The Best Pals In ‘Palword’ Aren’t Pals At All, Albeit Morally Dubious
I am attempting to blaze my way through Palworld with any and all free time I have. I’ve hit level 61, which is well past where I got in early access, though I believe progression has gotten a lot faster now.
There are obvious ways to build out your team in Palworld: Finding wild Pals you like, capturing boss Pals, or the all-important breeding to make total superstars. But new players may not realize another option. You can catch…humans.
Yes, this does include the bad guys you will encounter in the wild of varying levels, you can throw a ball at them (usually they’ll require a more scaled-up one) and catch either the grunts or even the minibosses. But that’s not all. You can:
- Catch the actual world boss humans with purple smoke around them.
- Catch friendly NPCs that won’t actually fight you.
- Can catch a story boss like Zoe after you beat her in the first fight. She’ll appear in a nearby church, and you can just…throw balls at her if she’s standing still. Again, higher balls are better. The intimidating merchant next to her, ehhh, he will pull out a gatling gun and blow you away. So prepare for that eventuality.
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Some of these human Pals can be built into serious DPS machines, including Zoe and some of the bigger gatling gun guys, among others. But Palworld skeptics also believe that this is “morally wrong” and the game, by having this system in place, is promoting human trafficking. Well, um, I mean:
- You can capture humans and force them to work at your bases. They get food and a place to sleep, but uh, yeah.
- You can capture humans and force them to fight on your behalf, and not in a fun “hey, let’s go on an adventure together” way! They don’t exactly have a choice.
- You can…sell humans to black market dealers. And they are very, very profitable, giving you lots of coins, which motivates more kidnapping.
- Finally, like normal Pals, you can…butcher them. And in turn, eat the meat they give you. Pokémon, this is not.
No, I don’t think any human, miniboss, boss or Zoe are going to be on the highest level of the top Pals in the game. But you can beef them up and give them traits that can make them a force in battle, provided your moral compass doesn’t object to the implications of all this. I’m…just going to not think about it too deeply.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
