Open-world survival game Palworld lets you explore the world and craft away at your own pace, tending to your survival needs and your crafting goals as you like. But of course, there are always some best practices. And when it comes to the game’s early moments, you’ll want to find the right Pals for the job and gather the right resources.

This guide will lay out the best choices to make during Palworld’s opening tutorial, from the right resources to focus on to the first 30 Pals you should catch. Following it won’t just help you make the right choices as you continue your journey, it will also help you learn and master Palworld’s systems more effectively, so you can make better decisions later on.

This guide will be updated as more effective strategies are discovered.

To get to catching Pals, you’re gonna need Pal Spheres. And to craft Pal Spheres, you’re gonna need rocks, wood, and Paldium Fragments. Go ahead and craft a Primitive Workbench (it requires just 2 Wood) in an area suitable for your base. Something near rocks and trees is a good place to start.

Once you have your Primitive Workbench setup, get to making a Stone Pickaxe and a Stone Axe. You’ll need 5 Wood and Stone for each, so gather 10 Wood and Stone total. Craft those two items in addition to a hand-held torch to prepare for the evenings. Use the pickaxe to mine rocks on rock piles and the axe to chop down trees.

Crafting a Palbox is a part of the game’s tutorial, and it’s important, but you’ll want to avoid being over-encumbered and have a way to keep your tools in good shape. To solve those problems, unlock the Wooden Chest from the Technology Menu with 10 Wood. Then unlock and build a Repair Bench with 10 Wood and 10 Stone.

Go ahead and build a Palbox as well (8 Wood, 3 Stone, and 1 Paldium Fragment). Your placement of this will determine where your base is and where the Pals you’ll start catching will get to work.

Now you have a pickaxe and an axe to gather wood and stone, a place to put all the wood and stone in (the Wooden Chest) and a repair bench to keep those tools sharp.

Your next step is to start crafting a mass amount of Pal Spheres. Hit the world and gather and store over 90 Wood and Stone, and around 30 Paldium Fragments. You’ll get Paldium Fragments from mining rocks, but blue rocks which shine will give you even more.

Why so many? Because you’re about to get to crafting a ton of Pal Spheres to complete the next step: Catching 30 Pals.

The tutorial will ask you to catch any random Pal. Make this first one a Cattiva. Take this guy back to your base and send him to the Pal Box where you can put him to work mining more Stone at your base (you can do sovia the Pal Box by dragging him to the lower area of the HUD. If there are any rocks in the area, he’ll get to mining and will place the Stone in the Chest on his own). The Cattiva (and any Pal at your base) will help out with crafting tasks as well.

Then go ahead and follow the game’s Tutorial to catch 5 Lamballs.

The tutorial will track your early progress in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The Pals you’ve caught should start counting toward that initial 30 that the game asks of you. You must also upgrade your base to level 7 (the Pal Box will tell you what steps are required for each level).

Be sure to craft a Pal Bed for each Pal you have working, as well as a campfire. Then go out and start catching the remaining amount of the 30 initial Pals. We recommend prioritizing the following Pals:

• Cattiva: great for Mining
• Lamball: produces Wool (the initial 5 you must capture as part of the tutorial should be good to start, but you’ll probably need more as your base grows)
• Lifmunk: chops down trees
• Teafant: heals you
• Tanzee: chops down trees and gathers resources

As you increase in level and your base grows, you’ll come to rely on stronger Pals and ones with more than just basic features like mining, chopping wood, gathering, and crafting. For now, however, these Pals should suit you well and you’ll get the hang of caring for them at your base.

Palworld is a large game with many possibilities and a ton of creative freedom. What are some essential functions of your bases?