As you start and progress through Palworld, the wildly-successful game from developer Pocketpair, you’ll have no shortage of questions that simply can’t be answered in-game.
Upon starting Palworld, which went into early access on Jan. 19 and has since seen a whopping 19 million players, I went in blind and that has led to some regrets about how I approached things in the early game.
Granted, none of these mistakes were backbreaking by any stretch, but having the knowledge I have now would have made life easier.
Knowing that, here’s a look at a bunch of tips for players to know that will help you avoid the same pitfalls many players have experienced.
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Before entering your new world, the game gives you the ability to change the settings, thus you can tweak overall difficulty and experience gain, and other things you may not want in the game, like dropping your backpack when you die and/or raids, for example.
And, you’re able to make changes after creating your world, so don’t worry if one of your initial settings doesn’t work out.
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The best way to level up in this game is to catch Pals, and when you catch 10 of the same type, you’ll get an XP boost. Thus, you’ll want to make sure you craft plenty of Pal Spheres.
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As you level up, you’ll get points you can invest in HP, stamina, attack, defense, weight and work speed.
Because you’ll be farming a lot by yourself early on, it’s suggested you invest in carry weight. Also, putting points into stamina will help you traverse the map better before you get your first mount.
Once you’ve gotten more efficient with your resource farming and have a mount, you can put more points into attack, defense and HP. Having a good attack stat becomes more important later in the game, especially when you square off against the tougher boss towers that force you to help your Pal more.
Feel free to invest in work speed if you want, but your Pals are going to be doing most of the working, anyway, so it isn’t vital.
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Once you craft the Statue of Power, you can begin investing Pal Souls into your Pals to power them up. However, you shouldn’t invest much, if anything into the Pals you catch early in the game.
That’s because you’ll encounter much more powerful Pals in higher-level areas that you’ll want to utilize in your party for late game, which will render your early Pals as nothing more than help at base.
If you have already used Pal Souls on some of your early-game Pals, fear not; you can refund them, although it’ll cost you a pretty penny in gold.
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Melee weapons are OK for early game, but they carry a big risk because they leave you more vulnerable to taking damage from enemy Pals as a result of the lack of distance you’ll have to react to their attacks.
Ranged weapons are king in this game and you’ll want to lean heavily on bows early on until you have the ability to craft guns, which are, of course, superior to bows. The only down side is crafting ammo takes more effort than arrows.
Melee weapons can be used to whittle down enemy Pals’ HP when you’re trying to catch them, but bows can accomplish the same by not pulling all the way back before firing. The less you hold down fire with a bow, the less damage it’ll do.
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In the early game, you’ll want to build your base near areas that are rich in trees, stones and Paldium fragments, as all three are crucial for crafting.
But later in the game, you’ll want to have a base near areas that are rich in ore, coal and sulfur, all of which are important for crafting better gear, weapons and gunpowder.
The good news is, you’ll have the ability to put down three Palboxes in total once you level up your first base. This enables you to plop one in the middle of an ore deposit without having to move you’re entire home base, which is quite the tedious process.
And speaking of your home base: try to situate yourself that has as few access points as possible, as this will make raids much easier to deal with. Putting them on cliffs is a great way to do that.
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Once you establish your base, Pals can help you farm and craft just about everything you need.
Make sure you deploy an assortment of Pals so you can farm multiple resources at once.
But help from your Pals doesn’t just stop there. Once you find a good place to farm things like ore, sulfur and coal, a Pal like Digtoise, for example, can help you farm those resources more quickly after crafting its saddle.
In addition, having Cattiva in your party will increase your carry limit.
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Dungeons are a great way to find new Pals you haven’t caught before, but they are also the way to acquire schematics, which give you more powerful versions of the weapons and gear may or may not already have. Dungeons also have accessories that can increase defense, attack, HP, work speed and elemental resistance.
On top of all that, each dungeon sports an Alpha Pal at the end, which are more powerful than their normal versions.
Dungeons can be difficult to find because they aren’t marked on your map, but they are typically situated on cliffsides. Once you enter the dungeon, you’ll have a limited amount of time to complete it, but they do respawn.
If you aren’t interested in discovering the dungeons yourself, Game8.com has a great resource for where to find them.
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When you open up your map, the bottom right has a legend that shows you which button or key to press to place map markers, and there are different symbols you can utilize to distinguish what you’re marking.
These are important because they can help you remember anything you come across while exploring, from dungeons to ore locations, and whatever else you need.
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Pals with passives are going to be better options than those without, whether that be with damage and defense, or work and movement speed.
You can check a Pal’s passives by going into their description and looking on the bottom left. Pals you catch can have up to four passives, but some have none.
Again we go to Game8 for a comprehensive list of the best passives to look out for.
What passives your Pal has when you catch it is based on luck, but breeding Pals gives you a more direct way to get the ones you want, although it isn’t full-proof.
Simply craft a Breeding Farm when at the right level and place a male and female Pal into it with the passives you desire and hope for the best. It can take several tries to hit them perfectly, but it’s possible to hit all four of whatever passives you want.
An example of the damage difference you can achieve: I had a level 50 Alpha Anubis with no passives that had less than half the attack power of a level 50 Anubis I breeded that had three damage passives.
Safe to say, the latter Anubis shreds.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t tell you exactly what you’re going to get when you combine the Pals, but Palworld.gg has you covered with a great breeding calculator.
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Palworld features five towers that each hold a timed boss (an Alpha Pal and its trainer) fight that can be difficult to handle if you and your Pals aren’t powerful enough.
That’s why it’s important to attack them in the right order as you progress through the game. You’ll hit the first one at the end of the opening tutorial of the game but shouldn’t get after it until about level 12 or 13.
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