Skip to content
Haven Collective Collective
Play now
Home Games Rust PvP Rust PvE Rust Console Palworld 7 Days to Die Compare all servers Store Points Leaderboard News Staff Forum Discord

Palworld guide

Palworld beyond the first hour: bases, Pal work and catching on a 3x world

Once you have your first Palbox down and a few Pals chopping wood, Palworld opens up quickly. The difference between a base that runs itself and a base where everyone is starving, injured and standing about comes down to a few systems the game does not explain very well. This guide covers them, with notes on how they play on Haven Collective's Palworld server.

If you have only just started, read our Palworld beginner guide first. It covers your first hour, from the Primitive Workbench to setting up food.

How our world changes the pace

Haven's Palworld world is a PvE co-op server with boosted settings. These are worth keeping in mind as you read the rest of this guide:

  • 3x EXP, gathering and enemy drops. You will level, and run out of storage, much sooner than in a default world.
  • 1.5x capture rate. Catching is still a skill, but you waste fewer spheres.
  • 1.5x Pal work speed and up to 20 Pals per base. Bases are bigger and busier than default.
  • Half hunger and half weight. Food and carrying matter less, though not zero.
  • Drop items, keep equipment. Death leaves your bag behind but never your weapons and armour.

Work suitability: the right Pal for the job

Every Pal has one or more work suitabilities, shown as icons with a level number on its summary screen. A Pal will only do jobs it has a suitability for, and a higher level means it works faster or can operate better stations.

The suitabilities are:

  • Kindling: fuels furnaces, campfires and cooking stations.
  • Watering: waters crops.
  • Planting: plants seeds in plantations.
  • Generating Electricity: powers electric machines later on.
  • Handiwork: crafts at workbenches and builds structures.
  • Gathering: collects crops and dropped items.
  • Lumbering: chops trees and works at logging sites.
  • Mining: mines stone and ore, and works at mining sites.
  • Medicine Production: makes medicine at the medicine station.
  • Cooling: keeps cold storage and coolers working.
  • Transporting: carries materials into storage and to building sites.
  • Farming: produces items from ranch animals.

Building a balanced team

A base with twenty Pals that can only chop wood will drown in logs and never smelt anything. Aim for a spread:

  1. Handiwork and Transporting keep crafting and construction moving. Most bases need several.
  2. Kindling is essential once you rely on furnaces and cooking.
  3. Mining and Lumbering feed your resources. One or two strong Pals for each beat lots of weak ones.
  4. Planting, Watering and Gathering together run your farms.
  5. Farming Pals on a ranch give a steady trickle of useful items without any input from you.

As your team grows, replace low-level workers with Pals that have higher suitability levels. Swap them in and out at the Palbox.

Keeping Pals healthy and happy

Pals have hunger, health and sanity (SAN). Overworked, hungry Pals lose sanity, and low sanity makes them slow down and more likely to pick up illnesses or injuries.

  • Keep the Feed Box stocked. Half hunger helps, but a busy base still eats a lot. A Berry Plantation is enough at first; move to better food as you unlock it.
  • Give every Pal a bed. Pals sleep at night and recover better in a proper bed than on the ground.
  • Build a hot spring once you can. Soaking restores sanity.
  • Treat illnesses quickly. Check the Palbox for Pals with a status problem, and use medicine to fix it.
  • Use the Monitoring Stand to switch your Pals' work mode, for example to have them rest for a while, or to work harder when you need a rush job done.

Base levels and multiple bases

Your base has a level that rises as you complete base missions, shown when you check the Palbox. Higher levels raise how many Pals can work at the base and how many bases you can run. On Haven, each base can hold up to 20 working Pals.

Many players eventually run more than one base:

  • A main base for crafting, breeding and storage.
  • A mining base near rich ore or coal deposits.
  • A farm base with plantations and ranch Pals.

Keep the bases close to fast travel points you use, but leave room around the points themselves. On our server, building on or blocking fast travel points and boss arenas is against the rules.

Defending your base

Wild Pals and human groups sometimes raid player bases. Your Pals will fight back, but a few precautions help:

  • Keep some combat-ready Pals at each base, not only workers.
  • Build walls and defensive structures around the important parts.
  • Do not leave valuables on the ground. Put them in chests.

Because the world is co-op, other players cannot attack your base, and griefing other people's bases or Pals breaks the rules.

Catching tips

  • Lower their health first. The lower a Pal's health, the better your chance. Use a weaker weapon or a Pal that does less damage, so you do not knock it out by accident.
  • Use the right sphere. Better spheres from the technology tree raise your chance, especially against higher-level Pals.
  • Raise your capture power. Lifmunk Effigies are hidden across the map. Offer them at the Statue of Power to raise your capture power permanently.
  • Catch duplicates. Extra copies are not wasted. Combine them with the Pal Essence Condenser to strengthen a favourite Pal.
  • Fill your Paldeck. Catching new species gives bonus EXP, which on our 3x world adds up fast.

Bosses and progression

  • Alpha Pals are tougher versions of a species that appear in fixed places. Defeating or catching one is a big step up for your team.
  • Tower bosses guard the towers across the map. They are some of the hardest fights in the game and well suited to a co-op group.
  • Ancient Technology Points come from defeating bosses and unlock some of the best recipes in the technology tree.

Before you take on a tower, check your Pals' elements against the boss. Palworld's elements each have strengths and weaknesses, so the right partner Pal makes a big difference.

Breeding

When you are ready, build a Breeding Farm and place two compatible adult Pals in it with Cake in the box beside it. They produce an egg, which you hatch in an Egg Incubator. Breeding lets you combine passive skills and create Pals you would struggle to find.

Playing well with others

Our world is shared, so a little courtesy goes a long way:

  • Build away from other players' bases, boss arenas and fast travel points.
  • Other people's chests, Pals and crops are theirs.
  • No duplication or other exploits.

Show off your base in #base-showcase in our Discord; pick Palworld when you join. The best builds go up on the Palworld page, and the Palworld leaderboard ranks players by level.

Haven Collective · Guides · All guides