The chokehold Palworld had on my life when it first came out was insane. With how much I love Pokemon and how Ark dominated my life for countless hours (flashbacks of “want to go pick up some rocks?” are resurfacing), Palworld was a slam dunk for me. My husband and I had our own server and we played HARD. But there’s a problem… whoever starts the server owns it. They have to launch the game for anyone to play. Can you guess who owns our server?

He’s not into Palworld anymore which is terrible news for me. For a while, my husband would launch the game and I would play by myself, but that means he can’t use his computer for other games. I finally had to bite the bullet and start my own server… Fart Palace (yeah, that’s what I named it) is officially live and I am starting over from scratch. If there’s a silver lining to this, it’s that I never wrote a Palworld blog before. I was on hiatus from writing when this game came out. So, Palworld is finally going to get its place in the sun.

Since I never wrote about this game before, let me go ahead and give you a basic overview. Remember how I wrote about turning Ark into Pokemon? Palworld is Ark with Pokemon. The technology interface looks exactly like Ark’s and it’s great. You build a base, you collect materials, you catch pals and you level up. There are different zones with varying climates and some areas are higher levels than others. You’ll need gear to get into some areas without freezing/burning to death and you’ll definitely want saddles for different types of pals to traverse the landscape. This map is painfully incomplete.

Let’s go ahead and get the obvious out of the way. This game is much harder by yourself and it is painful going back to having NOTHING when you’re so used to having the most legit shit in the game. I am not playing very carefully, but that is probably because I have sunk so many hours into the world that nothing is “scary” anymore. I have a general idea of what I can handle and I know where a lot of things are… it’s just I’m too squishy to do most things. Some of the danger is unavoidable… like how fast traveling somewhere can put you in immediate danger before the load screen even finishes.

The game has changed a lot, and starting over is letting me see some of the things I would have missed otherwise. New technologies were added to the game and I’m experiencing a lot of newer aspects of the game for the first time. There’s new NPCs to interact with, they’ve added wandering pal tamers to fight, and there are bounties on human NPCs to take on in addition to the boss fights/alphas. I’ve even run into random nests where there’s just a ton of a specific pal in an area, an alpha version of the pal, and some eggs. Don’t even get me started on how much I love going to find eggs to hatch… but it keeps the game interesting because you never know what you’re going to find.

There’s also random world events now with supply drops and meteors falling from the sky. Approaching these can be dangerous, but it is worth it for the valuable loot you can find. And when meteors fall, there are some special pals you can only find there. If you’re going for it, you have to be fast, because humans will also spawn and get into a gun fight with them. Depending on where you are, the number of pals that spawn, and the level, that might not matter though…

This game is so easy to lose time in. My favorite thing to do is just run around the zones looting everything I can and then running back to base with it all. The bad news is it is easy to hit your carry weight when you’re farming for valuable resources like iron and coal. And the running out of stamina thing is annoying. The good news is you can fast travel still (as long as you can get to a totem to do it). But from what I gather, they’ve added new technologies to allow farming of some of those things at your base now so… maybe when I get to a higher level that will become less painful. Unless I can get this random glitch (?) to happen more often.

I spend a lot of time in the newer zones that were added to the game because you find better materials in that area. The only thing is, the newer areas are higher levels and I have no business being there. Sometimes I try to sneak around to grab stuff and avoid being detected, but it kind of doesn’t matter a lot of times. I get nuked… but I did change the world setting so I don’t lose my stuff and have to try to run back for it.

Anyway, I love this game. It is my addiction all over again. It is more fun with friends, but I still enjoy it. I’m level 32 and working my way back up. I have crappy armor. I’ve barely made any new weapons. I’m more invested in running around all day collecting things I need so that one day I can inevitably build up a massive arsenal of weapons and gear.

It’s kind of hard to write about a game you played extensively years ago because it’s hard to know what to talk about now. I’m just going to share the random things I’m doing, the fun things I discover, and my little wins along the way. Are you a Palworld player? Have you tried playing on a public server? Let me know in the comments!