Palworld Complete Guide First Steps – What to Do First

Look, I've restarted Palworld four times now. Every time I learn something the hard way. So here's what nobody tells you about the first hour.

The spawn point matters way more than the tutorial lets on. When you load in, don't just start punching trees like the game nudges you to. Stop and actually look around. You need flat-ish ground near water, a fast-travel eagle statue you can see from where you're standing, and if you're lucky some copper-colored rocks nearby. Those are ore nodes. You won't care about them for the first few levels but by level 10 you'll be kicking yourself if you built your base nowhere near any.

If you spawned on a cliff or in dense forest just run. Seriously. Find better ground before you do anything else. I wasted my first playthrough on a hillside base where half my Pals got stuck on geometry and stopped working entirely. Don't be me.

So the order I follow now after four fresh starts is this: scout a base location first, grab the fast-travel statue, craft stone tools immediately, and catch at least one Lamball or Cattiva before nightfall. Order matters. Skip straight to building and you'll regret it within two hours, I pretty much guarantee it.

About base placement. Yeah you can move it later at level 10 but it costs resources you won't have and time you can't spare early on.

What to actually look for in a base spot. Flat open terrain is the biggest thing, honestly. Pals get stuck on slopes constantly and then nothing gets done. Ore nodes nearby, the copper-colored rocks, because ingots gate basically the whole tech tree and you'll need hundreds. Water access for drinking and for cooling Pals when it gets hot. A fast-travel point close enough to walk to in like ten seconds because running back to base wastes real minutes of your life. And not right next to a boss arena unless you enjoy watching your entire base get wrecked by an angry mammoth.

The plateau northeast of where you start, near the Desolate Church, is honestly the best spot I've found. Multiple ore nodes, flat, water nearby, fast-travel point two seconds away. But don't overthink this part. If a spot checks three of those boxes just drop the Palbox and start. I've spent way too long looking for the perfect location and honestly the difference between a good base and a perfect one doesn't matter until way later in the game.

Now the tech tree. It's huge and most of it is useless early. Points are scarce and every dumb unlock sets you back levels of waiting.

What actually matters before level 10. Palbox obviously, you need that at level 2. Stone pickaxe and stone axe because wood tools break in like five seconds and it's infuriating. Primitive workbench gates everything else so grab that at level 2. Pal spheres, and I mean a lot of them, you'll burn through dozens not a handful. Cloth armor at level 4 because temperature damage kills you faster than any Pal will. Feed box at level 4, without it your base Pals just slowly starve while you're out exploring. Common shield at level 5 for cheap survivial padding. Old bow and arrows at level 3 for your first real ranged damage. Repair bench at level 5 since tools and armor break constantly.

Everything else can wait. Meat cleaver, decorations, even the repair bench can slide a couple levels if you're tight on points. But one thing about arrows. Craft at least 60 before your first real expedition. Arrows are cheap, one wood plus one stone, but running out mid-fight when you're far from base feels absolutely terrible and I've done it more times than I want to admit.

So about which Pals to catch early. Not all of them pull their weight and some look cute and do absolutely nothing useful.

Cattiva is everywhere in the starting zone. Not a great fighter but it has Handiwork level 1 which means it builds and crafts while you're gone. Catch three or four of these and your base kinda builds itself while you're out doing other stuff.

Lamball, the fluffy sheep thing. It has Transport level 1 and drops wool for cloth armor. Put one on the ranch and you get infinite wool. I slept on this my first run and regretted it hard.

Foxparks looks like a tiny fox but melts things. Its partner skill is a flamethrower when you hold it. Not kidding, Foxparks carried me through the first tower boss. Found around the starting plateau.

Daedream floats behind you and shoots whatever you're fighting. No saddle needed, just craft the Daedream Necklace at level 5 and it becomes basically a permanent second gun following you around.

Lifmunk. It's a chipmunk with a submachine gun. The partner skill is absurd early game and I'm still not sure if it's balanced correctly but it works so whatever, I'll take it.

Honestly a party with Foxparks, Daedream, and Lifmunk plus two Cattivas working at base covers everything until level 15. Don't waste time hunting rare spawns in the first ten levels. Fill your Paldeck with quantity first and worry about quality later.

Now the thing that tripped me up most early on. Throwing Pal spheres at full-health Pals. You will miss constantly. The sphere breaks, the Pal aggros, and you've wasted resources for nothing.

The formula that actually works is bring them below about 30% health first and then throw. But some Pals have tiny hitboxes or dodge constantly. For those use a bow to soften from range, close distance, and throw while they're recovering from an attack animation. Never throw mid-charge or mid-dodge. You'll hit maybe 20% of those and the other 80% will make you want to close the game entirely.

So my catching routine goes like this. Hit with bow until the health bar is low, wait for them to finish an attack, throw during the recovery frames. It's not perfect but it's way better than just chucking spheres and praying.

Base operations. Your Pals have one job which is don't die while you're away and yet something always goes wrong, like clockwork.

Three things to set up the moment you build the Palbox. First, a feed box with cooked berries. Raw berries restore almost no SAN and low-SAN Pals get depressed and stop working and need expensive medicine. Cooking berries takes five seconds and saves hours of headache. Tbh I didn't know this my first run and had three Pals incapacitated before I figured out why they were all collapsing.

Second, at least one bed per Pal plus two extra. The game doesn't clearly warn you when you don't have enough beds. Pals with no bed can't sleep and can't recover SAN and spiral into uselessness. Build the straw beds now, upgrade later.

Third, a Pal with Transport assigned to nothing else. Items dropped by dead Pals and mining nodes and tree farms don't auto-collect. If nobody has Transport your ore sits on the ground and despawns. You'll mine 40 ore, walk away to catch something, come back, and everything is gone. That one killed my first base and I didn't even realize what happend for like three hours.

The first tower boss. Zoe and Grizzbolt is available around level 10 to 12 but your level alone won't save you. The minigun shreds cloth armor in about two seconds, it's not even close.

Bring the old bow with at least 80 arrows. Bring Foxparks for the flamethrower burst. Bring a shield. And most importantly bring a grounded Pal like Rushboar or Eikthyrdeer because of the electric immunity frames they give you during the fight.

Grizzbolt telegraphs everything. The minigun has a wind-up sound so side-dodge immediately when you hear it. The ground pound has a long jump wind-up so roll backward twice. The lock-on laser is the easiest to dodge but the hardest to notice because there's no sound cue at all. Watch the eyes not the health bar.

Honestly the first tower fight is less about party composition and more about whether you remembered to repair your armor and craft enough arrows before leaving base. Half the people I've watched fail this fight had a broken bow and no backup weapon and just... yeah.

About the Paldeck and map. There are over a hundred entries and the map is massive. Trying to fill the Paldeck zone by zone is the fastest way to burn out completely.

I think of the map as rings instead. Center ring is the starting area, middle ring is level 15 to 25 zones, outer ring is 30 plus. Fill the center ring completely before pushing outward. Each zone has maybe 8 to 12 unique Pals and the center ring alone gets you to about 40 entries with basically no risk.

But here's where the completionist approach falls apart. Day and night spawns are different and some Pals only show up during specific weather. A Pal you've never seen isn't necessarily rare, you might just be visiting its biome at the wrong time of day. I spent two hours looking for something that only spawns at night and felt pretty dumb about it afterwards.

For breeding the earliest useful pair is a Nitewing, found at night near the starting cliffs, plus whatever high-attack Pal you've caught. Flying mounts shortcut the entire mid-game exploration loop. The moment you have a saddle on anything that flies the whole map opens up.

Around level 20 the early game efficiency falls off hard. Stone tools feel slow, cloth armor stops protecting you, and your base needs iron ingots desperately.

The bridge to mid-game is one thing. Ore. A full stack of ingots lets you craft the metal pickaxe, metal axe, and crossbow which together triple your gathering speed. Prioritize ore runs over exploration at levels 18 through 22. Build a second base near a dense ore cluster, the plateau behind the Desolate Church has six plus nodes, set up mining with Digtoise or Tombat, and fast-travel between bases to move ingots.

This is where early decisions compound hard. A well-placed first base with nearby ore means your level 20 transition takes maybe an hour. A poorly placed one means three hours of manually running ore between distant fast-travel points while your base Pals slowly lose SAN because the feed box is back at the old location and you forgot to build a new one. Not that I'd know anything about that...