A Palworld base is a fixed cylinder about 35 metres across that reaches from the ground to the build limit, so the only way to expand is upward. Everything else — throughput, Sanity, hauling — comes down to putting the right suitability level next to the right structure and keeping the walking distances short.
Palbox in the middle. Chests touching every workbench. Feed Box, beds and a Hot Spring in one corner. Specialists over all-rounders. Build a second and third floor instead of wishing the circle were bigger.
Verified on patch 1.0.3 (12 August 2026).
The constraint you design around
| Property | Value | What it means for layout |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Cylinder | Height is free, floor space is not |
| Radius | ~35 m | Roughly 9 Foundation tiles wide |
| Usable tiles | ~8 | The circle clips the corners of a square footprint |
| Vertical limit | ~250 foundations above sea level | Three to four storeys is trivially affordable |
| Palbox slope requirement | Under ~15° | Flatten the ground or foundation it before placing |
| Adjustable? | No | No level, tech, structure or server setting changes it |
The official configuration reference exposes BaseCampMaxNum, BaseCampMaxNumInGuild (default 4, max 10) and BaseCampWorkerMaxNum (max 50). All three are counts. Nothing in the settings file changes base size — only mods do.
Layout principles that survive contact with 20 Pals
1. Palbox in the centre, not the edge
The Palbox is the centre of the circle, so an off-centre placement throws away usable ground on the far side. It is also your fast travel point and Pal storage, so it wants to be reachable from every floor.
2. Chests within a step of every workbench
Transporting Pals move finished items and ground drops into containers, and every metre of that trip is wasted work. One chest per production cluster beats one giant storage room at the far end of the base.
3. One flat production floor, then build up
Pals path badly on stairs and ramps, so keep the machines that Pals operate on a single level surface. Put storage, beds and decorative or player-only structures on the upper floors.
4. Beds, Feed Box and Hot Spring in one corner
Pals walk to eat, sleep and de-stress on their own. Clustering those three cuts the round trip and is the cheapest Sanity fix in the game.
5. Leave the node cluster clear
Do not foundation over ore, coal or quartz nodes, and do not wall them off. A node inside the circle is infinite income only if a miner can physically stand next to it.
If workers must change level, a shallow ramp is far more reliable than a staircase or a ladder. Pals that cannot path to a structure simply stand idle rather than reporting an error.
The production chains worth automating
These are the loops that a base can run without you. Each one needs the listed work suitability present at the base, not merely somewhere in your Palbox.
| Chain | Structures | Suitabilities needed |
|---|---|---|
| Wood and stone | Logging Site, Stone Pit, Crusher | Lumbering, Mining, Watering (Crusher), Transporting |
| Metal | Ore nodes, Primitive Furnace, later Furnaces | Mining, Kindling, Transporting |
| Food | Berry Plantation, Wheat Plantation, Mill, Cooking Pot | Planting, Watering, Gathering, Kindling |
| Ranch goods | Ranch | Farming |
| Medicine | Medieval Medicine Workbench and successors | Medicine Production |
| Power | Generators and the structures that need them | Generating Electricity |
| Crafting | Primitive / High Quality Workbench, Weapon Workbench | Handiwork |
A plantation is only half a loop: Planting sows it, Watering grows it and Gathering harvests it. Bases that produce nothing from a full field are almost always missing the Gathering Pal.
Ore needs Mining Lv2, while Coal and Pure Quartz need Mining Lv3. Below the threshold the Pal does not work slowly — it ignores the node completely. Everywhere else, level acts as a speed multiplier.
Assigning Pals: level is a multiplier
The highest listed specialist per work type, from published work suitability tables. Use these as the ceiling to aim at, not as a shopping list — a level 7 Pal you already own beats a level 10 you never catch.
| Work type | Highest listed | Level | Next best |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindling | Renjishi, Jormuntide Ignis | 10 | Flaracle, Faleris, Suzaku (9) |
| Watering | Shaolong | 10 | Jormuntide, Neptilius (9) |
| Planting | Dandilord | 10 | Lyleen, Broncherry (9) |
| Generating Electricity | Orserk | 10 | Solmora Lux, Azurmane (9) |
| Handiwork | Selyne | 9 | Anubis, Sekhmet, Solenne (8) |
| Gathering | Jetragon | 10 | Starryon, Omascul, Gildane (9) |
| Lumbering | Celesdir Noct, Silvegis | 10 | Celesdir, Hartalis, Paladius, Necromus (9) |
| Mining | Tetroise Primo | 10 | Knocklem, Menasting Terra, Pierdon (9) |
| Medicine Production | Silvance | 10 | Lyleen Noct, Bellanoir Libero (9) |
| Cooling | Bastigor, Frostallion | 10 | Univolt Cryst, Whalaska (9) |
| Transporting | Eidrolon | 10 | Knocklem, Knocklem Ignis (9) |
| Farming | Farming Pals are listed in the reference tables, but per-Pal levels for Farming are not published — see the ranch drops guide | ||
One reference describes suitability levels as "typically naturally range from 1 to 8" with a maximum achievable of 10, while another lists a number of Pals at 9 and 10. Treat the per-Pal figures as the data-side values for 1.0 and the narrower description as written for the pre-1.0 roster.
Two rules that beat any list
- Specialists over all-rounders. A Pal with five mid-level suitabilities will be pulled onto whatever job is nearest and abandon the one you wanted.
- Always keep dedicated Transporting. Without it, output piles up on the ground and workbenches jam waiting for inputs.
Sanity: the invisible throughput tax
| Lowers SAN | Restores SAN |
|---|---|
| Being forced to work (for example by a Monitoring Stand) | Hot Spring or High Quality Hot Spring the Pal can reach |
| Hunger and starvation | Enough food in a reachable Feed Box |
| No beds to sleep in | A Pal Bed each |
| Sustained overwork | Farming Pals recover SAN while grazing in a Ranch |
Low Sanity looks like slacking or sleeping mid-shift, and sustained low Sanity applies a Depression debuff that hurts output further. You can also raise Sanity directly by feeding a Pal from the command menu.
No source publishes numeric thresholds or recovery rates for SAN, so this guide gives none.
Pal Labor Research Laboratory: +50% per work type
The Laboratory sells permanent, base-wide work-speed research per work type. Each line we could verify runs six ranks totalling +50%, in a 10 / 5 / 5 / 5 / 10 / 10 pattern.
| Rank | Bonus | Handiwork gold cost | Handiwork materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lv1 | +10% | 50,000 | 50 Wood, 40 Stone, 10 Cloth |
| Lv2 | +5% | 200,000 | 100 Wood, 10 Cement, 20 Cloth, 10 Nail |
| Lv3 | +5% | 500,000 | 30 Cement, 30 Gunpowder, 5 Ancient Pal Manuscript |
| Lv4 | +5% | 1,500,000 | 100 Gunpowder, 20 Circuit Board, 10 Ancient Civilization Parts, 15 Ancient Pal Manuscript |
| Lv5 | +10% | 5,000,000 | 300 Gunpowder, 50 Circuit Board, 20 Ancient Civilization Parts, 30 Ancient Pal Manuscript |
| Lv6 | +10% | 10,000,000 | 30 Computer, 50 High Quality Cloth, 20 Ancient Civilization Parts, 70 Ancient Pal Manuscript |
Costs differ per work type but follow the same shape. Watering and Planting are the cheapest lines verified — their rank 6 costs 3,000,000 gold against Handiwork's, Kindling's and Generating Electricity's 10,000,000.
Rank 1 is +10% for 50,000–150,000 gold. Rank 4 is +5% for 750,000–2,000,000. Spreading rank 1 across every work type you actually use is by far the best gold-per-percent in the building.
The Laboratory also sells egg hatching speed research. Ranks for Gathering, Lumbering, Mining, Medicine Production, Cooling, Transporting and Farming exist on the same page but were not retrievable in full, so their exact costs are omitted here rather than guessed. The structure's own technology level and build cost are likewise unverified.
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Base placed so nodes fall outside the circle | Miners idle next to visible rocks | Pick the Palbox up and re-place it; placement refunds |
| Coal or quartz base staffed at Mining Lv2 | Zero output, no error message | Mining Lv3 minimum |
| No Gathering Pal | Ripe crops never harvested | Add one Gathering worker per plantation cluster |
| No Transporting Pal | Items on the floor, jammed workbenches | Add a dedicated hauler; keep chests close |
| Single Feed Box far from the work floor | Constant hunger, falling SAN | Feed Box beside the beds, both near the machines |
| Filling the base with 25 low-level workers | Pathing chaos, food drain, little output | Fewer, higher-level specialists |
| Ore nodes paved over with foundations | Node permanently unreachable | Leave a clear working ring around each node |
What to do next
- Pick the site first — see best base locations for the five clusters documented with coordinates.
- Match every structure to a worker with the Work Suitability Finder.
- Read the work suitability guide for what each of the twelve jobs actually covers.