Palworld 1.0 is Out Now! All Major Changes & Updates

Palworld's much-anticipated full release is finally here! The developers have made so many changes, they couldn't even fit in one Steam patch post.

Thankfully, we'll be continuing to cover and break down a lot of those core changes made to the game and what you can expect going into the new update.

If you're coming from an older release of the game, or are looking to update your server to Palworld 1.0, our post on how to prepare your server for the new update has you covered on everything you might need to know!

Preview

In a rush to play Palworld 1.0? Here's an extra-quick breakdown of some of the key changes in this update!

• Over 70 new pals!

• New world bosses, overhauled leaders, and a new tower boss.

• New building sets, including decorations and water-based building.

• New story missions and an overhauled narrative for the game!

• More challenging late-game content.

• New equipment, tools, and weapons!

• Completely overhauled map and new regions.

• Overhauls for player + pal combat.

• Improvements to graphics, sounds, and animations.

All of these changes and more are covered in more depth below! Or, if you just want to jump in and get started for yourself, Kinetic Hosting offers the best Palworld server hosting to get started in the latest update with no wait!

New Pals

One of the most obvious parts of a huge Palworld update is, of course, new pals! We covered Pocketpair's teaser of over 20 new pals in our recent blog post about Everything Coming in the Palworld 1.0 Update, but they've blown that estimate out of the water with a full 70 new pals, split between 47 new species and 25 new variants!

With so many new pals added to the update, we can't cover all of them in just one post (just like the developers couldn't fit all of their changes into one Steam patch notes post), but you can expect more to come on those new pals as everyone gets the chance to explore and learn more about them.

Bosses & Leaders

The leaders around the islands have been one of the most beloved parts of Palworld for a while now! Enough-so that the developers have begun adding some, like Zoe, as companions you can recruit while playing as well.

Those boss towers have all been reworked to make them feel a lot more dynamic and interesting, with sweeping changes to the actual mechanics of each leader to better reflect their personalities as well! This goes for visuals, too, as every boss tower is also entirely redesigned visually.

This is all in addition to the newest leader added to the game in this update. They will preside over a territory of their own, just like past leaders, and will come with their own challenging boss fight.

Leaders aren't all the bosses the game has to offer, though, as there are super strong pals across the map that you can fight for an extra challenge. Palworld 1.0 introduces overhauled sanctuaries around the world with extra rare pals and entirely new bosses.

They've even gone as far as to develop a "MAX danger level" no-hunting zone expansion to the map, redesigned to offer a late-game challenge even after you've reached the point of beating all the other leaders!

World Changes

With a new leader comes equally notable expansions to the map, including entirely new regions!

New Area: Sunreach

Sunreach is the first of the new regions, and is a new floating set of islands in the sky! The new area promises remnants of a civilization built in the skies with its own new pals, tower boss, ores, and challenges!

New Area: The World Tree

This includes the ability to now actually travel to and explore the world tree! The massive tree looming over the islands has been around since the game was first announced, and was left as a mystery inaccessible to players until now. We've seen glimpses of a massive, godlike Pal looming over the tree in trailers, and are now able to explore and challenge the tree for ourselves!

Uncover the secrets of why the factions on the Palpagos Islands have been fighting for so long, and face the greatest threats you've encountered yet!

Overhauled: Wildlife Sanctuaries

What were previously just small islands have been reworked into Wildlife Sanctuaries, protected by technology from ancient civilizations to preserve their environments.

There are currently 3 of these in the game as of this update, and each has their own environment, scenery, pals, materials, and bosses!

Sneak inside the sanctuaries by avoiding searchlights and drones, or raid them with guns and Pals, and conquer the challenges of the sanctuaries once you're confident in the strength of your team.

General Map Changes & Reworks

The entire map as a whole was also reworked, though, with expanded regions and diversified content across all existing areas. Pocketpair wanted the map to feel a lot more interesting to explore, and to start to flesh out the world of Palworld.

In addition to a pass through the terrain and environment int he world, the spawning systems for Pals across those environments have also been adjusted to match! You'll find the placement and spawning levels for pals feeling a lot more natural in the new update.

Story Overhaul

Palworld has completely redefined its approach to story! One big goal of this update has been to flesh out the universe of Palworld and to work on an overarching narrative for players to immerse themselves in. You won't just hunt for small bits of dialogue or notes around the map, but instead have actual story missions to engage with and play through, making you an actual living part of the universe!

As you explore the islands, challenge tower bosses, and work your way towards the World Tree, a larger narrative will begin to form and will help everything around the universe to feel far more connected and natural. Entirely new NPCs have also been added around the world to reward discovery for those curious to dig into secrets that might be hidden out of the way alongside even more journals and secrets as well!

There's so much of the story for players to explore anew, that only time will tell what secrets there are to unlock around the newly re-designed Palpagos Islands.

Progression Systems

In addition to the new mechanics for Pal strength and development, players have also seen their own love!

The maximum level for players in Palworld has been increased from 65 to 80, introducing a ton of new technologies related to the ancient civilization that you'll continue to see more of across the islands as of the 1.0 update.

Not only has the maximum player level been increased, but the work suitability levels of pals have been expanded to a full 10 levels, giving more to do during end-game to keep strengthening your base.

Requirements for various bonuses and ranks have also been smoothed out a lot. The team clearly wants the game to feel less like a grind, and more like an adventure across the islands.

• The number of captures required to get a capture bonus was changed from 12 down to just 5

• The amount of Pals you need in order to reach the max rank has been reduced from 116 down to 48, cut by over half!

Base Building

What would a huge update to a sandbox/survival game be without more ways to personalize your base?

Palworld 1.0 introduces a ton of new decorations and building sets to build up your base in ways that haven't been possible before now. Most notably, you can build on water now!

There are entirely new sets of tools and foundations in the game now to be able to build foundations overtop of water and create the beachside home of your dreams. You can even finally build greenery like bushes, trees, and plants, or create slanted triangular roofs!

There is lots of new tech for you to explore around your base as well, like oil extractors and material synthesizers that fit neatly into the new advancements and technology in the game to discover.

Raids & Defense

Alongside the ability to build up a base that feels more personalized, comes the need to defend your home!

The raid system in the game has been overhauled, and is now based on waves of enemies that will attack over time. Thanks to this, the placement of your structures and pals are even more important, and require more thought when assembling your base.

There are also other key changes to the logic of raids themselves!

• The types of enemies that invade your base during a raid is now influenced by your environment and region.

• Defense structures don't need/consume ammo anymore.

• The level and difficulty of enemies during raids will automatically scale based on the level of the pals working at your base.

• If you have a Gold Coin Assembly Line at your base, there is a chance for a raid event to be triggered dedicated to attempting to pillage it.

New Systems

Palworld has totally redefined the experience of combat and growth in the game thanks to a few new key systems.

Awakening

Awakening is a new mechanic in the game that allows you to go beyond leveling up your pals to strength them even further! When you explore the new World Tree region, you can gather Radiant Gems to use on your Pals and awaken them to entire new strengths previously impossible in the game.

Mutation

The other biggest mechanic being introduced in this update is Mutation! This system is targeted towards the breeding of pals, and gives a small chance of the resulting pal being much stronger than normal. Fans of a certain other monster-collecting game may be familiar with the idea of breeding creatures together to maximize the strength of the resulting creature and be more competitive.

With Palworld, you can now take that even further thanks to mutations! Pals born this way will even have their own unique passive skill to set them apart more.

To help accommodate the new breeding experience even further, some new cakes have also been added to the game that can help influence your breeding results:

• Mushroom Cake: Increases the chance of the newborn Pal having higher stats

• Vegetable Cake: Causes two eggs to come from breeding, instead of just one

• Deluxe Vegetable Cake: Makes stat growth and mutations more common in Pals resulting from breeding

• Special Cake: Makes it more common for pals to inherit passives from multiple of their parent pals

Partner Skills Changes

Although not a new mechanic necessarily, partner skills have been completely reworked for over 200 Pals! Taking into account even more completely new partner skills, this change entirely changes how you approach team compositions when assembling your team of Pals.

The changes to partner skills hope to make sure you can build teams of Pals that are more diverse and varied while still being able to tackle any challenges that come your way.

Combat Changes

Animations, Motions, & Movement

As part of Pocketpair's continued effort to smooth out the game and clean up a lot of the janky experience players have had with a lot of actions in the game, combat has seen a huge pass of improvements.

Player Changes

• If you're attacking or aiming, dodging will now perform a dash instead of a roll! This lets you keep your aim and your attack focus without exiting it to do a roll animation.

  • You can also ATTACK while you're dashing! Combat has become far more mobile and intense thanks to your ability to keep fighting without interrupting your momentum to avoid enemy attacks.

  • Reloading will also not be interrupted by dodging.

• Rolling hasn't been ignored though. You can continue to use your controls while rolling now, allowing you to adjust your direction and positioning even while you're in the middle of the animation.

Pal Changes

Active skills for Pals have been totally reworked - for almost all active skills in the game. This comes alongside a complete damage rebalance of these skills, allowing for Pals to deal their own damage even greater than the player during fights.

Entirely new active skills have also been added, such as a charge attack for Starryon, and an underground burrow attack for Fuddler.

The pals you encounter in the wild will also have new types of attacks and behaviour, allowing dogs to bite, or fast pals to do more dashes to reposition themselves.

Equipment

What would a new floating sky region be without new equipment to help you traverse it? A wing pack has been added to the game, allowing you to use wing cells to access free flight!

In addition to this, a new Plasma Multicutter tool has been added to the game, as an all-purpose tool to gather resources (even while riding and exploring).

Many new weapons have also bee introduced in the update. To help you make more use of them, you can craft an extra weapon holster item, and equip up to 6 total weapons at once! The core additions to your arsenla in 1.0 include:

• Mechanical Bow

• Combat SMG

• Prototype Shotgun

• Heavy Assault Rifle

• Tactical Grenade Launacher

• Laser Sword

• Beam Scatter

• Drone Launcher

• Plasma Rifle

• Beam Launcher

• Primitive Sword

• Metal Bat

• Enhanced Lily's Spear

Entirely new sets of armor, accessories, consumables, ores, and relics have also been added to the game for players to uncover in the update.

Multiplayer

Playing with your friends has been drastically improved thanks to player feedback over the past year!

• In-Game Voice Chat: You can now use voice chat to speak with your friends right from within the game! This must be enabled in a server's settings, so you can control, whether or not you want to be able to allow voice chat in your server. Our panel makes changing settings like this as easy as possible!

• Guild Changes: New roles, permissions, notifications, and security systems have been added to flesh out the guild experience.

• In-Game Text Chat: The text-chat in-game has also been overhauled to be far easier to use. This lets players scroll in chat more, gives system messages different labels, and improves security to avoid impersonating other players.

• Discord Integration: You can now link your game to Discord, allowing you to directly invite players to play with your from Discord directly.

• Improved Server Functionality: The saving & restoring of passwords for servers has been improved, including more clarity in the connection process for fields like entering a server's IP address. The game now also has a much more thorough saving system to help avoid data corruption!

With all the improvements to multiplayer, it's the best time in Palworld's history to jump in and play with friends on a Kinetic Hosting Palworld server.

General Improvements

Quality of life is important too! Based on the changes in Palworld 1.0, it seems like Pocketpair understood how essential improving the general gameplay flow is for players, too.

New Pal Motions & Animations

Pals have never felt so alive! Over 100 new animations have been added for pals including sleeping animations, swimming, idle animations, and more. These animations are distinct to the individual pals, and add a lot more personality to the various pals you'll find as you adventure!

Riding & Flying Controls

Taking a lot of player feedback into account, the developers have done a major pass of improvements to the general experience of riding pals! This targeted all sorts of mechanics from dashing, shooting while mounted, switching weapons, and camera systems.

You can also cancel skills now while riding and turn more naturally while moving even at high-speeds when mounted, eliminating a lot of the 'jank' that a lot of players used to experience with the riding systems in the game.

UI & UX Improvements

Interfaces throughout the game have seen a lot of improvement to help make it easier to find exactly what you're looking for, and to make it feel more intuitive to navigate menus.

Character Customization

More customization options have been added, including new hairstyles, face types, and accessories!

Sound

All new sound effects and music have been added in a sweeping pass through the game. Some of the scenes where you'll encounter new and refined sound effects include:

• Player Actions (jumping, landing, dodging, etc.)

• Combat (firing weapons, slashing, reloading, and more)

• Pal Actions (cries, footsteps, swimming, and other vocalizations)

• Gathering & Exploration (mining, logging, gathering, etc.)

• Missions & Conversations (reward sound effects, NPC conversation sounds, merchant effects, etc.)

• Building & Crafting (interacting with machines, building structures, repairing items, and more)

You should also be able to expect more variety in battle music, tuned to fit the flow of combat as you play!

Graphics

The entire world of Palworld has seen a major visual touch-up! Water materials, lighting, rendering, coastlines, and general atmosphere have all been enhanced to help with immersion into the world.

All sorts of extra effects, shadows, and other visuals have been generally adjusted and refined as well!

Balance

Balance changes have been made all throughout the Palpagos Islands.

Pocketpair's efforts to smooth out the experience and curve as you play and progress have touched on most major systems in the game, including research, expeditions, shops, accessories, gold, capture probabilities, experience gains, and more!

What's to come?

Pocketpair has solidified Palworld as a breathing universe that has a lot more to offer. Between their debut as a card game, their expansion into cozy sandbox games and visual novels, and their commitment to continued development of Palworld itself, there's a lot more to come from the universe of the game!

Even just this Palworld 1.0 update has too much to cover to fit into just one blog post. We will continue to cover updates to the game, as well as helping break down all of the overhauled content in Palworld's release update in the weeks to come.

If you'd like to be the first to get news about these updates, consider starting up a server with Kinetic Hosting today and play alongside the news as it comes out! Palworld is even better with your (real) pals, and there's no better way to jump into the world together than with our lag-free Palworld server hosting and commitment to keeping game servers affordable for everyone.