6 things I wish I’d known when I started playing Palworld

Palworld, from Pocket Pair, is one of the biggest launching games on Game Pass ever. It has scored amazing player figures both on Xbox and on Steam, and while it is still in Game Preview on the Xbox, it certainly has more than enough to get you hooked and keep you playing. 

What I hope to do with this article is give the benefit of all the missteps I made when I started out with Palworld – so hopefully when you start to play, or even continue to play, you can learn something from my misfortune. 

I’ve already detailed my initial thoughts from the wild frontier of Palworld, but let’s go to a world of Pals and survival, as I share the 6 things I wish I’d known before I started playing Palworld. The Palworld tips and tricks, if you will.

1) Beware the ground with no texture!

The worst thing that can happen in Palworld is falling through the floor, literally. 

The map is built with a base layer of water, and when you fall through the ground (and it happens more than you’d think) you end up in the water, where you can only swim for so long before you die. 

Now, once you have fallen through, there are a couple of things you can do, but prevention is better than cure, right? When you are walking around, chilling and exploring, keep your eyes on the landscape; there will be sections where the textures haven’t loaded in properly – these are the places you can fall through. 

Assuming you have stumbled into one of these areas, the only way to get out is to have a Pal that you can ride, and of all those, a flying one such as Nitewing or Vanwyrm is the best. If you can get to a an area near where the normal world is restored, then a land Pal, like Univolt or Grintale can work, but the key is throwing the sphere with your Pal in it outside the rift you’re in, then holding the “Ride” button (X) and hoping you get teleported to the Pal. 

On a flying Pal, I’ve had good success flying back out the way I came! But the thing I wish I’d known here is that it is best to keep both eyes open for the oddities of the world. I’ve included a photo of what I’m on about up top – if you look to the left of my character you can see the lack of texture that is basically a trap!

2) Choose where you put your points – wisely

When you level up in Palworld, you are given points to spend, both on technology and on personal development. This section is about the personal development section. 

When you do go up a level, you’ll see a message at the bottom of the screen telling you that you have some unspent stat points. There are a few categories to put points into, but there are two that are vital – stamina and weight. The others are HP, work speed, attack and defense. 

Now, stamina is so vital because pretty much everything in the game needs it – climbing, swimming, mining, melee combat to name but a few. When your stamina is gone, you cannot run or jump or do anything except walk until the bar refills; having a bigger pool is a great idea. After all, there is a lot of verticality in the game, so climbing for a while is vital. 

Weight, the other vital category, means that you can carry more before you are weighed down, and when it comes to getting things like ore to make ingots, the more the merrier! When you are overburdened, you cannot run or jump again, climbing is out of the question, but the good news is you can still fast travel using the bird statues. 

Beware, if you are very overburdened you won’t be able to move at all, and this applies to any Pals you can ride too – if you are too heavy, they can’t go fast either. 

HP is a nice-to-have stat, and so is Attack, but I’ve tended to rely on making better armour to raise my defence in the game. 

3) Consider your Technology points and where to spend them

When we first start the game, we are advised that in order to found a base, we need to build a Palbox. Once we have got the bits together that we need, we can start to build a house and all the mod cons that we need. 

Now, one thing it took me a while to notice was that I could go to the Palbox, press Y, and receive a list of missions that would allow me to raise the level of my base. These usually involve building something specific, like a hot spring or a fluffy Pal bed, and once you have achieved the target, the base level will increase. This allows you to have more Pals working at the base, which in turn makes it easier to automate things and get stuff you want faster. 

How this ties in to the Technology points we gain when levelling up (or finding a new fast travel statue) is thus – the list of items that we can choose to build from is expanded by spending Technology points. It may cost two points to learn how to make a bed, for instance, but a bed is no good without a roof to put it under. 

Choose wisely, as while the decorative items may look nice (who doesn’t want a piano in their bedroom) you are better saving the points and unlocking the things you need to level the base further. At a certain point, you can even unlock a second base and so have two areas to call home. 

4) Planning makes perfect

This is more of a nice-to-have thing than an absolute necessity, but make sure that you have a bit of a plan before building your base. I made the mistake of making a campfire near the workbench, and now every time a Pal comes to help me build something, they end up stood in the fire and take damage over time. This applies to you too, so don’t stand in the fire!

Also, the door to my house is directly behind the Pal’s beds, so I end up jumping over them when it is sleepy time. 

Choose a nice flat area near natural resources such as wood and stone (although as your base advances, you can make facilities that allow these materials to be automatically gotten) and if you can be near some ore veins, this is also very helpful. These ore veins can be destroyed by mining, but will regenerate over time, so having a rotation allows you to keep making metal items while the next batch of ore is cooking. 

It’s all about having a nice flow to the base – makes the old Feng Shui much better, see. 

Be aware that certain bits of kit depend on other bits – my sphere production line was a waste of space until I built a power generator and assigned an electric Pal to it, as it needs power to run. 

5) Choose the right Pals for the right jobs

When you start your base, there will be little chance for automation, and what chances there are may confuse you. 

As an example, when I built a furnace to make ingots, I was mystified to see that it “needed kindling”. I searched high and low for kindling, assuming it may come from trees, but it was only when I set a fire Pal (hello Foxparks) loose in the base that the penny dropped – kindling is a Pal ability, not an item. 

Same with handiwork that you need for workbenches and production lines – Pals like Tanzee and (weirdly) Gobfin and Mossanda are great at building items and can speed everything along nicely. 

If you want a Pal to work on something particular, you can pick them up with a press of the Y button, and then press Y again to throw them at the machine you want them to run. It’s a great feeling to see everyone working hard in the base, making bullets for guns, spheres to catch other Pals and various other bits and bobs. 

Oh, and a little aside – if you have Pals who are unconscious, instead of putting them in the Palbox to recover, have a little sleep at night time – they will be raring to go when the sun comes up. 

There is another side to this chapter, and that is choosing the right Pals to help you fight the bosses. Each boss has an element, and by taking Pal’s along that are strong against that element, the fight is a lot easier. All the boss fights require you to do a certain amount of damage in ten minutes to win, and taking not only the right team but the right weapons can make a big difference. 

As an example, the second boss, Lily and Lyleen, are based on plants, so they are weak to fire. I took not only a full team of fire type Pals, but my Flame Crossbow as well, and we finally managed to take them down. Something like 69,000 HP to remove in ten minutes was a challenge. Take the right gear and friends is the moral of the story. The same goes for the various alpha Pals that are either wandering around or are found in Sealed Realms – taking the right gear, team and the strongest possible spheres will make ticking them off a lot easier. 

6) Play your way

Now a bonus thing I only found out today – if you go into the World Settings option from where you load the world up, you can adjust how the game behaves in lots of interesting ways! Things like damage received from Pals, or damage done to them can be tweaked, how quickly your Pals recover health, how quickly your stamina drains – you can tailor the game to be exactly the way you want it to be. Even right down to choosing what you drop when you die. Imagine my joy when I realised I no longer had to trek through an icy wasteland, freezing to death, to get my cold resistant armour back!

So there we have it – 6 things that I wish I had known when I started playing Palworld; the tips and tricks to help you out. I’m not going to lie, this is a game that has taken over my life, almost completely – it is just so addictive. 

But how about you guys? Any top tips for new trainers? Are you also sucked into the game without hope, or does it leave you cold? Let us know in the comments!

And if you haven’t yet played Palworld on Xbox, aside from losing hours of your life to the damn thing, you can not go wrong by grabbing a download from the Xbox Store. It’s free if you have a Game Pass subscription, otherwise will cost you £24.99. You’ll then be able to play on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. You’ll also be able to take that game to PC thanks to Xbox Play Anywhere.

Just remember though, Palworld is currently in Game Preview / Early Access. Things will change as weeks and months play out. Expect a full review from us as soon as Version 1.0 of Palworld is in the works.