Pristine Trap failed FIVE times

What the heck is going on? Sure, I have had the Pristine Trap fail 3 times in a row, and yeah, I can see a 90% chance failing. But 120% chance failing? I mean, if the tooltip claims, “Capture chance is increased by 30% each time you fail”, then shouldn’t 4 traps in a row equal 120%? I actually went back through the Pet Battle log, and it shows that I used the Pristine Trap 6 times on the same capture, which is kind of weird, since the 5th one was a capture, and the 6th was a failure.

But still, FOUR traps in a row missed! Am I missing something (HA! I crack myself up), or has something gone screwy? Thanks in advance for answers!

does the trap miss 100% if the enemy pet uses dodge or something?

Most likely the %increase is multiplicative to the base chance. So for example, if the base chance was 30%. A miss would increase that by 30% to 39% (30% * 1.3 = 39%). In that scenario you never actually reach 100% chance, but you can eventually get close.

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Creeks, I have had opponents underground/underwater (Burrow and Dive type abilities) and the trap still caught them. I’ve also had opponents flying (Lift Off?) and the trap still caught them. The pet in question was a Leafy Flutterwing that had Slicing Wind, Moth Balls and Moth Dust for its abilities. I don’t think any of those give dodge.

Jere, I’ll have to take your word on that, I never understood it. I just assumed it was a 30% increase each time, and took the tooltip at face value.

Thanks for your replies, guys!

I wouldnt think that from experience.

Ive been using the pristine trap for ages and a pet is caught for me within the first 3 throws most of the time.

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If I bring the opponent pet’s health down to 1, which is easy using Superbark or Weakening Blow, it never takes more than 3 tries to catch it.

The higher the level of the pet you are catching, the lower the health you need to bring it down to, to have a reasonable chance of catching it.

If you’re catching a level 25 pet whose health you have brought down to 35%, you chances of catching it first time are not great. If the catch chance begins at 30%, the second attempt chance will increase that by 30%, which is 9, so your second attempt will have a 39% catch chance. Your third attempt, if the increase is cumulative, will have a 40.7% chance, fourth attempt would have a 52.9% chance, fifth attempt would have a 68.8% capture chance.

The moral of the story is always have a team saved with a “reduce health to no less than 1” move for catching pets.

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I believe you are mostly correct, except (math quibble) your last sentence wouldn’t be true in that case. If it kept going up by a 1.3 factor it would get to 100% and exceed it.

How I suspect it works is that the chance to miss is decreased by 30% each time. So e.g. if you start at 30% chance to catch = 70% chance to miss, next time you have a 70% x 0.7 = 49% chance to miss or 51% chance to catch, then after that ~35% chance to miss, and so on. That way it actually would asymptote to 100% without ever reaching it, and it also supports that we almost always catch it in the first few tries because the chance improves fast at first then slows.

It is virtually impossible to do regression testing to confirm the formula unfortunately so unless we get told we can’t know for sure.

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Nope, I’ve caught plenty of pets while they had an immunity up like dodge/borrow/fly/decoy

I am so afraid bringing HP so low AND end up killing it. I’ve lost so many rares that way. I always try to start catching the minute that trap lights up… thanks for the tip!

Check out these pets as catchers. They each have a move which brings the opponent’s pet’s health down to not less than one:

Brutus
Corgi Pup
Corgnelius
Grumpy
Lord Woofington
Molten Corgi
Scraps
Snobold Runt
Terrible Turnip

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Zarraline, thanks!!!