Palworld Beginner's Guide: Best Early Tips & Tricks

Palworld is leaving Early Access, which means many players will either start fresh or return to their old saves. Despite its playful tone and colorful style, the game is not as simple as it may seem at first: you need to build a base, catch Pals, gather resources, manage hunger, and gradually unlock new technologies. In this guide, we have gathered all the essential information you need to get comfortable in the world of Pals quickly.

Once you enter the open world, you may immediately run into an obvious problem: where exactly should you build your base? The game does not clearly explain whether being close to water or resources matters, but you should still choose the location carefully. Your base location is determined by where you place the Palbox. At the start, you can only have one base, but the limit increases as you progress, so it is best to place your first base somewhere that will be convenient during the first few hours.

Since Palworld is, at its core, a survival game, you may lose your gathered resources after death, depending on your world settings. A bag with your items will stay at the place where you died, and sometimes getting back to it can be difficult. The main advice for placing your first base is simple: build near resources and not too far from a fast travel point. As you reveal the map, you will come across these statues.

After activating them, you can fast travel between discovered points, but only by interacting with an already activated statue or with the Palbox at your base. Naturally, you do not want to waste extra minutes running to the nearest fast travel point, so it is better if your first base is relatively close to one. Beyond that, choose a location based on nearby resources, flat terrain, and how easy it will be to defend.

By default, your character can sprint for a short time, but only while they have enough stamina. Increasing the right stat will let you sprint for longer. As mentioned above, do not ignore fast travel statues and make use of the Palbox at your base. This will let you return to previously explored areas much faster.

There is another way to speed up your character, but it only becomes available after some progress. Each Pal species has its own abilities. Some of them can be used as mounts. Keep in mind, however, that every Pal has its own movement speed, so riding the local boar will still be slower than riding a wolf.

Do not skip the Normal Parachute. It lets you glide down from high cliffs, but only for as long as you have stamina left. Some Pals can also replace the parachute and work like a glider. Celaray is one example.

One important note: to unlock the full potential of Pals, including riding them, you first need to unlock the Pal Gear Workbench in the Technology menu, then unlock the specific gear for that Pal species. To do this, you will need to keep leveling up your character.

When you open the menu, you will see several sections:

The inventory shows everything you are carrying, as well as all equipment currently worn by your character. You can also view your character's stats here and improve them after leveling up.

Party shows the Pals currently with you. We will cover Pal mechanics in more detail below.

Technology contains recipes that let you build new structures. All technologies are divided by level, and unlocking them costs points earned each time you level up. In this same section, you will also see Ancient Technology. These are special recipes that can only be unlocked after defeating bosses. Each boss gives you several Ancient Technology Points.

The Paldeck helps you see exactly what each Pal species can do. It is important to find Pals that can work at your base without your direct involvement, otherwise resource production will slow down.

Guilds are needed for multiplayer: they make it easier to team up with other players, use a shared base, and coordinate your actions in co-op. Options are worth opening even in single-player. In addition to the game's settings, you will also find the Survival Guide there.

It contains the basic information you need to deal with common tasks and early-game problems.

To build the simplest structures and tools, you will need Stone, Wood, and Paldium Fragments. We have explained how to collect Paldium in detail in another guide. Here, we will focus on the general mechanics.

Stone and Wood can be gathered by attacking the corresponding objects. Your character will automatically pick up resources if there is enough space nearby and you are not overencumbered. Over time, you will have enough materials for a Palbox and then a Primitive Workbench. At the workbench, you can craft several tools that speed up resource gathering, including a pickaxe and an axe.

Every item, structure, and tool has durability. The more often you use something, the faster its durability drops. Fortunately, everything can be repaired once you unlock the Repair Bench and gather enough materials.

Almost any ordinary creature you meet can become part of your collection and potentially serve as a worker or fighter. To catch Pals, you need Pal Spheres, which can be crafted at a workbench. However, simply throwing a sphere at a creature you like is not enough. When aiming with a sphere, you can see the capture chance. You can increase it by weakening the Pal in battle. The goal is to lower its health as much as possible without killing it. That said, catching a Pal without damaging it is still possible, since there is always some chance.

There is an exception. For especially strong or large Pals, a basic sphere is usually not enough: the capture chance will be too low, or the sphere may simply bounce off. For these targets, you will need upgraded spheres, which become available as you level up.

Later, spheres will receive several more upgrades as you progress. You can read more about catching creatures here.

Caught Pals need to be placed in the Palbox at your base. There, they can recover their health. This is also where you can assign the creatures you have found to work. Pals will automatically find tasks based on their skills and gather resources within your base territory.

In the same Palbox menu, you can check the tasks required to raise your base level. The higher the base level, the more Pals you can assign to work. These tasks are usually tied to building specific infrastructure, so you will quickly set up most of the essential facilities.

Pals have needs: hunger and SAN. To make sure they perform their duties well, you need to take care of both. Unlock and build a Feed Box, then place enough food inside. Pals will eat on their own. You should also build beds for them. If one of your creatures has nowhere to sleep, it will become upset, which will affect its work.

Finally, keep an eye on their mood. Some Pals may suffer from illnesses, fatigue, depression, and other problems. A Hot Spring helps improve mood and restore SAN, while illnesses are treated with the right medicine. If a Pal is exhausted or becomes incapacitated after battle, you can send it to the Palbox and temporarily replace it with another worker.

You can take part in battles in two ways: personally or through your Pals. In the first case, you will need a weapon. At first, this will be a club, but very soon you will unlock a bow and several types of arrows. Note that different arrows work with different bows, so you cannot load poison arrows into a regular bow. You need to unlock and craft a special Poison Bow.

You can send out any Pal from your current party. You can check them in the Party section. You can also give commands to your Pal, so make sure you find this button. A Pal can attack any hostile target, focus only on your target, or avoid combat entirely. If you are trying to catch a strong creature, it is important to pull your Pal out of combat before it finishes off the target.

If the fight is uneven, it is better to bring several Pals with strong combat skills. When one goes down, you can send out the next one, then revive them all later at your base.

All Pals level up on their own, even while working at the base. However, their maximum level is limited by the player's level. Each creature has several stats: attack, defense, work speed, and maximum health. In the open world, you can find Statues of Power. They let you improve your ability to catch Pals, as well as strengthen your creatures' stats.

Progression requires special resources. Look for green glowing Lifmunk Effigies in the open world: they are used to increase your capture power at a Statue of Power. Pals are a little simpler: you will need Pal Souls. You can collect them from enemies, bosses, or chests.

Over time, you can build a Statue of Power at your base so you do not have to return to the statues found in the open world.

Your main goal is to develop your base, strengthen your party, and defeat the faction leaders in their towers.

They wait inside towers marked on the map. However, they are not the only bosses in the game. Special creatures called Alpha Pals also appear on the map. Unlike tower leaders, many of these Pals can be caught, and defeating them rewards you with valuable items and Ancient Technology Points.

Pal Eggs can be found in the open world or obtained by breeding creatures at your base. To hatch them, you need an Egg Incubator. Place an egg inside, and after some time you will receive a new level 1 Pal. Comfortable temperature affects hatching speed, so for some eggs you will need to choose the right place or put a heater or cooler nearby.

As you level up, you will unlock not only new workbenches and structures, but also additional ways to speed up base development. For example, later you will gain access to structures and mechanics for research, Pal expeditions, automatic resource production, and improving worker efficiency. You do not need to think about all of this at the start, but after the first few hours of survival, it is worth checking the Technology menu and Palbox tasks more often.