Every Palworld Server Setting Explained

Your Palworld server has 87 settings, and the panel groups them so you never have to touch a configuration file. This page walks through every group and explains what the settings in it actually do, so you can find the one you want instead of changing things at random and restarting to see what happened.

1Find a Setting

• Log in to your game panel and click your Palworld server.
• Click Game Settings in the left menu under GAME SERVER.
• Use the search box at the top to jump straight to a setting by name. Searching is far faster than scrolling through all ten groups.
• Every setting saves as you change it, and an amber banner appears: Settings saved. Restart the server to apply your changes.
• Nothing takes effect until you go to Console and press Restart. Your settings are written to the server configuration on boot.

2General

Who your server is and who may join it.

• Server Name and Server Description are what people see in the community server browser. A distinctive name is what makes your server findable.
• Server Password is what players type to join. Leave it empty for a public server.
• Admin Password is separate, and is what grants in-game admin commands. Keep the two different.
• Max Players is the cap, up to 32. Max Coop Players covers coop sessions.
• Connection Platform and Crossplay Platforms decide which platforms may join. See how to set up crossplay.
• Region is the region label shown in the browser.

3Difficulty and Death

How punishing the world is.

• Difficulty Preset sets everything at once. Any individual rate you change afterwards overrides the preset.
• Hardcore Mode makes character death permanent, and Recreate Character in Hardcore decides whether a player may start again after that.
• Permanent Pal Loss does the same for Pals.
• Death Penalty is what players drop when they die: nothing, items only, items and equipment, or everything including Pals.
• Inactivity Penalty applies a penalty to players who have not logged in for a long time.

Full walkthrough: how to change the difficulty.

4Rates and Multipliers

The pace of the game.

• EXP Rate multiplies experience for players and Pals. This is the single biggest lever on how fast a server progresses.
• Work Speed Rate multiplies crafting and base work.
• Day Time Speed and Night Time Speed change how quickly each passes. Higher means shorter.
• Item Weight Rate multiplies item weight, so lower values let players carry more.

5Pals

Everything about the creatures themselves.

• Capture Rate multiplies capture chance and Spawn Amount multiplies how many Pals exist in the world.
• Pal Attack Damage and Pal Damage Taken set how hard they hit and how hard they are to kill.
• Pal Hunger Rate, Pal Stamina Drain, Pal Health Regen and Pal Health Regen (Sleeping) control upkeep at your base.
• Egg Hatching Time (hours) defaults to 72 for huge eggs. Set it to 0 to hatch instantly.
• Predator Boss Pals enables the aggressive roaming bosses.

6Players and PvP

• Six multipliers mirror the Pal ones for players: attack damage, damage taken, hunger, stamina, and health regen awake and sleeping.
• PvP, Player-to-Player Damage and Friendly Fire are three separate switches, and all three matter. See how to set up PvP.
• Aim Assist (Controller) and Aim Assist (Keyboard) are set independently.
• Keep Player After Logout leaves characters in the world after they disconnect.

7Building and Base

• Structure Health and Structure Damage Taken decide how tough bases are.
• Structure Decay Rate controls deterioration over time. Set it to 0 to disable decay entirely, which is usually what a friendly server wants.
• Max Buildings per Player caps structures, where 0 means unlimited.
• Restrict Building Areas blocks building near fast travel points and similar spots.
• Max Base Camps (Server), Max Base Camps per Guild and Max Workers per Base are the limits that matter most for performance on a busy server.

8Guilds

• Max Guild Members caps guild size.
• Auto Reset Inactive Guilds and Guild Reset Time (hours) clean up guilds nobody has logged into, which keeps a long-running world from filling with abandoned bases.
• Loot Other Guilds Death Drops, Pals Defend Against Other Guilds and Hide Other Guild Base Effects decide how hostile guilds are to each other.

9Items and Drops

• Enemy Drop Rate and Gathering Drop Rate multiply what you get from kills and from harvesting.
• Resource Node Health and Resource Respawn Speed change how long trees and ore take to break and to come back.
• Max Dropped Items, Max Dropped Dung and Dropped Item Lifetime (hours) cap loose items in the world. Lower values are kinder to performance.
• Equipment Durability Loss and Food Spoil Rate control how fast things wear out and rot.
• Supply Drop Interval (minutes) sets how often meteor and supply events happen.
• Global Palbox Export and Global Palbox Import decide whether Pals may move in and out of your world.

10World and Misc

• Base Raids enables enemy attacks on bases. Turning it off is a common fix for stutter on busy servers.
• Fast Travel and Choose Start Location control player movement and spawning.
• Pal Randomizer, Randomizer Seed and Randomize Pal Levels let you shuffle which species spawn where. The same seed always produces the same world.
• Show Player List decides whether players can see who else is online from the Esc menu.
• Chat Messages per Minute is a simple spam limit.
• Auto Save Interval (seconds) is how often the world is written to disk.

11Advanced

Leave these alone unless you have a reason.

• Player Authentication should stay on. It is what stops people claiming to be someone else.
• Ban List URL points at an external ban list your server enforces.
• REST API and REST API Port expose an HTTP API for management tools and bots.
• Log Format switches the console between text and JSON.
• Backup Save Data keeps backup copies of the world.
• Container Sync Interval (seconds) and Replication Distance are network tuning. A lower replication distance sends less data to each client, which can help a full server.

Good to Know

• Restart or nothing changes. Saving a setting only stores it. The server reads its configuration on boot, so a restart is always the second half of the job.
• Presets are a starting point, not a lock. Setting a Difficulty Preset and then changing individual rates is fine, and the individual values win.
• Change a few things at a time. If you change twenty settings and the server misbehaves, you have twenty suspects.

Finished

You know your way around all 87 settings. If your server feels slow rather than badly configured, read how to keep your Palworld server fast.