Okay, so this guide is just to cover the absolute basics of your FFXIV Island Sanctuary Pasture. Basics on catching, feeding, and (TBA) info on the best pasture setups. Welp, I suppose lets go ahead and “Gotta capture ‘em all!”. You know something along those lines was coming.
Updated Jan 18 ’23: Patch 6.3 now, thankfully gives the option to release an animal if your pasture is full and you acquire a new one. A great QoL, and all references to the old system removed, while adding this reminder as well.
Best animal setups for your pasture? That’s a more thorough guide!
While I’m certain you got the gist of it during the Island Sanctuary “tutorial” and the Island Sanctuary Codex does cover most of the basics. However, if you’re here, then that means theres something you need clarification on.
“What time is it!? What’s the weather!?”
– Mahiko “tchum” San
More advanced info on feeding and pasture setups are in a separate page, if you wan’t to learn more about those.
Island Sanctuary Pasture – the Basics
You catch animals found roaming around your island. You can keep 5/10/20 of them depending on your Pasture / Island rank. Feeding them from various choices of food can potentially improve their mood – but more importantly well fed animals drop leavings. The happier they are, they have a chance to leave another type of leaving. Ultimately, these leavings are used for more advanced workshop recipes that typically yield better prices. That’s it in a nutshell.
Now, for the usual FAQ
What, how often, and what’s the mechanics behind feeding animals? TLDR is better food is always better, and once every human day is enough. A well fed animal will always provide their primary leaving. The happier they are, the higher chances for them to leave their second leaving type. The long answer? FFXIV Island Sanctuary Animal Feed Guide. It’s pretty basic, but the few nuances deserve a small little guide on it’s own.
How many animals can I keep? 5/10/20 depending on your Island Rank. You’ll be at 5 (Rank ~3) for a short while, and 10 for quite a while (Rank 4) – finally unlocking 20 and caretaking at Rank 9. Since you’re gonna be at 10 slots for a while, you might want to have a balanced leavings setup for 10 slots.
How do I catch animals? You can craft consumable items that, depending on your rank, allow you to catch small / medium / large animals. It’s not a 100% chance, though – to the annoyance of many. Your option of ‘pokeballs’ are as follows:
- Makeshift Net (Unlocked at Rank 4~) allows Small animal capture. (needs: 1 Branch, 2 Vine)
- Makeshift Restraint (Unlocked at Rank 6) allows Medium animal capture. (needs: 3 Hemp, 1 Copper Ore)
- Makeshift Soporific (Unlocked at Rank 8) allows Large animal capture. (needs: 2 Laver, 1 Sap, 2 Jellyfish)
The actual mechanics of catching, is changing your action mode to Capture, and selecting the appropriate trap item for the animal you want to catch. From there, simply right-click the, hopefully, unsuspecting creature.
You then get 1 of 3 possible results. 1) You catch it successfully and it goes to your pasture (angrily, I might add). 2) You fail, and it doesn’t notice you – giving you more chances (which use up more traps. Yeahp). 3) You fail, and it DOES notice you – then it runs away. Super annoying for Weather + Time gated rare animals.
MEMEWORTHY NOTE: My friend, and I’m tempted to name him here, advised me that catching animals from directly behind prevents them from running away. I’ll test this further but this guy is known to troll me. If I find this to be a meme… I should really blame myself at this point. UPDATE: This is very likely a meme. That *****. I’ll keep this here for the memories.
What happens when my pasture is full when I catch a new one? Back in the day, you couldn’t. These days, you now get a prompt to select an animal to release if you so wish to do so. The new guy fills up the slot if you do release one of the old ones.
What are the chances for rare leavings? Pretty high. Over 50% I’d say if their happiness level is gleeful.
What’s the best animal setup? This is too broad, and honestly subjective, depending on your goals. There is no one answer to fit all, but check this out for pasture animal setup ideas.
Are there special animals? Yes. These so-called rare animals usually spawn during time windows, or during weather conditions – with some requiring time AND weather conditions to be met.
Island Sanctuary Pasture – Feeding and Setups?
As state above, these two topics deserve a little segment of their own.
What’s best and how best to feed the animals? While Feeding your animals is pretty basic, there’s some information here and there and optimizations that I don’t want to bog down this really basic guide with. For most people “Best food, once a day, caretaking” is enough of a guideline. Otherwise, if you want to learn more about feeding your animals in Island Sanctuary.
What’s the best animal setup for your pasture? TLDR – while it depends on your personal preference, the typical end-game setups are “I want all the rare animals”, “I want the most balanced yield of leavings”, “I want to fulfill my custom workshop ‘rotation’”, “I only want to feed low level food”, or a combination of these. Check out: Island Sanctuary Animal Setups.
Summary and Outro
Like I said, this is a basic of the basic rundown of the pasture. If you have any basic questions, this will probably answer most of ‘em. If you’re in need of more advanced info on the related systems of the pasture, you’ll find that on the related link on here too.
Learn more about FFXIV Island Sanctuary!
Good luck out there, and, forgive me – I only did two Pokemon references alright…