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

[nosimpleway]

Pengullet is the earliest ice-element available can get, and there's Alpha Chillet once you can take that down. Other ice-elements tend to be pretty uncommon up until you get into the "this is where all the ice-types live" lategame frozen peaks areas. I was a little surprised to see a Mau Cryst in a low-level Syndicate camp.


The music in the game is take-it-or-leave-it, so I have it turned all the way down. Pal and human voices are at mid levels, and the sound effects cranked up. And it pays off, I heard this guy chime before I saw him. That's three Lucky Pals so far.


There's another ruined church on Forgotten Island; I caught the Lucky Direhowl just outside. I dip in to turn in this gigantic stack of Lifmunk Effigies I've collected. Each level increases catch chances a little bit, allowing me to snag Pals before they're at super-low health, or more reliably snag Pals that are at low health. I don't think the upgrades here are ever as much an improvement as using the next level of Sphere up, but it doesn't hurt.


Map update. Northwest of here, across the sea, is the gigantic tree the intro movie told me had the answers. I'm not even sure what the questions are. Even with a flying or swimming mount I can't get there, there's a big red forcefield in the way.


It's a lot of eggs, but the only new Pal I get is a Surfent.


Talkin' Pals: 065 Surfent, "The Ocean's Wrath"
"Its hydrodynamic form is well suited to life in water. Poachers often catch them and use them in place of surfboards."
The lore: You might think "Surfent, oh, it's a sea snake that rolls around in the surf" but no, it's much dumber than that.
The inspiration: It's a generic sea serpent sort of shape. You'd think it was designed to look like a trireme or something, but
The name: nope, it's a surfboard.
In gameplay: Surfent lets you cross water without spending stamina on swimming, but it's unlikely a player will reach one without already having a flying mount, all but three of whom can also cross open ocean without spending stamina to do it.


Talkin' Pals: 065b: Surfent Terra, "The Desert's Wrath"
"Its aerodynamic form is well suited to life on the sand. Poachers often catch them and use them in place of surfboards"
The lore: Sand surfing. That's a thing, right?
In gameplay: The most redundant Pal around. It has nothing unique going for it to make it stand out from anything else. Even its partner skill is just "You can ride it, I guess. It doesn't fly or swim or double-jump, it doesn't change the element of your attacks or effect enemy drops, and it's not particularly fast. But you sure can ride it around."


Moving on up. After building a couple of comfortable beds for your Pals, the next goal is to build a bigger, better hot spring. Cement isn't hard to make, but it takes a lot of stone, some Pal bones, and those unidentified Pal Fluids to make. I am going to need a lot of the stuff, might as well start collecting those things now.


A new weird behavior back at Cold Shores base: Dinossom is following me around. Wherever I run in base, it waddles up right behind me. If I leave the base border, it stands at the edge and stares forlornly at me. It's fully fed, it's got full Sanity, there's no problem... it's just feeling clingy, I guess. I give it some pets, but it still just stands there and looks at me.


Eventually I ask it to get back to work by picking it up over my head and body-slamming it onto an empty farm plot.

Talkin' Jank: Brawk, It's a Living
That's how you assign specific jobs to Pals at base: pick 'em up and throw them at the place you want them to work. It can be as small as a Chikipi or as big as a Mammorest, just uproot it and toss it around.
It is not a good system, because a) you have to be able to catch the damn thing before you can lift it, and some Pals have a faster running speed than the player character, b) sometimes Pals that are busy with a task can't be picked up, so you have to wait for them to finish the job you don't want them doing before you can reassign them, and c) the assignment only lasts until sunrise the next day. Once they wake up, they go back to their usual priorities.
There are plenty of Pals you might want to keep around for a specific job, but their priorities mean they keep doing other things unless you throw them back at their assigned spot. Lookin' at you, Beegarde, your job is to make honey, stop doing Transporting tasks, go to the ranch.


Pathing remains an issue. Surfent is watering my farm plots from thirty feet away, and I have no idea what this Cattiva is allegedly building for me because there's nothing around to build.


It's not a problem unless Pals just stand at spawn and starve because they can't figure out how to walk to the feed basket and eat. Oh, that's exactly what they're doing. >:|


Things seem better back at Winswept Hills base, but then the game freezes up.


It takes five or six restarts before I can get past the title screen. Ear-ly-Acc-ess!


When I get the game working again, I am pleased to see everyone at Cold Shores asleep in their beds rather than standing in T-pose staring over the horizon.


Well, nearly everyone is in bed.

[nosimpleway]

Part 9: Distractions

I realized, when rereading the last update, that I had some Caprity meat in my inventory, so I guess that was the part of the game where I'd caught my first Caprity. So here's a writeup. For Caprity.


Talkin' Pals: 035 Caprity, the "Walking Farm"
"The shrub on this pal's back produces berries as long as it is properly fed. It offers these berries to potential mates, and if the flavor is to their liking, romance blossoms."
The lore: I've read stuff that tries to tie the ineffible attraction humans have for one another to the scent of pheremones we can't consciously pick up to chemical analysis of partner's spit when kissing. Caprity skips all that and just offers a little snack.
The inspiration: Looks a bit like Gogoat, but Gogoat just looks like a plain goat anyway.
The name: The "capri-" I get, it's Latin for "goat". Like the Zodiac sign, right? -ty isn't much to reverse-engineer a word from, though, so I can only guess. Maybe "fruity"? I guess "pretty" would make for a better pun, or would if anything about the Pal had anything to do with beauty.
In gameplay: Berry farming needs multiple Pals to do the planting, watering, and harvesting jobs, and structures that don't do anything but grow berries. Assigning a Caprity to the ranch will also produce berries, using a structure you already have, and only one Pal to do the job. The tradeoff, naturally, is that farming produces more berries, faster.


In preparation for the day I collect enough Dolphin Pussy Jelly High Quality Pal Oil to build my first assembly line, I build an electric pylon and bring Beakon out to charge it up. Assembly lines need both a source of electricity and Pals with Handiwork to make stuff, but allow up to three Pals to work on a project at the same time.

Talkin' Jank: Electricity
It's kind of pointless.
Like the conversation in development clearly went "Hey, what can electric-element Pals do when they're working at base? It seems weird that they can't use their elemental powers for anything."
Then somebody goes "Well they can make electricity, how about we add a bunch of electric-powered workstations to the game? Electric Pals can charge batteries up, then those furnaces or kitchens or refrigerators or assembly lines or whatever can work on their own."
"Well, that's no good. That means Kindling and Cooling and Handiwork Pals are all out of a job. Electric would be too useful."
"Oh... well, in that case, we'll make a furnace that pulls electric power but still needs a fire-element Pal to work it! The fridge can consume electricity without actually doing anything, since there still needs to be an ice-element Pal working that. That way nothing's obsolete!"
"Brilliant!"
except it defeats the entire goddamn point of having electric power in the first place


I talked about Sealed Realms before, but didn't go in. Now I'm going in. This is the Sealed Realm of the Frozen Wings, where the Alpha Penking lives. All of the Sealed Realms are like this: one big room where the Alpha hangs out. In Penking's case, it gets three Pengullet mooks that help it out once it notices I'm here.
I should have brought Beakon with me, but Lunaris has an electric-type attack it can use that does well enough. One Ancient Tech Point, some Ancient Civ Parts, some Precious [$varname], and some Ice Organs. Oh, and the extra Ice Organs and Pal Fluids I got from the Pengullets, I guess.


It becomes available at level 10 and needs Ancient Technology Points to figure out how to carry food in a separate container from the regular inventory backpack.


With the Stay Fresh Cheese Bag in hand I don't have to worry about manually feeding my Pals, they'll eat out of the bag as long as they're in the party and not in the middle of using their partner skill.
There are bigger, fresher cheese bags to open up the other four slots but really, one is all you need.


mupdate. This is the western side of Windswept Hills. Crossing the bridge here takes me to Moonless Shores.


Syndicate forts in the area are manned with gunners and grenadiers, in addition to the club-brandishing thugs. The grenades have a giant red aura indicating where the blast radius is, but it's big enough that if the player character isn't already running when the grenade lands nearby, they're probably not fast enough to get out of the danger zone.


One of the semi-scripted events spawns an Incineram and a Leezpunk next to a few Syndicate thugs, and the two of them fight. I swoop in to help kill off the thugs, and nab the weakened Pals.

[nosimpleway]

Now that I've spent some time talking about how redundant electricity is as a gameplay element, I explore the side of Windswept Hills where a couple of the earlygame electric-element Pals hang out. Hey, haven't seen one of those yet!


whoops


Talkin' Pals: 007 Sparkit, the "Livewire Tabby"
"During the dry season, this Pal is always on the verge of blowing a fuse, Sparks can fly with even the slightest provocation even amongst allies."
The lore: We're gonna make a cute little mammal critter with electric powers and a lightning-bolt tail! Wait, that's been done? Well, how can we make ours a little different? What if instead of a friendly, adorable mascot critter, we make ours kind of a jerk?
The inspiration: Oh, come on.
The name: It's a kitten that throws sparks.
In gameplay: Electricity doesn't unlock for nearly half of the tech tree, leaving earlygame electric types without much to really do.


Talkin' Pals: 012 Jolthog, "Don't Touch!"
"Releases the electricity stored in it's body when under attack, producing a shock that can be over 10 million volts. If thrown, it can even be more lethal than any conventional heavy weaponry."
The lore: "This little critter can produce 10 million volts!" is some "Magcargo is hotter than the surface of the sun" lore nonsense.
The inspiration: Shaymin went super-saiyan. It's a super-Shayman.
The name: A hedgehog produces electric jolts.
In gameplay: At least Sparkit had some Handiwork suitability. Jolthog can't do anything but generate electricity, and is almost certainly obsolete by the time electric pylons and stations are unlocked. Its partner skill hucks Jolthog like a grenade, which creates an explosion of electricity. It's... fine, I guess.

And since I'm doing elemental variations whenever I do base species...


Talkin' Pals: 012b Jolthog Cryst, "Watch your feet!"
"It releases cold air stored in its body when under attack. The frigid blast it radiates is cold enough to freeze the surrounding air and easily pierces through any attacker's body."
Element shift: Jolthog is electric, Jolthog Cryst is ice.
In gameplay: The real pain in the ass is that there's no spawn points anywhere for Jolthog Cryst. They can show up as part of random events, where they're under attack by three Direhowl of equal level and quickly killed without player intervention. They might show up as cave Alphas, or imprisoned in a faction fort, but otherwise they don't appear anywhere. I didn't get any of these guys until the very end of the game because I simply forgot they existed.


mupdate. I don't know what prompts it to happen, but it's happened across three games I've played so far. That circle of exposed map to the southeast, indicating some kind of rocky spire in that direction. I haven't been. It's not a respawn point, so I can't have been there. Maybe it's an intentional hint that there are things across the sea that a player might not think to check the horizons for.


Alpha Gumoss is as low-leveled as Alpha Chillet was, way back when. Another Ancient Tech Point for me, along with the other rewards.


Talkin' Jank: No Seriously Take Some Time Off You Overstressed Bastard
If a Pal gets stressed from working too hard -- say, from being able to work at a station from anywhere on base without having to path to it, but it can't find the way to the feed basket or hot spring to take care of itself -- you can pick it up and throw it at the hot spring to take a load off. It'll restore a couple of sanity points, then hop out again. To get it back to functional, you have to repeatedly throw it back into the hot spring. It doesn't sound all that relaxing to me, but it works. But as we saw with Tombat before, sometimes the Pal can't find the hot spring even when hurled directly into it.


Ahh, what could be better than hovering ten feet above the ground, happily splashing about in the warm water pooled below you and eight feet to the right?


Eventually I make the connection between "this base doesn't let me build in the middle because the ground isn't ground" and "Pal pathfinding is never very good but it's usually not this obviously glitchy". I tear down the fuckin' tent, put up a foundation, and move the ranch and farms over there. I tear down the farms and ranch, build a foundation, and move the beds there. I tear down the existing beds, put up a structure, and move my production stations there. And sure enough, pathfinding mostly dials back to its usual level of merely bad.


Oh, hey, nice. That saves me some trouble.


Talkin' Pals: 029 Mozzarina, "Grade A Beef"
"Milk pours from this Pal like water from an open faucet, regardless of its gender. It's truly a mystery of life, although this mystery may be better left unsolved."
The lore: Yeah, Pals don't have different Partner Skills based on biological sex, so even the males lactate. Male Chikipi lay eggs, too.
The inspiration: more like Snorlactating amirite
The name: Mozzarella cheese is a cow's-milk cheese, sure, but cheese isn't in the game in any form.
In gameplay: Another "useless in combat but indispensible on the ranch", Mozzarina milk is a vital ingredient for cooking.

[nosimpleway]

Experience levels go to level 50. I'm past level 30. I guess it's time to do the last thing on the tutorial, huh.


I'm prompted to gather my party before venturing forth. Make sure all the players are ready before you go in! Even though I'm not on a multiplayer server. The group is given a time limit of ten minutes before the trials inside the Tower automatically fail and we're all ejected.




Inside the Tower is the open night sky, under some sort of nebula.


Slowly walking across the floor is... a miniskirt!


Boobs!


Hat!


People have criticized the game by saying that the Fortnite/anime-style human models don't match the cartoony art style of the Pals. I'm cool with there being a stylistic difference between people and Pals to illustrate how different they are, but the game usually tries to draw similarities between them, not differences. So like... swap 'em out. Take Pokemon, where people and Pokemon are different, and give them the style where Pokemon look cartoonish and people look like plastic figurines, then have this game give everyone Ken Sugimori Triangle Eyes.












Boss fight time.

[nosimpleway]

Zoe & Grizzbolt is tough, because all the tower bosses punch above their weight class. Things could be worse, Zoe is riding around on Grizzbolt but not using its Partner Skill. Those thirty thousand hit points serve only to prolong the fight and take quite a while to chew through, but it's time for this Fuddler to contribute something for once. Being a ground-element, Fuddler has type advantage. Grizzbolt can't do much against Fuddler, while Fuddler can do about 1000 damage at a time with one or two of its moves.


I can help. It's possible to score a critical hit against most Pals by shooting it in the face, but in this case Grizzbolt's face takes normal damage and Zoe herself is the weak point. Normally that means aiming at Zoe's face and shoulders as she peeks over Grizzbolt's head, but if I can circle around Grizzbolt while it's trying to hit Fuddler, I can fire my crossbow right into Zoe's ass. I'm honestly a little surprised the devteam gave Zoe bike shorts underneath that skirt, this seems like an easy way to put unnecessary panty shots into the game.


One of the main lessons the boss tries to teach is the tactical retreat. Two of Z&G's attacks have a long windup, including this one that uses an aiming laser to draw a bead on its target for several seconds before firing an electric bolt. If it's aiming at your active Pal, you can call them back into the Sphere for a moment. This confuses Grizzbolt so much that it fires the bolt straight into the sky.


I'll grant that the tactical swap might be more important if Z&G's attacks were doing more than 6 damage to Fuddler at a time, but it's the principle of the thing.


For comparison, here's Fuddler doing some kind of rock shotgun move.


Just like I can shoot at Zoe, it's perfectly valid for Z&G to target me with their attacks. But mostly they concentrate on the active Pal... or the empty air, if you're quick about recalling at the right moment.


I don't know what level you're supposed to fight Z&G, but 33 is probably a bit higher than intended. On the other hand, this is pretty clearly a feature planned around multiplayer games, so being overleveled is the only way a single player has any hope of doing the job within the time limit. The reward for overcoming this challenge: Five Ancient Technology Points.


Zoe ragdolls to the floor, but before you can kick her lifeless corpse around too much, the scene fades out.


When I regain control, I'm at the top of the Rayne Syndicate Tower, looking at the fast-travel statue that's up here.


Hello down there, fort from the beginning of the game! I see you've caught another Pal!
In fact I'm pretty sure it was another Dazzi.


Anyway, I've overthrown the Rayne Syndicate leader, dissolving the organization and forcing the second-in-command to take over the radio tower in Goldenrod City in a frantic search to find their missing leader. Nah, not really, the Rayne Syndicate troops are still all over the map, and if I wanted to fight Zoe & Grizzbolt again (for no reward) they're still in the tower. The Free Pal Alliance haven't even tried to move into Syndicate territory, preferring to stay near the center of the map and... well, continue to harass me with goddamn electric crossbow bolts.

[nosimpleway]

Having gotten that over with, it's back to business as usual. Two mupdates as I head northward, looking for Lifmunk Effigies and eggs again. Here I am crossing into the desert...
The desert! Right. I had things I was gonna do today!


Back to base to prepare, I spend some of those Ancient Tech Points I got from defeating Zoe Rayne to figure out the mystery of portable light sources. The hip lantern is a fashionable accessory that turns me into my own light source. Finally, I can take screenshots of things that happen at night and include them in this thread without them being too murky to see!


There's a gigantic desert in the top-right corner of the map, which I'd reached the bottom edge of earlier before I turned back. There's a smaller desert closer to the center of the map, too, and that's where I'm headed now. Desert areas tend to be populated by Ground- and Electric-type Pals, but the first things I see are flocks upon flocks of Tocotoco.


Fucking pain in the ass, they are. Dodge roll away from their explosion at just the right time, or say goodbye to a significant chunk of hit points.


The only upside to all the little bastards around is that those other little bastards, the ever-present and not-slowed-down-by-the-defeat-of-Zoe-Rayne-even-a-little Rayne Syndicate thugs, also have to deal with them.


Love to see it.


Also here: Digtoise. I catch every one I can.


Talkin' Pals: 067 Digtoise, the "Digging Machine"
"A walking contradiction, possessing the strongest shell and the only drill capable of piercing it. "Digtoise's Fable" is a popular children's tale."
The lore: It's both an unstoppable force and an immovable object! That'd make a good kids' story.
The inspiration: I think a Lakitu threw one of these at me one time
The name: Diggin' tortoise
In gameplay: Digtoise's Partner Skill starts its shell spinning, and can absolutely disintegrate mineral nodes. With how quickly its energy runs out, how long the recharge takes, and how hard it is to aim, it's kind of more trouble than it's worth. They've got Mining 3 and no other suitabilities, so they're good focused diggers at base.


Most Dumuds ignore the player, but this one was hostile once it spotted me. I guess it's mad because it's stuck in a tree. (Now it is stuck in a Pal Sphere, which is presumably better, but still.)


More Syndicate goons harassing the local Pals. They've upgraded to flamethrowers for fort defense now and handily fend off any of the Pals in the area.

[nosimpleway]

And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings
Look upon my fursona, ye mighty, and despair!


Alpha Pal beside remains. He's not really small, he's down in a valley, far away. Up close it's about the size of a person. If the giant statue and the -- well, the little bit you can see of this guy, I didn't want to get too close and risk it seeing me -- look familiar, we've seen 'em before. The Statue of Power is a statue of this guy.


(I do eventually spot an opportunity while Anubis wanders away to sneak in and nab the chest between the statue's feet, but the contents weren't anything special. Some money, some bread, and a schematic I didn't care about enough to screenshot it.)


The Digtoises, Dumuds, Tocotoco, and Hangyu I've been nabbing get me to level 34. I can build that Beakon Saddle I've been coveting, and an Improved Furnace capable of crafting the next tier of metal I need. Refined metal needs a source of carbon to mix in to make steel, despite the fact that the ore nodes themselves are pretty clearly copper instead of iron. Anyway... now where am I going to find coal?


There aren't any fast-travel points in the desert, and on the way back through more verdant pastures my attention is drawn to a nearby FAP fort. All the troops in the fort were fighting with a Pal, which isn't unusual, but in this case they were engaged with the Pal they'd already captured inside the cage. I freed the thing -- a Vanwyrm, the regular fire kind rather than the Vanwyrm Cryst I hatched a while back -- and fought off the rest of the guys. But why were they bullying the Pal they'd already caught, anyway?


I find a new fast-travel point near the Sealed Realm of the Spirits and hastily take this mupdate while a Katress pummels me with magic. This is a ruin in the middle of Moonless Shores. That's Windswept Hills to the southeast, Gobfin's Domain and Verdant Brook to the northeast, and Marsh Island to the east. Northwest is Twilight Dunes, the whole goal of this expedition and where I saw the Alpha Anubis.


I set Arsox to work cooking all the Dumud meat I found in the desert, which goes inside the Stay Fresh Cheese Bag once it's done. But while I'm not in any grand hurry to start making it, I finally have all the ingredients I need for cake. The eggs I found in my journey hatch into Robinquill, Lovander, a couple of Swee, and Maraith.


Talkin' Pals: 048 Robinquill, the "Archer of the Forest"
"A pal that is very similar to humans who hunt and live in the forests. It may prove to be a key for understanding what Pals are and how they diverged from humans so long ago."
The lore: There you have it, Pals are a genetic offshoot of human beings. Don't think about it too hard.
The inspiration: If Decidueye was a humanoid instead of an owl, and somebody swapped Gallade's head on top, it would be a Robinquill.
The name: It's a green-clad forest-dwelling archer, bringing to mind Robin Hood. I guess the arrow-ish projectiles it shoots are kind of like a porcupine's quills. Or maybe those are feathers on its head crest and it's shooting those. It's not clear what its ammunition is, or even where its bow comes from.
In gameplay: They have a lot of different work suitabilities, but between Planting, Handiwork, Lumbering, Medicine, Transporting, and Gathering, become pretty unreliable at doing whatever job it is they're intended to do.


Talkin' Pals: 048b Robinquill Terra, the "Archer of the Sands"
"A Pal that lives a hunting life in rocky areas and is very close to humans. When bones are found in ruins, there are always human bones found nearby as well."
In gameplay: Not being grass-element like Robinquill Regular, they shed Planting and Gathering suitabilities. So they're slightly better able to concentrate on a task, but not by much.


Talkin' Pals: 053 Swee, the "Curious Floof"
"Crawling along the ground, it eats microscopic organic matter. After a while, it discharges any substances that provide no nutrition. By using it as a mop for cleaning, everyone wins!"
The lore: So it eats organic dust but spits, like, sand back out onto the floor. A Roomba isn't that discriminating.
The inspiration: A dust bunny, probably. Not exactly one of those, otherwise it would probably have rabbit ears instead of cat ears. I dunno, would someone make a capturable monster based on a tub-and-tile cleaning product?
The name: There's a payoff coming.
In gameplay: Going by combat stats, Swee are the weakest Pals in the game, tied with Chikipi. That's kind of sad.


Talkin' Pals: 066 Maraith, the "Messenger of Death"
"It relishes the peculiar scent living things give off when they are near death. If a Mariath has taken a liking to you. It is safe to assume that is why."
The lore: Rather than "it's cute but spooky!" or "it's nice until it's dangerous!" I can appreciate the occasional Pal that's just menacing and dangerous as it is.
The inspiration: Doesn't look like anything I recognize.
The name: Best guess I have is "mare-wraith".
In gameplay: A dark type with middlin' combat power and no particularly interesting work suitabilities makes it easy to pass over.


Talkin' Pals: 069 Lovander, the "Pal on the Prowl"
"Seeking a night of love, it is always chasing someone around. At first, it only showed interest in other Pals, but in recent years even humans have become the target of its debauchery."
The lore: Oof. Okay. Lot to unpack here, and I'm not sure I'm really the person to do it. As far as I can tell the setup is "People are gonna want to fuck these Pals anyway, right? Like no matter how inhuman or monstrous we make them, somebody's going to want to bone it." And then the punchline is "What if we intentionally made that really creepy and weird?" Lovander is the sort of creature that you'd expect to see in a furry's ao3 submission, cranked up to 11, and not played for laughs.
The inspiration: Salazzle. Like, obviously. Making it entirely bipedal instead of semi-upright means it resembles Mewtwo a bit, and there might be a hint of Rouge the Bat if you squint, but yeah. That's Salazzle. A Salazzle that skips the mind-control pheremone bit and just rapes whatever it can catch.
The name: "Love" doesn't really factor into it, does it. I guess its color is almost, not quite, lavender. And it's a lizard sort of monster, which are shaped kind of like salamanders? So we have three almost-accurate ideas coming together to name a thing. And they're Paldeck entry #69 for a reason, in alpha releases they were #49 and they moved it specifically for the joke.
In gameplay: They drop Cake (used for breeding) and various kinds of suspicious medicine. Every design decision that went into this thing was to make it as over-the-top creepy as possible.


I need two more Electric Organs before I can craft my Beakon Saddle, so I head to Small Settlement to buy them from the merchant. Quicker and easier than hunting down Sparkits or whatever. When I arrive, I find out why the PIDF officer was so nonchalant about the nearby villagers having died: he killed them himself. Apparently sometimes they just spawn hostile to one another, and the level 5 unarmed citizens have no chance against the level 30 guy with a gun and body armor.


Well, none of my business.


Back at base, I fit Beakon with a new saddle and swap it into the party. Digtoise can come too. I feel like Beakon's flying speed is pretty close to Direhowl's running speed, so I'm pretty sure I also swap Direhowl out for another Cattiva. I don't have another Pal I want to level up for combat right now, and that +50 carry weight is always useful.

[nosimpleway]

As the name implies, Digtoises are good at digging. Maybe they're also good at toising? I dunno. But put to work on ore deposts at base...


they quickly clear the yard and get to work in the neglected stone pit.


aww yiss
As you might have guessed just from having played video games before, the gigantic tower roof where I built my base is a special landmark. It's the spawn point for four chests. And this time, one of them was a rare red chest. One of the others gives me the Gold Key I need to open it, and inside is a schematic for an Uncommon-grade Assault Rifle.
The first firearm in the game is the Makeshift Handgun, which unlocks at level 25. It sucks and I skipped it. There's also a Handgun, not makeshift, at level 29, and I've been looking for the materials for it. It was on the list. At level 36 I can get a Single-Shot Rifle, which between its attack power and reload time is more or less the Crossbow But Better
The Assault Rifle unlocks at level 45. It's endgame gear! With this schematic, I can build one right now -- or whenever I get the polymer and refined metal I need to put it together, I guess. It's twelve levels early and one rarity level up.


Right, back to business. Y'know, inasfar as I can stick to one task, because this game has Stardew Valley levels of "wait before you go do that thing you set out to do you should handle this thing you just noticed, right now". Or put more diplomatically,

you switch gears often enough that nothing's wearing off its welcome.

I set out to put together a Production Assembly Line, didn't I? The whole reason for the trip to Twilight Dunes was to get the High Quality Pussy Jelly I needed to construct it. Dumuds aren't always the first Pal encountered that will drop Pal Oil but I wanted to map out Twilight Dunes anyway.
The weapon assembly line is the next thing I need for a base upgrade, followed by an Improved Furnace that I can also put togther immediately, so I'm up to base level 16 now. Next I need a Large Pal Bed, even comfier than a Fluffy Pal Bed, but those don't unlock until experience level 36.

[nosimpleway]

Part 10: A Wealth of Foxes



There's some impressive architecture scattered around the map, including some gigantic Pal statues. The Sealed Realm of the Winged Tyrant is marked with a gigantic statue of a dragon that does not represent the Sealed Tyrant stuck inside.


Sometimes Mammorests spawn two at a time, hostile to each other. "When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers", but these two decided to take their fight to the sandy desert. Also they are themselves the grass. Oh, forget it.



The point is, I wait until they've pummeled each other a bit, and nab the one at lower HP. The other one isn't hostile to me, so it leaves me alone while I throw the Spheres at its former rival before the catch takes. Then, since I'm at full health and the other Mammorest is at about a third, I shoot it a couple times to get it down to critical and catch it too.
Mammorest is okay as a Pal but tbh honest I'm mostly interested in the dozen-plus stacks of Leather and High Quality Pussy Jelly they drop.



Having unlocked it last time with the last couple of base upgrades, I'm getting up my third and final base. I stake my claim on a little desert hillside.


My first base was on a little mesa, hard to reach from the ground below. My second base was at the top of a constructed tower, also hard to reach from the ground. This base is at ground level, and hoo boy, nothing pisses off the locals like a new base going up.


"Here's a distraction to keep you from doing the thing" being three-quarters of the guys stationed at this fort charging over the hill and attacking me, I figured the job being mostly done I'd come over and finish it. So hey, free Mau Cryst. I bet it sucked to be out here in the desert sun like that, huh little ice-type?


Talkin' Jank: Transparent Mesh
When a structure is torn down, there's a little visual effect of debris flying every which way. This includes the Palbox, and the Palbox model includes the invisible walls around the edge that mark the border of the base. When broken, gigantic chunks of now-visible debris rain from the sky as that all falls apart.
This screenshot captures why I want a base out here in the first place: those are coal nodes. Coal and ore smelted together make Refined Metal, which is a required ingredient for a ton of midgame recipes.

[nosimpleway]

Would you fuckers knock it off for just a goddamn minute


For bases that need them, there are Defensive Walls that can be built. They don't need a foundation and can usually clip through the landscape to make sure there aren't any gaps that hostile mobs can sneak through. But they have completely flat bottoms and that bottom rests wherever the middle of the wall is, so they look awful when built on hills. But it keeps the Rayne Syndicate from coming over to shoot me, and keeps Digtoises and Tocotocos from walking over to break my foundations, so up they go.
(The first defensive wall you can build is made of wood, but they're as flammable as any other wooden structure, so I skip them.)


Ugh. Defensive walls also catch the blue glow of the base border and I kind of hate how that looks, so I have to be particularly careful to place them far enough away from the border that doesn't happen. I'm going to have to rebuild these once the visual effect bugs me enough.


Hmm.


Hey here's a distraction, some Syndicate dumbass pulled hate from Alpha Anubis!


You love to see it.


I pull back and look at a base and go "eh, I don't love it..." but since that happens every time it's hardly noteworthy.


I put a couple Digtoises to work on the coal nodes before I head back to Windswept Hills base to check in there and pick up some more building materials.


hey, you, back there


This dumb idiot fell off the cliff and can't figure out how to get back up, even though he can fly.

[nosimpleway]

I've finally got all the parts in place to actually use this damn thing I keep building. I grab a Beakon, not the one I'm using as a mount, and throw it inside.


Next comes my Lucky Lamball. They immediately get to bonin', but it'll be a while before there's any payoff.

Talkin' Mechanics: Pal Breeding
Of course there's a way to splice Pals together. Monster collecting games always have one.
The Breeding Farm is so absurdly huge that it was actually kind of a pain in the ass to build at Cold Shores, where half the ground can't support structures. I couldn't get a group of foundations wide enough to hold the whole thing and ended up building it wherever I could ground that's made of ground. There's a wide pen for Pals to wander around, straw piles for them to ignore and not sleep on, and a storage container on one side into which only Cake may be placed.
No Pals will work the fuckin' tent on their own volition. They have to be thrown into it by the player. Once there, one male Pal and one female Pal can begin a lengthy work process, filling a meter. Once the meter is full, one of the cakes in the storage box is consumed and the Pals produce one egg. The process then starts over.
Any kind of Pal can work the fuckin' tent. Unlike Pokemon, there are no sexless Pals, and there are no Pals of only one biological sex. (Sexes aren't always even: Kingpaca are 90% male, and Beegarde and Elizabee are 90% female, with some other species between those extremes.) Every Pal can breed with any other Pal, and any two parents of a given species combination will always result in the same child species. What comes out?
It's complicated. Needlessly so. Every Pal species has an internal value, with Chikipi at one end and the endgame legendaries at the other. Average the value of mom and dad, and whatever Pal has an internal value closest to that is the one in the egg. Since every Pal of a given species has the same value, and the average of two identical numbers is that number, every Pal species breeds true. With parents of different species it's a crapshoot, because there's no way to discover or document the process in-game without trial and error.

Talkin' Mechanics: Special Breeding Partners
There are a few special breeding combinations that lead to unusual results. I mentioned before that Jolthog Cryst never appears in the wild, but it can always be bred by crossing a Jolthog with a Pengullet. Apart from breeding two Jolthog Crysts in the first place, this is the only way to get a Jolthog Cryst egg out of the breeding farm -- no other combination of Pals will result in one.
There's also the matter of inheritance.

Talkin' Mechanics: Inheritance
Of course breeding mechanics in a video game take a goddamn long time to explain. They're never simple.
When bred, a Pal egg has a chance of inheriting moves, talents, or traits from their parents. There's a flat percentage chance that any move, the value for a talent, or a passive trait will be passed along, chosen from either the mother or the father. This means that long, selective breeding chains can result in Pals with a collection of powerful traits and strong stats, if a player is willing to roll and reroll (and reroll and reroll and reroll) to get exactly the Pal they want. There's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.

Talkin' Mechanics: You Want This Cake?
Cake is a food item that requires flour, eggs, milk, and honey. Flour is made from wheat, so it takes functional farms to grow, and a mill for some Pal with Watering to grind up. Eggs, milk, and honey are produced by Chikipi, Mozzarina, and Beegarde in a ranch. This of course is assuming that Beegarde can be arsed to do you fucking job, stay at the ranch, no dammit put down the ore and go make honey
Cake takes a frankly absurd amount of time to cook, too. Any other food item can be finished pretty quickly, depending on the Kindling suitability of whoever's on KP, but cake always takes a couple minutes. It takes twenty minutes to rot, which is a pretty good turnaround, and cake placed in storage in a Breeding Farm never decays at all.
Why bother? Cake is the necessary fuel for the Breeding Farm. Pals be like "Man I don't want none of that unless she got some cake, you know what I'm sayin'?" and as an ass man, I can respect that.



Now normally after a giant text dump like that I'd probably wrap the update and leave it, but I haven't found any new Pals to write up yet, so I'm-a keep on truckin'. You all just tl;dr-ed that anyway, right?
I leave Beakon and Lamball to do their thing and go hunt Alphas for a bit. Alpha Univolt has a seven-level advantage over the Digtoise I keep in my pocket, so Digtoise can't do much to damage Univolt. But it has type advantage and is tanky enough that Univolt can't really damage it either, so it serves an effective decoy while I whittle Univolt's HP down and catch it. Do I need to keep listing Alpha fight prizes? It feels redundant.


Talkin' Pals: 056 Univolt, the "Swift Deity"
"It used to be considered an emissary of the Thunder God, and thus was not hunted by people. However, after witnesses osberved one die from a lightning strike, its reverence faded, and it quite literally fell into the role of a workhorse."
The lore: the thunder-god yeeteth and the thunder-god yoinketh away
The inspiration: It's horse-shaped and has a lightning-bolt pattern, so comparison to Zebstrika are inevitable. But as I feel like I mention for half the electric-types in the game, "slap lightning bolt patterns onto its fur" is the low-hanging fruit of drawing an electric-powered monster.
The name: High voltage unicorn. This was another Discord submission that was somehow better than whatever working name the devteam had been using.
In gameplay: I've stared at this text entry field for ten minutes and I cannot think of any way that Univolt is at all noteworthy or interesting.


I don't catch Al-swee-pha because it is level 11 and I throw my new level 31 Univolt at it, which KOs it in two hits. Here's the writeup anyway.


Talkin' Pals: 054 Sweepa, the "Majesty of Fuzz"
"While hibernating, a large number of Swee hide within its voluminous body hair. The most ever recorded is 101."
The lore: Hi Swee, I'm dad.
The inspiration: A Swee, but larger and more paternal, as reflected in its grand mustache.
The name: Swee vacuum up detritus from the ground to eat, and this one is a father figure to them. It's Swee's pa. A sweeper. Get it? Har har.
In gameplay: Sweepa isn't very good but its Partner Skill (and Swee's Partner Skill) power it up depending on how many non-pa Swees are in the party. It also holds the dubious distinction of being the slowest ridable Pal in the game.



When I return, there are two eggs waiting in the breeding pen. I hatch two Digtoises, each with the Artisan passive inherited from dad and the Lucky passive inherited from mom. Plus some other stuff, but who cares, those are the attributes I was looking for. Artisan is +30% to work speed and Lucky is +15% to both Attack and Work Speed. I don't know if those are additive or multiplicative but either way these two 'toises should be able to bust ore nodes by just walking near them.


Good enough for me.


Of course, pathfinding is still pretty bad. As long as the coal node outside is getting broken up and the Digtoise isn't doing damage to the walls and floor, I don't care enough to pick it up and throw it outside.

[nosimpleway]

This dumb idiot couldn't figure out the way to get to the feed box and eat, so he's feeling bummed on account of how awful it is working here. I pick him up and throw him at the food box, at which point it is nighttime and he goes to bed.
Ugh. I hit the Palbox, put Dumbassom in my party, and stuff him full of berries myself. With his belly full he makes it to the hot spring once he wakes up in the morning and is right as rain after a refreshing bath.


Don't like that.


It's a bunch of Lovanders.


Okay, that's pretty funny. Through some accident of pathfinding one of them yought themselves off the cliff opposite and took like a quarter of its own HP out from the fall.


Unable to find their way into my base, they group together in one little crevice at the bottom of the cliff, like the Leezpunks and Incinerams did before. I manage to catch two of them before the raid expires and the rest run away.


I finish exploring the rest of the island on the west side of the map. There's not another fast-travel statue there to prompt for a mupdate but here's one anyway.


The easternmost part of the map is broken open by some sort of lava fissure.


There are fire-type Pals mixed in with the usual spawns in the area, Robinquills and the like. And Syndicate thugs who obligingly fight the Robinquills on my behalf so I can catch them without spending my own ammo.


Elsewhere, there are some Robinquills I have to fight myself.


This one ran past me, as though it were fleeing into the cave complex I just came from. I turned around to see what the hell was going on, and the Alpha sucker-punched me for my trouble. So I did not catch any of these Robinquills, nor did I get the loot from the last room in the cave. That's... surprisingly good tactics, from a pathfinding bug.

[nosimpleway]

This dumb idiot would have starved himself to insanity up there if I hadn't come along and busted the coal node myself for him to get down.


Oh word? Pump-Action Shotgun unlocks at level 40. Like the Assault Rifle before, I now don't need to reach that level and unlock the tech to build it now that I have this schematic.


Here's around where I found it. I've been through this area plenty of times while building Cold Shores base, but there's more to the area than just that.


Arsox fucked off from finishing this Cake. See that tiny little sliver of black at the top of the orange circular progress bar? Cake takes so damn long to cook that just this last tiny bit takes over thirty seconds. I could make most other dishes from start to finish in that time.


A frozen egg I found nets me a Wumpo.


Talkin' Pals: 091 Wumpo, the "Guardian of the Snowy Mountain"
"Researchers once tried to shave off its hair to reveal its true form. In the end, only hair was left, as if that was all there was to begin with."
The lore: awk-waaard
The inspiration: It's a big floofy yeti. Being just a pair of eyes gazing out from inside a pile of hair evokes Tangrowth, a pair of eyes gazing out from inside a pile of vines.
The name: Named in the Discord but damned if I know what the name's supposed to mean.
In gameplay: Wumpo is nice to have not because they're strong in combat (they're certainly tough but their attack is low), but because they're strong in general. Having one in the party increases the Tamer's carry weight more than any other Pal, and that bonus stacks with multiple Wumpo. Sadly I am twelve levels short of unlocking the Wumpo Saddle that lets me use this ability.
Since no Pal has Lumbering 4, Wumpo (and its elemental variant) are tied for first place at Lumbering 3. Wumpo (and its elemental variant) have the highest Transporting suitability at 4, but it's nearly impossible to get them to actually do it when there's any chance of them exercising their Handiwork, Lumbering, or Planting/Cooling instead. Use a Helzephyr.


Talkin' Pals: 091b - Wumpo Botan, the "Guardian of Grassy Fields"
"Researchers once tried to cut the grass off its body to reveal its true form. In the end, only grass was left, as if that was all there was to begin with."
Type shift: Wumpo is ice, Wumpo Botan is grass.
The lore: Wumpo is a yeti, so I guess that makes Wumpo Botan a sasquatch. Not that it actually lives in forests or the grassy fields in its title; it only spawns in barren, rocky Wildlife Sanctuaries. idk
In gameplay: Wumpo's main utility is its carry weight boost, and Wumpo Botan gives less of a boost than Wumpo Regular. That said, Wumpo Botan has the highest combat stats of all the single-type grass-elementals, so it may have a place in a combat party. That said, its stats are heavily weighted toward defense, so if you're looking to do some damage instead of protect yourself, take a Lyleen. Or a Warsect. Or whatever. I'm not your dad.


Bred egg nets me Anubis. Beakon passed on its Artisan again, and I mixed in a Lovander that happened to have Swift (+30% move speed).


Talkin' Pals: 100 Anubis, the "Guardian of the Dark Sun"
"Once seen as a symbol of nobility, and an idol for those who shunned wealth and power. Yet over time, this Pal became a token of death."
The lore: I dunno about a token of death but they're damn handy to have around both in combat and doing base work.
The inspiration: I pointed out that the statue of Anubis looks like a statue of Lucario when I first built one, and brushed it off as Lucario simply being the most generic anthro-furry creature imaginable. I stand by that.
The name: Lifted right out of Egyptian myth, matching its "jackal in Egyptian dress" design.
In gameplay: Anubis is great for a bunch of reasons. It's the strongest ground-type Pal in the game, with three exclusive moves no other Pal can learn. Wild-caught, it has the "Earth Emperor" passive, boosting its ground-type attacks and those of any children it breeds who inherit it (my Anubices, not bred from that Alpha, lack this passive). It's got the higheset Handiwork suitability in the game, so it can assemble structures and items in the blink of an eye.
And Anubis can be bred from some surprisingly low-tier mons. By the time the player reaches the parts of the map where Beegardes show up (thus making honey available, thus making cake available, thus making breeding available), the player can already reach both Vanwyrm and Cinnamoth. Crossbreed those for an Anubis, then leave them be to get a dozen more. They're great.


Last level I unlocked Carbon Fiber and Circuit Boards, now I have the ability to make High-Quality Cloth. These are the mid-tier crafting materials made from other crafting materials that tend to show up in games with long tech trees, ya know? Carbon fiber is used for most lategame technology, circuit boards are needed to make the endgame assembly lines, and high-quality cloth is needed for endgame armor and those Large Pal Beds.
None of this stuff is easy, of course. Carbon fiber takes either an investment of coal that I'd rather use making refined metal, or charcoal made from rather a lot of wood. Circuit boards require polymer (made from two pussy jelly) and a hunk of quartz (an ore I haven't so much as seen yet). High-quality cloth requires ten wool instead of the mere two that regular cloth demands.
The next base upgrade demands two large Pal beds, so I'm on the hook for twenty high-quality cloth, or 200 wool. Melpaca's gonna be busy.


Anubis moves quickly, and some of the ones I'm hatching now have Swift on top of their normally zippy run speed. It is kind of weird that they Naruto-run.


It takes a long time to craft an Assault Rifle. Two Anubises each with Handiwork 4, working beside one another on an assembly line, can put it together before the eventual heat-death of the universe.


Now to... well, start over with the materials for a pump-action shotgun.


The next problem is that these advanced guns is that they take their own ammo, and the ammo unlocks at the same experience level as the guns themselves. The drops I've managed to get from the Rayne Syndicate mooks I've killed already aren't going to last long, the assault rifle fits 24 rounds in the magazine.

[nosimpleway]

Oh, word? Here's the rare version of the pump-action. Guess I'm holding out for even more carbon fiber and polymer.


Yeah, Beakon! See how they fuckin' like it! Being a mid-level cave, the likes of which I haven't seen much of, there are some new Pals hanging out inside:


Talkin' Pals: 052 Grintale, with the "Marshmallow Body"
"Grintale's eyes light up the moment anyone enters its territory.
This is no figure of speech-its eyes literally light up."
The lore: It's true, they do.
The inspiration: That's Purrserker's face, or for us old fogeys, it's Kamineko from Azumanga Daioh. The headlamp eyes bring to mind the Catbus from the same film that gave us Mossanda.
The name: It's grinning like a Cheshire cat, this one. And, uh, it does have a nekomata-style forked tail I guess. Did it lift the "my tail is a distinguishing feature but I'm going to intentionally use the homophone for it in my name" from Ninetales?
In gameplay: They're not particularly strong or tough, their Partner Skill is nothing to write home about, and their only suitability is Gathering. They're just not very noteworthy. They do drop pussy jelly, I guess there's that.


Talkin' Pals: 075 Katress, the "Phantasmal Feline"
"With the power of shadows it produces arcane phenomena. It prefers to eat food raw and is particularly hostile towards Wixen."
The lore: It is really important that Katress prefers its food raw. Wait, no it's not, it gets the same nutrition boost from cooked foods as anything else.
The inspiration: Witches have cats as familiars, right? What if the cat familiar was itself the witch? This means it looks like the Pokemon that was also based on a witchy motif, Mismagius.
The name: Cat sorceress, or possibly cat enchantress.
In gameplay: Sometimes wandering around in the wilds of the Moonless Shore it's possible to find a group of Katress in a circle, doing... something. It is a mystery.


The boss fight goes, uh, kind of poorly. I haven't gotten ten Cinnamoths yet, so I'm trying to catch the mooks before I take on the Alpha. I'm paying too much attention to throwing Spheres at the little guys and the Alpha manages to knock out my Beakon.


So once I'm done with the fight, I collect my treasure and leave... and I'm stuck out here in the wilderness without a mount. Gonna be time to climb a bit. It's a long walk and several cliffsides to get to any of the fast-travel statues. (Without any death penalties in the world settings, I could have just hit "Respawn" on the options menu to kill myself instantly, but I figured I could catch a few more Pals for the experience on the way.)


A bunch of eggs I managed to find before and after the cave nets me Foxcicle, Kitsun, Verdash, and Cawgnito.


Talkin' Pals: 044 Cawgnito, the "Shadow-Cloaked Schemer"
"Long ago it freely soared the skies. After losing a contest with Galeclaw, it abandoned the skies and now lives a quiet nocturnal life."
The lore: Sure enough, it's a flightless bird.
The inspiration: Once the internet collectively discovered plague doctors like ten or fifteen years ago they've been showing up everywhere. Plague doctors dress in black, have long beaklike masks, and tend to hang around dying people, so the obvious comparison to any kind of animal would be a crow.
The name: I do not think, therefore I do not am.
In gameplay: Look, I'm not an expert. I'm not the one sleeping on a mattress stuffed with crisp dollar bills from selling a viral sensation video game. But if you have two birds and one of them is sneaky and one of them is sagacious and both of them are nocturnal... why don't you make the smart one the crow called "Cawgnito" and free up the owl design to play up how they're stealthy ambush predators? That way you don't need an awful portmanteau like "Hoocrates".


Talkin' Pals: 057 Foxcicle, with "Claws of Ice"
"On nights when the aurora is visible, it looks up towards the sky and begins to howl a beautiful song. This does, however, leave it vulnerable to attacks from enemies."
The lore: Howling "At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, loca--" and then they get swarmed by angry Chikipi or something.
The inspiration: Another fox. This one's different! It's ice! Wait hang on there's an alternate region-form Vulpix? What type is thaGOD DAMMIT
The name: Fox that makes icicles. At least it's not another portmanteau off of "vixen", I guess. But then, this was another Discord-voted name.
In gameplay: Between being easy to get and having Cooling as their own suitability, Foxcicles are a go-to choice for keeping the base's refrigerators running. But the way Cooling works is that the refrigeration structure is just another storage structure unless the Pal is doing the Cooling job. Food spoilage resumes at its normal rate as soon as the Pal turns away, and Foxcicles gotta sleep at night. I use a Vanwyrm Cryst.


Talkin' Pals: 061 Kitsun, the "Guardian of the Azure Flames"
"Despite its appearance, Kitsun is extremely sensitive and will flee into a cave when spooked. Long ago, it was considered an ill omen if one were found nearby."
The lore: "It runs and hides in caves" is a reference to the Japanese goddess Amaterasu, because...
The inspiration: ...the game files call it Amaterasu directly. So it's a direct callback to the goddess wolf from that one Capcom franchise.
The name: How many foxes are we up to now? Like three? Four? This one's a kitsuni spirit fox, with emphasis on "sun" since it's a fire-type.
In gameplay: They're needlessly difficult to find because they're a rare spawn that only appears at night. With that in mind, they're not dark-types, and not nocturnal, so they only spawn asleep.


Talkin' Pals: 077 Verdash, the "Gale of the Forest"
"Land that Verdash has run across becomes extremely fertile, with thick vegetation growing there soon after. It will not run anywhere that herbicide has been used."
The lore: Horseshit. Wild Verdash are only found on one little island made entirely of barren rock.
The inspiration: Dip a Cinderace in green paint and glue Hisuan Arcanine's neck ruff on, and that's a Verdash.
The name: It has high foot speed and (allegedly) leaves lush growth wherever it grows. Verdant and dash.
In gameplay: They have five different work suitabilities: Planting, Lumbering, and Transporting at 2 and Handiwork and Gathering at 3. They're good helpers for bases that farm food, particularly since the only Pals with equal or higher Gathering come at the very end of the game.


I still need a ranch and the materials it provides, but I'm getting sick of the pathfinding up at Cold Shores. I tear down the ranch there and rebuild it in the desert, which... immediately distracts the Lamballs I was using to carry the coal into hanging out in the ranch and producing wool. That's not bad! I do need wool! But I also need someone to carry the coal.


I move the ranch back to Cold Shores and replant my farms in the desert instead. Planters and water-ers get much less distracted than ranch mooks.


That's still less bad than Anubis getting distracted and trying to fight off a Syndicate raid. You just hatched, girl, you are level one, please stay safe inside the base.


confy

Talkin' Jank: Pal Beds
The game warns that large Pal beds are necessary to give particularly large Pals a place to sleep, as they can't fit on fluffy Pal beds. Except they can indeed fit on fluffy beds just fine, for all the usual benefits. And that's good! Beds are first-come first-served once night falls, and as pictured there's nothing stopping some of the tiniest Pals from taking up an entire large bed by themselves.

[nosimpleway]

Four Tombats, in perfect sync, each moving and hitting the ore node the exact same way at the exact same time. Weird. Eerie.


Headed to the southwesternmost landmass on the map. This is the entrance for Mount Obsidian.


Spoilers: Mount Obsidian is a volcano. Going up the mountainside is too hot to handle, so I'm going to have to go around the coastline where it's still nice and cool. I have a single heat-resist accessory, but it's not enough to fend off HP drain from being around open lava flows.



That's okay, because what I'm looking for is on the coast, not on the mountainside. This is Fisherman's Point. As with Small Settlement, here are virtually no citizens here that aren't either guards or merchants. The one who sells gear sells fire crossbows, fire arrows, fire resistance rings, and the heat-resistant shirt. The Pal merchant sells fire-types almost exclusively. There's a theme here, and that theme is: bottom of the volcano.


But the whole reason I came is this guy's inventory over here. He sells ammunition, including the stuff I can't make yet. I stock up.


Fisherman's Point also has a merchant sells seeds, so I don't need to go grind Pal drops for them. I pick up enough tomato seeds to plant a couple of farms, and enough lettuce seeds to plant those as soon as I unlock the tech. Yes, planting lettuces is far more difficult than tomatoes, tomatoes more complex than wheat, and wheat more complex than berries. I'm no agronomist so I don't know how accurate that tier list is, but it's still pretty video games that I haven't caught enough wild animals to know how to plant lettuce.


The volcano is simply plump with Pal eggs. There are tons of egg spawn points on the slopes, but certainly no shortage of them on the beach. I pick up Leezpunk Ignis, Gobfin Ignis, Wixen, Reptyro, and Pyrin.


Talkin' Pals: 031 Gobfin, the "Sea Thug"
"Long ago, it was a large and powerful aquatic Pal. As food became scarce it evolved to live on land. Since walking requires much energy, it gradually became smaller and is now a small and puny Pal."
The lore: That... actually kind of makes sense.
The inspiration: Shark Pokemon look like sharks, not horrible little bipedal gremlins. Maybe "Morloc, but shark instead of anglerfish".
The name: Nasty, brutish, short, and topped with a shark fin. It doesn't much resemble the actual animal named "goblin shark", though. (This too is a fandom-submitted name.)
In gameplay: A Gobfin's Partner Skill increases the player character's attack power as long as it's in the party. Even a Tamer who never releases the thing from its Sphere can benefit from having one (or more, they stack) around, as long as they're fighting other stuff themselves and not letting the other Pals do it.
Wild Gobfins live in an area called "Gobfin's Turf", which is just goddamn loaded with the things. They spawn in groups of two to four and aggress on sight. Since Gobfin's Turf is a flat sandy shoal area, the line of sight for a Gobfin to spot the player can be pretty far away. Getting attacked by ten or twelve Gobfin at a time isn't unusual.


Talkin' Pals: 031b Gobfin Ignis, the "Volcano Thug"
"Once upon a time, it was a giant and powerful aquatic Pal. However, with the dwindling availability of food, it ventured onto land. As a consequence of burning many calories to walk, it astonishingly awakened its power to control fire!"
The lore: That... doesn't make any sense at all.
In gameplay: Has the same Partner Skill as Gobfin Regular. They're also aggressive and spawn in groups, but compared to Gobfin's Turf the volcanic slopes where Gobfin Ignis appear have much steeper terrain, fewer spawn points, and other Pals to spawn. Finding more than three or four at a time is unusal.


Talkin' Pals: 058 Pyrin, the "Steed of Flames"
"It's entire body has evolved into a highly efficient radiator, gifting it with astounding stamina. When someone has mounted it, this Pal takes caution not to burn them."
The lore: Listen I get that if you're doing a horse-shaped monster you do the mane up in flame or mist or clouds or whatever. But a fire horse where you're explicitly pointing out "it doesn't burn a rider it trusts"? Come on. You're making it a bit too obvious.
The inspiration: Unicorn? Unicorns wish they were me! I am a denizen of the skies; a companion to the gods. I am a ki-rin! Unicorns are doomed to tread the earth, whereas ki-rin can fly! We can control the weather, speak with our minds, summon up to 32 cubic feet of soft goods, and cast spells equal to those of the greatest wizards! Evil beings that would laugh at a unicorn hide their faces and weep in terror at the approach of a ki-rin!
The name: Pyro ki-rin
In gameplay: Okay, D&D ki-rin can do those things. This one is just a middlin' fire-elemental.


Talkin' Pals: 058b Pyrin Noct, the "Steed of Darkness"
"It burns mysterious dark matter as energy and expels the remaining particles from its body. If someone rides it, they should take care so as not to gallop down the path of darkness."
In gameplay: Somewhat more useful than Pyrin Regular on account of its dark typing allowing it to keep doing Kindling work overnight.


Talkin' Pals: 076 Wixen, the "Fire-Licked Furball"
"With the power of light, it produces arcane phenomena. It prefers to eat food well-done and is particularly hostile towards Katress."
The lore: We got a cat witch and now we got a fox wizard. Naturally, they hate each other.
The inspiration: Why does this game have so many foxes? Why are so many fox monsters fire-type? Must every one of them be directly compared with either Vulpix or Delphox?
The name: It's a vixen that resembles a candle, what with the flame on the end of its hat. Like its hat is a candle wick. Wick vixen.
In gameplay: The lore that Katress and Wixen despise each other has no effect on gameplay. They don't spawn in the same places or the same times so they're never hostile to one another in the wild, and once caught by the Pal Tamer they cooperate in a party or doing base work just fine. You can even throw one of each into the breeding farm and they'll hate-fuck out little Caprity babies for you.


Talkin' Pals: 084 Blazehowl, the "Crimson Goliath"
"While it prefers raw meat, it always ends up eating well-done meat. This is due to its blistering claws, which it uses as its weapon—it simply doesn't realize its prey gets burned to a crisp."
The lore: That's actually kind of funny.
The inspiration: "Do Teostra but make it an anime"
The name: At least Direhowl actually howls sometimes.
In gameplay: If you want to hunt Mammorests for their pussy jelly, bring a Blazehowl along. Their Partner Skill forces extra item drops from grass-element Pals.


Talkin' Pals: 084b: Blazehowl Noct, the "Inferno Goliath"
"While it prefers raw meat, it always ends up eating tainted meat. This is due to its dark claws, which it uses as its weapon—it simply doesn't realize its prey got cursed."
Type shift: Blazehowl is fire, Blazehowl Noct is fire/dark.
In gameplay: It is Blazehowl enough to do Kindling work but it is also dark-element, so it is superior to Blazehowl Regular in that it can do Kindling work without needing to sleep.


I consider a foray into the desert island to the northeast -- called the Dessicated Desert -- but it's still a bit too rich for me.


I can sneak around the eastmost side, because I'm headed for a particular landmark.

[nosimpleway]

Remember I had to build my fuckin' tent on the ground at the Cold Shores base, rather than putting it on a foundation. This leads to the same pathfinding issues I'd had with every other workstation, despite that breeding Pals never need to leave the tent in the first place. Get to work, Lovander! Wanting to get laid is your entire schtick!


Anyway. That was a big trip to go all the way around the east edge of the desert, so lots of eggs. I get Dinossom Lux, Broncherry, and Robinquill Terra.


Talkin' Pals: 086 Broncherry, the "Winds of Spring"
"Its scent drastically changes before and after pairing. It exudes a pleasing aroma after finding a partner, which is called the 'fragrance of first love'."
The lore: Don't look at me, I've got nasty pollen allergies, the fragrance of first love would just give me a sinus headache.
The inspiration: Meganium got a glow-up and her hair did.
The name: The usual awkward portmanteau until you realize the Pal has a sort of romantic theme. Pronounce it with a French accent and it sounds like "mon cheri".
In gameplay: Its Partner Skill increases the Tamer's carry weight a moderate amount and allows Broncherry to be ridden, though it's tied with Sweepa as the slowest mount in the game. It's one of the few Pals with Planting suitability but no Gathering, which can be useful sometimes for bases that want specialist work.


Talkin' Pals: 086b Broncherry Aqua, the "Waves of Summer"
"Its scent drastically changes before and after pairing. It exudes a pleasing aroma before finding a partner, which is called the 'perfume of purity'."
Type shift: Broncherry is grass, Broncherry Aqua is grass/water.
In gameplay: Despite still being grass-element, B'Aqua sheds its Planting suitability to focus on Watering instead.


Inventory space freed of desert eggs, I'm off to where I was going in the first place.


Northeast of the Dessicated Desert is the #3 Wildlife Sanctuary.


Don't make the mistake of the wildlife sanctuary being a nice place, it's actually barren of plantlife and is just a place where six or seven spawn points are. And some nice loot in chests.


The problem is that it is, y'know, a sanctuary. Pal Tamers aren't supposed to be here.


Sometimes PIDF Elites will spawn instead of Pals, and they are consistently hostile in a way Pals aren't. But I'm just here for the loot, so I manage to keep well away from them this time. But you see how the ground underneath them is barren rock? The whole island is like that. For a wildlife sanctuary, it's kind of a shithole.
Loot on wildlife sanctuaries includes some accessory pendants that boost attack, defense, or work speed by an insignificant amount, skill fruits, tech manuals for free Technology points, and the heat- and cold-resistant shirts. I thought I could get a shirt +1 that offered better protection, but those are not on the list. Mt. Obsidian will have to wait a bit longer.

Talkin' Lore: The PIDF
PIDF stands for Palpagos Island Defense Force. What are they doing here on the Boufadiz Archipalago? I dunno. But they're the police, more or less. Every settlement has a couple PIDF guards to make sure no Pal Tamer comes through and starts beating up the citizenry, and agents show up as random spawns in Wildlife Sanctuaries. They don't operate forts like the Rayne Syndicate or the FAP.
The PIDF are run by a guy named Marcus, whose journal entries can be found here and there. They are written to make the guy seem almost comically corrupt and ineffective as law enforcement. Apparently the reason there are only four or five citizens in any settlement is because the PIDF are shit at protecting them from rampaging Pals. The PIDF deal in addictive drugs (made from Cinnamoth scales, maybe?), then arrest people for possession, and confiscate the drugs to sell again. He's the only faction leader to be on explicitly bad terms with his own Pal, keeping it addicted and starved with only a glancing concern that it might turn on him.
So really the only thing the PIDF are any good at is keeping an eye on Wildlife Sanctuaries. APIDFAB

[nosimpleway]

Edit: This post was just a duplicate of this one from beginning of this very update so I removed it

[Niku]

[nosimpleway]

Huh, weird.

[nosimpleway]

Part 11: The Secret Ingredient is Crime


Back at base I have a new problem. My Palbox is full. Sixteen pages of thirty 'ems each is 440, though the five in my party and up to forty-five out working in my bases don't count toward that. It's a hard limit in a game that offers 146 species and asks you explicitly to catch ten of each one.


Well, what with needless pathing issues it was time to move the breeding farm away from Cold Shores anyway. I build a staircase to the upper level of the desert base, rebuilt the fuckin' tent and egg incubator there, and add...


The Pal Essence Condenser.


Talkin' Mechanics: The Pal Essence Condenser
The Essence Condenser is a station that lets me choose my favorite Pals, then sacrifice other Pals of the same species into them in order to make my chosen Pal stronger. Pals have a rank between one and five, indicated by the four stars on each stat sheet. Pals are always caught or hatched at rank one. The Essence Condenser is the way to rank up.
Here I've decided the fates of four unlucky Lamballs to be cannibalized by my Lucky catch from a while back.


For each rank, a Pal's HP, attack, and defense increase a litte. The level of their Partner Skill also goes up by one, making it more effective. Mounts get faster, attacks get stronger, and ranch Pals produce more items.
Sacrifice four Pals to rank up by one. Sixteen more grant another, thirty-two more for a rank after that. The maximum is reached after sixty-four more sacrifices, which increases all of the Pal's existing work suitabilities by one. No Pal in the game starts with suitability level 5 in anything, so this is the only way to get it! Dump 116 living, arguably sentient creatures into the Orphan Crushing Machine and you can get a guy who can build stuff on an assembly line slightly faster.
I assume this is meant as a deconstruction of how Pokemon trainers are supposedly becoming stronger by developing close relationships with their Pokemon, when the actual gameplay involves discarding any who don't have the right abilties or IVs or natures or whatever. Hell, the Essence Condenser is half the jokes about Pokemon Go that weren't about its shitty launch quality. Y'know, the ones about how sending a Pokemon to be tagged and released was actually having it ground up into the candy you get as a reward for sending it in. For reference, see any video game webcomic circa 2016.



The visual indicator that the Palbox is full is that Pals that are caught in spheres appear on the map as collectible items instead of being instantly whisked off to storage. After I clean out some space by liberal use of the Orphan Crushing Machine I can come back and reclaim this Dumud. Presumably on a multiplayer server anyone who spotted the beacon shining into the sky could wander over and pick this up instead of me.


Having not yet realized the thing I'm after is not in the loot table for the chests in and around wildlife sanctuaries, I'm headed off to another one. I stop and nab the Alpha Kingpaca on the way.


Talkin' Pals: 089 Kingpaca, the "Supreme Fluff Commander"
"Melpaca serve this Pal. Contests between Kingpaca offer up their vassals as a wager. Those seen alone are losers of such contests."
The lore: "This Pal is the boss of another kind of Pal", like we've seen already with Penking, Sweepa, Elizabee... But Kingpaca only spawns as an Alpha and always has two Melpaca with it, so that much tracks.
The inspiration: Kingpaca definitely stole the beak/headpiece off an Empoleon and glued it to its own forehead.
The name: It is king of alpacas. Or Melpacas. It is king of Melpacas.
In gameplay: Kingpaca increases the Pal Tamer's carry weight, better than Cattiva does. But unlike Cattiva (and like Broncherry, which does the same thing just as well as Kingpaca does), it takes a technology unlock and item crafted to make it work.


Talkin' Pals: 089b Kingpaca Cryst, the "Azure Fluff Commander"
"With a heart of ice, this Pal is terrible at expressing its emotions. A solitary individual is pitiable, seen as too clumsy in the eyes of Melpaca."
Type shift: Kingpaca is neutral, Kingpaca Cryst is ice.
The lore:



I head to Sanctuary 1, on the south side of the map, as hinted at by the random splotch that appeared as already-explored earlier. I'm here for the chests, but when I don't get the accessory I'm looking for out of them I figure hey, while I'm here I might as well catch the Pals too. I pick up some Azurobe, some Petalia, a Vaelet, an Elphidran...


Talkin' Pals: 078 Vaelet, the "Voice of the Violets"
"The castle was filled with the king's favorite flowers. A great battle ensued, and flames approached the castle. Amidst the chaos, the spirit of a flower appeared. - From the fairy tale, The King's Flower."
The lore: Flames approached the castle, and the spirit of a flower appeared. But the spirit of the flower was grass-element, and was instantly consumed by the flames and died. The end.
The inspiration: Seems to just be a flower fairy.
The name: "Violet" for the flower it resembles and "valet" for the... wait, how is it a valet? It came to life to save a garden, not to take care of the king personally. Might as well be a combination of "violet" and "fae".
In gameplay: They're bizarrely hard to find, but if a player can get one to spawn in Sanctuary 1 or catch the Alpha, they make a decent midgame grass-type Pal.


Talkin' Pals: 080 Elphidran, the "Gentle Sky Dragon"
"It possesses a demeanor as pure as its appearance suggests. Perhaps because of this, it is sometimes unable to discern good from evil, often allowing wrongdoers to take advantage of it."
The lore: Maybe if there were more than five evildoing Pal Tamers in the game, maybe one of them could use an Elphidran and demonstrate how easily manipulated they are.
The inspiration: Of all the rubbery cartoon dragons there are out there this one probably looks most like a headswapped Flygon.
The name: The closest guess I've got is "sylph dragon."
In gameplay: Elphidran is one of the few flying mounts that can't cross the sea. Most flyers will drop to sea level and continue to hover a couple of feet above the water's surface, which counts enough as resting to restore their stamina. Elphidran will sink like a stone, bucking the player off in the process.


Talkin' Pals: 080b Elphidran Aqua, the "Beast of the Tides"
"It possesses a demeanor as pure as its appearance suggests. Perhaps because of this, it harbors no ill will in any of its actions and is indifferent even after killing someone."
In gameplay: Slightly better than Elphidran in that it doesn't drown itself trying to fly over the sea, and has pretty good Watering suitability for base work. Is kind of annoying in that nothing in the game, anywhere, hints that this thing exists. I suppose you're supposed to see the big question mark on the technology screen indicating the item needed for a Pal you don't have yet, go look up what that Pal is, then go look up how to breed it. (It's Elphidran plus Surfent.)


Talkin' Pals: 082 Azurobe, the "Lady of the Lake"
"This Pal's white ribbon turns black if doused with impure water. Given its usefulness in detecting poison, this Pal was once overhunted. This past has left them bitter towards humanity."
The lore: People just walking up and dumping a bucket full of nasty water on me to check and see exactly how nasty the water is would leave me pretty bitter, too.
The inspiration: Can't ignore that this is a Dragonair/Primarina mashup, maybe with a few bits of Milotic mixed in.
The name: The "Azure" part is obvious. The wispy bits of its skin the Paldeck calls its "ribbon" don't look at all like a robe, though.
In gameplay: It has Watering suitability 3 and drops cloth when it's defeated. I cannot think of anything else noteworthy about it.


Talkin' Pals: 087 Petalia, the "Lady of the Garden"
"A pal that transforms into a massive plant when at the end of its life. Once every ten years, a beautiful flower blooms and a new Petallia is born."
The lore: They're hard to find in the wild, only spawning once in a while, at Sanctuary 1. So that baffling lifecycle is kinda-sorta reflected in-game! Don't see that every Paldeck entry.
The inspiration: "We're going to make a flower monster that people want to fuck" is the inspiration for several Pokemon already. Petalia is just... well, it's one of those, a demure little flower waifu.
The name: It does indeed have petals.
In gameplay: Its Partner Skill is the mid-tier healing move, one of only three in the game. Points for uniqueness if nothing else.