Since its release in early 2024, Palworld has satiated an appetite among gamers for a title that successfully deploys vast, open-world survival mechanics while successfully incorporating monster-training tropes players hold dearly. Palworld’s dynamism is a double-edged sword, though, with its genre blend both making the game special and challenging players.
With countless resources to manage and a bounty of titular Pals to train, Palworld has kept its community buzzing, sharing strategies on how to raise a battle-ready bounty of titular Pals while managing a bouquet of resources. To be successful in Palworld, one must master an egalitarian approach to all of its many facets, so gathering tips and tricks is a currency among players, which enhances already critically-and-fan-acclaimed gameplay.
10 Franchise Player Base Operations ASAP
Palworld: 10 Strongest Pals For Early Game, Ranked
Palworld has a whole host of powerful pals to choose from, but some are stronger than others when it comes to owning this RPG’s early game.
When first building up a kit of resources, be wary of accidentally slipping into a tunnel vision by (sometimes literally) putting all the eggs in one basket, or, in the instance of Palworld, on one farm. Having a home base of operations isn’t unwise, but players benefit from having alternative outputs to complement their overall output and the shortcomings of their HQ and improve fast travel.
Once skilled and leveled enough to craft saddles for their mountable Pals, or able to catch jack-of-all-trades Pal with myriad work suitability for their team (i.e. Tanzee), prioritize map exploration and search for new areas with resources less common to their home-turf. Players should be sure not to choose a sentimental favorite Pal at one of their fences because the idea here is to let these Pals be left to their labors. Each new base creates a travel checkpoint, freeing players to continue exploring the map and have a treasure trove to return to.
9 Diversify The Pal Party
To hit the ground running in Palworld, one must successfully keep many plates spinning. While some buffs may help along the way and Palworld’s multiplayer co-op offers up some party boosts, nothing in the game will optimize player output and strengthen a squad as successfully as having a team of preciously picked Pals possessing a balance of skills that address party needs.
Most early encounters are also against the most adorable Pals, so it’s important to know the who’s who and what’s what to make informed decisions while curating a team. Pals available early, like Daedream, who can single-handedly boost party levels and defenses but are only available at night, and Teafant, who can be easily glanced over for its unassuming baby-elephant appearance but is the first Pal with healing made available in Palworld, show how important researching the nuances of the map and Pal Deck can be.
8 Travel Often And Travel Smart
While travel expertise is an unsurprising aspect of player success in Palworld, the trick is knowing which small changes to incorporate to yield the most — or most needed — benefits. Even small, subtle adjustments to time management or player priorities can greatly improve the gameplay’s quality of life.
The opportunities to streamline travel are aplenty. A mindful approach might mean setting up backup stashes near boss battles or difficult terrain, to easily don helpful armor, or to keep a grappling gun for scaling a cliffside when equipment weighs too much. Prioritizing finding NPC-run marketplaces to purchase either the goods or Pals they need rather than grinding and crafting for them can save players hours. Joining an online guild with a friend allows players to share their customized maps, often revealing vital locations, statue checkpoints to activate fast travel, and trade secrets to prevent aimless wandering.
7 Elemental Education Elevates Play
Palworld Player Recreates Attack on Titan in Pokémon-Like Game
A Palworld player has faithfully recreated the world of Attack on Titan within the monster-catching survival game being dubbed “Pokémon with guns.”
Comparing Pokémon and Palworld is unavoidable, though only some of their shared similarities are helpful to actual gameplay. Of all the useful comparisons, in-game elements are of the highest importance. Adopting real-time combat, Palworld encounters get more explosive, more quickly than their Poké-counterpart, so mastery of the elements and their strengths & weaknesses is a must-have when the player’s back is against the wall in combat.
Some suggestions are so simple they go overlooked, elemental education among them. Pausing the action of Palworld to carefully comb the game’s survival guide is likely to fall low on the list of priorities for enthusiastic, trigger-happy players eager for power-ups. However, a healthy study of the chart will both help discern party needs and inform conditioned monster-catchers about how elemental matchups skew differently in Palworld than they do in similar games.
6 Launchers Send Gameplay To New Heights
In the real world, it’s said people are prone to use only 10% of their brain. In Palworld players should avoid only using 10% of their weapons. Unlike most monster-catching titles, besides training, Palworld also challenges players to learn the best deployments of their weapons cache, including various launchers for both personal and Pal use.
Rocket and grenade launchers elevate pals with explosive power buffs. Even post-tutorial pals like Pengullet can have their powers amplified by a rocket launcher as early as level 17. One rocket blast alone is capable of stunning anything weaker than a tower boss, allowing players to defend their at-range Pals against aerial enemies or attacking mobs from would-be-killing blows. Palworld even has non-violent launchers, like the Sphere Launcher, which is great for lassoing multiple Pals like Chikpi in one swoop, quickly proliferating player farms.
5 With Great Stats Come Great Stat Block Responsibility
Palworld Is Perfect for Gamers Who Wish the Pokémon Universe Was Darker
Palworld is a charming yet violent new monster-breeding game that allows players to do almost anything they want, including shoot everything they see.
One distinction between Palworld and its predecessors is its player characters having a stat-build for themselves. The game doesn’t do much hand-holding or explaining, leaving early players prone to funneling precious skill points into what, unbeknownst to them, is a less-than-ideal stat block. Assigning these points wisely is a crucial part of optimizing the Palworld experience for players, and the stakes are high from the jump.
Palworld’s map is filled with surprisingly powerful Pals (and buffs) one can find relatively early on in the game to help pack a punch against stronger enemies. It may be tempting to invest skills into player character strength by beefing up Attack stats, but that’ll, ironically, only weaken parties down the road. Instead, focus attention on building out stats like Stamina, HP, and Defense, which bolsters player constitution and enhances the ability to tread difficult terrain with a large inventory.
4 Don’t Work Where You Eat
Time is everything when it comes to optimizing Palworld operations. Pals will happily whistle while they work and ask for little in return, save for a meal in between labors. Simple, right? Sure, so long as critical thought goes into the blueprint of the player’s base.
Once Pals finish tasks, they require food to rebuild their energy before moving on to whatever else is on the docket. Some farming and survival sims encourage a neat base design with distinct and separate spaces for different activities, but a segregated floorplan in a Palworld base only hinders optimization, forcing Pals to trudge long distances to go between their workstations and their meal location. As bases expand, it becomes more important to support each workstation with food pots and to give each workstation a chest to keep tools Pals produce, preventing them from commuting long distances between work and home.
3 Get Creative With Capturing
Given the size of Palworld’s map and creature index, it’s understandable that players would rather not waste time on Pals they’ve already caught or that are weaker than their party. No matter how tempting it is to zoom by, players should avoid giving the cold shoulder, as all Pals they see are likely worth the Pal Sphere.
It’s a given that weaker Pals will benefit from sharing XP with a powerful party, but the real trick lies in each caught Pal chipping away at a 10-caught achievement. While players make their way through their first 10 iterations of a Pal, they’ll earn a significant XP bonus, making even that lowly wild Depresso worth thousands of XP points (so long as the player doesn’t already have 10). It’s also worth mentioning that Pal Spheres have a “back bonus” that offers a sharp probability boost on a back-facing foe, and a similar bonus for sleeping Pals found at night.
2 If Players Fuse, They Don’t Lose
Why Palworld is Not a Problem For the Pokémon Franchise
Palworld has been called the “Pokémon Killer,” but it may be at a type disadvantage.
Despite having a robust roster of 100 distinctly unique Pals, not one Palworld creature is a descendant of an evolutionary process. Though evolution is a beloved aspect of Palworld’s inspiration, the new game instead employs the process of Fusion as an alternative, which, while wholly separate from evolution, does similarly make new or more powerful Pals.
Continuing the trend of not letting even the weakest Pal go to waste, spare Pals are great to use on Fusion. For example, if a player has completed their aforementioned 10/10 capture challenge, they can stack nine of the weaker Pals to be absorbed by the strongest one. Similarly, but more potently, Pals of different breeds that are kept together can, under the right conditions and in the proper settings, eventually fuse to create unique and powerful offspring Pals.
1 Get Lost!
Exchanging analytics and optimization techniques for a dense online multiplayer like Palworld can be fun, but don’t let it eclipse the reality of the game experience, which is one that more closely hits the nail on the head at executing the open-world monster-catching survival RPG of fan’s dreams than a lot of recent titles from Palworld’s more established competitors. In a lush setting, and with dynamic gameplay like that of Palworld, players should freely follow the breeze and find the gameplay aspects that speak most to their sensibilities.
Every region of the Palworld map offers new Pals and new surprises. Players never know what hidden item or scenic hillside they might stumble upon. The best advice is to wander the map’s many corners, get lost on purpose, and feel empowered to abandon everything on the in-game to-do list and set up an idyllic campsite to share screenshots of with friends and guild members.
Palworld
Fight, farm, build and work alongside mysterious creatures called “Pals” in this completely new multiplayer, open world survival and crafting game!
- Platform(s)
- Windows , Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S
- Released
- January 19, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Pocket Pair Inc.
- Publisher(s)
- Pocket Pair Inc.
- Genre(s)
- Survival , single player , Multiplayer
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- ESRB
- T