Crates

Crates are standard containers featured throughout the Ratchet & Clank series, used to contain bolts, ammo, nanotech, and sometimes small boosts to Ratchet and Clank. A wide variety of different crates appear, with the most common crates being wooden crates containing bolts, while many others are found depending on the game. They are usually found stacked with other crates, often among a mix of crates. Crates are produced in factories.^[1]

Inferno mode gameplay from *Up Your Arsenal*.

In Tools of Destruction, certain crates contain RYNO IV holo-plans. In Full Frontal Assault, destroying all basic crates in a level earns the skill point Crate Hater.

Crates in the first four PS2 games, Going Mobile, Size Matters, and Secret Agent Clank have a very different appearance from crates in Tools of Destruction and later games.

Types[]

Name	Description	Appearances
Bolt crate	Basic wooden crate containing bolts, most common crate found in its appearances, with slightly different design. Easily destroyed with any weapon. Usable as Suck Cannon ammo in Up Your Arsenal and Size Matters.	All except Deadlocked
Explosive crate	Red crates containing bolts. When touched, a timer will start, giving three seconds to move away before they explode and destroy nearby crates or damage anyone nearby. Hitting them with the OmniWrench or another weapon will cause them to instantly explode. Often found among basic bolt crates, and sometimes underwater, where touching them allows them to be used destroy other nearby crates.	All except Deadlocked, Going Mobile, and Full Frontal Assault
Ammo crate	Crates containing ammo for weapons, with various different appearances for Gadgetron, Megacorp, and GrummelNet crates. Ammo released from the crates is random, but priority is given to weapons the player is holding that are below maximum capacity.	All
Nanotech crate	Glass crates containing blue nanotech orbs, which restore the player's nanotech when opened, or leave nanotech around if at maximum capacity. In Up Your Arsenal, can also fill the nano-pak. In the original Ratchet & Clank and Going Commando, they restore a set amount; in later appearances, the amount restored is proportional to the player's maximum nanotech.	All
Metal crate	Metal crates containing bolts, can only opened by an explosive weapon (or Walloper).	Ratchet & Clank, Up Your Arsenal, Tools of Destruction, Quest for Booty, A Crack in Time, All 4 One
Ultra nanotech crate	Glass crates containing purple nanotech orbs, which restore the player's nanotech four times the amount of standard nanotech crates when opened, providing either four nanotech units in a standard playthrough or sixteen in challenge mode.	Going Commando
Inferno crate	Orange and red crates with a black rim which, when opened, start inferno mode. This grants Ratchet Infernox armor, two flaming wrenches which instantly kill enemies, and invulnerability. Found rarely in few areas, and appears randomly in Annihilation Nation challenges, but they will expire when a boss fight begins.	Up Your Arsenal
Jackpot crate	Varies in appearance and slightly in function. In Up Your Arsenal, they are green with a black rim, and double the value of bolts the player collects (including doubling the current bolt multiplier value in challenge mode), and experience gained. In Deadlocked, they are small, yellow, and spherical, and give a high amount of bolts, varying between 1,000 or 10,000 at once, depending on the battlecourse in which they are hidden. In Tools of Destruction, they are blue crates with a question mark sign on them, double the value of bolts and raritanium, but are ineffective in challenge mode.	Up Your Arsenal, Deadlocked, Tools of Destruction
Weapon crate	A green crate only found in Clank Challenges and Size Matters' multiplayer mode. Contains single-use power-ups for torsos in the former, and weapons in the latter.	Size Matters, Size Matters multiplayer
Upgrade crate	A yellow crate only found in Size Matters' multiplayer, will upgrade any equipped weapon to V2, and then again to V3 (effectively V4, in multiplayer). Takes a long time to respawn.	Size Matters multiplayer
Mod crate	An even rarer crate than the upgrade crate, also only found in multiplayer. Will grant a random equipped weapon one of the singleplayer mods. Each weapon can only have one mod, which will also always be the same one. Takes even longer to respawn.	Size Matters multiplayer
Raritanium chests	Space pirate chests containing raritanium.	Tools of Destruction
Massive crate	Large wooden crates sealed with metal, containing bolts, ammo, and nanotech all in one.	A Crack in Time
Camo crate	Translucent crates that blend into their environment, containing more bolts than normal crates.	A Crack in Time
Bolt Grabber crate	Blue crates with metal trim, provide the player a x2 bonus to all bolts received, and allows the player to break bolts by simply touching them.	All 4 One

Behind the scenes[]

In Going Commando, the ammo crates originally had a brown appearance in early builds of the game.^[2] Additionally, the unbreakable metal crates in Ratchet & Clank would have appeared, and appeared in the Maktar Resort in the demo release of the game.^[3]

When in pre-production for Up Your Arsenal, a group of Insomniac Games developers, including Tony Garcia, brainstormed the possibility of adding new crates, and proposed it to Insomniac CEO Ted Price. Price believed it was impossible to further the crate paradigm as he'd been attempting new crate ideas since the beginning, and offered to buy a developer a case of beer if they could do it. This motivated them to create the jackpot crate and inferno crate.^[4] Originally, the developers had wanted a new set of attacks with the inferno mode giving Ratchet a second wrench, but this would require too much animation time.^[5]

For Up Your Arsenal, an additional crate was going to be included called the upgrader crate, which would have upgraded Ratchet's weakest weapon by one level.^[6]^[7]