Base Building and Automation
An efficient Palworld base starts with a Palbox on flat ground near ore nodes, then matches every Pal to the Work Suitability icons it actually has, remembering that node types are hard-gated by level and ore needs Mining 2. Keep Sanity high with a bed per worker, a Feed Box stocked with SANResist food like Mozzarina Hamburger, and a Hot Spring. You no longer need a sacrificial raid base, because v0.7.0 added a separate Raid Area battlefield and v1.0 made repairs free.
Your base is the core of your progression. An efficient base automates resource gathering, crafting, and food production. Poor base design leads to stuck Pals, low production rates, and constant frustration.
Choosing a Base Location
The Palbox establishes your base limits. Place it in a wide, flat area. Uneven terrain, cliffs, and water features cause pathing errors for your Pals. A flat plain allows Pals to walk freely between workstations without getting stuck on geometry.
Look for locations with natural resources within the blue ring radius. Ore nodes are incredibly valuable. Finding a flat area with several Ore nodes allows your Pals to mine continuously while you explore.
Work Suitability
Every Pal species has specific Work Suitability traits indicated by icons in their stats menu. Matching Pals to the right tasks is essential for automation.
| Work Type | Ideal For | Common Early Pal |
|---|---|---|
| Kindling | Cooking food, smelting ore | Foxparks |
| Watering | Growing crops, powering mills | Pengullet |
| Planting | Sowing seeds in plantations | Lifmunk |
| Mining | Gathering stone (Lv. 1) or ore (Lv. 2+) | Cattiva (stone only) |
| Handiwork | Crafting items at workbenches | Lamball |
That table covers 5 of the game's 12 suitabilities. Assign a mix of Pals to cover all necessary jobs.
Check the numbers next to the icons, because they are hard gates and not speed modifiers. Each node type demands a minimum level: Rock 1, Paldium Ore 1, Ore 2, Sulfur 2, Coal 3, Pure Quartz 3, Soralite 6. A Mining Lv 1 Pal cannot touch ore at all.
v1.0 raised the Work Suitability cap from 4 to 10, and every rank up now increases one of a Pal's suitability levels, with maximum rank raising all of them. Note that each species has its own ceiling, so this does not turn every early Pal into a late-game worker: Cattiva only climbs from Mining 1 to 3 at four stars, while Aegidron goes from 8 to 10.
Condensing is also no longer the only route. Starfruit 1 to 4, bought with Dog Coins, and Ripe Starfruit, bought with Bounty Tokens, rank Pals up directly, and Applied Technique items raise suitability on their own.
Avoid cluttering your base with massive structures early on. Keep workstations spaced apart. Crowded areas trap larger Pals and stop them from working.
Managing Pal Sanity (SAN)
Pals lose Sanity (SAN) as they work. The thresholds are worth knowing: 85 Resting, 65 Slacking off, 60 Idling, 50 Overeating or destroying the Feed Box, 40 Sick, 0 Rioting. SAN drops from being forced to work, from hunger, and from having no bed. One change worth noting: since v0.7 Pals no longer lose SAN from taking damage.
The ailments they develop are Sick, Sprain, Overfull, Ulcer, Fracture, Weakened and Depressed. Ulcer costs 10 Work Speed and 5 Movement Speed, and Medical Supplies cure it.
Build enough Straw Pal Beds for every worker and upgrade to Fluffy Pal Beds when you can. Then get the food right, because the usual advice on this is wrong.
Red Berries do not accelerate SAN drain. They are Nutrition 15 and SAN 0, so they are simply near-worthless and not harmful, and it is the resulting hunger that costs you sanity. Salad and Pizza do not slow SAN decay either. Salad is SAN 11 and Pizza SAN 23, both with +30 Work Speed, and neither carries the SANResist stat at all.
The foods that actually resist SAN decay carry SANResist 25: Pancake, Mozzarina Hamburger, Carbonara, Grilled Lamball, Stewed Galeclaw, Fried Chikipi and Fried Kelpsea. For an industrial Feed Box the best pick is the Mozzarina Hamburger, at +50 Work Speed and SANResist 25, or Dumud Chowder at +50 Work Speed.
Construct a Hot Spring, which Pals use automatically when they need to recover, at +0.50 SAN per second. Since v1.0 they stay in it until SAN is fully recovered instead of hopping out early. Upgrades exist in the High Quality and Japanese-Style Hot Springs, and v1.0 added more SAN infrastructure worth building: the Clinic and Ancient Clinic, where Medicine Production suitability reduces SAN depletion and suppresses illness, and the High-Quality and Ancient Monitoring Stands.
Automating Production Lines
Set up continuous production tasks. Assign recipes at the cooking pot or workbench and leave the required materials. Pals with Handiwork or Kindling suitability will automatically complete the tasks while you are away.
Use chests near production areas. Place a wooden chest right next to your logging site. Pals will gather the wood and instantly deposit it, reducing travel time and increasing overall efficiency.
Oil and Power After v1.0.3
The patch cut the building costs of the Crude Oil Extractor, the High-Pressure Crude Oil Extractor and the Large Power Generator, and raised the crude oil production speed of both extractors. It also widened one mission requirement: the base mission that asks you to build a Crude Oil Extractor now accepts the High-Pressure version, so you no longer have to put down the older one just to tick the objective.
Fixing Pal Pathing Issues
Large Pals do clip into structures and get stuck, and it does cost you SAN. But the specific architectural rules that circulate, three wall heights of doorway clearance, stairs two units wide, and foundations matching their stairs, are not documented anywhere, and there is no material-dependent pathing node system. Build material governs cost and durability, not pathfinding.
What is documented is simpler:
- Space facilities out so Pals do not have to squeeze through tight corners.
- Build on flat ground.
- If a Pal is stuck, pick it up and throw it at its workstation, or re-assign it through the Palbox.
v1.0 also improved this directly, adding countermeasures for raiding enemies getting stuck and fixing cases where base Pals could not resume work or clipped through the ground.
One point where current guidance has moved against this guide: the modern recommendation is to build up and not out, using multiple floors instead of spreading everything across a wide footprint.
Ranch Pickup Problems
Transport Pals ignoring Ranch output is a real, player-reported annoyance, but the explanation usually given for it is not. Transport level sets how many items a Pal carries per trip, and since v1.0 it also sets pickup radius. There is no teleporting, and no "conflicting pathing zone".
| Transport Level | Items Per Trip |
|---|---|
| Lv 1 | 2 |
| Lv 2 | 5 |
| Lv 3 | 10 |
| Lv 4 | 20 |
| Lv 5 | 40 |
| Lv 10 | 500 |
Wumpo and Wumpo Botan are Transporting Lv 6, not Lv 4, against a maximum of 8. Wumpo is still a good pick, though for a different reason than usually given: its partner skill grants every other base Pal +1 Transporting. Wumpo Botan's partner skill is Ground damage reduction and does nothing for your base.
The documented fix for the Ranch itself is spacing it out and keeping chests clear of its opening.
One genuine Ranch bug did get fixed: v1.0.3 corrected Alpha Surfent producing no Leather when assigned to a Ranch.
Pal Expeditions and Research
To reduce manual grinding for basic resources, construct a Pal Expedition Station and send boxed Pals on timed missions.
The reward percentage does not go past 100%, so there is no over-capping and no surplus. What extra Firepower actually buys you is a shorter expedition. Xenolord Slab Fragments are a real reward but an ordinary one, at a flat 33.333% from two endgame destinations only: the Dark Cave of Feybreak at 476,000 Firepower and the World Tree Subterranean City Ruins at 851,000.
Building the Pal Labor Research Laboratory also unlocks permanent passive productivity buffs for your bases.
Raid Bases Are No Longer Necessary
This advice has been overtaken by two updates and is worth unlearning.
v0.7.0 added a separate raid battlefield. You can now choose to fight a raid boss in a Raid Area, which deploys you and your Pals to their own instance, so your base is never in the blast radius.
Structure loss was never permanent and is now trivial. v1.0 removed the Repair Kit entirely, and Handiwork Pals repair damaged structures for free.
If you do choose to fight at your base, the current approach is the opposite of stripping it bare: add defenses. Mounted Machine Guns and Missile Launchers no longer consume ammunition as of v1.0, so there is no running cost to leaving them up.
On tanks, Astegon (125 Defense), Knocklem (135) and Mimog (130) were the right answer before v1.0 and are no longer the best. Panthalus and Astralym sit at 200, with Paladius at 145, Aegidron at 140 and Tetroise Primo at 140. Mimog is a particularly poor base Pal regardless, at 60 Health with only Gathering Lv 1 and Transporting Lv 2.
The claim that bosses run advanced aggro routines targeting active base workers is undocumented. The only recorded targeting quirk was a since-fixed bug where the boss warp-attacked the Palbox if you left its range.
If you run a dedicated server and want enemy camps back near your bases, v1.0.3 added the server setting bAllowEnemyCampSpawnNearBaseCamp, which disables the suppression of enemy camp spawns near player base camps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the best place to put your base in Palworld?
Pick a wide, flat area, because uneven terrain, cliffs, and water features cause pathing errors for your Pals. Look for ore nodes inside the blue ring radius so your workers mine continuously while you explore.
Why do my Pals keep getting stuck in my base?
Tight builds and uneven ground. Space facilities out so Pals are not squeezing through corners, and build on the flat. If one is already stuck, pick it up and throw it at its workstation or re-assign it through the Palbox. The specific rules about doorway clearance, stair width and matching materials are not documented, and build material affects cost and durability, not pathing.
How do you stop Pals from losing Sanity in Palworld?
Beds for every worker, a Feed Box with the right food, and a Hot Spring, which they now stay in until fully recovered. On food, note that Salad and Pizza carry no SANResist at all and Red Berries are simply worthless and not harmful. Use Mozzarina Hamburger for +50 Work Speed and SANResist 25. Since v1.0 the Clinic and Monitoring Stands also reduce SAN depletion.
Why are my transport Pals ignoring Ranch items?
It is a real annoyance but not a pathing-zone problem, and no Pal teleports items. Transport level sets items carried per trip, 2 at Lv 1 up to 500 at Lv 10, plus pickup radius since v1.0. Space the Ranch out and keep chests clear of its opening. Wumpo is worth using, at Transporting Lv 6, because its partner skill gives every other base Pal +1 Transporting.
How do you protect your base from raid bosses?
You mostly do not need to any more. Since v0.7.0 you can fight a raid boss in a separate Raid Area instead of at your base, and v1.0 removed the Repair Kit so Handiwork Pals repair damage for free. If you do fight at home, add Mounted Machine Guns and Missile Launchers, which no longer consume ammunition, and field genuinely tanky Pals like Panthalus or Astralym at 200 Defense instead of the older picks.
See Getting Started if you need help with the initial setup.
What to Read Next
- Technology and Progression. Unlocking the structures you need.
- Breeding and Passives. Breeding Pals with better work passives.
- Endgame and Farming. Optimal base locations and automation tiers.
- Raid Bosses. Building an altar without wrecking your layout.
- Tips and Tricks. Suitability gates, the sanity food myths, and free raid repairs.