The capture crate is a reusable tool that lets you temporarily store small and juvenile animals in Hytale, making it possible to move them from the wild to your farm without the frustration of herding them across the map. Unlike other animal management systems, the capture crate does not tame or breed animals—it simply provides safe transportation.
Quick answer: Equip a capture crate and left-click on a small animal to capture it. Left-click again to release it at your destination.
Crafting a capture crate
You craft the capture crate at the Farmer's Workbench, which requires early-to-mid game farming progression to unlock. The workbench itself is built at a standard workbench using 6 tree trunks and 20 plant fiber.
To craft the capture crate, gather 4 wood (any type) and 50 essence of life. Essence of life drops from harvesting crops and wild plants, and you can also obtain it by chopping trees or killing passive mobs like cows, sheep, and rabbits. Once you have the materials, open the Farmer's Workbench, navigate to the farming section, and craft the crate. It will appear in your inventory and can be placed in your hotbar.
Capturing an animal
Step 1: Place the capture crate in your hotbar and equip it by selecting it.
Step 2: Approach a compatible small animal and left-click on it.
If the animal can be captured, it will instantly be stored inside the crate. The crate's icon will visually change to show it now contains an animal.
Releasing an animal
Step 1: Move to the location where you want to release the animal.
Step 2: Aim at the ground or your enclosure and left-click with the capture crate equipped.
The animal will be released exactly where you clicked. Since wild animals run away immediately upon seeing you, always build a fenced enclosure first. You can craft fences at the builder's workbench by placing any type of wood in the input slot—one piece of wood yields two fence pieces.
Which animals you can capture
Only the smallest animals fit inside the capture crate. Most adult animals cannot be captured, but nearly all baby and juvenile versions can be. Capturable animals include calves, lambs, foals, rabbits of all sizes, baby pigs, baby swine, mice, frogs, meerkats, and armadillos. Chickens and desert chickens can be captured at any size, as can mouflon.
Animals you cannot capture include birds, bats, snakes, snails, fish, crabs, lobsters, tortoises, flamingos, foxes, wolves, bears, big cats, hyenas, crocodiles, camels, deer, moose, and dinosaurs. If baby versions of currently non-capturable animals are added in future updates, the capture crate will likely work on them.
Using a feed bag to make capture easier
A feed bag, crafted at the Farmer's Workbench using 10 wheat, 5 vegetables, 5 fruits, and 10 essence of life, can calm animals and make them easier to approach. Hold the feed bag in your hand as you approach animals, and they will show heart icons and become less fearful. This makes capturing them without chasing significantly easier, especially when paired with the capture crate.
You can also place a feed bag near an enclosure to draw animals toward it, then capture them once they're calm and close enough. Without a feed bag in the enclosure after release, animals will remain wild and run away from you.
Taming captured animals
Capturing an animal does not tame it. Wild animals released into an enclosure will run away as soon as they see you. However, if you place a feed bag inside the enclosure with the animal and spend roughly a day nearby, heart icons will begin to appear, indicating the animal has become tamed. Tamed animals will no longer panic at your presence—they simply ignore you instead of fleeing.
If you recapture a semi-tamed animal, it will revert to its wild state, so avoid moving tamed animals once they've settled.