Rufous

Also more skills, buildings, items and open world diversions

Image credit:          Pocketpair

Popular monster-enslaving sim Palworld has a big new update, which introduces the game's long-promised PvP multiplayer Arena together with a new island, new Pals, new Pal skills, a new Raid, new buildings and construction options, new open world activities and items - new everything, basically. The island is Sakurajima, a place of pink blossoms and red Tori gates which is ruled by the Moonflower faction from the security of their tower HQ. As for the Arena, where players can have their Pals duel for supremacy, you'll find it in the Dessicated Desert. Catch a glimpse of all the wanton Pokenot abuse in the below trailer.


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Titled Steam version v0.3.1, the update makes Palworld's landscape a lot busier and more distracting. There are new Junkyards where you might find valuable items, monster dens where you can obtain Pal eggs, and the possibility of meteorite impacts, which may supply you with additional supplies. There are also whispers of a new Pal that lives in outer space, which you might stumble across by way of those meteorites somehow.
You can look forward to Medal Merchants who trade rare items for new Dog Coins, and Hard Modes for Tower Bosses, "allowing you to face them in their ultimate form". Continuing its descent ever deeper into smiling puppy-eyed dystopia, the Palworld has also just discovered crude oil: you can extract the stuff from certain spots around the world, and use it to craft materials such as Plasteel. Oil may also be obtained from Oil Rigs, strongholds owned by the Rayne Syndicate, which remind me a little visually of Metal Gear Solid 2's ocean base. There's also a new Raid, featuring Blazamut Ryu - the strongest Dragon Pal in the game.In amongst the additions, Pocketpair have given Palworld's building system a rework to make it "more intuitive and smooth". You can add pillars to structures so that upper storeys don't evaporate if you accidentally flatten a supporting wall. Defensive walls can be joined up, and there's a new "axis alignment function". The maximum base level is now 25, and you now own a total of four bases, though the devs note that having several (or having a lot of Pals per base) might cause performance issues.
There's a new glass material so that you can build terrible see-through modernist panopticons and keep your Pal labourers under surveillance while lurking indoors. Work Pals will now use defensive facilities automatically, and there's a new private lock function for chests to stop so-called friends stealing your raw materials. There are new facilities and decorations, too, including wall-mounted signs on which you might write invigorating workplace slogans, and "Pal Disassembly Conveyors" that allow you to dispose of unwanted Pals without bloodying your hands and beginning to feel like the accursed child of Old Macdonald and Lady MacBeth. Alas, it is too late to be good, for there are always more Pals to harvest. The Machine must be fed.
Last but not least, those new Pal skills. They include passives such as Nocturnal, which lets Pals work throughout the night, and a few unique active abilities such as Raging Flame Wave for Faleris and Jumping Stinger for Menasting. It's a lot. Far too much Palworlding for one article, if you ask me - there are more tweaks and features in the full patch notes.