Palworld 1.0 Update: All Changes and Patch Notes

After two and a half years in Early Access, Pocketpair has finally released Palworld in full, and this is a truly major event for players. The developers added new regions, dozens of new Pals, heavily reworked building, combat, Partner Skills, and the balance of almost the entire game, while also adding hundreds of smaller improvements. In this guide, we will cover everything the release patch brought to the game.

The main addition in update 1.0 is, of course, the world itself. You could roughly describe it as 2.5 worlds, because in addition to two truly huge zones, the game also received a whole scattering of new islands spread across the existing map.

Existing locations have also been reimagined:

And, of course, the world has changed visually: water now has full waves and much nicer reflections, coastlines look more modern, and Pal animations have received serious improvements. For example, Jetragon no longer flies like a clumsy brick, but moves smoothly and naturally.

The structure of progression itself has also been heavily reworked.

Because rewards have been revised, main and side mission progress has been reset for all save files. Missions related to tutorials and tower bosses will automatically be marked as completed based on your progress with already defeated bosses.

New locations would not mean much without new inhabitants, and update 1.0 delivers here. In total, 72 new Pals were added to the game: 47 completely new species and 25 variants of existing ones, bringing the total number of Pals in the game to 287. You can find the newcomers in Sunreach, the World Tree, and other new regions.

In addition to the new Pals, some familiar creatures received major visual reworks:

Pals have also received over 100 new animations: swimming, sleeping next to the player, new idle animations, and much more. The 47 new Pals also have their own unique animations, giving each species a much stronger personality.

The rideable Pal control rework deserves a separate mention. Shooting, dashing, weapon switching, charged attacks while riding, and camera behavior have all been improved. Movement feels much faster, and Pals now turn more naturally. While riding, you can now cancel an activated Pal skill by jumping in the movement direction, making it easier to dodge in combat.

This may be the most important system addition in the entire update: the game now has two new ways to strengthen Pals.

New cakes with special effects have also been added for mutations:

According to the developers' idea, mutations should make Pal breeding a much more engaging and exciting process for players who want to raise the perfect Pal.

If we had to choose one of the most influential parts of the entire update, it would definitely be the Partner Skill rework. The developers added new Partner Skills and reworked them for more than 200 Pals. Team builds are now much more varied and no longer come down to simply comparing the biggest damage numbers. Here are some examples:

In addition, for almost all Pals, the system has been designed so that Partner Skill effects do not stack if your team has several copies of the same species. This expands team-building options without letting the balance lean too far toward duplicating one strong Pal.

Many new passive skills with completely new stats have been added. Here are a few examples from the developers:

A separate new category is World Tree passives. These are extremely powerful skills that require you to pay a high price:

This variety forces you to truly weigh the pros and cons of each Pal instead of simply using the highest stats. The "Nocturnal" passive ability has also been renamed to "Insomnia", while several existing passives such as "Legend", "Lucky", "Hard Skin", and "Diamond Body" have been buffed.

The character level cap has been increased from 65 to 80, and many new technologies tied to the ancient civilization have been added along with it. Lifmunk Effigies have been reworked into Pal Effigies: you can now collect effigies of different species to strengthen the player's stats, while already collected Lifmunk Effigies carry over as they are. Work Suitabilities have been expanded from 5 to 10 levels, with values revised for all Pals. Now, each time a Pal's rank increases, one of its suitability levels also increases, and at maximum rank, all of them increase at once. This noticeably raises the value of investing in your favorite Pals. Technical Manuals have also become easier to obtain, and a separate Applied Ranching Manual I has been added for ranching.

The Pal catch checklist has been simplified: the catch bonus now requires only 5 copies of each species instead of 12, so progress toward new regions and Pals moves noticeably faster. Condensation has also been made easier: the total number of Pals required for maximum rank has been reduced from 116 to 48, greatly lowering the grind for training. In addition, the inheritance rules for active skills during breeding have been changed: the inherited skill is now chosen randomly from the parents' three slots. The cost of resetting Pal Soul upgrades has been significantly reduced, and egg incubation time has been cut in half on new worlds with Normal and Hard difficulty. Accumulated experience in old save files will be automatically recalculated according to the new table without lowering the character's level.

Crafting and building have received a major expansion of production chains. New materials have been added: Hardwood, Orichalcum, and Pal Fluids, tied to the new regions. Instead of directly turning raw materials into a finished product, the game now has more intermediate materials, making factories feel more complex.

Following many player requests, new building parts have been added to the game: artificial greenery for base decoration, a sloped triangular roof that closes long-standing awkward gaps in structures, and most importantly, the Aqua Complex, which allows players to build bases along the coast and directly in the sea. The last addition greatly expands architectural possibilities and will surely inspire players to build floating bases.

Additional variants of existing structures were also added: inverted corner roofs made of wood, stone, metal, and glass, in several styles, new furniture such as Jetragon and Frostallion statues and an arcade machine, as well as a full line of ancient civilization-style structures: foundations, walls, roofs, stairs, doors, windows, pillars, and fences from that set.

The combat arsenal has received a major expansion. Wing Pack is a new type of glider that lets you fly freely without a Pal by consuming Wing Cells. Calling it full flight would be an exaggeration. It is more like "falling with style", but it is a very fun way to move around. The Plasma Multicutter is a new gathering tool that can even be used while riding a Pal.

The game now has 13 new weapon types: Mechanical Bow, Combat Assault Rifle, Prototype Shotgun, Heavy Assault Rifle, Tactical Grenade Launcher, Laser Sword, Beam Scatterer, Drone Launcher, which deploys up to 9 combat drones at once, Plasma Rifle with chain lightning against multiple enemies, Beam Launcher, as well as simpler early and midgame weapons: Primitive Sword, Metal Bat, and Improved Lily's Spear. Thanks to crafting an additional weapon holster, you can now equip up to 6 weapons at once instead of four.

In addition to weapons, the ancient series of armor has been added: helmet, armor, and shield, along with headgear that lets you take on the appearance of various bosses as a reward. The patch also added 44 new accessories, including the Commander's Baton, which strengthens Pals in your party, the Airwalker, which expands movement freedom, and single-use implants for the Surgical Table that let you add more powerful passive skills but are consumed when used.

The base raid system has been heavily reworked and turned into a wave-based system. Enemies now attack in consecutive waves, and the player receives a reward for defeating all waves.

Player animations have been reworked: movement, combat, and weapon handling are now more responsive. Dodging while attacking or aiming has been changed into a dash. The regular roll remains for situations outside combat, while attacks can now be performed directly during a dash without losing momentum.

Reloading is no longer interrupted by dodging, and character control remains responsive during a roll.

All active Pal skills have been revised: their power, behavior, cooldowns, and usability have all been adjusted. For example, the skill Holy Burst, which previously dealt excessive damage to large enemies, now has a hit limit and 700 power, while top-tier skills of other elements have been significantly strengthened to match it. After the full damage rework, Pals in your party can now deal damage on the level of the player or even higher.

Co-op also received a batch of improvements. Built-in voice chat has been added, although it is available only when enabled in the world settings of a dedicated server and is not supported on WinGDK. Guild features have been expanded: there are now several roles with customizable permissions, notifications when members join or leave, guild markers, and significantly improved security. Access to some structures can now be restricted to specific roles only.

The in-game chat has become more convenient: system messages have been improved, protection against impersonating another player has been added, and history can now be scrolled back by 200 lines. Connecting to servers has also been simplified: saving and restoring passwords and entering IP addresses is now more convenient, while the save process itself has been improved to reduce the risk of data corruption. Optional Discord integration has also been added. Linking an account makes it easier to invite friends, although this works only in the Steam and Mac versions.

In addition to combat and skill changes, the developers revised the balance of almost the entire game. The experience table and the amount of experience gained by Pals have been adjusted so that low-level Pals now level up more easily. Training a Pal caught late in the game is now much more viable. The capture chance formula has been revised, making Pals much easier to catch, while the amount of Gold from treasure chests has been increased by 2 to 4 times, along with merchant prices for items and Pals. Material requirements for recipes, weapons, armor, ammo, schematics, and saddles have been recalculated to match the current progression pace, as have shop inventories and prices.

Expeditions have also become more rewarding: the danger level of destinations that unlock after tower bosses in Hard Mode has been raised to "highest", and rewards have been significantly reworked. Sunreach and the World Tree have also been added as new expedition destinations. Enemy and boss placement has been revised across the game to match the proper difficulty level of each zone. Because of this, progress for Bounty Targets has been reset, and with the new level cap of 80, the difficulty of raid bosses, Hard Mode tower bosses, and oil rigs has been recalculated.

The developers have carried out a large-scale visual upgrade of the entire world: water materials, coastlines, lighting, and environmental rendering have been revised, strengthening the atmosphere and immersion during exploration. The time of day also feels more expressive in different locations. Battle music has been expanded and adapted to the pace of fights, while sound effects, from footsteps and resource gathering to building and base work, have been almost completely changed.

For many players, however, the most noticeable change is optimization. Dedicated server processing has been improved even with many players, equipment and weapon load has been reduced, and grass, trees, collectible objects in the open world, memory usage, and data searches for items and base work states have all been optimized. In practice, this should noticeably reduce stutters and FPS drops, especially around large builds. For players who like building huge complexes, this is one of the most valuable changes in the entire update.

The update is full of dozens of small but extremely welcome improvements. The Palbox now has search, the crafting menu has filters by name and category, and the Paldeck has filters for incomplete catch bonuses and specific elements. Palbox sorting has also been expanded with sorting by expedition power. Partner Skill descriptions are now more specific: instead of vague phrases, they now show exact numbers, such as "while this Pal is in your party, ore weight is reduced by 80%". This value updates automatically when the Pal's rank increases. Status effects such as Burning or Poisoning are now visible directly on the Pal's health bar, while bonuses from Souls and Awakening are shown in the status details.

The map has also been improved: zooming and icon selection are smoother, a guild marker has been added, you can hover over a base, and bases under raid are now marked. The character editor received 8 new hairstyles, 5 face types, and 13 hair accessories. Among the most useful additions are the "Retrieve All" button in the Palbox interface, which returns all Pals from a base with one click, quick sorting that sends matching items to the nearest storage, and an expedition exclusion list that prevents specific Pals from being sent automatically.

The patch notes include literally hundreds of small fixes. Control freezes and infinite loading when logging in, teleporting, dying, and respawning have been fixed. Progress-blocking bugs in some boss and tower boss fights have been addressed, and wild Pals and NPCs now get stuck in geometry far less often.

On the base worker side, the developers fixed cases where Pals could not resume work, fell through the ground, or got stuck in an abnormal state. In multiplayer, numerous desyncs, visual bugs, and crashes were fixed, including memory leaks on PS5, Xbox, and dedicated servers.

Some stranger cases were also fixed separately, such as camera shake remaining active when the setting was turned off, the player spawning buried in the ground after loading a save, and taking fatal damage immediately after joining a dedicated server. According to the developers themselves, many, many other small bugs were also fixed, too many to list.

Pocketpair also warns players about mods: using them after update 1.0 may cause crashes, save corruption or loss, and other unexpected problems. If bugs started after the update, the developers recommend removing all installed mods, disabling Steam Workshop mods through the mod management menu, and always backing up saves before using mods at all.