Palworld: Getting Started

Palworld is a creature-collection survival game. Your server is fast to set up on our
panel — most owners spend their time tuning gameplay multipliers rather than wrestling
with configuration. This guide gets you connected and walks you through editing
PalWorldSettings.ini, the file that controls nearly every gameplay tunable. See the
Palworld guide index for the rest.

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First Boot

1. Open your Palworld server in the panel and click Start.
2. First boot downloads the PalServer files (~7 GB). Allow 10–15 minutes.
3. Once the world finishes loading in the console, the server is ready.

⚠️ Don't edit settings during first boot. The server generates its default
PalWorldSettings.ini only after the initial launch completes. If you edit too early,
your changes may be overwritten. Let it fully boot once, then stop it before editing.

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How to Connect

On Steam, click Join Multiplayer Game (Dedicated Server) and paste the IP and port
from the Address at the top left of your panel.

Since the 1.0 release, dedicated servers support crossplay across Steam, Xbox, PS5, and Mac.
One important difference:

• Steam players can join directly by IP.
• Console and Game Pass players cannot join by IP at all — they find the server
  through the in-game community server browser, so make sure your server is listed as
  a Community Server.

Which platforms may join is controlled by the CrossplayPlatforms setting (all platforms
by default).

💡 Server not showing in the community list? Steam players can still connect by IP
directly while you wait. The list can take 15+ minutes to refresh.

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Editing PalWorldSettings.ini

Almost every gameplay tunable — XP rates, Pal capture odds, day length, difficulty — lives
in a single file: PalWorldSettings.ini. Here's the safe workflow for editing it.

Where the file lives

Palworld reads its live config from:

Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini

There's also a default copy at DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini in the server root. Never
edit the default file — copy values out of it as a reference, but always make your
changes in the LinuxServer path above.

The editing workflow

1. Stop the server. Editing a running server risks your changes being overwritten on
   shutdown.
2. Open the panel File Manager and navigate to the config path above.
3. Edit PalWorldSettings.ini directly, or download it, edit locally, and re-upload.
4. Start the server and confirm your changes took effect.

⚠️ The whole config is one line. Every setting sits inside a single
OptionSettings=(...) block on one very long line. Don't add line breaks inside it, and
keep the surrounding parentheses intact — a stray comma or missing ) will cause the
server to silently fall back to defaults.

Anatomy of the file

The relevant section looks like this (truncated for readability):

[/Script/Pal.PalGameWorldSettings]
OptionSettings=(Difficulty=None,DayTimeSpeedRate=1.000000,ExpRate=1.000000,PalCaptureRate=1.000000,ServerName="My Server",ServerPassword="")

To change a value, find its key inside the parentheses and edit it in place. For example,
to double XP gain:

ExpRate=2.000000

Commonly tuned settings

Multiplier values use six decimal places (2.000000), and string values must stay inside
double quotes.

💡 Tip: Change one thing at a time and restart to confirm it worked. Batch-editing a
dozen values and then discovering a syntax error means hunting through one enormous line
to find it.

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What to Read Next

• How to Add Admins and Commands — authenticate as admin and enable RCON
• How to Install Mods — the current state of Palworld modding
• Managing Your World — backups and troubleshooting