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Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Playing

By birolay

After dumping over 100hours on game pass, I noticed that man... Did I make some stupid decisions and failed to enjoy the game to its fullest. So I decided to give it another go here on Steam for a flawless, no nonsense playtrough.

These are my *30 things I wish I've known* for Palworld.

Award

Created by

birolay
In-Game
No Man's Sky

Category: Characters, Classes, Crafting, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Secrets, Trading, Walkthroughs, Weapons

Languages: Bulgarian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Spanish-Latin America, Vietnamese

Posted

Updated

Jan 25 @ 12:24pm

Jun 25 @ 9:33pm

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Guide Index

Overview

Ultra-mega-blaster-important

Useful Tips

Currently a bug - might get fixed

Personal Takes

Suggestions?

Comments

Ultra-mega-blaster-important

If you're too lazy to read the rest, take note of AT LEAST the following:

Early Stat Leveling
Attack is sort of a useless stat. Pals are way, WAY stronger than you. Dump early points in HP, Stamina and Carrying Weight.
Ekranoplans are better than boats
When crossing a body of water, riding flying pals is faster than riding a swimming pal.
Pal-Riding Immunity to Fall Damage
There is no fall damage when riding a Pal.
Dual grappling
Each hookshot (grapple gun) has its own recharge bar. If you craft and equip two, you can spider-man through the map.
Fast travel will refresh assets
If you're looking to capture a specific pal or farm XP from thugs on a specific region, just fast travel away and back and they'll respawn.
Structural Preservation
You can perfectly build stuff beyond your base borders. But it’ll be gone on your next load unless you change the in-game config regarding “structure deterioration” to 0. That’ll prevent automatic destruction after a few hours.
Don't play only during daytime
There are nocturnal pals and special variants that only show up at night.
Beware of wooden stuff
Wooden constructions WILL catch on fire. Be careful when defending your base.
Make a bonfire kitchen
As soon as possible, make a row of bonfires to use as a kitchen in your base. Not only this improves efficiency on cooking (idle cooking is painfully slow), it'll prevent whatever has already been cooked from spoiling (yes, food will spoil if you don't consume it). PATCHED
The game has no HP potions
You can find/craft medicine for curing ailments or giving temporary bonus, but there's no such thing as an HP Potion. There are, though, a few pals that have healing skills and can restore your health, like the Teafant and Petallia.

Useful Tips

Here goes the bulk of the guide. I guarantee you'll wanna read until the end.

Abuse those bonfires
Torches and wall torches and whatnot need to be MANUALLY LIT. In other words, they're useless. You're better off being creative and stacking campfires on top of stuff. Highly recommend stacking a couple of large stools and putting a campfire on top. There ya go, a permanent light post.
Craft a Shield ASAP
The craftable “Shield” is not a shield-shield, bashing-like buckler, no. It’s more of a space laser shield. It basically gives you a rechargeable second health bar. Craft it as soon as possible.
Switch Pals during battle
If you pull out a pal that's almost DED it'll restore its HP while it's in your pocket. It's also actually kind of fast. Rotate pals mid-fight and you'll always have one with full HP.
Rock, paper, scissors. (ft. kampfer91)
This might sound obvious, but I was >30h into the game when I realized fire beats leaf, water beats fire, electrical beats water and so on. But here's the neat part... That ALSO goes for combat ailments, meaning your shock attack will be stronger if you first use hydro jet on whatever poor dude you're fighting.
Don't leave your poison bow at home (ft. Sotanaht)
You have more chances (%) to capture a pal from behind, when he’s sleeping, or when he has an ailment. So, go nuts with those fire/poison arrows! They inflict status in 1 hit, and 1 poison arrow is WAY cheaper than 1 pal sphere above blue level.
Infinite Palspheres
First off, capture some of the little guy called Vixy (it's the fox-thing from the cover art of this guide). Then, build a couple of Ranches and put them in there to retrieve arrows, gold, and, most importantly, Palspheres. With two or three full ranches it'll idly produce hundreds of palspheres in a matter of minutes.
Base Location Criteria - Terrain
Don't build your base next to a hill as pals are actually stupid and might not find the way back home around a cliff (even if there’s a clear pathway up/down), and starve to death. Also, stuff you might wanna build won’t snap properly in inclined terrain. So, plain, flat terrain it is.
Base Location Criteria - Infinite Ore
The most important resource in the game is copper ore. So, it’s wise to build your base next to ore clumps. Later on you can have an endless source of logs and stones… but not ores. There's a place with a TON of ores on the red-part of the map, next to an old church. Look it up and you'll eyeball it.
Base Location Criteria - Defenses
Also, if possible, look for clearings between rivers or ridges to build your base. As you’ll be invaded from time to time, having fixed paths and choke-points for enemies to follow will make it way more defensible. So yeah, get yourself a moat.
XP Farming
One of the best ways to farm XP early on is capturing 10 of each Pal type, earning an experience boost for the first 10 of any category. These captured Pals can be sold or butchered later. Or, even better, combined (check out the Enhanced Pal Traits through Breeding tip).
Get a mount ASAP
Palworld's world was *NOT* meant for on-foot traversal. Thus, walking is painfully slow. Acquire a mount early on and develop its saddle to navigate the expansive map faster. Consider deer and wolves as fast early-game choices, as they are some of the fastest early-game mounts, with Nitewings being slower, but flight capable.
Fly farther
Note that a flying mount's stamina and your glider's are two different, rechargeable, things. Switch them for longer flights.
Infinite Swimming
When flying over water, Pals won’t sink if their stamina is depleted. They’ll just hover above it, allowing you swim indefinitely.
Enhanced Pal Traits through Breeding
As soon as you unlock this feature, consider spending some time breeding pals. It can give you insanely better passive stats, like 30~40% more movement speed for a mount.
Stacked Pal Party Skills
Pal party skills stack. So, consider bringing Pals like those pink cat things along to enhance mining and hauling capabilities.
Strategic Effigy Spotting
You can easily spot those green statue thingies from high up. That goes double during the night, as their glow won’t dim over vast distances. Check out the YEETING tip on the next section for a useful way to do this.
Essence Capture for Improved Rates
When you get your first green holo thingies around the map to capture essence, consider using them to boost your character's Pal capture rate percentage. That’ll render a much less frustrating gameplay loop.
Efficient Pal Work Assignments
Throw Pals directly at whatever you want them to work on, minimizing his distraction rate. Stand on top of the workstation and throw them directly down at it for better results.
Non-Stop Nighttime Productivity (ft. Titan Methos)
Nocturnal pals will work continuously through the night without sleep. Think of that and you can have your production line running 24/7. It is worth noting, though, since nocturnal Pals don't sleep, they only recover SAN from hot springs & food. So, don't cheap out on those.
Inspire them to be like Elon Musk (ft. RoboGerbil)
Don't dump all your pal beds in one location. Place some near their work stations for less pathing/downtime. Same goes for the feeders, preventing transporters from getting stuck carrying berries all day and getting distracted with other tasks.
Don't hide the good food (ft. Kenzi)
This is actually pretty intertesting, check this out. Turns out Pals will eat whatever food out of the feeder from left to right. So, make sure you put your most filling and sanity-restoring stuff in the first slot.
Baked Berries are not always the solution (ft. Titan Methos)
Pals won't eat-to-full, but only enough to be not-hungry. So, if you have a big chungus assigned to your base, unless you want him to spend half its time on the feeder, give him a proper meal.
Harvesting vs. Transporting
Albeit obvious, it's worth noting harvesting pals and transporting pals are 2 different things. Harvesters will NOT take whatever they harvested to storage. Instead, they'll straight up toss it on the ground (wtf dude). You need transporters to do that.
Seed-Free Planting Pals
Get a load of this. You don’t need seeds for planting, only to build the plant patch. Once it’s built, it won’t require seeds.
Task-Focused Pals are better
At first we’ll dump those handymen do-it-all pals onto our base, right? Sure, we all initially did that. But as soon as you unlock more slots, consider using Pals with fewer job options for high-priority tasks, as those with many options may (and will) get easily distracted, ending up doing nothing.
Don't build willy nilly
Be careful when building stuff where ore farms and assorted resources were, as whatever you built may prevent such resorce from respawning.+
The in-game building is not 100% consistent (ft. deathspiralli)
If you are struggling to place something, (e.g. a chest) but it won’t let you despite the perfectly acceptable placement, try jumping on the spot a few times.
Ores require Lvl2 Mining Skill
Ensure miners have the skill on at least level 2, as level 1 Pals cannot mine ores.
Efficient Ore Gathering with Boars
Try using boar pals to mine stuff. Their charge move will quickly mow down those ore clumps.
Optimizing View Distance for Night Visibility
Make sure to set that in-game config “max draw distance” to max, so you can see stuff from afar.

Currently a bug - might get fixed

These are CURRENTLY working, but they look more like bugs or lack of polish due to the game being in early acces than intentional features. Beware they might get fixed.

World Respawn Point Exploitation
If you die, you can respawn at literally every fast travel respawn point on the world, even at undiscovered regions.
No idle Mining
Pals won’t idly mine when you’re away. You have to be at the base. That said - this is debatable – instead of assigning a full time miner, you’re better off just going to the base every ingame day and let out a Digtoise to quickly take care of it manually.
Unspoilable Foods
If you sort your inventory whenever food is close to spoiling, it’ll reset the timer.
Palshpere Aerial YEET
Catch a pal and quickly climb onto the palshpere. It’ll throw you high into the air. Great for exploration or green statue hunting.
Speed Boost Tricks (ft. EVHaste)
(i) Triggering combat before summoning a flying mount can result in an insane speed boost, stacking with movement-boosting abilities. (ii) Double-jumping with a mount then gliding will also give ya a slight boost. (iii) Another way is to slide down an incline then jump-gliding, allowing you to zoom around without spending much stamina.
Bypassing Weight limit (ft. SIKO Killa, Nopax & Wankovich Ista)
If you're overencumbered, you can still move with a couple of tricks. (I) If you have lvl.2 hookshots, you can grapple away as if you didn't have a tractor's worth of ore in your backpack. (II) On your inventory, if you "select/pick up" whatever's heavy with the mouse you can move your character until you reclick and relocate it to another slot. (III) you can spam a mount's moving attack until your base.
Change death penalty to "lose items only"
AS OF NOW the game will leave your stuff exactly where you died, and not slightly before like most soulslike games. Which means if you die at some unreachable/glitched location, your equipment will be gone forever. Unless the idea of permanently losing your stuff appeals to ya, turn that death penalty (main menu -> world-settings) to "lose items only".

This last one is sort of a bug, sort of a personal take. Let us know what you think about it.

Speaking of personal takes...

Personal Takes

These are debatable, and may or not fit your personal playstyle. You're welcome to disagree or suggest counterpoints in the comments.

Don't waste time crafting ammo
Crafting ammo in general takes way, way too much resources, time and effort. Just buy them on a settlement instead.
Finding alpha pals
Don't bother visually looking around looking for shinies. Whenever you're close to one, it'll produce a loud-ass audio cue (a christmas-y chimes, jingle noise... The same noise 100% of cartoons do when stuff SHINES). Just gallop about with a fast mount and pay attention when you hear this sound. Also, as I said, it's LOUD, so don't worry about not hearing it.
Capture a Galeclaw ASAP (ft. Carrot)
Instead of being a mount, this Pal actually serves as a glider (you'll hold its talons instead of riding it). Also, it's quite common to find one with the passive skill "Runner", giving you a whopping 20% speed bonus. Think of it as a jet-powered-super-glider. This is a personal take because he's not much of a fighter, and ends up being "an equipment" that takes up a pal slot. Nevertheless, it's one of the game's most useful pals, both for faster world traversal and battle dodging.
Be an Extreme Cheapskate (ft. Titan Methos)
If you intend to do a full playthrough, save as many Tech Points as you can, whenever you can. You don't need those fancy chairs right now, but later on you might depend on critical unlockables that'll cost an exorbitant amount of points that you most certainly won't have.
Animal tr4fficking is a good business?
You can get a pretty decent amount of money by selling pals to merchants. Enough money to buy whatever else you need that's available, instead of crafting it. Bosses and shiny alpha pals worth even more.
Specialized bases (ft. Mavrah)
Consider not having redundant bases. Instead, specialize them. E.g.: Early-game wise make (1) your main balanced "do-it-all" base, (2) 100% Vixies digging up palspheres, and (3) 100% ore mining. Late-game wise, as your resource throttlers will be ore, sulfur, coal and quartz, switch your bases to processing one or two of these, each.

Suggestions?

Anything I missed? Share your experience so we can update this guide.

SMAAASH THAT LIKE BUTTON, SUBSCRIBE, LISTEN TO MY ALBUM, BUY MY MERCH AND I'LL SEE YOU ON THE NEXT ONE

64 Comments

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EeveeRealSenpai Jul 8 @ 11:15am

is there a good way to prevent pals from stepping on bonfires and setting themselves ablaze

Amber9572 Jul 8 @ 7:23am

Two updates, there are ore stations now, and the catch 10 thing is now catch 12. Thats as far as I've got so far, but it looks great!

birolay [author] Jun 25 @ 9:36pm

Thanks for the inputs, as well as the kind words, guys! Updated the guide with the currently patched tricks and some others.
Keep 'em coming!

warrat106 Jun 22 @ 3:05pm

update: hp recovery potions are a thing now

Spoon Apr 24 @ 6:47pm

one thing i wish i know before i started playing: the steam community tab is full of horny posts.

Sonar The Wendigo Apr 12 @ 2:27pm

[Make a bonfire kitchen
No longer viable, unless you plan to roast to death.
Because that early on your not going to have enough heat resist to survive the row of bonfires.

SneakySnek Apr 5 @ 7:11am

Wow that is a comprehensive guide. Thanks for putting the effort in it. It did add value to my Pal experience. Thanks a lot!

Acount Feb 26 @ 7:10pm

Finally, an actually good game guide

Sofantheil Feb 17 @ 5:16pm

If you have a flying mount then you won't get flagged as trespassing while you're on it in the sanctuaries until you get off. The game only updates it when you're not on the mount so if you get on the mount while already trespassing it won't make you suddenly innocent (i only tested with vanwyrm so take with a grain of salt or get yourself a vanwyrm)

Plain Flame Feb 9 @ 9:18pm

yo my game is just black and google dosent help plzz save me

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