5 Things That Could Have Made The Palworld 1.0 Launch Magnitudes Better
When the Palworld 1.0 launch landed, it added a plethora of new content to explore: new locations, new pals to capture, new technologies to unlock, and new buildings to expand our creative horizons. With all the new bosses and unique pals in conjunction with collectibles, we also got new lore that dropped on top of it all. With all the new different things we could unlock as we progressed, Pocketpair made sure that all resources would be in demand, no matter what we might be doing.
So where exactly did the 1.0 update fail the players, and what could have made it even better?
Players Lay Out Demands: All About That Base
Something players have asked for is expanding the base limits when upgrading the Palbox, kind of like how Enshrouded expands the building parameters when upgrading the Flame. Some players have gone so far as to build big, bulky skyscrapers just to make ends meet, and that was before 1.0 even dropped! Whether crafting the next set of armor, cranking out spheres, or making all the ammo ever needed for every raid boss known to Palkind, it’s easiest to keep production in one location for ease of processing and crafting.
Alongside bigger, expanded bases is the often-requested ability to simply relocate a base in its entirety to mitigate using materials to build a billion bases. As players progress, certain areas feel like they just aren’t as necessary or useful, as the materials they need can become farmable plots like the ore mining site, or resources can be farmed through the ranch like fire organs instead of being in one spot. Currently, as things stand, you end up having to completely build a whole new base as you progress, or keep building skyward.
Finally, the only storage that is limited to once per base is the almighty Guild Chest, which is shared between all bases in the game. While other parts of core base functions did get an upgrade, such as the Monitoring Stand that becomes High Quality at 28, before becoming Ancient at 71 with bonuses, the Guild Chest remains basic with only 54 slots of storage. Even just a final upgrade of 3 more rows at 75 would be an improvement, as some use it for food so it never goes bad or for base-building materials so they don’t have to teleport back and forth for resources.
The Grind For Gear: Tiered Progression Upgrade
The idea behind this is that gear you either find or craft can evolve or be part of a lineage crafting system. As an avid bow user, I don’t care for the crossbow, so my game weapon progression is: Old Bow level 3, Three Shot Bow level 10, but then I have to wait 32 levels to unlock the Compound Bow at 42. Even if one goes for the Crossbow at Level 13, it is still a long way off from the next bow iteration.
This could be fleshed out to use dog coins or bounty tokens to buy a one-use special item that lets the player use their base armor or weapon as a component to craft the rare version of it, saving a bit on resources but also consuming the original gear. Crafting it this way would also give a small bonus, either with an area of effect or faster fire rate for guns, an extra % to piercing or draw speed for bows, or +2 Defense and +5 Health for head armor; body armor getting + 5 Defense and +15 Health, increasing incrementally by x .5 per tier.
Admittedly, this progression might be most useful on challenge runs, solo, or 4-player worlds; it would be an incentive to focus on early gameplay and increase playstyle continuity. Other games like TERA Online used the evolution theory, with Guardian being enhanced to +6 and evolving into Twistshard; at +9, it evolved to become Frostmetal. Terreria also did this by combining different swords or accessories into their final forms, like the Zenith sword and Shellphone.
Storage: All The Boxes, Everywhere All At Once
While the Dimensional Box is great and all, the Pal Box itself was left in the upgrade dust too. Players are still limited to 32 pages worth and 30 pals per page, for a total of 960 pal slots, despite having 203 pals with 84 variants to collect, breed, and perfect for boss hunting, raid bossing, and hard-tower farming. Pals in the Dimensional Box also don’t get sent out on Expeditions, which makes using it not exactly optimal, and if you catch more than your box can hold, you rush home to condense and begin anew.
Something that feels a bit like a missed opportunity was the inclusion of tons of new materials and new tech tree craftables but no new storage options at all. Palworld 1.0 introduced a plethora of new resources, two new ores with new ingots, and special collectible crafting materials for the new craftable accessories from the revamped sanctuaries, new materials we have to craft a ton of to make the end-game gear and workstations.
There are now 12 gatherable resources players can make their pals gather: wood, hardwood, stone, paldium fragments, ore, coal, chromite, sulfur, pure quartz, hexolite quartz, coralum ore, and soralite. That doesn’t include the fiber, new Mythical Wood or Paloxite found in the world tree; there is now Ancient Lava, Ancient Bone, and Ancient Bark found in their respective Sanctuary locations. That is a lot of resources, and all of them end up being necessary at some point or another, but where do we store it all?
This doesn’t include other new materials for awakening crystals, relics, or any of the new pal organs we can now farm.
For reference, at level 67 players unlock the Ancient Workbench – it requires
- 5 AI Cores
- 25 Computers
- 50 Circuit Boards
- 100 Pure Quartz
- 50 Polymer
- 100 High Quality Pal Oil
- 50 Sulfur
- 75 Plasteel
- 150 Crude Oil
- 375 Ore
- 50 Bio Battery
- 50 Electric Organ
- 50 Refined Ingot
- 100 Ore
- 100 Coal
- 50 Carbon Fiber
- 50 Flame Organs
- Either 100 Coal or 250 Charcoal (500 Wood in the furnace)
- 50 Carbon Fiber
- 50 Flame Organs
- Either 100 Coal or 250 Charcoal (500 Wood in the furnace)
- 50 Circuit Boards
- 25 Computers
- 50 Soralite Ingot
- 100 Soralite Ore
- 100 Pure Quartz
- 10 Thermal Core
- 40 Flame Organ
- 80 Coal
- 20 Corrosive Solvent
- 20 Venom Glands
- 20 Sulfur
- 20 Hexolite
- 20 Chromite
- 20 Hexolite Quartz
- 5 Ancient Civilization Core
All The Farming – At All Times
Palworld has all kinds of big pals and burly pals, mounts galore, and just in general pals that have a huge frame that look like literal pack mules. This made me think of TERA Online again, but also brought to mind ARK; both games allow you to have pet/dinosaur inventories, but none of Palworld’s ungulates or behemoths have their own storage. From the land Pal Kingpaca to airborne Elphidran, even the giant Mammorest and its variants have no storage.
They can all be mounted and stampede the ground they walk on, trampling the little guys under their gargantuan feet as they make the world rumble, but they have no saddlebags to help lighten the load on the player’s inventory. For a world built with stunning scenery and all kinds of places to explore, this really feels like a thing that could have been considered. With all the hidden treasure chests and dungeons to poke around, being stonewalled with a “Your inventory is full.” message can feel daunting as players fly or drag themselves with a grappling hook to the nearest teleport to quick-stack and run to keep scouring the world of Palapagos.
The Final Aesthetic
While decorating and shifting things around, it dawned on me suddenly that we can’t really color our armor or cosmetics in any way. Palworld gave players cosmetics and outfits, but the armors are plain and devoid of creativity, where the color palette comes in. Even if it is just dying the fur tufts and the leather itself a different color, it would be better than the same plain sort of egg-shell white and grey or leather brown.
Palworld granted a couple of new face options, which was a nice boon. Creativity with our outfits, besides cosmetic looks based on previous armors or Pal outfits, would be a nice touch to let players really make the funniest of creations.
