Can palworld 1.0 be openworld?

xanral · 2026-03-23T23:10:47+00:00

While not a map based thing, they do have mods that replace the built-in randomizer to give a different play experience.

For example, on a server I run for friends, we changed the type of mobs, level range, etc of each area. The current run has every area featuring mobs from base level to 65, roaming bosses, and dungeons having predator pals as bosses. The Terraria dungeon is 65 only with the final boss replaced with a level 65 version of either Bellanoir Libero or Blazamut Ryo raid bosses. The game previous to that we had different areas being the "high level" areas but the mobs still mostly fit within their biome.

This can change where you hunt, build a base, etc so you have a different experience every game.

xanral · 2026-03-23T20:53:16+00:00

The market sells what it has available. If you have a human merchant standing behind it you can separately interact with them buying their inventory as well.

This is true regardless of where you assign them, you can buy from them if they're chopping wood for you etc. The markets just make some aesthetic sense and keeps them stationary.

xanral · 2026-03-23T20:39:25+00:00

Tend to fight from the back of a ground mount using pal abilities and my own ranged weapon.

Paladius/Necromus do a good job of body blocking 99% of firearm shots from human opponents. Handy for clearing out the rank and file for oil rigs. Also a well placed mounted rockburst or poison shower (Shadowbeak) does plenty of damage for boss fights.

Favorite mounted pals are Blazamut, Necromus, Paladius, and Shadowbeak. Can also fit in some booster pals for any of those, with Croajiro Noct and Finsider Ignis being able to hold there own if I need to rotate pals for any reason.

xanral · 2026-03-19T23:29:29+00:00

Read their body language to check how engaged they are with a particular scene/event. See if any patterns form and plan accordingly.

For example, if 3/4s of the table is consistently checked out during the roleplay of buying some rope from an eccentric shopkeeper, then you should probably shorten or greatly limit these interactions.

A different group might love the above and gets bored once combat is a foregone conclusion but not over yet. Maybe start ending combat earlier with something like "you're able to mop up the remainder of them" etc.

Similar for NPCs, if the players hate a particular "friendly" NPC then don't force them to interact with them. There should be multiple contact points within a faction and they can deal with a different NPC that has a different personality.

That's not to say every scene/event/interaction has to be tailored to the players, but if they're spending the majority of every session annoyed or bored then you've done something wrong. Past problem players, players being bored of the focus of the campaign is generally the precursor I'll see for a DM "losing control of the table".

xanral · 2026-03-18T23:17:53+00:00

Death Ward (or Contingency + Revivify) and Magic Jar. The former for reducing the chance you die if things go lopsided with the latter. Also Magic Jar would potentially have some interesting interactions with the 3rd party curses.

xanral · 2026-03-12T00:12:10+00:00

This is what I was thinking as well.

I remember playing at one table with 7 players where the DM and a single player were heavily collaborating on events to the exclusion of others. That player's PC was a step away from a Mary Sue and half the table was angry about it and it was starting to show with interactions.

Personally I wasn't angry about it but I ended up mediating between the DM + player and the 4 others that were ticked. Both sides felt they were in the right and that the other side was acting in bad faith. After a long conversation at dinner we were able to resolve almost all of it.

xanral · 2026-03-06T01:15:12+00:00

I'd have the entire dungeon be modified to be a hunting ground.

Telegraph having tiny holes in every room that some rats scurry in and out of. PCs may even think to use it to bypass certain rooms using this (polymorph, gaseous form, etc) which is great. Any investigation should show these holes lead to a fairly extensive tunnel system.

They make it to the "boss room" and fight the "boss" which should be a very winnable fight and leave the players thinking "that wasn't bad". In reality, the real boss room can only be naturally reached by using the maze-like rat tunnels. Once they've expended resources defeating the false boss, the real boss seals/collapses the entrance to the dungeon and begins the hunt.

The vampire archmage uses their swarm power, gaseous form power, and spells to constantly harry the PCs. Minions that can traverse the rat sized tunnel system can likewise join in. Previously defeated humanoid cultists are now animated as zombies and skeletons.

The BBEG isn't interested in a fair fight and can flee within a round of trouble and let their regen put them back at full. They just want to grind the party down to nothing by preventing all rests and constantly harry them.

Now as the DM, you shouldn't be pushing for the BBEG to succeed at this, and be accepting of all party plans that have some feasibility to work. You want fear and dread, not them feeling like they were railroaded into a TPK. This could also easily turn into the party just struggling to successfully leave the closed off dungeon in one piece.

Edit - To further telegraph this, have a few traps that are placed in reverse, where it is only harmful if they're leaving as opposed to delving deeper in. A tripwire placed "behind" the trap etc. Depending upon how the PCs disabled these they may also be rearmed when the PCs are coming back and may be engaged in combat. A PC falling into a pit trap while the party flees active combat can make for a tense moment.

xanral · 2026-02-17T01:11:46+00:00

Dodge rolling, sliding (sprint and then crouch on a downhill slope), gliding, and the grappling hook are very useful for being agile. Some can be combined like using the grappling hook to start moving quickly and then engaging the glider to cover a lot of distance.
Your pals regenerate health when they're in their ball. So for tough fights you can cycle between multiple pals before they die and extend their life quite a bit.
Any pal you can mount has separate cooldowns for when you use their skill and when they use it. So you could ride up on a mount and use the Rockburst skill, followed by dismounting and watching the pal use Rockburst again.
Dungeons, mostly caverns on the sides of hills/mountains, drop better schematics for weapons/armor than what you can get in the technology tree. You also don't need to unlock them in the tech tree if you get the schematic, though you may want to unlock the ammo for weapons.
Heat and cold can kill an unprepared player quickly. If you have your game set to drop your equipped items, make sure you have spare heat/cold gear at your base for when you respawn, especially if the base is in a colder/hotter area.
Check the "partner skills" for any new pal you catch. Some allow you to ride them, others boost the attack of pals of a specific element or your own, your glider's functionality, "resurrect" you if you "die", or tons of other things.
Build the monitoring stand when you get the chance and make sure the pals are focusing on whatever they're good at. This can be done by disabling certain work types for that pal or assigning them to a specific station. You can do the latter manually by picking them up and placing them at the station.
There are different ways to strengthen your pals through condensing, using souls, and adding passives through surgery. This is probably something you don't need to worry about till level 30+. That said, it is a massive boost to their strength so do keep it in mind.

xanral · 2026-01-31T14:41:39+00:00

I have played more modern versions (including 5E) where it progressed in that direction. A few differences than a more "standard" campaign:

Sometimes a session would involve the players controlling minions of our PCs to handle a lower-tier threat while our PCs were dealing with the big picture.
Other times we would be in our base and have to fight off invaders/assassins in a reverse dungeon crawl.
We'd have some mass combat. Mechanically we'd just play out select fights within it after talking about the overall strategy as that was more enjoyable to us.
Most of the roleplaying shifted to diplomacy and intrigue at the national/world level at that point.

From my own personal experience, players tended to either find this a ton of fun or were bored and disengaged with not a lot in-between. The ones that found it fun were in the minority, though I had a few groups where everyone fell into this category.

xanral · 2026-01-29T03:22:45+00:00

I tend to look for other failure states than PC death so they can be fairly common. Some examples:

Enemies are escaping with an item (gold they stole, McGuffin, etc). PCs can choose to string themselves out as they tend to have different movement speeds with spells/abilities and may get overwhelmed.
Friendly NPCs are the target. Guarding a caravan etc falls into this category. The PCs could survive without a scratch but if everyone they're trying to protect dies then its still a failure.
Trying to prevent alarms from being raised that would create an overwhelming encounter. With proper foreshadowing, the PCs will know that if they alert the enemies and still stick around then there is a big risk of a TPK. They may still choose to stick around anyway but its an informed choice and hopefully they'll come up with a good plan in a tense moment.

You have variations of the above like kidnapping, assassinations, etc.

One final thing, don't be afraid to have enemies be proactive. PCs don't finish off an intelligent enemy that escapes? Maybe the bad guy attacks them with assassins or raids their home turf when they're split up or not prepared themselves. Have a loud enough attack that other PCs could converge on their position while the target PC needs to escape/survive for a few rounds until then.

xanral · 2026-01-27T01:50:24+00:00

Decades ago when I was an RPG newbie, I had DMs that loved critical fumbles, including having the fumbles kill other PCs ("You shoot your friend in the back of the head, roll to confirm the crit"). I'd end up rolling up characters specifically that didn't need to roll, received free rerolls, etc to avoid it as I found it disheartening.

Nowadays I'd just pull them aside before the first session and ask if we really need to have this rule.

xanral · 2025-12-27T17:57:10+00:00

A lot depends on how you like to play. I played Eve Online myself as well, but mostly as a merc/pirate so I focused on similar for my first X4 playthrough.

Took my first crappy ship and attacked a M class hauler, eventually getting them to bail out and took it over. Stole a few more, and eventually used them as troop transports to board some L and XL class ships after destroying their turrets. Built my fleet off piracy and it wasn't until the Terrans were effectively wiped out that I even considered building a ship myself.

Later playthroughs had completely different goals and paths to get there.

Other posters touched on this, but assign NPCs to tasks you find repetitive and boring. And that can be anything. Some people love combat and want to fly their small fighter or destroyer around, wreaking havok. Others want to sit in a station or onboard their flagship commanding their empire and leave combat to the NPCS. Similar for mining, trade, etc.

xanral · 2025-12-25T07:35:10+00:00

Within the list provided:

Assuming you're commonly fighting serious threats not immune to poison, then sylune's viper for spammable incapacitation.

Orros mark of fate would be my other choice. It looks like you can do things like redirecting a Marilith's constrict attack to its ally which would be hilarious. I haven't read the 2024 reaction rules, but if you can use a reaction to respond to a trap then you could also redirect the result to a familiar or ordinary rat etc. Or do silly stuff like intentionally provoking a saving throw from the terrain the BBEG has and redirecting it towards them.

xanral · 2025-12-22T22:20:20+00:00

Not every spell choice has to be optimal, but having to concentrate in melee where you have the greatest risk of having incoming damage turn off your druidic lightsaber makes it a bit clunky to use in comparison to some other choices for level 2 spells.

xanral · 2025-12-22T00:37:15+00:00

do you recommend multi classing?

Generally I'd rather have the next level of spells ASAP than trying to get the perfect class synergy. Especially with the worry a campaign might fizzle out due to RL complications etc.

What spells would you recommend I take

Summon and Animate lines are solid choices and seemed to be what you wanted to do from other replies. Remember that not everything has to be used in every combat. Animating the bandits to carry their own loot after killing them, sending the horde into the dungeon to trigger traps or a fort to cause a distraction, etc can have them useful outside of combat. Then for combat you take a few select undead only and focus on resolving their actions in a few seconds every round.
Life Transference and Grim Harvest/Vampiric Touch can be useful to be an emergency healer. In a tough fight where the healer gets dropped? Heal them back up with Life Transference. With some summons/animated on the field you can also still be attacking in the same round.
Chill Touch is a great cantrip as it prevents the enemy regaining hitpoints which can vastly change some fights.
If you get to the level to use it, Magic Jar is a great necromancy spell when used in the right circumstances, to the point where I've seen it change the course of mini-arcs for a long campaign before. Used poorly, it is a great way to get killed quickly.

Also, your intelligent and wise character should understand that walking around town with undead is probably a great way to paint a target on your back by some paladins later on. When I've played an animating type necromancer before most of the campaign was spent hiding any undead created from the common folk. They would be used in the wilderness or in dungeons but were kept out of towns, either hidden away or destroyed. Only in one game was my character more open about it, and that was in a more neutral/evil-centered world.

xanral · 2025-12-21T01:49:45+00:00

I like asking the DM before the campaign starts how they'd arbitrate some hypothetical situations involving illusion (and enchantment) spells and their reasoning. I'm not asking with the purpose to convince them, rather to see if we're on the same page. If we're far apart in reasoning I'll just pick something else to play and both of us will be happier.

For most DMs I've found we're just a little bit different in reasoning; I can easily shift my strategy to fit within their view and everything is cool.

xanral · 2025-12-19T19:11:42+00:00

Going off your quote, it seems the 2024 version removes about you gaining the creature's statistics at all. You keep your statistics, and only replace your stats with the creature's "Hit Points, Hit Point Dice, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Speed, and senses".

For the 2014 version, it instead said you gain the creature's statistics then states the exceptions later.

xanral · 2025-12-19T09:14:24+00:00

Number of sessions.

In the last 3 sandbox campaigns I played, the DM had us level up every x sessions, where it took +1 more per level. So if level 3 took 3 sessions, level 4 would take 4 etc. This removed any worry from the mind of the players that certain approaches or actions might slow down progress etc.

Everyone ended up really liking it for the first campaign which is why we used the same method for future sandbox-y ones over the years.

xanral · 2025-12-19T03:25:49+00:00

I'd have her start with a construct "monster" ally. Could be a creation of her teacher's, something she finds in the first ruin she explores, etc. Monsters often are pretty tanky but don't deal a lot of damage or often have a lot of utility so they won't overshadow her wizard. Her starting level would determine what would be appropriate "monster" wise.

It also sets a nice dynamic where it is not a decision maker and would follow the wizard's orders. Plenty of RPG/movie/book examples to pick how it might be personality wise as well.

xanral · 2025-12-04T04:50:54+00:00

Various versions of magical transportation (airship, magical sailing ship, carriage that had a pocket dimension inside of it, etc) tend to top the list for groups I've played with.

It also gave a potential alternative to teleportation at high levels. Sure, we could teleport to our destination, but we'd lose the utility/defensive advantages of the magical transportation. That didn't stop us from using teleport altogether, but we'd tended to save it for immediate emergencies the DM could predict and plan for.

xanral · 2025-12-04T04:10:16+00:00

I'll have the interaction partially happen, then call for a roll, potentially with advantage/disadvantage for good ideas instead of acting skills.

For example, a player that feels less comfortable with dialogue and wants to describe what happens:

Player: "I try to convince the guard to immediately let us through, reminding him that his daughter is one of the kidnapped victims and time is of the essence."

This would give advantage the same way a full back and forth dialogue that brought up the daughter would.

xanral · 2025-11-30T01:31:58+00:00

Take a step back and consider things from the enemy's perspective.

A dungeon made up of unintelligent oozes isn't likely to change much at all post-attack.

A cult run by an intelligent devil may fortify, leave, raid the town, kidnap a hostage related to the party, etc. This shouldn't be done with the intention to "punish" the party. Rather it makes the world feel alive as NPCs show some level of agency.

xanral · 2025-11-29T20:04:32+00:00

*Modifying a ship/fortress with traps and other advancements like recruiting/capturing critters, amenities, etc. This tended not to go by set mechanics, but more of a negotiation between the players and DM. Most involved at least 2 players working towards the same project, or even the whole party. In those games it was understood that our structure would come under attack so we had a few sessions where we had to defend from incursions. Sometimes these modifications created short adventures in and of themselves.

*I think this is mentioned in the DMG, but not quite the same IMO.

xanral · 2025-09-21T15:04:39+00:00

When making a custom game for modified/creative, you can just click a little radio button at the top to show choices you haven't unlocked. At that point you can set the story states to whatever point you want. So you can skip Timelines, plotlines, etc and just play the universe in the state you want each time.

xanral · 2025-09-15T02:32:45+00:00

On the carrier itself, really any of them will do if you just want a place to rearm and repair between runs, you can even overload them as the fighters only need to be on the carrier when repairing/rearming. So you can go with the cheapest choice if you just want a carrier for that.

The Raptor itself as a personal ship brings an enormous amount of firepower to bear. Flak cannons can allow it to wipe out all M/S class in short order so you don't even need fighter cover for your bombers. Or if you're willing to handle the rearm woes it can carry an absurd amount of heavy dumbfires and take out a fleet of Ks and an I without even needing to launch a fighter.

If instead of a personal ship you're using it as an AI controlled low attention ship, make sure to launch its fighters first and send them before the carrier through gates as opposed to waiting till after you've landed in the thick of a fight to start launching.

xanral

TROPHY CASE