In Raft, capturing and raising animals comes with many benefits that can help you survive and beat the game more easily. For example, Llamas provide Wool, which you need to make armor and backpacks.
However, not all players know how to catch animals. According to Steam’s statistics, only 34.2% of players have captured one animal on their playthroughs.
Recommended Read: How to Get Dirt in Raft
This means that more than half of Raft’s player base doesn’t take advantage of animals to beat the game, or they simply don’t know how to capture one.
You can catch animals in Raft by using the Net Launcher on them while having Net Canisters in your inventory. You can find more information on how to craft both and what materials you need below.
Table of Contents
How to Catch Animals in Raft
After finding Metal Ores on the ocean floor, smelt them in the Furnace to obtain Metal Ingots, open the Research Table, and research the following items: 1 Scrap, 1 Plastic, 1 Metal Ingot, and 1 Bolt.
Next, open the crafting menu and find the Net Launcher recipe, located in the fourth tab with the two crossed swords icon. You’ll need 2 Scraps, 4 Plastics, 1 Metal Ingot, and 2 Bolts to craft one.
The Net Launcher serves as a gun that fires nets to capture the animals on islands. However, you’ll need one more crucial element – ammunition – a Net Canister.
Net Canister is crafted with 1 Explosive Powder, 4 Ropes, and 4 Stones. Its recipe can also be found in the same crafting menu tab as the Net Launcher.
Ropes and Stones are basic materials, while Explosive Powder can be obtained by smelting Explosive Goos in the Furnace.
You’ll need at least 2 Explosive Powders to catch animals: one for researching the Net Canister recipe and one for crafting a Net Canister.
You can get the Explosive Goos by hunting the yellow Poison-Puffers that spawn around large tropical islands and other special ones.
Fortunately, animals also spawn on large tropical islands. This means that as long as you can find a large tropical island, you will be able to get everything you need to catch animals, including the animals.
Techniques to Catch Animals
Once you have a Net Launcher and some Net Canisters, you can catch the following animals:
- Clucker
- Goat
- Llama
These 3 animals only spawn on large tropical islands, Balboa and Caravan islands, and their variants. So make sure you visit the correct island.
Next, put the Net Launcher in your hotbar and select it. Then, click the left mouse button to shoot the canister to catch the animal.
The firing and catching process seems pretty straightforward. However, you’ll likely miss your first shot if you aren’t familiar with the Net Launcher.
Similarly to shooting a Bow, you’ll need to aim higher than the target animal so the canister can land accurately. The farther away the animal is, the higher you should aim.
These animals don’t just stand still for you to catch. They annoyingly run around and make sudden turns, making them really hard to hit.
Our recommendation is that you stay far away from them. Keeping a distance will make them not notice you, and as a result, they will not run around wildly but instead walk slowly or even stand still to eat grass.
When they’re moving at a much slower pace or standing still, take your time and prepare the shot.
Of course, this method also has a disadvantage – you need to be familiar with the firing and aiming mechanics of the Net Launcher. Since you’ll be pretty far from the animal, you’ll need to aim a lot higher.
If you prefer staying close and chasing the animal around, try to chase it into a corner. When it reaches the end of the corner, it will turn around, and if you aim carefully, you can catch it easily then.
In addition to the two methods above, you can also try to predict the animal’s movement and aim in front of its current location, as there is a small delay between when you click and when the net is actually shot.
However, after catching hundreds of animals in Raft, we find that the two first methods work better.
How to Tame and Feed Animals
After successfully landing the net on the animal, get close to it and press “E” to pick up the animal.
Now, immediately return to your raft without collecting anything else. If you press “E” again, the animal will be released, and you’ll need another Net Canister to catch it again.
Once you’re on your raft, you can release the animal without worries. As long as the animal is on your raft, it is tamed and will not run away. You can also pick it up again or rename it whenever you want.
After several tests, we concluded that the animals in Raft won’t actively jump into the ocean or try returning to the islands.
However, they can still fall into the ocean, so it’s recommended to build a place for them and surround that area with fences so they don’t wander around too much.
Next, you need to collect Dirt, which also spawns on large islands. Then, research it and craft a few Grass Plots. Its recipe can be found in the Food/Water crafting menu.
Each Grass Plot costs 2 Dirt, 6 Planks, and 4 Plastics to craft.
The Grass Plot only has one purpose – it grows grass to feed the animals.
Once watered, a Grass Plot will grow grass after 5 minutes.
Since each animal needs to eat every 8 minutes, it’s recommended to have an individual Grass Plot for each animal on your raft.
If you don’t have enough Dirt to craft Grass Plots, or you simply are too lazy to water them, just let them be, as the animals in Raft can’t die of starvation. They just don’t produce their resources when not fed.
That’s how to catch animals in Raft.
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