The player performs work at a little garden in Palworld.

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Constructing, growing, and / or harvesting your own items in Palworld is all well and good, but you don't need to handle a lot of these jobs on your own. One of the big draws of Palworld is that you can put your Pals to work, giving you the time to run off and explore the world while your cutesy critters toil away at the base on your behalf.

This guide will teach you the basics of making your Pals do work at your base in Palworld. The process is simple - but it can also be a bit finicky once your base grows to a certain size.

The player stands near a Palbox in Palworld.

The Basics

Although it isn't a necessity for you to have a Pal assigned to your base, generally speaking you'll want to assign Pals to do work. If you release a Pal from your party to do work, it will only work at its job until you leave the base. At that point it'll skitter after you and leave its job behind. Our first task, therefore, is assigning Pals to your base.

In order to establish a base in the first place you needed to build a Palbox. These cost one Paldium Fragment, eight Wood, and three Stone, and can be used to store or heal your Pals. Whenever you complete specific goals you'll level up your Palbox, which unlocks Base Upgrades. Base Upgrades allow you to assign specific numbers of Pals to your base.

Interact with the Palbox to open the Palbox Management Menu. At the bottom of this menu you'll see a small window for Pals at the Base. Click on a Pal that's in your party, or inside the Palbox, and move it down to one of the open slots in Pals at the Base. This will allow the Pal to roam around your base. Step one complete.

It's important to note that Pals need to eat and sleep to avoid becoming stressed. Set up Feed Boxes and Pal Beds before you deploy anyone. (Or, at least, shortly thereafter.)

The status screen of a Lamball in Palworld.

The next step may be underway the second you set Pals loose in your base. It depends on two things:

  • The workstations you've set up
  • The Pals active at your base, and their Work Suitability
Inspect the Pals via the Palbox and press the X button. This brings up a full profile of a particular Pal. In the bottom-right corner you'll see the Work Suitability menu, displaying the kind of jobs the Pal will do, if given the chance. The Lamball above, for example, can perform Handiwork, Transporting, and Farming. These all correspond with different tasks, including work stations. Come within interacton range of a work station to see which Work Suitability a Pal requires to use the station.

We'll use a Berry Plantation as an example. Berry Plantations require four steps to yield a harvest:
  • Planting
  • Watering
  • Growth
  • Harvesting, aka Gathering
Growth happens over time, but Planting, Watering, and Gathering are all skills possessed by Pals. If a Pal in your base has one of these abilities, they should rush over and do the job on their own - assuming they aren't asleep, or otherwise indisposed. With the proper combination of Pals assigned to your base you can get them working on a number of different work stations, without you needing to be there at all.

Does this always work? Nope! Fortunately, you can be a bit more specific with your taskmastering.

A Cattiva works at a Primitive Workbench in Palworld.

Assigning Pals to Jobs

There's a catch to all this, and that's having too many work stations. If you present your Pals with a bunch of different things to do they may not accomplish the tasks you want them to focus on. To get around this you can assign a Pal to a specific work station.

How do you do this? Ah... it's a bit unorthodox, but it works: You Lift the Pal. Cycle through your tools and weapons until you're working barehanded, then approach one of your Pals. You should get an option to Lift the Pal. Do so and you'll heft the Pal over your head, and can carry it around your base.

Hold down the left front trigger on your controller / right button on your mouse once the Pal is in your hands, then aim the Pal at the desired work station. If the Pal has the correct Work Suitability skill, then the targeting reticule will indicate that the Pal can work there. You can then choose tasks for that work station, and the Pal will carry them out. The Pal will remain at this station, so you can continue to assign tasks whenever needed.

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