Palworld tips and tricks you need to know before starting

Get a headstart with our essential Palworld tips and tricks

If you’re thinking about starting Palworld, or you’re just about to jump in for the first time, boy do we have some tips and tricks for you. Palworld is a survival-crafting game that will be very familiar to fans of the genre who are Steam players, but the unique hook here is that the development of your base, and your exploration of the world, is all tied to pal creatures you can capture, collect, and put to work.

It’s an obvious satire of the monster-catching RPG genre, but it’s also a solid survival-crafting game in its own right. And with a hook like this? Beautiful. You can become a cruel slave driver if you wish, or you can take care of your pals, and they’ll take care of you. Whichever path you choose, the Palworld tips below will give you some vital info that you’ll want to know as you play the first 15 hours of Palworld.

If you’re not sold on playing Palworld yet, make sure to take a look at our Palworld FAQ so you can figure out if it’s for you.

Palworld review: Procuring projectiles with primitive Pals, passionately

Choose your base location wisely

Picking a resource-rich spot for your first base is key, and setting up a second base when you find loads of ore isn't a terrible idea either / Pocketpair

Palworld's survival-crafting gameplay is all about gathering resources to build up your base, and then gathering more and different resources to further upgrade your base. Granted, at some point, you'll automate some of the resource gathering, but at first, you won't be able to get much help from your Pals. The game doesn't tell you where exactly to build your first base of operations, so for starters, make sure you pick a spot that has a lot of ore and stone deposits close by, to make your trips between them and your base as short as possible. Eventually, you will be able to set up more bases, so when you find an area that's rich in ore, coal, stone, sulphur or another heavy material, it makes sense to build a second base there.

The right pal for the job

Check the Work Suitability table on the right / Pocketpair

Each pal has a set number of tasks they can accomplish independently while at your base – you can check these in each pal’s description. You’ll need specific pals to fuel a Furnace, or leave the right items at your Ranch, or mine for Wood at your Logging Camp. Make sure the pals you have at your base can actually use the facilities you’ve built. For more details, check our Palworld work suitability guide.

Path assistance

You'll be building up your base, but that might make it hard for pals to navigate / Pocketpair

Pals are a little bit stupid. They’ll often go hungry, simply because they’ve gotten stuck on the terrain and can’t find their way back to Feed Box. Other times slopes are simply too steep, and they won’t figure out how to move up and down a hill. When this happens, you can remove a pal from your base and then place them back in to respawn them. To permanently stop pals from drifting off course, you can build walls, floors, and stairs that they can use which will help them to navigate your base permanently. Still, keep an eye on them.

Storage wars

So many items / Pocketpair

You will need a lot of storage in Palworld. Items will weigh you down fast, leaving you totally immobile if you carry enough, so you’ll often need to take things back to your base and drop them in barrels and shelves. Items stack seemingly infinitely, so you only ever need one item slot in a barrel to hold, say, 9,999x Stone. Still, you will find a huge number of resources, items, ammunition types, materials, and more. It’ll be very easy to lose track, but luckily, all of your facilities on your base have instant access to the storage on your base, so you’ll never go without. Place storage boxes right next to generators like Logging Camps and Stone Pits to make it easy for pals to put away produced materials.

You can catch bosses and people

Catch 'em if you can / Pocektpair

Pal Spheres, for some reason, work on pretty much everything. A boss monster? Get its health low enough, and a Pal Sphere just might make it your friend, permanently. A human opponent shooting you with a gun? Well, the game warns you that it’s inhumane, but you can absolutely throw a Pal Sphere at them and add them to your party. You can even catch a Merchant and place them at your base.

You will need more ore

Ore and Ingots will be required to craft the most deadly weapons / Pocketpair

Ore is a resource that is needed for Ingots, and Ingots are required for a huge number of items in the game. That would be fine, only mining ore is a time consuming process, and unless you place your base on an ore spawn, there’s no way to automate earning ore. It’s heavy, too, making it tough to farm in large quantities. Make sure to place your base close to an ore spawn, and this should be too much of a problem, but if you didn’t consider this, you’ll need to go ore mining often.

Pals level up when at your base or in your party

Get a strong team with minimal work. Well, from you / Pocketpair

Even if you never actually use your pals in the field to fight and capture other creatures, they will still level up. Pals at the base will earn experience while completing tasks, and pals in your party will also earn experience almost constantly as you explore and battle through Palpagos. So even if you capture a seemingly weak but interesting pal, just place it at your base or throw it in a spare party slot and it’ll soon be just as stronger as the rest of your team.

Craft Pal Gear

Pal Gear allows for a variety of pal abilities / Pocketpair

Pal Gear comes from the Pal Gear Workbench, and there’s a unique piece of gear for almost every pal. Once you acquire a piece of Pal Gear, it will apply to that type of pal while in your party automatically. This allows you to use Foxparks as a flamethrower, ride Rushoar, and have Daedream tag along beside you at all times, even while another pal is out on the field. 

Catch more pals

Could always use another big deer thing / Pocketpair

So you got a cool pal. That’s it, right? Wrong. Catch more of them. And more. Keep catching pals. You’ll get experience bonuses for catching up to 10 pals of the same kind, and beyond that, there’s a good chance of getting a pal with a unique passive ability which makes it a better partner or worker. If you end up having more pals than you need, well, the Meat Cleaver will give you an interesting way to get rid of them.

Nitewing is your first flying mount

I love you, Nitewing / Pocketpair

You can catch the pal Nitewing in the first area, and this can be your first flying mount, which massively opens up what you can do in Palworld. For all of the details, take a look at our how to get a flying mount guide.

Beat bosses

Take down Zoe & Grizzbolt with our guide / Pocketpair

There’s no real story in Palworld right now, so your main task should be building up a productive base, and beating bosses in the world. Each boss you defeat rewards you with an Ancient Technology Point, which you can spend on items like Egg Incubators. If you want to see everything Palworld has to offer, you’ll need to take down all of the bosses. The first main boss is incredibly tough, so make sure to read our Zoe & Grizzbolt boss guide. Eventually, you and your Pals will be strong enough to take down the other bosses, so you will need our Palworld boss tower locations guide.