History VideoGame / Palworld

** Out of all player stats to upgrade, Weight Limits is the most important regarding how much more the player can carry, especially when it comes to carrying heavy materials like coal, ore, and fragments.

* RegeneratingShieldStaticHealth: Downplayed, as health also regenerates, but shields regenerate much faster, as long as you can avoid damage for a bit, letting them quickly recover to full in combat. By contrast, the player's HP regeneration is far too slow to really make a difference while fighting, and the only way for the player to restore appreciable amounts of health in combat is to be healed by one of the few Pals capable of doing so.

* SanityMeter: Each Pal has a Sanity gauge that lowers from doing work and recovers when sleeping or relaxing. If a Pal's sanity drops too low, they become prone to slacking off and refusing to work, or in particularly dire cases, they may start causing disturbances.

* StatSticks: A decent number of Pals have abilities that passively provide some form of stat benefit just by having them in your party, and these stat boosts stack, meaning a viable method for combat is having one Pal for combat while the other five sit in your inventory boosting it, or in the case of Gobfin, boosting the player while using a mount that provides its own boosts to your attacks.

** ''Palworld'' is also one of the ''very'' few MonsSeries to answer a deeply uncomfortable question: "If Pals and humans share a common ancestor, does that mean you can capture humans in Pal Spheres?" The answer here, of course, is "Yes": capturing humans inside of Spheres -- while considered inhumane and ''very'' illegal -- can, and does, happen, and allows the Pal trainer to [[HumanTraffickers potentially sell them off on the black market]]. Or even [[ImAHumanitarian butcher them]].

* FantasticNatureReserve: Its equivalent to the Safari Zone, the Wildlife Sanctuaries, is a [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome more realistic take]] rather than hunting grounds, being actual nature reserves guarded by the PIDF where even setting foot there is considered trespassing (but EvilPaysBetter). Fortunately, the species exclusive to the sanctuaries can be found as Field Bosses or by breeding, allowing you to obtain them legally. They can often also be purchased from Black Marketeers, which is mildly less legal but won't get you in trouble with the cops.
* FlamethrowerBackfire: Some mooks from the Rayne Syndicate and most mooks from the Brothers of the Eternal Pyre carry flamethrowers. If you set them on fire, the flamethrower's fuel tank explodes with predictable results, and shooting the tank will cause them to leak and ignite the user (and then explode). Oddly enough, if the mook survives the tank explosion, they can still use the flamethrower with no problems.

* MadeOfIncendium: Wooden materials in this game are ''insanely'' flammable compared to not just real wood, but also wood from most other survival games; where a wooden house would take hours in real life and minutes in an average survival game to burn down, a large wooden house in ''Palworld'' will get instantly set entirely ablaze from the smallest spark and burn down in seconds.

* {{Pixellation}}: Choosing to "butcher" your Pal instead of "pet", when equipping a Meat Cleaver, will cover them in a pixel censor while the deed is done.

* RegeneratingHealth: Health slowly regenerates outside combat.

** Dying in single-player, even with the hardest difficulty settings, is still ultimately just an inconvenience; the player is simply required to go retrieve their belongings from where they died. Nothing is permanently lost, even with subsequent deaths.

* EnemyMine: By the time you hit level 40, you've become such a threat that the other factions (except the PIDF) will put aside their differences and form a raiding party made of their toughest {{mooks}} with the Rayne Syndicate contributing Syndicate Elites, the PGRU contributing Executioners armed with laser rifles, Brothers of the Eternal Pyre contributing Martyrs with flamethrowers and the Free Pal Alliance contributing crossbowmen with electric stun bolts.

->''"It's like Skyrim, but with Pokemon."''

The game is also known for the ''extreme'' amounts of BlackComedy it has, with the game outright reveling in the mistreatment of its various Pals to varying degrees. It being a {{Deconstructive|Parody}} AffectionateParody of ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' in the mishmash style of ''VideoGame/PanzerDragoon'', ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' and ''VideoGame/PlayerunknownsBattlegrounds'', it takes place in a CrapsaccharineWorld filled with colorful {{mons}} called Pals who you can choose to [[VideoGameCaringPotential protect]] or [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential exploit]]. The game's open world, especially in regards to its design and progression, also takes very obvious cues from games like ''VideoGame/EldenRing'', ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', ''VideoGame/ARKSurvivalEvolved'', and ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2''.

* 0.2.0.6 made it so flying or floating Pals are now immune to FallingDamage after people [[CheeseStrategy cheesed]] Jetragon by luring it off the nearby cliffs.

** If you die during a tower boss battle, your dropped items sack will be neatly placed in front of the tower entrance, instead of inside the tower instance where you died.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The Double Barrel Shotgun is great for crowd control and close-quarter combat against higher-leveled Pals. However, it quickly loses effectiveness in terms of damage should the range be past point-blank plus unlike the Pump Shotgun, ammo can easily be wasted when fired carelessly and can easily break when overused.

* BackStab: Tagging an unaware Pal from behind with a Palsphere gives a higher capture chance.

* ConfusedQuestionMark: Confused pals display "?" above them.

* EatTheDog: "You must be prepared to do anything if you want to survive. You may even need to consume Pals sometimes...". In fact, Chikipi normally becomes food in the Palworld videos, and the game itself enforces this to the point that the Paldeck entry notes that, despite being food for essentially ''everything else'' on the island, the population never seems to decline. The game doesn't let you do this easily, however, as doing so requires you to go through quite a bit of the techtree and craft an item that enables the function. This is even discouraged if you're playing optimally, since it's much better to use Pals in the essence combiner or for their labor purposes, so [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential the only practical reason to butcher your own Pals is to be a special kind of cruel]].

** Grenades will decrement their own stack count by 1 when thrown, but an oversight in the programming means it also reduces the stack counter of whatever nearby players have in the same slot, deleting the other players' gear.

* GameHuntingMechanic: The player can kill Pals for meat, but this is explicitly stated to be illegal. To make matters worse, resource scarcity means there may be times when it becomes necessary. Capturing Pals also gives meat for some reason.

** The Paldeck trailers that showcase the Pals are also very deceptive with many of them showing Alpha Pals at levels and locations they cannot be found in. Just to give an example, the Paldeck trailer for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMXo094Mbv8 Bushi]] shows an Alpha Bushi at level 43 being fought in a desert. While Bushi ''do'' spawn in a desert, the only Alpha Bushi is level 15 and is found inside a special boss arena.

* NeverTrustATrailer: Because of the game's TroubledProduction, ''all'' the trailers showcased things that never made it into Early Access. And that's not counting the dramatic art style change from stylized and cartoony in the earliest trailers to the more realistic style seen in the later trailers and the Early Access. To go further into detail: