Palworld

At first the breeding pen was working fine, then all of a sudden I’m having problems where the pals don’t care for the breeding pen and just simply leave.

I double checked that the entire pen was within the base boundaries and that the parent pals weren’t hungry or have any ailments.

Any idea what may be the issue?

Some days ago I wrote this post documenting my experience in playing Palworld on Linux using Steam / Proton / Wine on a supposedly almost out of spec laptop.

To help with this follow up, my specs are as follow:

• CPU AMD Ryzen 7730u (8c/16t) - RAM 16GB shared with the iGPU (2GB dedicated) - SSD fast enough to not be the bottleneck - Ubuntu Linux 23.10 with xanmod 6.7.0 kernel - Proton Experimental (tested with GE-25 and GE-27, same results)

Where were we

Last time I posted, I could barely get stable 20fps using all low settings in fullscreen.

Where are we

Now I am able to get almost stable 30fps (locked, see next chapter) in fullscreen using all low settings

The settings (aka how to play Palworld on low spec hardware on Linux, at least with AMD)

Prerequisite

• Install Gamemode and verify it works - (optional) Install Mangohud to monitor your performances - Ensure you have Gamescope on your system - Steam and the game either installed or added manually

Installing the two mods we need

• Install this mod (yes it works on desktop too); pay attention to not select the FSR2 version, instructions are included in the README
• Then install this mod that supposedly enable FSR3; DISCLAIMER: I have no idea if this is effective or not, as theoretically gamescope only supports FSR1. Anyway, I have it on

TLDR After modding

If you are on Ubuntu

apt install -y mangohud gamemode gamescope

Else

Install the dependencies manually

Then

• Right click on Palworld in Steam - Paste this in the "Launch Options" box

VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr,dx11 VKD3D_FEATURE_LEVEL=12_2 gamemoderun gamescope -W 1920 -H 1080 -w 1152 -h 648 -F fsr -r 30 -o 20 -f -- mangohud %command% -dx12

Why and what is this

That's the preset I game with. Basically, besides setting some tweaks for Vulkan:

• It uses gamemoderun from Gamemode to ensure the system is optimized for games
• It uses gamescope to forcefully set the internal resolution of the game to the values indicated by -w and -h (lowercase) upscaled to -W and -H (uppercase)
• To do this, it uses fsr (specified as the -F option). The -r flag locks the FPS at 30, while the -o flag locks the FPS at 20 when the window is not active (win+tab for example)
• The last command is optional, and is mangohud that adds its overlay to the game. You are highly encouraged to use something like GOverlay to tweak mangohud

My settings

My settings are tweaked for my hardware. Feel free to experiment. In my experience, the sweet spot for gamescope (which by the way is probably one of the most noticeable difference) is 1280x720.

Conclusion

You should see huge improvements in terms of performance with some compromises on the graphical side.

If something breaks, not my fault.

Happy penguin gaming!

I've been interested in finding the best Pal breeding strategies, which is pretty difficult because of gender limitations, passive skill inheritance & all sorts of special cases in the Pal breeding system. So I wrote this small utility to help me find the strongest Pals that I can breed & plan the optimal breeding.

If you're into breeding pals you might find this useful :)

The patch says it includes pathfinding AI fixes, but at least for me, Pal pathfinding seems a bit worse. My tombats now really want to climb the mountain behind my base whereas before they weren't having any issues. How are your Pals faring?

I did a bit of experimenting and I thought I'd share the results

More tidbits for base building, because I've now joined a server and dear god these bases are making my eye twitch.

• The palbox can be moved and it doesn't automatically destroy the base. It apparently destroys some objects (unsure of what, haven't seen it do that yet) and it shoves all the pals that are out into your personal storage (you should take them out manually first though by finding an empty page and filling it up. then you can easily put them all back) Do be quick putting it back though because everything slowly takes damage while outside the base area.

• The palbox footprint is so freakishly large because there is a spawn area directly behind the palbox. That's where the players and pals spawn when fast traveling or summoned. They always spawn at the lowest point below that spawn area. So you can place it five stories up with the spawn area off the ledge and have people/pals spawn on the first floor. Sounds hilarious, must try in a server.

• The palbox ring is really more of a vertical cylinder of control, not a sphere.

• foundations can be raised and lowered easily if you try to build it as far from your body as you can

• If you need to build a bit over a body of water, build a foundation as LOW as you can go, as far into the water as you can. Build a wall on the water side of the foundation, you can then build two roofs forward into the water and a roof and stairs towards the land. Extend that left and right as much as desired. It can look cludgey, but when every bit of space matters you can easily fit a ranch or farms on it. You can even throw the beds underneath this platform.

• Quarries and lumbermills take priority. Pals seem to do tasks from left to right, so if you have a quarry, they don't do anything to the right of mine, and they don't mine anything but a quarry. Same thing with a lumbermill. 3 pals fill a quarry or lumbermill.

• You don't need quarries and lumbermills, Especially on a server, just leave an area of trees and stone. You can mine boulders and trees for stone and palladium, and wood and fiber. All without a grinder. Yes it makes it slower, but also when everything is gone pals will do other shit while it grows back. Making it superior in many ways to a quarry or lumbermill.

So far I've only gotten it from freeing caged pals and I'm wondering if there's a better way to acquire it

Couple of interesting tidbits I've discovered during base building, because I just love the basebuilding aspect of this game.

• Pals can't pass through closed doors, meaning you can actually turn off an automated task if you put it into a room with a door. So you can easily turn your wood or stone quarry on or off by opening/closing a door. Or just make a private pal proof area.

• Pals can be too tall to enter a building. Two stories a floor is a good buffer to make sure everyone fits so far. (This happens so much faster than you think. Even a penking is too tall) It's an incredibly stealthy buff to the beginner small pals. (also it's a great way to filter out certain pals from doing things)

• Grapple gun still works when you're encumbered, so load up on stone and wood, grapple to your palbox, fast travel to the new base, and shove all your wood and stone into a barrel. Your second base will be SOOOO much better than your first.

• Speaking of barrels (they're in the early furniture research very easy to miss) they stack, and hold inventory! and you can put a chest on top of a barrel, then delete the barrel and place another chest where the barrel was.

• Lot's of furniture holds inventory like the wall cabinet. It only holds two things, fill it with stone and wood and don't ever worry about someone sticking random shit in it.

• You do level by building, quite quickly as a matter of fact if you have the resources. Don't be afraid to build massive buildings or towers.

• shadow type pals don't sleep. Meaning if you compare a Depresso and a Cattiva, a Depresso mines more.

• I'm not entirely certain but I think pals choose their tasks from left to right (meaning they seem to kindle first, transport last)

Things to avoid

• Cliffside construction. Their adamant stance on "no clipping in any instance at any time" means that it will never be flush against a cliff. Mountaintops? fantastic. Plains? awesome, but good lord any vertical surface sucks, maybe satisfactory spoiled me.

Cross-post from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/13765975 at [email protected] (No idea how to properly link to the community)

Palworld has brought back a Pandora's Box that Pokemon let open in Black/White: Does Team Plasma have a point? Is the player in Pokemon/Palworld an evil entity just for playing?

Some preliminary context for those unaware. Pokemon Black/White's version of an evil team was Team Plasma, which argued that Pokemon trainers were evil for capturing Pokemon and forcing them to fight alongside them. While the game gave us the character of N, who is honest and sincere in his ideas and intentions, Team Plasma is presented as an hypocritical boogeyman that wants to force all other trainers to free their Pokemon, but secretly this is only a ploy to make sure no one can oppose them when they attempt to grab power for themselves.

Palworld has its own take on the idea: out of the different hostile factions, we find early on the Free Pal Alliance, which similarly argues that capturing pals and forcing them to do your bidding is evil, and we find again that their leader really commits to the idea, but her underlings are constantly attacking pals in the wild and sometimes even putting them in cages.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Pokemon fanbase was very defensive of this idea, often repeating the arguments provided by the games that captured Pokemon like the companionship anyway, dismissing the fact that wild Pokemon violently resist being captured unless you force them into submission to accept the Pokeball. The fact that you forcibly push them into a situation where their previous freedom to choose not to associate with you gets overwritten by a newfound willingness to obey means that they're being effectively brainwashed - if we were to apply our real life standards to this situation we would say without a doubt that the situation is exploitative and we're wiping our ass with the idea of consent. Palworld is even more "in your face" about this, given that the brainwashing mechanic of Pokeballs/spheres does not only work on the mons, but on humans as well. The general reaction of the Palworld community seems to be acknowledging that it's fucked up, but nonetheless jumping straight to the fact that the Free Pal Alliance are hypocrites as a whole or even calling them a parody of PETA.

My position here is: should these games even address the ethical dilemma? Once you put the ethics into the game's narrative, the designers are basically forced into going to "Yes, but" territory, since acknowledging the ethical issue leads you to the conclusion that the game only allows you to play as a morally dubious character at best, but given that that would be unwise from a marketing pov (at least for Game Freak), the narrative ultimately has to twist the argument into some sort of fallacy (The Pokemon actually want to be captured/The Free Pal Alliance is full of hypocrites anyway), which in my opinion is actually the heinous design decision, since you're pushing the player into twisting the moral dilemma in a way, thus training moral hypocrisy, rather than the much healthier position "Yes, capturing Pokemon/Pals is evil, but it's a game so no actual sentient creature is being harmed".

Both Pokemon Black/White and Palworld hint at the idea of human-Pokemon/Pal association out of free will through the character of N and the Free Pal Alliance, who do not capture their creatures, but rather they choose to cooperate with them out of real free will, but this option is mechanically impossible for the player (save, arguably, for rare exceptions where Pokemon freely join you through through scripted events). This ends up cementing the ludonarrative dissonance where the player has to justify themselves into thinking that what they're doing is morally acceptable, despite being presented with actually ethical in-lore alternatives that they just do not have access to. It is understandable that, from a game design perspective, the Pokemon/Palworld developers do not want to spend significant effort into reworking the mechanics of Pokeballs/spheres, which are already effectively fun for their gameplay loops, but that leads them into the position where Team Plasma and the Free Pal Alliance have to become caricatures of their actual ideas, which on the other hand is a waste for their respective lores.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my rambling. My Chikipis have already laid all the eggs I need for baking cakes, so I'm off to butchering them for meat, bye.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/12803046

I was generous and built them a barn so they could sleep indoors but I noticed most of them never go through doors (probably cuz they're too big or I need stairs at the foundation) and just sleep outside on the ground. They're not gonna get pissed after a while are they?

Crosspost from Reddit

On a community server.

Dungeons spawn below the map whenever you enter one. This is also the case with boss arenas.

If you climb out like this, you can sometimes watch players from a distance. Eventually it disappeared and I continued onward. Creepy~

Just got started with this game (PC - Steam version). It's fun so far. I had really wanted to use my controller. But, the aiming movement is so sluggish. I've tried pushing the "Aim Sensitivity" up to 10, but still felt like I was turning through molasses. Is there anything which can be done to speed that up, or is the controller just fundamentally slow on PC?

Using an Xbox controller via Bluetooth. And the issue isn't lag, it's the rotation speed in game.

... check that the breeding ranch is fully within your base's blue circle.

The building is massive, and the game lets you have part of it outside, but I ran into a ton of bugs with pals going into a weird state where they can't be assigned after they un-assign themselves to the pen (usually when fast travelling).

(Edit: this is before patch 1.3.0)

As per title, I am currently playing on Linux using Proton GE Custom latest version (8.27 but also tested 8.25).

My experience is the following.

Specs

• Ryzen 7 7730U (8c/16t) Laptop
• 16GB RAM (14 RAM + 2 VRAM)
• Decent performance SSD
• Ubuntu Linux 23.10 (with Xanmod 6.7 x64v3 Kernel)
• Wayland

Experience

• Could not test anything above Low settings due to severe stutter even in the menu and 95% RAM which lead to PC being stuck

• At low settings with different resolutions (from 720 to fullscreen 1080) i have 80-85% RAM usage (starting from a 21% base load) and 25-ish FPS performances

Workarounds

• Once you get the game installed, add it to Steam as a non steam game pointing directly to the game .exe, compatibility forced to Proton GE or Proton Experimental
• If it gives you some Visual C++ dependencies error, use ProtonTrick to install it in the Steam prefix
• I did not find any performance tips and tricks

Conclusion

While being playable, I feel that the game can see huge improvements on Linux. However, I think there is also a lot of telemetry (local or remote) / logging in the mix as every pre-release version has (looking at you My Time At Sandrock) and probably the graphics part (especially the engine part) needs to receive some improvements too, so I bet in about 1 month we will see a steady 40-ish FPS with those settings

Cheers

Sometimes, at completely random intervals, my FPS just drops and keeps dropping until I reset my game. The only thing that at the moment has worked is playing 720p, all low at 30FPS VSync off, and honestly, I hate this, although I love the game so I can live with it but I wish I can improve it somehow.

Sometimes, when I see a mountain in the distance my fps just drops to 20 and stays like that permanently, but when I restart the game I can see the mountain without any fps drop...

Usually it comes to a point where I feel like I'm dragging my mouse because of the input lag.

I have a GTX 1650s 4GB, 16GB RAM and a Ryzen 5 5500, and I use Arch Linux with i3wm, I know it's not the best setup and Palworld uses UE5 which is a high demand hardware graphic motor, but I have read about people playing on even lower hardware than me and they apparently can play perfectly.

Edit: Just add -dx12 to your game parameters at that's it, it runs as it should.

There definetly exists a few of us that want to play together; so let's do just that.

Please specify your platform as the game isn't cross platform except Xbox -> PC Microsoft Store.