Cat Catching in Enshrouded

Coming into Enshrouded after the last big update means that a lot of the previous history of the game isn’t part of our perspective.  It has been on the scene since January or so and we just picked it up in November.

I am given to understand that the aforementioned update, the Souls of the Frozen Frontier, brought with it tamable pets back on November 5th.  But I didn’t buy the game until November 6th… the update was probably what triggered the sale which, in turn, tempted me to buy it… so tamable pets are new in that the whole game is still new.  So goats, for example, the first pets you go out and tame once you have the farmer, who teaches you to make the goat bait, were pretty easy to get.

I tamed two goats and soon we had goats all over.  Despite the fact that both goats gave milk, baby goats appeared.  Note: remember to upgrade your baby goats if you want more goat’s milk.

Unless, of course, you just like having baby goats around.  My wife always says she wishes cats would remain kittens.  Here you can get that… with goats at least.

Ula also went out and tamed some hophares, so we have a mess of those running around the homestead and scarfing up all the food we lay down for them… and breeding as well.

But on the list of quests there popped up one with the name “Cat Search.”  That immediately caught our attention.

That required us to find stinging nettles which, for some reason, is a required ingredient of cat food and cat bait in the game.  Also, cat bait is a thing, but whatever.

So there was a bit of searching for those, and then some cultivating.  The farmer’s workstation lets you create seedlings of most plants you can find in a somewhat more efficient cycle than we had in Valheim, where you had to grow a seed bearing version of a plant to get seeds to grown the edible version… or you could plant the edible version to get more seed.

Anyway, armed with the cat bait I went out in search of the cat or cats, which were out at the Alchemist Tower.

The Alchemist Tower, which is also where the mortar and pestle for the alchemist can be found… I guess the tower has that name for a reason… is down in the shroud, and getting there is best done via some gliding… but gliding is one of the highlights of travel in Enshrouded.

Gliding from a sufficient height gets you a good 100 to 150 meter march on your destination, but eventually the ground comes up to smite you.  I landed short of the tower and had to fight through a little town full of shroudies… or whatever we call the corrupted souls who haunt the shroud… before making my way up to the tower.

The door was open and I was inside quickly enough.

The tower is one of those places in the shroud that is within the bounds of the shroud, but is high enough up that on the second floor you are suddenly above the shroud again and your shroud timer… the allowable time within the shroud after which you’ll perish, which for us defaults to ten minutes and thirty seconds… gets reset and you are safe once more.  You can also fast travel home when you’re done, which is handy.

It was up on the second floor that I found the cat.

Taming animals is a process where you get them to eat the bait and they are calm for a bit, so you can sneak up on them and pet them.  The furthers the taming process.  For goats you just have to get in there and pet them once and you’re done.  You then pick them up and head back home with them.

Cats, and some of the higher level beasts one can tame, require more hearts before they are tame.  The cat specifically requires three passes to tame.  So off I went, and the first heart was easy, no more so than the goats certainly.

The first heart down I threw bait to try for the second… and failed.  The cat showed the yellow heart, indicating it was ready for another cycle of petting in order to keep the taming process going, but creeping close did not give me the opportunity.

I was getting either a yellow question mark above the cat or a red exclamation point, and when those were showing up the game was prompting me with the following.

So I would back off a bit and then try again, get the same response, and then the bait would wear off.  I went through that multiple times.

I eventually ran out of bait and had to go back home to make some more.  So far I had merely succeeded in feeding the cat.

Back at base I tabbed out of the game to search on how to catch the cat.  I found a video that ran through it in a reasonable amount of time… I mean, it was 8 minutes but I was able to skip past the whole “making the bait” aspect of it… and they just walked into the tower, threw their bait, and boom, done.  Not much explanation, but it looked easy enough.

Still, it looked easy, so with twice as much cat bait I went back… and had pretty much the same issue.

A little bit more of that and I knew I must be missing something, so I went digging further down the results until I found somebody who described the process in more detail.

When the red exclamation point appears, that means you should back off.  When the yellow question mark appears above the cat… in the circle where the level shows… you just need to hold still.  I had been backing off like the game was telling me.  Once I just stopped and held still when the question mark was up, it all fell into place and I had soon enough picked up the cat.

I went up to the top of the tower to make sure I had everything… there are also a number of chests in there, including one in a room behind a bookcase… you should get your axe out and break all bookcases just sitting against walls, it turns up something more often than not… and took a look around.

Then it was back to base where I put the cat down and he immediately wanted to be fed.

There was already a bed placed upstairs, which the cat found easily enough.  Again, just like the real thing.

Though, thinking about it, Minecraft was probably more on point with cats occupying the human beds.

And if you pet the cat you get a small 30 minute health buff.

Now to go find the dog.  That is supposed to be in one of the scavenger camps out in the world.