Palworld Complete Guide & Walkthrough

I've done three full restarts of this game. The first hour is where I screwed up every single time.

Most people spawn in, punch a Lamball, build their base on that flat plateau near spawn. It looks perfect. And it's a trap. You'll spend the next 20 levels running miles for ore because there's none nearby.

So here's what I actually do now: sprint straight to the Desolate Church area, roughly 70, -410. There's 6 to 8 ore nodes packed within like 50 meters, flat ground for building, and a fast travel point right there. Ore is everything for the first 20 levels. Not wood, not stone, not Pal Spheres. Ore.

Drop your first Palbox near those nodes. Craft a pickaxe and mine everything in sight. Build a primitive workbench, queue up 20 Pal Spheres immediately. The first hour should be mostly gathering, honestly like 80%, and just a little exploring. Don't even think about a full base layout. A wooden foundation and a bed gets the job done.

Honestly, half the Paldeck is a trap. Pals that look cool, have one flashy move, and you burn through spheres catching them for nothing.

Foxparks is the real deal. The flamethrower harness turns it into a pocket boss-melter at any level, it's absurd. Vixy I slept on for way too long tbh. Stick one in the ranch and it digs up Pal Spheres, arrows, and gold passively from level 5. I ignored ranching for my first 30 hours and that was just dumb. A single ranch Vixy produces so many spheres you basically never craft them again. Cattiva gives +50 carry weight in your party and it stacks with multiple Cattivas, which sounds minor but inventory space is the real endgame boss. Tanzee gets an assault rifle harness later and is hands-down the best midgame combat companion, not even close. Penking handles watering level 2 plus handiwork, replaces three Pals at base by itself. Grab one near the ice mountain dungeon. Lunaris gives +80 carry weight passive, huge upgrade. And Anubis has Mining 3 and Handiwork 4, fastest crafter period. But you breed for it, don't hunt it.

And that brings me to breeding. The system looks like someone's math thesis but it's kinda simple once you see it. I've found it's literally one formula: every Pal has a hidden "breeding power" number, and breeding averages the two parents' power to pick the offspring. That's it. No IVs, no egg moves, no hidden abilities, nothing.

So how do you get Anubis at level 19 when it normally spawns in level 40+ desert areas? Breed Vanwyrm, found at night near the volcano, with Penking, the boss at the ice mountain dungeon at level 15. Both are capturable by level 15-18 with basic spheres and a bow. Eikthyrdeer plus Nitewing gives you Ragnahawk, a flying mount with Kindling 3. Mossanda plus Petallia makes Lyleen Noct, best healer in the game. Univolt plus Foxparks gets you Katress Ignis, a fire specialist for boss fights.

One thing the game never tells you: cake quality doesn't matter for breeding results at all. Regular cake, fancy cake, same outcome. Just make sure the breeding farm has cake in the chest and both Pals are assigned. Temperature does matter though. Eggs have comfort ranges, so throw a heater or cooler next to the incubator depending on the egg type. Not sure if the temperature thing actually changes hatch time or just prevents failure, but I do it anyway...

I've wrecked enough bases to know what works now. Three-layer layout, every time.

The production core goes on ground floor center. Palbox, workbenches, storage boxes right next to the Palbox. Pals path to the Palbox to drop stuff off, so storage has to be within arm's reach. Assembly lines go adjacent. The ranch belt wraps around the outer ring. Ranch, breeding farm, egg incubators. These don't touch production at all so they live on the edge. Breeding farm needs 4x4 clear space, don't build walls near it. Vertical layer on the second floor holds beds, hot springs, and feed box. Pals handle stairs fine but doors mess them up, so use 2-wide openings instead of single doors. Hot spring placement is wierdly important. Pals go to whichever hot spring is closest to where they're working, so put one near production and another near the ranch.

The stuff that kills bases, from someone who's killed several: building walls and ceilings too early. Pals get stuck on geometry constantly. Open-air bases until level 25 is the move. Placing the feed box far from workstations means hungry Pals trek across the base, lose SAN, and just stop. Stone foundations on uneven ground is a disaster. Pals fall through gaps and starve. Use foundations sparingly and build on flat natural ground. Ignoring SAN is another one. A hot spring, fluffy Pal bed, and cooked food not raw berries is the bare minimum. Pals at 0 SAN won't work at all. And not separating Kindling and Watering Pals from the production line. They path to random tasks and clog everything. Use the monitoring stand to hard-assign jobs.

Boss towers follow a pattern once you see it. Zoe and Grizzbolt at level 10 is your dodge tutorial. Bring a ground-type like Rushoar or Dumud and just sidestep the minigun. The tracking on that thing is terrible. Dodge roll when you hear the charge-up sound. You can honestly win this fight with just a bow and 50 arrows if you don't get clipped by the AoE.

Lily and Lyleen at 25 tests your elemental coverage. Fire types. Foxparks flamethrower at close range deletes this fight in 30 seconds. Don't fight at range, Lyleen's wind cutter tracks way too aggressively. Get in her face.

Marcus and Faleris at 40 is where the game stops playing nice. Bring a water type for the fire phase and an ice type for the second phase. You need both because Faleris switches elements at half HP. Suzaku Aqua, breed Suzaku with Jormuntide, handles both phases well.

Victor and Shadowbeak at 50 is actually hard. Four legendary spheres minimum, a rocket launcher, three high-level Pals. Shadowbeak's Divine Disaster wipes everything in a cone. When you see the charge animation, sprint perpendicular not backwards or you're toast. Dragon-type like Jetragon or Astegon for the Dark phase, Ice-type for the second phase. This fight is about surviving 8 minutes, not max DPS.

And the Legendary Pals. Frostallion, Jetragon, Paladius, Necromus. Bring 30+ Legendary Spheres, whittle them to 5% HP, then save-scum. The 2% catch rate means you're throwing 20 spheres before one sticks. That's probability, not skill. Don't waste time trying to "time it right." Just spam spheres when they're low and reset if you run out.

Tech tree stuff, because you never have enough points and respeccing costs resources I'd rather put into ammo.

Level 7 nail unlocks a money printer. One ingot makes two nails that sell for 160 gold each, that's 320 gold per ingot until level 25. Level 12 refined pickaxe doubles ore yield per swing, grab it immediately. Level 17 musket is the first ranged weapon that doesn't feel like throwing pebbles. Level 21 production assembly line. Automated crafting versus two hours of menu time, not a hard choice. Level 27 handgun has cheap ammo and consistent damage on everything. Level 34 single-shot rifle one-shots most overworld Pals below 25, saves massive time on capture runs. Level 42 rocket launcher is a boss farming tool, not general-use. Craft 20 rockets and save them for towers. Level 47 pump-action shotgun is the best general combat weapon period, outperforms the assault rifle at close range.

Skip the makeshift weapons entirely. Skip cloth armor. The difference between cloth and metal is two hits versus five, and metal armor costs the same ore as 10 spheres. Skip most decorative structures. The stone walls look nice but they won't help you beat Victor.

But the real cheat is Ancient Technology Points. You get these from boss kills, dungeon clears, and overworld chests. Never spend them on the grappling gun or feed bag. The grappling gun is fun for about 5 minutes, and cooked food gives enough nutrition that the feed bag is redundant. Save every Ancient Point for the Egg Incubator at level 7 and Production Assembly Line II at level 28. Everything else in the Ancient tree is quality-of-life you can grab later when you're swimming in points.

Alright that's pretty much everything I wish someone told me before my third restart... the ore thing alone would've saved me like 15 hours.