Beginner Tips For A Quick Start In Palworld

Palworld just released on Steam and Xbox on Friday, and over the weekend, it quickly became the hot new game to play. Touted as “Pokemon with guns,” Palworld is a survival game, Monster Hunter, and Pokemon all rolled up into one fun experience. Although it is similar to each of those types of games, Palworld has its own take on each genre, and if you just assume you already know how to play, you’ll miss out on a lot of the nuance its gameplay mechanics have to offer. To help make sure that you don’t miss anything important, we have put together some beginner tips to get you off to a quick start in  Palworld. And if you happen to have some useful tips of your own, be sure to share them in the comments below.

Picking The Perfect Spot For Your First Base

Truth be told, there isn’t really any wrong place to place your first base. Right after starting Palworld, you will find a large flat area, and it will make a decent spot to get things started, but you can do better if you really want to make your first few hours in Palworld a little easier.

Flat space may seem like the most important factor in selecting a spot for your base, but it isn’t. The most important factor to a quick start in Palworld is what resources can be found within your base’s radius. Your Pals have Work Suitability ratings that determine what types of jobs they can do while deployed at your base. For example, Pals with Lumbering will automatically chop down trees near your base, giving you a steady flow of wood to craft with.

So, when you go to place your first base in the world, you will want to find a spot that has trees, stone, and ore within your base’s radius. Palladium deposits are another great resource to have near your base. Resources are much more important than location since you can use your base to travel to any fast travel points you have unlocked.

One more thing. If you already placed your base, you can always deconstruct your Pal Box and move to a new spot. And if you have found the “perfect” location for your base and there aren’t any resources around, don’t fret. You can unlock resource-generating structures like the Logging Site and Stone Pit early in your playthrough to help you automate the gathering of basic resources.

Gaining Fast XP

Just about everything you do, from catching Pals to building your base, generates XP. However, the fastest way in the early-game to gain XP is to catch Pals. You get bonus XP for the first ten of each Pal type that you catch. After that, the XP for catching additional Pals of that species drastically drops off.

Other than catching Pals, the next fastest way to gain XP is completing missions at your Pal Box. Most of the missions you get will act as a tutorial, directing you to build specific items to enhance your base, deploy Pals to do work for you, or introduce other useful things that you can do while playing Palworld. Although completing the actual mission doesn’t earn you any XP, the tasks you need to complete to finish the mission usually do. And, as an added bonus, completing each mission will increase the level of your Pal Box, which in turn allows you to build more items at your base, allowing you to gain more XP, and so on.

Choose Your Stats Wisely

There currently isn't a stat respec at this time. Choose wisely when allocating the points you earn with each level up. 

• Health - You’ll want to get some health so that you aren’t one-shot by bosses, but the other stats can be important as well. 
• Stamina - Mounts will mitigate the need for stamina, but if you are the type of person who just likes to explore, climb, and parachute around the world for the fun of it, you’re going to need a ton of stamina to do so.
• Attack - The jury is still out on Attack. Each Stat Point only raises your Attack by two points, which doesn’t feel like a good value. Attack may become more important later in the game, but focus on getting better weapons and use the Stat Point somewhere else.
• Defense - Defense isn’t increased using Stat Points. You simply need to craft and equip better armor to raise this very useful stat.
• Work Speed - Work Speed increases the rate at which you build and craft. Your Pals will be doing a lot of the work around your base, so adding points into Work Speed could be considered inefficient.
• Weight - The more weight you can carry, the less often you will have to return to your base to drop off supplies. If you are the type of player that has to collect everything they find, this is a stat you will want to invest heavily into.

Battling With Your Pals

Since we know the first thing you are going to do is start collecting Pals, let’s cover a few things about combat before we dive into all the other things you need to know about your Pal. Just like in that other game, your Pals will have a type. Each Pal type is stronger against one other type and weaker against another (Fire and Neutral are the two exceptions). These may look very familiar - Water is strong against Fire and weak against Electric - but here’s a quick reference chart for all of the types in Palworld. And don’t forget, some Pals have two types, so take advantage of that whenever you can.

During battles, any Pal you have active will automatically attack other wild Pals that are attacking you. If you don’t want your Pal to attack, or if you want it to attack your current target, you can command it to do so by using your Radial Menu (4 key on PC) and choosing the appropriate command.

Each Pal has up to three Active Skills available during combat. You can find Skill Fruits that can teach your Pals new Active Skills, and unlike Pokemon, you don’t have to erase a current skill to learn a new one. Teach a Pal enough skills, and you can swap them in and out depending on what type of Pal you are fighting next.

Partner Skills And Passive Skills

Each Pal has one Partner Skill and up to four Passive Skills. Partner Skills are often combat-oriented, like the Tanzii’s Cheery Rifle skill, which causes the Tanzii to attack enemies with an assault rifle. Other Partner Skills allow you to ride the Pal, and other Skills will buff you or other Pals just by being in your party. Choose your team wisely, and your whole party will be useful even when they aren’t fighting.

Passive Skills work similarly to Partner Skills, but Pal has a randomly generated set of Passive Skills. These skills can have positive and/or negative effects on your Pal, and each Passive Skill can be one of three levels that increase or decrease its effect. 

Work Suitability - Domesticating Your Pals

Palworld is being called “Pokemon with guns,” but that isn’t entirely true. Yes, Pals look very similar to some Pokemon, and much of the battling in Palworld is just like it is in Pokemon, but there’s much more to Palworld than meets the eye. The biggest difference between Palword and Pokemon is how you use your Pals. Sure, you can battle with your Pals to collect them all, but your Pals will also help you out in the survival aspects of Palworld.

Work Suitability is a set of 12 traits that determine what jobs a Pal can do at your base. Once placed inside your base, a Pal will automatically try to complete any of the tasks it is suitable for. For example, all Foxsparks have the Kindling trait, so it will help with cooking, smelting ore, and any other task that needs fire. By choosing the correct Pals, you can automate practically any task that you need to complete, even while you are away. Here’s a quick reference chart to help you choose which Pals you want working at your base.

Kindling	Heat campfires, forges, and any other item that needs fire
Planting	Plant seeds for farming
Handiwork	Craft items at workbenches and build structures
Lumbering	Gather wood from trees
Medicine Production	Create medicine at the medicine workbench
Transporting	Carry harvested resources to storage boxes
Watering	Water farms to grow plants
Generate Electricity	Assign electric Pals to power generators
Gathering	Collect crops from farms
Mining	Mine stone and ore
Cooling	Assign Ice Pals to maintain cool boxes
Farming	Produce items when assigned to a farm

If It’s Sparkly, Pick It Up

 While there’s too much of the basic resources like wood and stone lying around to pick it all up, you’ll want to stop and nab anything that has a sparkle to it. Pal Spheres, Palladium Fragments, and many more valuable resources can be gained for free. You’ll also come across eggs to incubate, chests to open, and other goodies to collect. Simply put, if it doesn’t look like it would naturally occur in the wild, then it should go into your inventory.

Customize Your Game Rules To Suit Your Playstyle

Odds are that when you first started your new world, you button-pressed through every option other than adjusting your character’s looks. You may have set the difficulty to something higher than default if you were looking for a challenge, but the three presets are just that: presets. If you click on ‘Custom’ difficulty, you are presented with a slew of sliders and toggles to adjust the game world to your liking. Don’t want to deal with hunger or stamina? Turn them all the way down. Want more experience for each capture? Turn it up. Or my favorite - turn the death penalty off so you don’t drop your stuff when you die.

Bonus Round

We can list every tip to help you get started in Palworld, but we do have a handful of tips that don’t require a whole lot of explanation, so here you go:

• If you capture a Pal that is a higher level than your character, they will sync down to your level so that you don't gain a big advantage in fights.
• If you catch a new Pal when your party is full, it automatically transfers to your Pal Box.
• All party members gain XP from fights, even if they aren't used during the battle.
• Palworld Xbox Game Pass only has 4 player co-op. It's nice to play the game without the $30 price tag, but if you want to host a 32-player server, you'll have to pick up a Steam copy to do so.
• While the daytime Pals are asleep at night, other Pals will come out to play.
• Having trouble collecting Pals that run away from you? Just wait until nighttime, and they will be sleeping, giving you an easy way to sneak up and get the fight started.
• When trying to capture a low-level Pal, be sure you don't use a high-level Pal in the battle, especially if they are strong against the type you are fighting. Many times, they will end up killing the Pal you are trying to catch before you have a chance to throw out a Pal Sphere to catch them.
• Only the first Pal in your party needs to eat. If you are low on food, swap out your Pal with another so that a hungry Pal doesn’t starve to death.
• Incubate eggs to get Pals you normally don’t have the ability to capture.