Palworld: How to catch or hatch Lunaris

Finding, capturing, breeding and hatching the Lunaris mini boss from Palworld.
(Image credit: Cole Martin/Windows Central)

If you've not heard of Palworld, it is the multiplayer survival adventure that has surprised everybody with its incredibly successful launch in mid-January 2024. The game has more than 100 creatures you can capture or breed and then use as companions in your party or as workers in your base. These creatures, dubbed Pals, are reminiscent of Pokémon, with each Pal fitting within an element and having specific traits and weaknesses. If you're looking for a helpful Pal who can put in the work around your base, you will want to scout out a Lunaris.

What is a Lunaris?

Pal #63 is Lunaris. (Image credit: Cole Martin/Windows Central)

Pal #63, Lunaris, is a neutral elemental Pal in Palworld with the "Antigravity" partner skill.

Neutral pals are one of the strongest elementals in Palworld, with only Dark-type pals able to effectively damage them. Lunaris is a bipedal creature with a slender anthropomorphic body type, round head with two upward-pointing horns, and large floppy tail-like appendages attached to the back of the head. It is primarily white, with violet and teal color blocking on its points. 

Lunaris is particularly useful around the player's base, as it is well suited for transporting and gathering. The pal is also a level 3 for Handiwork, making it one of the most useful for assembling and crafting. A Lunaris' work speed can be improved using pal souls at the Statue of Power.

Where to find wild Lunaris

If you want to add a Lunaris to your pal party, you must first find one. The neutral pal is tucked away inside a dungeon known as the Sealed Realm of the Esoteric on the Sea Breeze Archipelago Islands to the southwest of the map. Before heading into the dungeon, you may want to check around at the smuggler's camps in the area. Sometimes, a wild Lunaris will be caged by smugglers, and freeing it will automatically add it to your paldeck without a fight. You may also luck out and find one from a Black Marketeer or Wandering Pal trader.

How to catch a wild Lunaris

If you're heading into the dungeon on Sea Breeze Archipelago Islands, pack some decent gear and a Dark elemental pal for the fight. As a neutral-type, Lunaris is a level 32 miniboss that is most susceptible to damage from Dark-type Pals. My preferred combination is a Daedream (equipped with a collar) paired with an Eikthyrdeer or Katress. 

If you aim to capture the Lunaris instead of just killing it, you will want to keep an eye on the boss' bar. Once it dips to around 400 hit points, it is best to stop your pals from attacking by clicking on the right stick on a controller and selecting "Command Don't Attack" from the command wheel. At this point, you can continue to whittle away at the Lunaris' health until you have a high enough catch percentage to risk throwing a pal sphere for the capture. 

Because of its status as a miniboss, high health, and high level, it is best to attempt to capture Lunaris with a Giga sphere or higher. That doesn't mean it's impossible to accomplish the capture with lower-tier spheres, but your catch percentage will certainly be lower. If you fail, you'll have to wait at least 60 minutes for a new Lunaris to return to the dungeon so you can try again.

How to hatch a Lunaris

Breed a Direhowl to a Roobey to produce a large common egg. (Image credit: Cole Martin/Windows Central)

The obvious thought process for hatching a Lunaris is that you will need to catch two wild ones, breed them, and hatch the resulting egg. However, you may be surprised to learn there's a much faster way to get your hands on the elusive Lunaris through breeding. Before you start breeding a Lunaris, you will need a Mixed Farm.

Lunaris is an excellent pal for crafting as it has a handiwork level of 3. (Image credit: Cole Martin/Windows Central)

After you build your farm, you need to set out to bake a cake. If you're not already set up to collect the necessary ingredients from the respective pals, baking cakes can seem fairly difficult. With the right setup, however, you'll be drowning in the sugary confection. The recipe for cakes is automatically unlocked when you purchase the Mixed Farm technology from your tech tree, and it can be accessed via the Cooking Pot, which also needs to be unlocked with technology. The cake recipe requires the following ingredients:

  • (5) Flour
  • (2) Honey
  • (7) Milk
  • (8) Eggs
  • (8) Red berries

Of the ingredients, eggs and red berries are the most plentiful. Red berries can be found growing all over the starting area of the map and collecting them also harvests seeds, which can be used in the berry plantation that is unlocked early on. Eggs are collected by either killing Chikipi or setting them to produce eggs in the Ranch. Milk is produced by Mozzarina, another early and easy-to-discover Pal, via the Ranch, though you can also purchase it from traders at settlements. 

Flour is produced by grinding wheat with a Mill, and it is one of the more complicated ingredients to collect, as it requires multiple steps and pals. Wheat seeds can be purchased from traders or are dropped by some Pals such as Cinnamoth or Flopie. Those seeds must then be planted and harvested from a Wheat Plantation and then processed in the mill using the help of a Pal with the watering skill. Honey, too, can be a difficult-to-procure ingredient as it must be collected from Beegriades and Elizabee's near Hypocrite Hill, though putting these Pals or a Cinnamoth into the Farm can lead to honey yields, as well.

Bake a cake in the cooking pot with the help of a kindling pal. (Image credit: Cole Martin/Windows Central)

Once you have all the ingredients, bake the cake using the cooking pot. Or capture a Lovander and wait until it mysteriously drops a cake. The choice is yours here, as both can take a ridiculously long time, but once a cake has been acquired, it only has 20 minutes on the clock before it goes to waste. You can refresh the cake's timer by putting it in a cooling box or fridge, but it's best to act fast once you have one in your possession. Drop the cake in the Mixed Farm's box, and you're ready to play matchmaker.

Pairing different Pal types can result in some wonderfully unusual variants of your favorite Pals, but occasionally, you luck out and create something different entirely. In the case of Lunaris, we can avoid the headache of fighting the miniboss and embrace the egg-hatching life to get all the benefits of this excellent little worker. A bonus to breeding the Lunaris as opposed to catching them is that the hatched Lunaris will have significantly better stats than any that you will be likely to catch wild. To hatch a Lunaris, you're going to assign a male or female Direhowl with a Rooby of the opposite sex.

Incubation of a large common egg produced by a Direhowl and a Roobey produces a level 1 Lanaris with two gold traits inherited from the parents. (Image credit: Cole Martin/Windows Central)

Give the pair of lovebirds a bit of time, and they will eventually produce an egg that can be placed into an egg incubator. Then it's just a waiting game until the Lunaris hatches. Hatching it will add a powerful Lunaris to your collection early in the game without having to wait until you're strong enough to take out the miniboss. Plus, setting yourself up to breed Pals can be a great way to unlock some rare Fusion Pals from the game. 

Can't get enough Palworld? We have tips and tricks for beginners, along with a host of guides for getting the best PC performance settings in Palworld, resolving Palworld errors, and info about dedicated servers and multiplayer in Palworld

Cole Martin
Writer

Cole is the resident Call of Duty know-it-all and indie game enthusiast for Windows Central. She's a lifelong artist with two decades of experience in digital painting, and she will happily talk your ear off about budget pen displays.