5 Tips to Get Started in Palworld
This Pokémon-like survival game has plenty of mechanics to juggle. Here's what you need to know.
Palworld has quickly taken up gamers’ fascination. But this Pokémon-like survival title feels like multiple games in one, leaving players with plenty to juggle when they first dive in. It combines the creature collecting of Nintendo’s beloved franchise with another fan favorite: The Legend of Zelda, with world exploration that feels reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. Oh and those creatures, called Pals, in this game? Well, in Palworld they carry some heavy-duty weapons.
This amalgamation is likely while Palworld has garnered so much interest despite still only being in early access. It helps that Palworld is on Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription service for Xbox and PC, but it’s also already one of Steam’s top paid games ever, all within less than a week.
And while Palworld offers a tutorial, the game leaves a number of gaps for you to figure things out on your own. Here are five tips to help you navigate the Palpagos Islands.
Palworld has already soared to the top of Steam’s charts.
5. Act fast to survive in Palworld
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Palworld is all about collecting cute creatures. This is, at its core, a survival game. As with many titles in the genre, Palworld drops you into the setting during the day, forcing you to take those initial daylight hours to prepare for the night.
To properly set yourself up, you’ll want to craft your basic tools first, including the Wooden Club, Handheld Torch, Stone Pickaxe, and Stone Axe. You’ll also need a Primitive Workbench. To get your gear setup ready, you’ll want to wander around where you first begin the game, get a few pieces of wood and stone. Once you have enough, you’ll want to craft either the Stone Pickaxe or the Stone Axe. The latter will make it easier to mine for stones, ore, and the ever-important Paldium Fragment. The Stone Axe, on the other hand, will help you gather wood, which you’ll need a ton of.
Nearby, you’ll also want to gather some berries for food, which are required to stave off hunger. You’ll specifically want to gather all these items within a small radius because you don’t want to be far off from your main base, especially come nightfall.
Once you have these basics, you’ll be able to wait out your first night without wasting much time before the sun goes down.
You’ll need a lot of wood to create a base like this.
4. Hoard your resources
Not only will you want to get your supplies together quickly, but you’ll also want far more of them than you probably realize. Once you’re comfortably set up, get to chopping as many trees as you can. You’ll need the wood to build a bed, a Pal Box, a Campfire, a Wooden Chest, and a ton of other structures.
Similarly, you should take your Pickaxe to the rock mounds you see. Here is where you can mine the Paldium Fragments previously mentioned. Palworld’s tutorial tells you to craft a Pal Shere, the game’s equivalent of a PokéBall. However, it never actually tells you how to the get required Paldium Fragment. The recipe for a single Sphere requires one Fragment each, so you’ll want to stock up. After all, Palworld isn’t just about survival. It’s about the Pals you catch along the way.
Even in the case of said Pals, you’ll want more than one. You get EXP bonuses the first 10 times you nab a Pal of the same species in addition to a bonus the first time you capture a specific type of Pal. Plus, each type has its own benefits. If you’re doing a lot of building, for instance, it’ll be helpful to have multiple species that can help in that area.
It’s about the Pals we made along the way.
3. Palworld doesn’t pause
After putting in the work to make a nice base for you and your Pals, you might want a break. Maybe you need to stretch your legs, get some water or a snack? Well, too bad. Palworld keeps on turning, with or without you. So if you think you’re paused in the main menu while you wander away, think again. You’re likely to come back to your game having perished from starvation. This also means you may have to go back to the site of your demise to retrieve everything you were carrying at the time, depending on the settings you chose when creating the world.
This always-on feature is likely due to Palworld’s online multiplayer capabilities, which would make pausing the world for one player on a server a bit awkward. Regardless of why, this is the way it is in Palworld. Get used to it or learn the hard way.
The lack of pause abilities is even more crucial at night when you not only have to worry about starvation but also a drop in temperature and dangerous Pals appearing. You can build a bed to pass the time at night safely, but it needs to be on a foundation and under a roof.
Just a Pal trying to make it in the world.
2. Check Palworld’s Survival Guide
It may seem obvious to look at the game’s built-in guide, but it’s easy to miss. And Palworld truly combines the mechanics of multiple genres, making it easy to forget details. Between building a base, capturing Pals, and trying not to become a literal criminal hunted by authorities, no one could blame you for needing to look something up when you first get started.
This is an easy place to comb through and get a feel for things rather than learning by trial and error.
No, this is not an edit. It’s an actual image of Palworld.
1. Don’t be afraid to get things wrong
Yes, I know I just said how much better it is to read through things rather than floundering through the game. But no matter how much prep you do, survival games are often about feeling things out. Maybe you really want to build a bed right away or you really want to collect lots of Pals quickly. Maybe you set up your base in a place that you actually don’t care for. You can simply start over with a new save. Or keep going and change things around.
