The best Pals to keep at your base in Palworld

Pals make the world go ‘round in Palworld, and you’ll want a good team of them to keep things going at your base. Each Pal has different “work suitability” skills, meaning that some may mine rocks whereas others may water crops. You want a diverse group of Pals to keep things going, but you don’t want them to be too diverse. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of the best Pals for your base.

You’ll quickly realize that when you have a Pal who does a lot of different things, like Penking, who has many base skills, they get distracted and don’t actually do the task you want them to do. While you may want Penking to mine, he might run off to water crops. It’s best to have Pals that only do one or two things in your base.

Below, we list out several Pals that are good in early-game, mid-game, and late-game for the tasks you’ll need the most. We also list where to find them or what to breed to get them, if they’re tricky to find. Most Pals have multiple locations to find them and dozens of breeding combinations, but we tried to list the easiest locations and combos. (We have a guide on the fastest flying mount, if you’re looking for that kind of thing.)

Best Pals in Palworld

Here’s our quick list of the best Pals for your base:

• Anubis (Handiwork)
• Jormuntide Ignis (Kindling)
• Blazamut (Mining)
• Jormuntide (Watering)

You don’t really need to have high-efficiency Pals to do things like Gathering and Planting. Even with a full base (15 Pals), we had enough gardened goods to feed all of our hungry Pals without maxing out their efficiency.

Though the above picks are end-game choices, we also detail some early- and mid-game choices for you to find around the world, since you won’t be able to get the best of the best until later in the game.

You can read more of an explanation on where to find these Pals and why we picked them below.

Best Pals for Handiwork

You’ll need Pals with Handiwork to help you craft items and make new structures. Some late-game items and and structures take a long time to craft and if you don’t want to stand around for three minutes holding down a single button, then you need some guys to help you craft.

Best early Pal for Handiwork: Sparkit

• Skill levels: Handiwork 1, Generating Electricity 1, Transporting 1

Sure, Cattiva and Lamball also have level one Handiwork, but they’ll get caught up in doing other stuff (mining and ranching), so it’s best to just have a Sparkit around. It’ll focus on helping you craft and build, and transport your stuff to your chests when not actively working on something.

You may be worried about its Generating Electricity skill, but early on, you won’t have anything that needs electricity anyway, so it won’t get distracted.

Best mid- and endgame Pal for Handiwork: Anubis

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

• Breeding combinations: Celaray/Relaxaurus, Penking/Bushi
• Skill levels: Handiwork 4, Mining 3, Transporting 2

Even though Anubis is an endgame-ish boss, you can actually breed it very easily using a ton of different combinations. Make one as soon as you can and then you don’t really have to worry about upgrading your Handiwork squad down the line.

That said, Anubis has the highest base Handiwork stat in the game at level four. It can do a lot of things, but it does them all pretty well, making Anubis one of the only multi-functional Pals we really recommend.

Best Pals for Kindling

Pals with Kindling help you smelt ingots and cook food. They’ll also power any heaters you have. You’ll want faster smelting speeds later on in the game, as you need tons of ingots and you’ll want a constant supply of them coming in.

Best early Pal for Kindling: Foxsparks

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

This thing is easy to find and it’ll light all your fires. That’s about it.

Best mid-game Pal for Kindling: Kitsun

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

• Breeding combinations: Penking/Rushoar, Rooby/Grintale, Gumoss/Nitewing
• Skill levels: Kindling 2

Once you have access to the snowy area around Lily and Lyleen, seek one of these out at night and add it to your base. It has level two Kindling, so it’ll cook and smelt faster than Foxsparks.

Best endgame Pal for Kindling: Jormuntide Ignis

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

Jormuntide Ignis is definitively the best Kindling Pal in the game, with a Kindling base level of four. It’ll smelt all your stuff really quickly, but with one trade-off: It’s huge. Jormuntide Ignis is gigantic so if you have a mainly indoor base, it’ll be buggy. We kept all our smelting tools outside so they had no problem, but I did have to watch him try to get into position to smelt four times.

Unfortunately, you can only breed a Jormuntide Ignis by breeding two… other Jormuntide Ignis. However, it’s very commonly found on the Wildlife Preserve #2, as shown above.

Best Pals for Mining

Mining Pals will help you farm rock, ore, sulfur, coal, and quartz. These Pals are especially important, as these resources will be your main ingredient for advanced Pal spheres and ammo.

Best early Pal for Mining: Rushoar

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

This guy hits rocks! That’s really all there is to it! Note that Rushoar is extremely early-game. Its low Mining level makes it so it cannot even mine ore.

Best mid-game Pal for Mining: Digtoise

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

• Breeding combinations: Penking/Woolipop, Gumoss/Kingpaca, Rushoar/Surfent
• Skill levels: Mining 3

A bunch of Digtoise will take you a long way. There’s a reason why every YouTuber, TikToker, and guide-maker recommends setting up an ore farm with these things. You’ll encounter them fairly early-ish, so you can grab a bunch of them. All they know how to do is mine! They’re gonna mine all that ore for you.

Best end-game Pal for Mining: Blazamut

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

• Breeding combinations: Blazamut/Suzaku Aqua
• Skill levels: Kindling 3, Mining 4

Unfortunately, there are no easy-peasy ways to get Blazamut eggs, but you can catch a guaranteed Alpha Blazamut in the location above. (Note that it’s in a mineshaft, which you can find the entrance to at the location we marked with the star.) You can also rarely find them at Wildlife Preserve #3, which is above the large desert in the northeast. Once you have one Blazamut, you can breed it with a Suzaku Aqua to get more.

Our endgame mining setups are a few of these at a good mining camp (whether it’s ore or coal, which you’ll need the most of in end-game), with an appropriate number of beds, a feed box, and a bath. They obliterate every rock in sight and when they’re done, I just put them back into the Palbox and bring them back out once the rocks respawn and I need more resources. These things are so efficient, it’s scary.

Best Pals for Watering

While you don’t need an expert Pal to water your crops, you’ll want one for grinding stone into Paldium fragments. These Pals will also mill any wheat you have into flour, which is also always nice to have for cooking.

Best early Pal for Watering: Teafant

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

This thing waters your crops and stuff with no other distractions. Hooray!

Best mid-game Pal for Watering: Azurobe

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

• Breeding combinations: Incineram/Sweepa, Elizabee/Univolt
• Skill levels: Watering 3

So, you can breed Azurobe, but you should just catch the Alpha Azurobe — it’s only level 17. You can also opt to grab more Azurobes from the Wildlife Preserve #1 in the south, if you don’t like having a huge Pal junk up your base.

Either way, this is a great non-obstructive Pal (see below) that waters and only waters. Whether it’s making Paldium from a crusher or watering your crops, it’ll get stuff done fast.

Best endgame Pal for Watering: Jormuntide

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Pocketpair

• Breeding combinations: Sweepa/Beakon, Elizabee/Relaxaurus
• Skill levels: Watering 4

Just like Jormuntide Ignis, regular water-type Jormuntide is the definitively best Watering Pal in the game, with a base Watering skill of four. And just like it’s fire-type brethren, it is gigantic. If you catch one of the two Alpha Jormuntides and put them to work, they’re even bigger, so we don’t recommend that if you want a base that doesn’t bug out. Grab the Alpha Jormuntides and breed them to make a regular-sized one or breed an Elizabee with a Relaxaurus to get one.

(Personally, since I use Jormuntide Ignis to smelt stuff, I just settled with using Azurobe to keep my crushers and mills going, since it’s not gigantic. I think the huge Pals are kind of an eyesore, but it’s a ultimately personal preference.)

For more Palworld guides, we’ve got you covered. If you’re just starting out, we’ve got a beginner’s guide, a list of all Pals, and a type chart. We also have explainers on breeding, eggs, and a rundown of how multiplayer works.

On the hunt for resources? Check out our guides on how to get ore, coal, polymer, leather, sulfur, wheat seeds, pure quartz, Ancient Technology Points, and ancient civilization parts. For advanced players, consult our lists of all tower boss locations, all passive skills, all flying mounts, and the best base locations.