Palworld 1.0 Release – Excellent Monster Catching Open World Survival Game
Posted on August 29, 2026 by Aywren
Palworld has turned out to be one of my most-played games of 2026. I don’t regret that in any capacity. I know some folks joked about it being “Pokemon with guns” but it’s been a very satisfying survival monster catching game.
I can say this with confidence as Syn, who isn’t much of a Pokemon player, has sunk just as much time or even more into the game as I have. I think that’s a pretty significant testament to the enjoyability of Palworld – when someone who isn’t generally the target audience enjoys it as much as she has.
We originally picked up Palworld back when it first launched in Early Access in 2024. We spent some time with it before heading off to other games, as is typical for us, and didn’t touch it again for two years. Earlier this year, we saw that Palworld had a series of new updates, so we decided to return and check it out.
Little did we know that the 1.0 release was right around the corner at the time. However, the time and experience we had from this early access bout was a great foundation for when we started over once more on the final release.
Some 1.0 Impressions
Much has changed in Palworld 1.0 – more than I actually expected to! It’s not just new areas to explore and new pals to catch, though those are very nice!
The game now has a sorta story that leads you through the game from zone to zone, tower fight to tower fight. I say “sorta” story because though there’s more story there than there use to be, it’s still very bare-bones. I think they still want you to read through the data entries that you pick up through the map, but so many of those are missing for me that the story remains very piecemeal.
It does function as a way to get you started and keep you moving through the different zones, which is fine. I would have liked a little more information about the ancient civilizations that we’ve long seen hints of, even back in the earliest version of the game. We get bits and pieces of it, and I get the gist, but still wish for more.
While the final boss fight is cool looking, the story around it is a little lacking and confusing. It’s also a shame that you can’t capture it as a pal, but I guess that’s sticking to the game’s lore.
I was happy to finally make it to the World Tree, which has taunted me from back in the early days of playing. But accessing the tree involved a rather annoying battle – we completely lucked out in managing to clear and catch the needed pal with only 8 seconds left on the clock.
Actually getting the end zone of the game was a little bit of a letdown, however. It was far smaller than I expected, only had two original boss fights, and then a gauntlet fight, before reaching the final boss.
Some of the areas within the end zone had hazards that made them annoying to traverse – such as a poison-ash area. You could craft a mask to help alleviate this, or just carry around a specific pal to protect against it. But this seemed a waste of an accessory or pal slot for such a tiny corner of a map that you really didn’t need to spend much time in.
Just design choices like that in the last map left me scratching my head a bit.
We reached this area before the balance patch which increased the amount of Holy Water you received in the zone. This was a resource that basically gated your ability to craft not just the ingot for the zone but a lot of other resources and buildings needed at end game.
It seemed they expected you to farm this, which I did for a bit of time. Until a patch dropped that buffed the amount you got – thankfully. By that time, I’d bred out a fishing team because I wanted to fish in the grand master locations. They added buffed drops of Holy Water to fishing, and that ended our water shortage real fast.
Speaking of fishing – this is one of my favorite activities in the game. When we first returned to the EA version earlier this year, I’d spend all sorts of time riding my Surfent around and fishing up materials from salvage spots. I didn’t know that later, it would turn out to be something I’d need to do for mining a specific type of ore.
I eventually did farm for the legendary Depresso fishing pole in the game, which took me some time to loot. So now I have a massive fishing team and a pole that makes fishing at end game much more do-able. You basically can’t fish in the end game zone without this as the fish are just way too fast.
Breeding, another one of my favorite pastimes, has been significantly improved as well. There are now several different kinds of cakes to make. One cake makes your pals lay two eggs at a time – great for breeding out pals to consolidate. Another cake makes your pals more likely to lay a mutated egg – which is a fun new system for breeding some real monster pals.
I got a random mutated Jormuntide Ignis early in the game with some incredible mutation-only traits that made him my ultimate pillar of my battle team. I know that he’s meant to be more of a base pal anymore, but he remains one of my strongest pals and was the one I awakened first.
He even took down Jetragon solo, while being 4 levels lower than it (see picture below) and won! I’d never captured a Jetragon before.
Anyhow, between the mutations and new cake types, breeding has become much more engaging than before.
They’ve also made random pals far more useful than before due to their active and passive skill. For example, you can place different pals in the ranch in order to farm pal materials that you used to have to go out and defeat or capture pals for. Considering you need a ton more pal materials for crafting than before, this is a huge, but needed quality of life change.
Some pals have new passive skills that make them useful while in your party. These skills multiply when you consolidate them for big bonuses. For example, I mentioned I had a specific party I built as a fishing team – this was based off of pals with fishing-specific passive skills that make it far easier to land a fish, and actually make it possible to fish in the highest-level fishing spots.
Base building has been improved with a number of new building sets, including one that allows you to build over water if you want. The only thing I wish we had more of is furniture that matches the high-tech sci-fi themed walls and floors. It’s really odd to have a cool sci-fi aesthetic to my building, but still have the old green bed from the early levels because there’s no matching furniture.
You can now find, buy, or craft fruit to increase your pal’s IV/talent points. So, say you have a pal you really love but its attack talent is less that you’d like. The Power Fruit in the game can increase your pal’s attack talent by 10 points. This means that boosting a perfect pal is still possible outside of breeding one.
Finally, there’s an Awakening feature for your best pals that allows you to further enhance their stats. So not only can you have a mutated pal with boosted stats from condensation, pal souls, traits, and the IV talent stats, you can now pile on a bigger bonuses by awakening them at end game.
These are some of the new features that stood out to me in 1.0 of Palworld. Obviously, I enjoy this game enough to put over 360 hours into it. This now places it in third for the most hours I’ve played of any Steam game, trailing just behind No Man’s Sky and edging out Enshrouded.
While we have “finished” the game’s story, and there doesn’t seem like a lot left to do at this point aside from continue to fine-tune my pals, I’m hoping we’ll see some additional content on down the line. I know I’ll be playing new content patches if they release them!