Goal: capture the best pet possible — bosses only, not common mobs — with every stat rolling with a green bonus. The green bonus is what determines the pet's star rating, and the star rating determines its real ceiling (and whether it qualifies for Shapeshift Fusion, which requires 3★).

1. How capture works (source: game client)

You use a Poke Egg: activate it and click the monster you want to capture. Golden rule straight from the client: “the less HP the monster has, the higher your success rate”.

1b. Capture grade (品級) — Common / Good / Rare / Excellent / Super

Besides the green bonus (section 2), the game assigns every captured pet one of 5 rarity grades, confirmed against the client's achievement.xml ("Tamer Newbie I–V" achievements, which require catching 5/4/3/2/1 pets of each grade — fewer required = rarer grade). Real order, lowest to highest:

How it works: the grade is decided server-side at the moment of capture (it isn't in any minable client file — the prototypes it would use don't exist in pet.xml). It used to be shown as a prefix on the captured pet's name (e.g. "Super-Name"); the capture message itself ("Capture successful.") doesn't announce the grade in text. This is an independent system from the green bonus/stars in the next section — a pet can come out high-grade with a low green bonus, or the other way around. Don't confuse this with the Normal/Superior/Excellent/Epic/Legendary scale, which belongs to the card album, not pets.

2. The green bonus and star rating

On capture, each pet stat can roll with a green bonus (extra on top of the base value). Per the game's own star chart: “the chart shows how big the green bonus needs to be to raise each stat's star rating; the pet's final star rating is the average of the star ratings of all its stats”. Green bonus thresholds per star:

Full table (0.1★ to 8.0★):

2b. Basic stats vs. Bonus — how the final number is built

Note: this section summarizes concepts from old external guides (not verified with CE) — use them as a general framework, not exact figures.

Every pet has two layers of stats:

• Basic stats (base number, grey): follow a fixed curve based on the pet's level/stage — the same for any pet of that type (antetype). This part does NOT depend on capture, it's deterministic.
• Bonus (green number, "+"): extra on top of the base, rolled at the moment of capture. Each pet antetype has specific attributes that can receive a bonus, and the exact value comes from a random range on that capture.

The bonus accumulates, it doesn't re-roll on every evolution: once a stat gets a bonus, that bonus is locked in and stacks with any new bonuses added when the pet evolves (Egg→S1→S2→S3, confirmed in the client — see Pet Evolution; the S3→Top step shown here is aspirational and not confirmed in the extracted client data). That's why a pet captured with a good early bonus keeps that edge through its confirmed evolutions.

On "does it always come with a bonus?": per external guides (not verified with CE), a captured pet never rolls all 8 stats at zero bonus — at least one comes out green. That doesn't replace the recapture protocol below: the goal is still to maximize how many stats (and how big) roll green, not just to have "some" bonus.

3. Perfect-capture protocol

1. Pick a top boss in your range (tables below) — bosses have much higher base stats than any common mob of their level.
2. Bring its HP down to the minimum without killing it (success rate rises the less HP it has left).
3. Use the best egg you have: Luxurious > Craftsman's / Leader > regular Poke Egg.
4. Once captured, check all 8 stats: if they didn't ALL roll green (or the green values are low), release it and recapture — the roll is fresh every capture.
5. Reasonable minimum target: green rolls averaging 3.0★ (unlocks Shapeshift Fusion). Ideal target: big green rolls on HP/Atk/Def depending on the pet's role.
6. After that you can keep raising stars via fusion: the Blessed Fusion Potion gives higher success, an extra attribute bonus, and the main pet doesn't die on failure.

4. Top boss pets by level range

Score = stat efficiency per level compared to the Unicorn Rabbit (score 1.00), the classic efficient-pet benchmark. Averages HP/level, Atk/level and Def/level. Bosses only.

Level 11–20

Level 21–30

Level 31–40

Level 41–50

Level 51–60

Level 61–70

Level 71–80

Level 81–90

4b. Boss pets CONFIRMED capturable by the client (PET.XML + real spawn)

This list comes from the extracted client — it's the source of truth: pets whose only spawn on the maps is a boss. The tables in section 4 are from the historical bestiary (stat reference); this is the list of what exists in the client today. Score = PET.XML maximums (0 = stats not yet mined).

Total: 94 confirmed capturable boss pets in data/capture_candidates.json (updated 2026-07-19). The ones with score "—" (Top stage) exist but their maximum stats haven't been mined yet — next CE session.

5. Training (summary of the official Pet System)

• Stages: Egg → Junior (lvl 15) → Secondary (lvl 35+, Secondary Bloodline Certificate) → Advanced (lvl 55+, special item). When advancing a stage the game asks questions: the answers + items determine the pet's direction.
• Level: rises by killing monsters and can never exceed the owner's level. There are items that bank the pet's EXP to redistribute later.
• Intimacy: rises while summoned; if it drops too low the pet can run away.
• Satiation: drops while summoned; at 0 it gains no EXP and loses intimacy — carry pet food from the Pet Expert.
• AI: Aggressive mode trains fast (attacks anything in range); it summons in Passive by default.
• Death: loses EXP and intimacy — recall it before a losing fight.

Sources: extracted client (str_item, Poke Egg descriptions), Pet System and by-level bestiary from ao-guides.wikidot.com, star chart from imi83 (IGG forum), Basic stats/Bonus mechanic from an external guide (section 2b) — not verified with CE. Note: the exact capture % per egg and the "at least 1 stat with a bonus" guarantee aren't in the client; only the HP rule is. Confirm in-game which bosses are capturable on the current server.