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Six must-know tips for the cozy life-sim MMO Palia
J
Jess Reyes
You start by camping out in a tent on your own plot of land. From there, you learn skills, like how to chop wood, pick rocks, and grow crops. You can even do more adventurous activities like hunting magical creatures and gliding. All major skills eventually pop up as you complete Palia’s early story. Still, there are a few unsaid rules that could make your experience even smoother. Here are some tips and tricks to make your Palia playtime as streamlined as possible.
Focus, focus, focus
Focus is Palia’s form of “energy." It increases the experience gained from leveling up skills like mining, cooking, and chopping wood. Always refill your Focus bar when possible.
You can check how much Focus you have in the upper left corner of the screen. Ideally, you should always have Focus available so that you get more experience when using any skills.
Focus comes from food like fresh crops and cooked meals, which generally give you more Focus than raw ingredients. With that in mind, it’s best to gather items you can use for cooking and fill up on meals whenever your Focus meter runs low.
Mushrooms, fish, and meat are the easiest ingredients to gather for cooking at the start of the game. These turn into Grilled Mushrooms, Grilled Fish, and Grilled Meat respectively—these are some of the first recipes you get from completing story quests. Once you find a favorite scavenging, fishing, or hunting spot, be sure to stock up! You can use extra dishes as gifts for villagers.
Start using Renown ASAP
Renown is one of the two main currencies in Palia. You mostly get it from completing quests and accomplishments, leveling up skills, and talking with villagers. It’s easier to earn at the beginning of the game, when you can get it from doing even the simplest of tasks, like harvesting your first crops and building a house. It’s harder to level up later on, so it’s important to use it wisely.
There are only so many things to use Renown on. You can use it to buy writs of expansion, which expand your house and plot of land. However, you should use your Renown to max out your Focus Bonus and Focus Capacity first. Of course, you can still use some Renown to buy writs of expansion. Just keep most of it for your Focus.
Focus Bonus increases how much experience you gain from using your skills so you can level them up faster. Meanwhile, Focus Capacity raises the cap on how much Focus you can store at once. This will eventually matter more later on, when a higher Focus Bonus demands more Focus per task. Therefore, maxing both out can make progression much easier.
You can level up Focus Bonus and Focus Capacity at the Phoenix Statue and Dragon Statues, which pop up as you dutifully complete the quests in Palia’s main story.
Every player starts with a max Focus Capacity of 200. To put that in perspective, a Grilled Mushroom Skewer (the first item you learn to cook in the game) gives you 50 Focus. It eventually reaches up to 1000, so that’s a long way to go.
Yes, there is fast travel
Palia has two main ways to fast travel: the “Return Home” button on the map, and the horseshoe bulletin boards. Alternatively, you can just sprint (which defaults to the Shift button) between different locations. You might find it convenient after you unlock other areas of the map, though!
The “Return Home” button is the most straightforward way to go home. It’s a yellow button in the upper right corner of your map that teleports you to your plot of land. However, you can only use it every 30 minutes. After that, you’ll need to use bulletin boards. Use Return Home wisely: Even teleporting home from a bulletin board will cost some gold.
Bulletin boards are marked with horseshoe icons on the map. If you go to any one of these locations, there will be a bulletin board that will transport you to any of the other horseshoe locations. Fast travel costs small amounts of gold—typically between 10 to 50G—so be sure to have some ready.
Track villagers with your waypoint
You can open your map in Palia with the M button on your keyboard. The waypoint button is set to the middle button of your mouse by default. This puts down a waypoint (i.e., a custom quest marker) anywhere you want on the map. Once you exit the map, it should show up next to other quest markers and villagers on your compass at the top of the screen.
Of course, you can use a waypoint to mark specific locations. However, you can also use it for tracking villagers. Villagers associated with quests will usually pop up on your compass automatically, but you might need to track them for other reasons, like gifting.
Load your sawmill and smelter before logging off
At a certain point in the story, you get a sawmill for creating wooden planks and a smelter for creating stone bricks. However, each plank and brick takes minutes of real time to create. Some actions, like building your house for the first time, will also take several real-time hours to finish. To save yourself the wait, load your sawmill and smelter before logging off; that way, your planks and bricks will be finished by the time you log back in.
Work together, not against each other
Palia encourages collaboration between players. Unlike other MMOs, where you might need to split loot with allies, it duplicates loot so that everyone benefits from working together. For example, multiple players shooting at a Sernuk deer should still get the drops from the kill, even if they aren’t the ones that shot it. That way, you aren’t competing for the same resources. In fact, you can work together (and should work together) with other players, especially when hunting magical creatures. Other mechanics like cooking also favor collaboration, because you can use fewer ingredients (assuming each player contributes at least one part of the recipe) but still get the same dish.
Palia is available now on the Epic Games Store.