Having various levels of difficulty is a great way to allow a broader audience to play and enjoy your game, and fortunately, Palworld has four difficulty settings. We’ll tell you what difficulty setting you should choose in Palworld.
Palworld Difficulty Settings Explained
There are four difficulty settings that you can choose before you go gun blazing in the Palworld universe. These are Casual, Normal, Hard, and Custom. Each provides the player with a different experience.
Casual Difficulty
Casual difficulty, whilst in the name, is a difficulty in which the player’s main focus is to explore and enjoy the fun without a difficulty barrier. Especially when it comes to mechanics usually seen in the Survival genre of video games.
Casual difficulty provides players with the following perks:
- Quicker XP gain.
- Pals are easier to catch.
- Resources are gathered quicker.
- Eggs are hatched quicker.
- Battles are easier.
- No death penalty.
Most of these are useful when it comes to keeping a casual feel to the game, but the no-death penalty is the biggest aspect that sets this difficulty from the others. You will not lose your items when you die, and you and your Pals will respawn upon death.
Normal Difficulty
It feels rather awkward to say that Normal mode is the intended mode, as all difficulty settings are valid choices. Yet, it cannot be denied that normal mode in Palworld is the default game experience. And, if you’re a survival game veteran, you’ll likely choose Normal or above. All of the enhancements that Casual boasts are not to be seen in Normal. Harvesting resources, hatching eggs, gaining XP, and other mechanics are all set to their standard rate.
There is a death penalty in Normal mode, as when you die, you will drop all of your items and armor.
Hard Difficulty
The hardest difficulty, which takes Palworld from a relaxing game to one where you are constantly looking over your shoulder in fear of the next Pal who wants to see you to an early grave. There are several differences which make Hard mode different from the earlier difficulties:
- Decreased catch rate for Pals.
- The rate of XP gain is lowered.
- The rate in which you gather resources is lowered.
- Hatching eggs takes longer.
- Enemies do more damage to the player.
- The player does less damage to enemies.
The death penalty in Hard mode is quite severe, as when you die you drop not only all of your items and equipment, but also all of your Pals.
Custom Difficulty
Palworld’s custom difficulty allows you to fully customize every aspect of your gameplay experience, and I mean every aspect. Players can choose the exact rate of XP gain, hunger and stamina reduction, the day and night cycle, capture rate, and much more. One can tailor their preferences to allow for their own specific experience. Even down to whether or not Pals will come and raid your Base.
Palworld Death Penalty
In Palworld, the death penalty option determines how punishing death will be for the player. If this option is turned on, players will lose all of their gear and pals on death and must retrieve them once they come back to life. This is similar to Minecraft, essentially.
To disable this option, find your PalGameSettings.ini file in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Pal\Saved\Config\Windows. Open the ini file. Find the “deathPenalty=All” line and change it to “DeathPenalty=0” to turn this feature off. Hit save.
Best Custom Difficulty Settings for Palworld
As Palworld has custom difficulty, it should be pretty easy for anyone to tailor make their game experience exactly as they want it. With that being said, it can be difficult to figure out which options are best for you. We have a list of the best settings new players should pick with custom difficulty down below.
- Day Time Speed: 1.
- Night Time Speed: 1.
- EXP Rate: 15.
- Pal Capture Rate: 1.4.
- Pal Appearance Rate: 1.5.
- Damage from Pals multiplier: 0.8.
- Damage to Pals multiplier: 1.1.
- Pal Hunger Depletion Rate: 0.5.
- Pal Stamina Reduction Rate: 0.5.
- Paul Auto HP Regeneration Rate: 2.
- Pal Sleep Health Regeneration Rate: 1.5.
- Damage from Player multiplier: 0.5.
- Damage to Player multiplier: 2.
- Player Hunger Depletion Rate: 0.5.
- Player Stamina Reduction Rate: 0.5.
Feel free to adjust these to your liking, but we found this to be the best template for new players looking for an easy transition into the often difficult world of Palworld.
With difficulty settings like these, all players should be able to choose settings that best suit their playstyle. Check out our guide on all Palworld starting areas for even more tips and tricks.
