Palworld 1.0 is finally here! After two and a half years, the creature-collecting, survival-crafting adventure is officially complete, and with it comes a whole host of new content, along with major changes to existing content. If you’ve been playing Palworld throughout its early access, then it’s highly recommended that you start a fresh playthrough for this update, as it’s going to be a significantly different experience to start from scratch.

Whether you’re one of those players starting fresh or a brand new one who’s hopped onto the bandwagon for this finally complete experience, here’s a summary of everything that’s new/changed in Palworld 1.0

New Pals

Let’s start with the most obvious and potentially most exciting part of any new Palworld update: new Pals! In this case, a whopping total of 72 new Pals have been added to the game. You’ll find the majority of them roaming the new areas added in this update (more on those shortly), but some have been added to the existing areas too; you’ll have to go out and explore to find them all!

New areas

Two major areas have been added with this update. The first is Sunreach, a strange area with blue grass and trees coating the landscape, along with a lot of floating islands all loosely connected and housing new Pals. You’ll need a flying Pal if you want to properly explore this area.

Second is the World Tree. This area is shrouded in mystery, as it will serve as the climax of Palworld’s main story and is said to be home to a Legendary Pal for you to catch. While it’s not outright stated, the team behind Palworld has implied that in order to unlock this area, you’ll first need to capture all of the boss towers, currently controlled by the game’s different factions.

On top of this, there are new smaller features scattered throughout the world, including: Ancient Ruins that task you with small minigames with powerful schematics as rewards; Watchtowers that you can climb to reveal the nearby map; new Settlements with NPCs, shops, and side quests; and various small islands dotted around the place.

Story overhaul

The game’s main story is complete in this update and has seen a rework that now has a better-flowing main and sub-quest system. You’ll find your journey progresses more naturally, it’ll be easier to tell where you’re supposed to go next, and of course, you’ll finally be able to see how it all comes together in the game’s new finale at the World Tree.

Awakening and Mutation

Palworld 1.0 introduces two new mechanics that can let your Pals become stronger than ever. 

First is Awakening. There is a new mystical area open somewhere on the Palworld map where you can find Radiant Gems. You can use these gems to awaken your Pals hidden potential, with new moves, abilities, and higher stats.

Second is Mutation, which is a massive change to how Pal breeding works. Now breeding Pals has a chance to produce a mutated egg, which will have higher stats and unique passive skills. On top of this, you can now produce multiple different types of cake that will have a variety of effects:

• Mushroom Cake: Increases the likelihood of Pals having higher stats
• Vegetable Cake: Produces two eggs at once
• Deluxe Vegetable Cake: Increases the likelihood of mutation
• Special Cake: Increases the likelihood of Pals inheriting multiple parent skills

Work Suitability overhaul

Work suitability is the system that determines how efficiently Pals will perform jobs at your base. Whether they’re crafting, watering, growing, cooking, or whatever, the higher the suitability level, the quicker they’ll perform their tasks.

Previously, suitability worked on a levelled system of 1 to 4. However, in 1.0, work suitability can now go up to level 10, giving a smoother sense of progression throughout the game. Every time you increase a Pal’s rank through Pal Condensation, one of its suitabilities will increase in level, and when it reaches max rank, all of them will increase.

On that note, the number of Pals required to reach the max rank has been decreased from 116 to just 48, so you can max out your Pals a lot easier.

Wildlife Sanctuary overhaul

The Wildlife Sanctuaries are guarded areas on the edges of Palworld’s map that contain rare and endangered Pals that can’t be obtained anywhere else. However, they weren’t very well-guarded, and it was very easy to get in and out undetected. In 1.0, it’s gotten a lot harder as the areas will now be patrolled by drones, searchlights, and powerful boss Pals that will make getting the riches they offer much harder.

Combat changes

There have been a handful of changes made to combat that will alter the flow of battle, making you more mobile on the field. Most notably is that the dodge has been changed to a dash that will more effectively let you close the distance, plus you can continue attacking and reloading while dashing to maximize damage.

Tower Boss changes

Tower Bosses have also been altered in this update to make fights with them a lot quicker. The time limit for these fights has been reduced from ten minutes to five, and all of their stats, like HP, have been reduced to better fit this new time limit. Many of them have also been given new attacks and battle tactics too, so whatever old strategies you may have used to beat them in the past might no longer work.

New equipment

And to cap it all off, there are new, exciting toys to play with in this update. All of these can now be found on the tech tree, which has now seen the level cap increase from 65 to 80.

First is the Wing Pack, which allows you to freely fly without having to ride a Pal, it just costs craftable Wing Cells to use.

Next is the Plasma Multicutter, a resource-harvesting tool that can be used while riding a Pal, letting you gather stuff quicker than ever before.

And finally is a big list of new weapons that span the entire tech tree. These are:

• Mechanical Bow
• Combat SMG
• Prototype Shotgun
• Heavy Assault Rifle
• Tactical Grenade Launcher
• Laser Sword
• Beam Scatter
• Drone Launcher
• Plasma Rifle
• Beam Launcher
• Primitive Sword
• Metal Bat
• Enhanced Lily’s Spear

And to top it all off, you can now craft even more weapon holsters, increasing the number of weapons you can equip at once to six.

That’s all of the major headlines for the 1.0 update, but there are a whole host of minor additions, changes, and balance patches across the whole game, so it’s worth checking out the official Palworld patch notes on Steam.