I haven't seen a pocket monster in a fortnight! Let's Play Palworld!

[nosimpleway]

Part 14: Inevitability


With my breeding projects stalled out for a bit, I use one of the two fuckin' tents to fill out the Paldeck. Elphidran and Surfent will breed Elphidran Aqua, Jolthog and Pengullet can be bred into Jolthog Cryst. I could have done these a while back, but I had better things to use my cake on.

Then it's off to kill some more time between egg-hatching and Alpha-fighting by filling out other collections. Huh, I haven't caught my fill of Kelpsea yet? Really? At least stuff like Hangyu Cryst and Kitsun have the excuse of only spawning in a limited part of the map, at night.


I manage to catch a Frostallion again, this time one that's not morally opposed to violence. That means I don't have to use the fall-damage exploit to fight Jetragons anymore! Legendaries come into my party at level 50, so they're ready to go as soon as they're caught.


Faleris, you've done a great job. You can retire now, though. What's the point of having a jet-powered dragon if I can't ride around on it? Investing a few tech points in Jetragon's Saddle lets me do that, and Jetragon is far and away the fastest mount in the game. It doesn't completely obsolete fast-travel points, but sometimes it's faster to just fly straight from point A to point B without using fast-travel in the middle now.



Life on the Palpagos Islands Boufadis Archi-Pal-ago kind of sucks. Well, now that I can fly at speed, why not just hit da bricks? There's no diagetic reason... The map just has this big, unexplained forcefield around the outside.



While flying around the ocean I find this little quirk of geography out in the ocean south of Mt. Obsidian. What is it? Why is it here? My guess is "a bug in the generative AI they used to put the world map together".


I've got a couple of Frostallions and Jetragons to my name, now. More than I need, really. I butcher the extra ones in hopes of another shot at their rare drops, but no dice. (This was before I looked it up and realized the legend Pal Metal Helm came from Frostallion. I thought Lyleen Noct Alpha dropped that.)

[nosimpleway]

...I guess it's time. I've been putting it off for as long as I could, because the next two legendaries are tougher than Frostallion and Jetragon. Because they're in the same place, fought at the same time. Legendary fights are no joke, and Paladius and Necromus spawn in the same spot and tend to follow each other around. It's tough to pull aggro from one but not the other.
Exception: Paladius is Neutral-element, and Necromus is dark-element. Paladius sleeps at night. Necromus does not.


This is not terribly comforting considering how tough Necromus is by himself, but I've brought a couple Jetragons to help out.
I can focus on dodging, and helping Jetragon dodge, Necromus's attacks. I manage to catch the bastard! I'm as surprised as anybody.


It takes all day just to recover from Necromus's attacks, and while I was too busy fighting Paladius to take a lot of screenshots about it, I'm wiped out pretty easily.
There's an odd sort of type-advantage balance between the legendaries. Frostallion has an advantage over Jetragon because ice beats dragon. Jetragon has an advantage over Necromus because dragon beats dark. Necromus has an advantage against Paladius because dark beats neutral. Neutral doesn't beat anything, though, so that's the end of that. It's plausible to take a strong fire-type and a bunch of empty party slots to catch Frostallion, use that Frostallion to catch Jetragon, use that Jetragon to catch Necromus, and use that Necromus to catch Paladius, without ever having to return to base.

Legendary #3 of 4


Talkin' Pals: 108 Paladius, the "Holy Knight of Legend"
"In the past, he and Necromus were a single species. They say that they are an existence that has freed themselves from all negative feelings, but the depths of their eyes harbor traces of resentment."
The lore: There's a little yin in that yang.
The inspiration: It's a centaur with a lance. It's not a Pokemon I'm aware of, but... it's just a centaur with a lance.
The name: from "Paladin", being the light side of the twins.
In gameplay: Paladius is the strongest neutral-type Pal in the game. But like... it's the strongest Neutral type Pal in the game. It's the best example of the worst type. But given how little interaction there is between elements overall, and how high its base combat stats are, that's still not bad... just don't let it out against high-level dark-types and it'll be fine. Being a legendary it's a source of the "Legend" trait. Being the legendary Neutral-type, it's got the "Celestial Emperor" trait, boosting its Neutral-type moves.


Talkin' Pals: 109 Necromus, the "Dark Knight of Legend"
"Once he and Paladius were a single species. They say it is the manifestation of negative feelings, but the depths of their eyes contain traces of compassion."
The lore: There's a little yang in that yin.
The inspiration: It's a centaur with two lances. It's not a Pokemon I'm aware of, but... it's just a centaur with two lances.
The name: from "Necro", for death, being the dark side of the twins.
In gameplay: Paladius and Necromus have the same combat stat total, but Necromus has higher attack and Paladius has higher defense. Can't say that's surprising. Being a legendary it's a source of the "Legend" trait. Being the legendary dark-type, Necromus has the "Lord of the Underworld" trait, the Emperor-type boost for the dark element.


I suppose it's possible to get a Lucky catch for something good, or even on a legendary, but by law of large numbers it's just more likely it only ever crops up on mons that appear all the time. This is my seventh, I think, but they stopped being noteworthy a while back.


What the hell are all these Foxcicles doing here?

[nosimpleway]

Well, I guess it's time for a reluctant descent into cruel turpitude. If I'm gonna show the game off for open discussion and criticism, there's no dodging this part.


oh
whoops
Murdering some rando on the street is certainly bad but it wasn't what I had in mind.


This guy was standing ten feet away and doesn't even care. You'd think they'd react a little.


Let's try again. Aiming for the knees this time, so I don't oneshot the poor guy.


The first merchant died before he knew what hit him, so while I got the "Criminal Activity Underway" popup, it went away after a few seconds. This merchant survived the attack and reported the assault, so I've got to deal with the PIDF while I catch him.


Yeah.
Catch him.
I've got a merchant stuffed into a Pal Sphere now, bound by whatever sufficiently advanced technology to do what I tell him.


More on that in a second, hold on. I'm still amused by the PIDF Slacker stationed here, ostensibly as a guard to keep me from doing exactly what I just did, who does not give the slimmest shit about my active criminal record when I talk to him.


Only in this case, the crime-pursuing PIDF agents wing him with their gunfire, spurring PIDF Slacker to action. There's a lengthy firefight between the two erstwhile allies. PIDF Slacker manages to knock both of the others down to critical HP, but can't finish either one off before he's overwhelmed and killed.


Sensitive-Nosed PIDF Officer also takes intentional-on-my-part friendly fire and starts shooting back, but I've gone long enough without doing any additional crimes myself that the other PIDF grunts despawn and my criminal record clears.
Total time from "I just kneecapped a guy and then mind-controlled him into being my slave" to "Eh, you're cool" was less than five minutes. Video games!


Talkin' Mechanics: Catching Humans
So I've got a human person in the Palbox. Whether he likes it or not, he's got to do what I tell him now. Apart from faction leaders in their towers, you can catch any human in the game. It's hard to do -- Pal Spheres aren't meant to work on humans, so the chance of getting it to stick even with a Legendary Sphere and maxed-out catch chance from a Statue of Power is still in the single digits.
Like some other morally dubious choices that can be made, there's not much reason you'd want to do it. Humans aren't Pals, and so they don't have Partner Skills. They suck in combat, with their only move being a weak punch rather than whatever gun they were using to fight the Pal Tamer off when they were caught. They're not useful on a base, with Handiwork 1 their only suitability. They can be butchered, but don't drop anything. Humans can be sold to Black Marketeers, too.
The only "Well, that could be worse I suppose" aspect of this is that humans can't be assigned to the breeding farm or crushed into LCL in the Pal condenser.


The only gameplay reason to catch another human is that merchants still have access to whatever stock they had when they were independent NPCs. I chose this guy specifically because he sells ammo, and if I'm going to go through with enslaving somebody for the purposes of documenting it, it might as well be someone who has something I want to buy. He has the infinite money available to buy my junk, too, so I don't have to return to a settlement to pawn off loot.
Catching a Pal Merchant or Black Marketeer lets you buy and sell Pals like usual, with their stock rotating every time they're put in the Palbox. So that's convenient if you've got more cash than Pals, I guess. (Black Marketeers are level 40 and armed with a minigun, so conscripting one is an endgame project.)

[nosimpleway]

Running up on the last few things to do in the game, it's time for an element I completely forgot was a thing to do. Those Statues of Power from waaay earlier, back when I was trading in Lifmunk Effigies to increase my catch chances? They do something else!
It is possible to sacrifice a number of Pal Souls of various sizes to increase the stats of Pals in the party. This is separate from, and stacks with, the bonuses from having a Pal benefit from the Orphan Crushing Machine. A stock of Small Pal Souls will get up to 12% bonus to HP, attack, defense, or work speed. Medium Pal Souls can get that to 21%. And a few Large Pal Souls will round things out to an even 30% boost. I've got most of my endgame party assembled now, so I go ahead and max out everyone with the souls I've been collecting all game.


The legendaries are still unwilling to hand over their legendary schematics, but Alpha Blazamut underneath Mt. Obsidian coughs this one up.


...uh, you okay up there?


Assume there's another "Several Hours Later" interstitial between screenshots anymore, because it took me quite a few tries before I could square up with Paladius. Having a couple copies of his brother helped.


*several hours later*
But thankfully it is not long before I catch a female Paladius as well. I can round out my collection of Paladius by breeding them.


*several hours later*
I keep catching Legendary Alphas and butchering Legendary Alphas, hoping for those just-as-legendary not-as-alpha schematics. This takes a very long time and bears no fruit whatsoever.


There's one half-exception to the "Legendaries breed true" rule: Frostallion Noct. Being an elemental variant of Frostallion, it takes one of those to be a parent, but the other one is just a plain ol' Helzephyr. That makes it easier to breed traits onto Frostallion Noct than any other legendary, since Helzephyr can be more easily bred with whichever traits are desired. It's a small mercy considering F-Noct is the strongest Pal around.


Talkin' Pals: 110b Frostallion Noct, the "Legendary Steed of Darkness"
"Guardian deity of Palpagos Island known as the Night Caller. In the past, when a calamity struck the land, it soared into the sky and sealed away the threat by casting the island into eternal darkness."
Type shift: Frostallion is ice, Frostallion Noct is dark.
The lore: Pff. Whatever the Paldeck says, its actual background is "I bred Frostallion with Helzephyr".
In gameplay: Did you notice I didn't point out that Necromus is the strongest dark-type in the game? Frostallion Noct not only has higher base stats than Necromus, it has the highest base stat total of any Pal. Also, it has the highest Gathering suitability in the game. That's... hmm. Okay.

[nosimpleway]

Oh right, there's something I'm supposed to be doing.










Every random encounter or fortress encounter with the FAP is indistinguishable from those of the Rayne Sydnicate. They talk big about Pal liberation (inasfar as anyone talks about anything in the game), but they're the same petty thugs as the outright poachers. Judging from her diary entries found here and there around the Moonless Shores and Verdant Brook areas, Lily is the only person in the entire FAP who believes in what she's saying.
It's probably worth pointing out that Lily Everheart is the only Pal Tamer around who just calls her Pal to her side without releasing it from a sphere, and also the only one to show it any affection whatsoever. I said the Free Pal Alliance were Team Plasma before, so Lily is N.



Lily's Lyleen has an array of grass-element moves as you'd expect, but also a few water moves juuust in case the player has the clever idea of bringing a fire-elemental into the fight for a type advantage.
Jetragon doesn't have same-type attack bonus on fire moves but it's still big and strong and can throw fireballs.


Despite Lily's Lyleen having twice the hit points that Zoe's Grizzbolt did, the fight doesn't last long.

[nosimpleway]

Well, moving on.





Axel here is the leader of the Brotherhood of the Eternal Pyre, the faction that hangs around Mt. Obsidian. I haven't brought them up because, well, they don't really do anything or factor in anywhere. I can find about a half-dozen diary entries each for Zoe Rayne and Lily Everheart, but Axel only gets one, and it's a shitty rap he wrote about how awesome he is. There's just nothing to talk about.
Despite the fire-themed zone he lives in and the fire-themed cult he leads, he has an electric Pal instead of a fire one.


Like Lily's Lyleen, Axel's Orserk has a couple of moves that are effective against Pals with a type advantage against it. Bring a ground-type to beat Orserk's electric-typing and Orserk will throw out a couple of grass-moves to defeat it. But Warsect is ground/grass, and the grass part resists other grass attacks, allowing Warsect to take neutral-or-less damage from anything Orserk can do.


About twice as many hit points as Lily's Lyleen but Axel's Orserk is also not any sort of challenge at this point. Same reward as always: five Ancient Tech Points and getting ejected at the top of the tower.

[nosimpleway]

I mentioned Marcus before as being almost comically evil. Now's the chance for some comeuppance. Those PIDF officers standing at attention while he walks out are nowhere to be found once the boss fight starts.


I don't have a water-type trained up for this fight, but Marcus's Faleris has electric-moves to even the odds against those anyway. I don't think I've ever used Grizzbolt's Partner Skill... shouldn't I do that sooner or later?


I don't even get a criminal record for walking into the office of the head of the PIDF and shooting him in the face until he dies. Or collapses. Whatever happens to bosses once I've beaten them and they go back to doing absolutely nothing but wait for a rematch in their towers.

Ah well. Most of the updates lately have been hours of gameplay compressed, but in this case all of the tower bosses got wiped out one after another, in less than ten minutes each. That's the Windswept Hills tower and the Rayne Syndicate faction, the Frostbound Mountain tower and the FAP, the Mt. Obsidian tower and the Brotherhood of the Eternal Pyre, the Dessicated Desert tower and the PIDF chief. Bosses don't have any story progression because there's no story, they have no personality or even dialog, and the fights themselves are padded sumo as the player gradually plinks away a frankly absurd number of hit points. There's only one more to go, but I'm not quite ready for it yet.

[nosimpleway]

lol

Well, it's early access. You didn't expect the game to just work, did you? I've had problems with crashing to desktop throughout this LP, and now the game has stopped booting entirely. Removing the couple of mods I was using? Doesn't fix it. Uninstall and reinstall? Doesn't fix it. Shit's just broken. Nothing I can do.

[Niku]

I wouldn't have wanted it to end any other way, quite frankly.

[Mongrel]

lmao

perfect

[nosimpleway]

Part 15: That's All For Now

I probably should wrap it there. That's the perfect ending, isn't it? Spend hours breeding and leveling a team, beat four out of five tower bosses, collect everything in the Paldeck, start farming legendaries, and the whole game craps out forever. Unfortunately on April 4, after about a week of the game not working, the devs released 0.2.1.0. I reinstall the game, and it works again! Hooray!

I will be honest I was 100% certain my save data would be corrupted or gone and I would have to start over. But it wasn't! I can pick back up right where I left off.

Let's see what's in the release notes... Among various interface upgrades and QoL improvements, theres:
Kelpsea's new Partner Skill lets it drop Pal Fluids at the ranch. And Dumud has one that drops High Quality Pal Oil. That would have saved me some time, and a lot of Mammorests their lives.
Surfent Terra actually does something as a mount, making it easier to carry ores around. I haven't messed with it but presumably they made it better than filling the slot with a Wumpo and carrying more ore that way.
Astegon makes resource nodes generate more ore, so it's still a resource-gathering beast.
There's now a "Merciful" trait. A Pal with that will never reduce any other Pal to 0 HP, leaving them with 1. Any game where catch chance is based on HP should have a False Swipe, dammit. This one puts it on the Pal and can't be turned off, rather than making it an attribute of a specific move, but it's not like I can control which moves a Pal uses in combat anyway so that's probably best.
And there's more to the tutorial, lasting for the entire game. Granted I'm already at the end of the game, so as soon as I started up a bunch of prompts appeared, got marked as complete, and immediately disappeared. The only one left is to take on the boss at the PAL Genetic Research Unit tower.
Eggs can produce Alpha Pals sometimes. Okay.
Flying Pals can no longer take fall damage. Good thing I got all those Jetdragons while I could!
The Stay Fresh Cheese Bag can feed a Pal while they're using their Partner Skill. If Faleris or Jetragon got hungry on a long flight, I'd have to find a place to land and dismount in order to feed them. Now they can eat without prompting from me or needing to land.


Chests can now be organized to take specific items. I can turn off wood, stone, and ore so that Transport Pals won't stuff them into whichever container is convenient. So that's another annoyance eliminated.





There are several new structures, including an Egg Incubator that does what the egg incubator should have always done in the first place. There's two levels of mining stations for ore that can be built in-base, matching the stone pit and logging site. There's a couple accessories, one that lets me False Swipe too, and one that lets me see a Pal's IVs. All things that should very much be in the game, and whose absence was sorely missed previously.
All of these things require Ancient Tech Points to unlock, the regular tech tree is unchanged. Thankfully, in addition to the regular tech manuals, there are now Ancient Tech Manuals for free Ancient Tech Points.


And then there's... this. Hmm.


If I can build a site on base that generates all the ore I need, I don't need to plan a base around natural ore deposits. Guess I'm in the business of moving house again... First place I try is the Cold Shores tower, but nope, the floor here is still not made of floor.


Searching for a wide, flat area to build on, I spawn in the event where a bunch of Direhowl appear and attack a Jolthog Cryst. I do not intervene, and the Jolthog is knocked out. Knocked out of the atmosphere and into orbit, that is. Look at it go!

[nosimpleway]

Finding land that is legitimately flat, to within the margin of error equal to the build thickness of a foundation, is pretty damn tough. Maybe a future update will allow some terraforming, so that players can smooth ground out themselves! Or make foundations taller, or make it so that ground underneath a foundation can't clip through the top, or something.
Anyway. If I no longer have to place my bases as determined by natural ore deposits, I got an idea. I can't find the perfect spot for a base, but maybe I can find a good spot for all three. I try this plateau in the Dessicated Desert, which looks to be around the right size for three bases, and spend a couple hours trying to find exactly where I can put foundations to cover as much space as possible.


That's a lot of flat foundation to work with, but not enough to cover two whole bases. My hope was to find an elevation where I could put down one gigantic flat plane of foundation and build three bases off of that, but the natural terrain just won't allow it. All three will need to be disconnected, and at different heights. Damn.


In hopes of being able to use the really huge Pals, like Jormuntides, I build each story four wall-segments high. There's a one-segment height between the foundation and the floor, in order to smooth out a bit of the jankiness that still plagues the building engine. Then the first floor is as round as I can make it without overlapping the blue light border. The second floor is completely square, with only empty space under those rooves.


I had to go find a couple Tech manuals to get the points to unlock this thing I'd skipped before. Monitoring Stand unlocks at level 15, but previously its only use was to set the work pace for the entire base at once. It was possible to dial back the work demands so that Pal sanity decreased more slowly, or be an unrelenting taskmaster who forced Pals to overwork until they went crazy. So I skipped it.
Now, though...


Now it is possible to use a monitoring stand to determine which suitabilities a Pal is free to exercise on a base. Here I've turned off Anubis's Transporting suitability. If there's something to build, build it, otherwise I want you mining.
Yes. I know. That means I can finally make Beegarde stay on the goddamn ranch and make Honey. Unfortunately I have so much money from grinding legendary Pals for schematics that I just buy all the cake ingredients I need in stacks of 999. Also I don't have any more breeding projects going on, so I'm not even using the cake I have.


It's busy, what with all the gigantic Pals roaming around, but it seems to be working smoothly. Lyleens plant and harvest crops, Jormuntide waters and runs the crusher/mill when I need it. Blazamut mines, assisted by Anubises. Jormuntide Ignis runs the forges and the kitchens. Helzephyrs put the items away.


Which is not to say that Jormuntide never clips through anything. I mentioned before I put a level of space between the foundation and the floor, but I didn't expect anyone to sleep down here.


The third floor... the third floor is almost purely decoration. There are tech unlocks for furniture that doesn't do anything, purely for the Sims-like joy of making a pretend living space. But it consumes the same tech points needed to unlock equipment and Pal items, and as you've seen it's not unusual to tear a base down and move it several times, so I never bothered unlocking or building them until now.
Anyway. The office has my monitoring stand just off to one side. I build a bedroom with a bed. There's a little plaza with a water fountain and a couple flower beds. It's almost like a living space.


*Spongebob voiceover* "Many, many hours later..."

What's funny is that without a ranch or a breeding farm, everything I need is in the base I already built. I set them up because that was always the plan, to keep wild Pals from spawning anywhere on the plateau by covering the area in the "hey, don't spawn wild Pals here" radius of a base. But they remain empty for a while.

[nosimpleway]

As it turns out, there is a structure that must be built inside a base, but it's not something anyone would want inside their main base.


I'll just go ahead and bring out all of the strongest Pals I have. All the level 50 Pals, at least. Fuddler and Tombat aren't exactly top-tier but I caught them at level 50, so they're included.


And I'll just take this and plunk it onto the altar...


The update added two Pals. And a raid boss mechanic to summon and fight them. First, go out and collect slab fragments from high-level chests! Assemble them on an assembly line! Build an altar! Put the thing on the thing!


This is Bellanoir. Well, it would be if you could see a damn thing through all the summoning and attacking effects. She's in there somewhere.


Yes, that's right. Two hundred ninety-four thousand hit points, about double what Marcus & Faleris had. And the attacks from my Pals can barely break double-digits.


Bellanoir has a couple unique attacks, including this gigantic laser that fires into the ground.


The game did warn me that my base itself was in danger. It's not long before Bellanoir starts breaking down the floors and foundations, leaving all my Pals with wonky pathfinding on the uneven desert stones.


What? Huh? Why? My Pals were all fine, I was fine, I still had seven minutes left on the clock... It's the falling debris that clues me in. Bellanoir broke the floor out from underneath the Palbox. Without the Palbox, this isn't a base. Without being a base to raid, the raid can't continue.


All of the Pals present are reduced to Pal Spheres. I don't know why they didn't have the beam of blue light shining upward from them like I've seen on filled Spheres before. If these were wild-caught but couldn't fit in the Palbox, I'd have a beacon taller than my base pointing into the sky so I could find them easily. Without it, it takes me a very long time to find all fifteen, since they fell all over the place on the bare ground. Several are in crevices between rocks, presumably their pathfinding jammed up and they got stuck before the base was destroyed.


Talkin' Pals: 112 Bellanoir, the "Eclipsed Siren"
"Without existing, she quietly gazed upon the world. One day, she was seized with a longing to be seen. With unbridled lust for vengeance against reality, thus was born the Eclipsed Siren."
The lore: what the fuck does that even mean
The inspiration: You know what this game really needs? Another Pal that looks like a human woman in a gown. Certainly not enough of those!
The name: "Bella" means "woman", "noir" means "black".
In gameplay: The very first raid boss, introducing what is sure to be a dull gameplay element that every update to the game from here on out will include and expand upon. Bellanoir can only be summoned at an altar, immediately starts a raid at that base, and cannot be caught in a Pal Sphere. But I've already explained a lot of that, and whatever else there is to cover will happen at the end of this update, so whatever.
What really baffles me is that there were already two top-tier legendary dark types, in Necromus and Frostallion Noct. Then the last Pal in the Paldeck is revealed to be Bellanoir, also dark-element. And the last nonlegendary Pal in the Paldeck, the strongest non-legendary in the game? Shadowbeak. Also dark. The Pal shown in early release trailers that fans are begging to be included now? Dragostrophe, bucking the trend as dragon/dark. There's a bit of a monotype saturation issue here.

[nosimpleway]

Another round of Pal naming.
For my own party: Jetragon is "Dromde", Warsect is "Beets", Blazamut is "Frarre", Shadowbeak is "Gommer", Chillet is "Palie".
Grizzbolt, normally in the party but now set aside while I level up Gommer, is "Lite"
Vaelet is "Flow-flow". Like "flower", not "moving fluid"
Two Anubixes are "Goldie" and "Blackie"
Two Dinossom Lux are "Golda" and "Pikka"
Lyleen Noct is "Twilight Sparkle". Surprising we didn't come across something like that sooner, really.
Two Fuddlers are "Digza" and "Zigza"
Wumpo is "Chewy". Not because it's a big shaggy beast like in that space opera franchise, but because it has that little sprig of a plant sticking out of wherever its mouth might reasonably be.
Tombat is "Cattibat"
Kingpaca Cryst is "Jewelie", since the nodules of ice on its chest look like diamonds.
Mau Cryst is "Uranus"
Faleris is "Bird-o"
Beegarde is, uh, "Bee Gardie"


Moving on.
I don't rebuild the base that Bellanoir destroyed. I put a Palbox on the bare rock, and the altar a short distance away. No floors, no masters.


Yeah, it's not so easy when you don't have an instant "I win" button, is it?


I also helped in the battle. I threw my slippers at the beast... you may not have noticed.


Raids are for multiplayer! Single-player mode get fucked! Presumably that's why Bellanoir can't be caught in a Sphere. Wouldn't be fair for only one player to get the thing, right? So Bellanoir oviposts an egg into every player's inventory upon defeat, and it hatches into a new Bellanoir.
Other loot includes a Multiclimate Undershirt +1, which protects against heat and cold at the same time, freeing up an accessory slot or saving the annoyance of switching. Training Manuals are free XP for Pals, and this is the biggest one for the biggest bonus. Ancient Civ Cores are introduced in this update, and are needed to build the electric egg incubator and the accessory that lets the player see their Pals' IVs. Each recipe takes five cores, Bellanoir drops one. Ready to grind the optional boss?


Note: not "superboss". Oh no. Because deep inside high-level caves, there's a different sort of slab fragment to find. Because yeah, not only does a player have to grind the boss fights, they've got to find a couple caves that appear and disappear at random, in the parts of the world least likely to spawn caves, and grind through those just to summon the damn thing. Presumably this is easier with a guild to split up and search for cave entrances.

Christ, I hate multiplayer-only features jammed into single-player games.


Anyway. To get ready for stuff I head back to Gobfin's Domain with my legendary shotgun, a Ring of Mercy, and a ton of mid-grade Spheres.



Halfway through I realize all the stamina and carry weight I needed through the rest of the game is obsolete, now that I have mounts to move around and shouldn't be needing to haul back gigantic piles of loot anymore. So I respec using some of that Memory-wiping Medicine a Lovander dropped a while back. Now I put most of my points into attack. This doesn't do much but means a Gobfin usually drops to 1 HP in a single shot instead of two.


Stands to reason if I run around catching hundreds of the same Pal, one of 'em might well roll Lucky.
It takes several intermediate trips back to base, but each time I have eighty or so more Gobfins to feed into the Orphan Crushing Machine. Gobfin's Partner Skill is a passive increase to my attack for every Gobfin I have in the party. The higher each Gobfin's rank, the bigger the boost. I put three rank-five Gobfin into my party and go on a trial run.


...to the PAL Genetic Research Unit tower, in the Astral Mountains.

[nosimpleway]

Victor is the one who spliced Shadowbeak together, stands to reason that's his Pal of choice. (How he can float ten feet in the air without someone trying to throw him into a hot spring first is not explained.)


Remember way back in the Chillet writeup, I said that Chillet seems designed from the ground up to beat a particular lategame boss? This is that one.
See, Shadowbeak here is dark-element. It takes extra damage from dragon moves. Chillet gets same-type bonus on dragon moves! But as other tower bosses before have done, Shadowbeak also has ice moves in order to level the playing field against dragons. But but Chillet is also ice-type, resisting the damage and being immune to freeze status.
By hopping on Chillet's back, its Partner Skill turns my own gunfire into dragon-element attacks. I figure with Chillet's type defenses and freeze immunity, dragon-element attacks, and three max-rank Gobfins in my party, I should be able to wipe Victor & Shadowbeak in just a few well-placed rocket shots.


That was before the patch, unfortunately. Mounted combat bonuses got a nerf, Gobfin's Partner Skill got a nerf, and while Palie here still can't be frozen, the Pal Tamer can be frozen while in the saddle. Shadowbeak's very first attack is a blast of icy breath that freezes me solid, still within the beam, taking continuous damage. I'm instantly dropped to critical HP, and Palie down to half. That first rocket hits, and does about 4000 damage out of V&S's 200,000 total.


So that didn't fucking work.


I run and hide, and let Dromde take over. Yeah it takes extra damage from Shadowbeak's ice attacks, but while other tower bosses target the active Pal, V&S aim right for the player character. They ignore that Jetragon is there for most of the fight, giving it plenty of opportunities to zap it with dragon lasers and whatnot while I duck behind pillars for cover.


Longest boss fight yet. And the most annoying, since my "use a weak Pal that's the perfect counter to and endgame boss" strategy got undone right when Chillet hit level 49 and was ready to take on Victor & Shadowbeak. The good old days of Magikarp vs. Champion Wallace this ain't.


Well, whatever. Let's go wrap this up.


World Tree, here I come.





It's still early access. The update wasn't to 2.0, it was to 0.2. The game isn't finished yet, the last zone on the map completely unreachable.

[nosimpleway]

Not done yet. There's... well, it'd be postgame content if there were an endgame, but I've found enough caves to assemble a full Bellanoir Libero Slab.


So let's see what horseshit is in store here.


Ah. Yes. Of course. I see.
Four hundred fifty thousand hit points. And now most of my level 50 Pals are struggling to hit double-digit damage.


I keep up my Chillet mount/Gobfin/rockets party strategy, even though it doesn't work as well as I'd hoped, since all my strongest Pals are already hitting Bellanoir Libero by virtue of being summoned to the base. With six seconds left on the clock, everything I can throw at this superboss has dealt less than half her HP in damage.


Never had a prayer.



And I went through a lot of Pals in that fight. Whenever one got KOed, I'd run to the Palbox and swap it out for a fresh one.


Talkin' Pals: 112b Bellanoir Libero, the "Twilight Siren"
"With her desires set loose, she was soon overwhelmed. She longed for a self to gaze upon herself. And the sisters who gazed, resenting reality, were driven into the abyss and, at last, closed their eyes."
The lore: Are we letting ChatGPT string together profound-sounding nonsense and dumping that into the Paldeck now? Is that what we're doing?
The inspiration: You know what this game really needs? A variation on the last Pal we added that looks like a woman in a gown!
In gameplay: Bellanoir Libero is not an elemental variant. She is also dark-element. Presumably the variant is purely for the raid battle, where she can shift her element as she drops in HP, turning her into a sort of barrier-change boss. She doesn't do that once tamed.


I call this option bundle "Gettin' Real Sick Of Your Shit".

[nosimpleway]

While searching for another four Libero slabs I manage to net a male Bellanoir. There are still no monosexed Pals, but there's only a one-in-twenty shot of Bellanoir turning up male. There aren't any more new Pals to catch, I've already got the up-to-ten EXP bonus from all of them except this one. At least I can do that without having to search for forty slab fragments.

Did I mention that Bellanoir inevitably destroys the altar every time she's summoned, and I get to build a new one each time? It's like they deliberately made everything about raids as needlessly tedious as possible. Anyway, my screen capture software crapped out on me and doesn't capture any of the fight with Bellanoir Libero. But that's okay.


Because I'm still not done. Bellanoir Libero drops much the same loot as Bellanoir Regular, including its own egg. But it has a chance to drop this, too. The final superboss, or what would be if the game were finished and no more content was going to be added. The final superboss of this update.
At least I don't have to assemble the damned tablet this time, it drops whole.


It's still Bellanoir Libero, just with higher stats. And, y'know.
Nine
hundred
thousand
god
damned
hit
points.


I don't know how even a multiplayer team is supposed to take this thing down. Don't know. Don't care.


Gettin' real sick of your shit.


And it manages to drop its rare, presumably as a result of my cranking up loot rewards too. For all that work you get a new helmet! That sucks! There's no way reducing dragon-elemental damage by a percentage is worth the 190 defense points that also work against the other 90% of attacks in the game I'm giving up from my legendary Pal Metal Helm.


So I have a couple Bellanoir Libero hatched from eggs, and a bunch of regular Bellanoir. I burn some of the Training Manuals I got (with a massive world-setting experience multiplier, I'm tired of waiting for Pals to level, too) to level them up to 50. And with some comparison... They're not very good! They certainly can't compete with the Legendaries, despite Bellanoir Libero being stronger than all of them combined in the boss fight.


Bellanoir Libero comes with a combination dark/ice Emperor passive, which would be perfect for breeding onto, uh... Vanwyrm Cryst? Y'know, the only dark/ice-element in the game? Bellanoir and Bellanoir Libero are only dark-element themselves! This is only a "make the player's life more difficult by countering their counter" trait.

Waste of goddamn time.


But that's game. Until the next content update.

[nosimpleway]

(Or maybe not, since the next content update appears to be "adding PVP".)

[nosimpleway]

I've gone over each Pal on its own, let's look at them in groups. Since Pal designs are so often compared to Pokemon, I'll have a little overview of my opinions on that. Since this is the devteam's first monster-collecting game, I'll compare them to the first-gen Pokemon games. But it's also The Year Of Luigi 2024, and by god, there are a thousand pockettomonsutaa out there already. I'll compare the Pals to the Pokedex as a whole as well.

The Electric Element

In general:
Look, I get it. Not too many animals in nature have electric powers, so it's hard to come up with ideas for fictional creatures that could reasonably be expected to shoot lightning bolts. Even so, there's got to be more to the motif than lightning bolt patterns on an animals' fur. Can we do something with magnetism? That could be a neat take. I feel like there's a horn/lightning rod motif that not even Univolt takes advantage of. How about an electric narwhal? Or a Hercules beetle, maybe? How about a porcupine-like creature with iron quills, where after it embeds some of those spines into a creature's flesh it uses them as conducting rods for follow-up lightning strikes? Jolthog's missing out on that gimmick.

Honorable Mentions:
Dazzi: There's exactly one that isn't yellow with a lightning-bolt motif. Wow.

Compared to first-gen:
Electric is a pretty small type assignment even in Pokemon. But sure enough we've got a Pikachu-lookalike, an Electabuzz-lookalike, and a Zapdos-lookalike. Did they forget about one that looks like a chunk of Paldium and explodes when it's disturbed?

Compared to the Pokedex as a whole:
There are only eight electric-element Pals in the game, and if they wanted to deconstruct or spoof Pokemon designs, they should have made every one of them a Pikaclone. Go the opposite direction from those ideas I was spitballing two paragraphs ago. I want the generic earlygame electric rodent, the positive-and-negative charged electric rodents, the electric flying squirrel, the electric hedgehog (oh wait they got that one), the electric hamster. Hell, my idea of an electric porcupine fits right in. Oh! Best of both worlds: gimme a rabbit that uses its exaggeratedly long ears as a magnetic railgun. Boom. There it is. Mic drop.

[nosimpleway]

The Ground Element

In general:
Ground-element Pals combine what would be ground-type and rock-type in Pokemon, although it's always seemed a little weird that those two were separate in the first place. There's some good stuff here! It's not all rocky shells and carapaces, not all burrowing animals, and a few designs that don't speak much to ground-element at all -- including the three strongest ground-element Pals in the game. Now that's variety!

Honorable Mentions:
Hangyu: The idea of a hangman's noose as a living creature gets my generic stamp of mild disapproval. But Hangyu is a flying monster, one that grants aerial mobility to the player, and is ground-element nonetheless. That contradiction in its design and its element I do like.
Reptyro: I dunno, I just like Reptyro.

Compared to first-gen:
There's burrowing animals (Sandshrew, Diglett), there's rock monsters (Golem, Onix, Rhydon), there's a couple that don't really say "ground-type" at all (Nidoqueen/king, Cubone). That about covers it!

Compared to the Pokedex as a whole:
Ground- and rock-type are like... B-student types. You know? There's not a lot there that really stands out as special, but there's some solid design variety. It probably helps that rock-type gets all the cool prehistoric critters included. Same as Palworld: ground doesn't have any of the exceptional designs, but they're pretty good.