Pal Trading refers to the idea that pals have been given a certain in-game cash value. The currency of coins used denotes that some are worth only a few, while others are hundreds! The traders that deal in pals come in two forms, roaming traders, and the black market vendor. Both generally carry a wide variety of pals, however the power levels and means of capture vary widely. Pal Trading can be a lucrative way of making money off of your breeding and catching system if you don’t want to deal in raw parts. Additionally, they can be a great way of building up your collection for a decent price.
Keep in mind that pal trading can be expensive if you want the good stuff, but in Palworld, you can catch anything found in these markets. Usually, you will be more interested in selling off red stat duplicates, however, occasionally they have some nice pals to buy. It’s important to note that traders can both be found at set locations like the small settlement, and the abandoned mining shaft. To this end, make sure that you find fast travel locations nearby for easier access later. Otherwise, you could always catch a roaming trader and a black market trader to add to your camp, if you’re lucky.
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Trading Pals For Profit
One of the distinct differences between the Pokemon franchise and Palworld is the trading for-profit system it employs. Pokemon has you trading their monsters so that they can potentially evolve, or spread on to a new legacy. Meanwhile, Palworld allows its monsters to be traded in the form of a free-flowing economy. They are just another resource that’s capable of being traded much like livestock and pets are today. The main and very distinct difference in the Palworld economy is if you get your pal from an ethical roaming trader or the black market.
In both cases, it’s extremely important to note that no matter how you operate in trading, there are no real consequences. You can buy a pal from the black market and nobody comes after you for doing so. And unironically the pals you get from roaming traders are no better or worse stat-wise than those caught unethically. Either way, the main difference is the price you pay, for the rarity of pal you’re looking to receive. Pals are judged on their exotic nature and rarity, not their power level, something you as the player can easily exploit with some breeding mechanics.
Traders And Commerce
Traders hold one of the most important roles in Palworld early on and later when you want schematics and obscure resources. Some things are just extremely limited, or hard to farm in the game so having access to traders helps significantly. In terms of these pal traders, they have a significant market in how individual communities thrive. It’s speculative, but since they can be found all over the place in and around small communities they might be useful for livestock and food. One of the major issues with this commerce is that larger more powerful pals are hidden behind illegal commerce and secret vendors.
The fast travel point in Small Settlement is a very important point to consider starting out, allowing you to get access to traders quickly!
This all translates to the fact that no matter how the player chooses to interact with this market, powerful creatures they’ll want are behind the illegal activity. It would be nice to see stronger pals with roaming traders once in a while, however as it stands pals for trade aren’t generally very good. Hopefully, in the future, we can see more variation in what’s offered by these vendors. Otherwise, they just serve as a great means of offloading extra pals for some money so you can get extra camp supplies.
Early Pal Trading
One of the major aspects of early game money building will be catching and trading low-level pals for coins. For this, catch pals like scatava, or anything else low-level that can go for a low sum. These will help you build up to buy things like arrows, food, or anything else you may need for your exploration. Keep in mind that when you’re doing this, quantity is everything so being able to craft pal spheres is a good thing to do. At lower levels, especially before you get access to the pal Sphere workbench this may be a bit difficult, but roaming around you can find a lot of loose spheres. Once you have access to the breeding area in Palworld, you can turn this into a much simpler process.
Mid-Game Pal Trading
Getting access to the breeding area allows you to start collecting more pals for trade than you’d usually have access to. This comes from mixing two of the more valuable pals you have together to generate something either in-between or better. With that in mind, creating a large variety of these pals for trade can generate a lot of coins quickly for when you hit larger markets. Additionally, these extra coins from cheaper more stable pals can get you rarer ones from the black market. However, at this point you’ll probably have come across a fair amount of the ones they have to offer already so make sure to check your map.
Pal traders can appear as blue or red depending on who you find.
Late Game Pal Trading
Something that can’t be undermined by the general pacing of Palworld is that legendary pals are worth a lot of money. You can easily breed and trade them for a large amount of capital resources, ensuring that you can circumvent crafting altogether. After a certain point, you’ll also get access to the pal sphere launcher that allows you to just catch large swathes of creatures. At this point, you don’t need to worry about money, but getting rich can be a fun angle in any video game! For Palworld, the economy only acts as a means of circumventing crafting at the time, so the more you have, the more you can potentially save time later with. Keep this fact in mind as you build your resources and trade lower-level pals.
Pal Traders Migration
Pals traders are very often found all over the place either just being nomadic, or settling around groups of people. It depends on the individual trader, even though all or most of their wages are randomly generated. The most available one thus far is located at the small settlement, which has both a regular trader and one who specializes in pals. Black market traders are more elusive and work for the syndicate themselves. Ultimately, they sell rarer more exotic pals but charge an extremely high price for these rarities. The most stable location for the black market trader is the abandoned mine shaft, though they also roam at night.
Trader Specifics
Each trader has their appearance, workflow, and means of protecting themselves as you’ll find if you choose to act in a hostile manner. Interestingly enough neither will use their wares to fight you, instead enjoying their firepower and brute strength. Roaming traders are generally their entity, and thus if you attack them you will have law enforcement sent after you. Meanwhile, the black market trader is part of the syndicate so if you attack them, high-level syndicate members will arrive.
Wandering traders are good for finding items.
Roaming Traders
These freelance pal traders prefer to find themselves catching the pals rather than sourcing them from criminals. In this respect, they can be seen traveling the islands and battling what they’re looking to capture. However, they are more than happy to trade with other pal collectors on their way to making a few coins. It’s uncertain if they do this for a love for pals, or to assist the communities around them, but they are a pillar of the world’s economy. Dressing in red outfits and sporting shotguns and assault rifles, the pal traders can defend themselves early on. However, as you build up your pals, slowly their defenses aren’t able to keep up, and catching them becomes easy.
Black Market Traders
When dealing with the black market, you’ll be met with a very muscular-looking large man donning a brown cape and a minigun. This gentleman is into trading unethically sourced pals for cold hard coins and killing people who try throwing pal spheres at him. As a person, the black market traders are some of the only people able to stand up to high-level pals besides ourselves. As a member of the syndicate, they most often find themselves trading the pals that you can’t find ordinarily. However, it’s easy to see that they’re no pushover, able to lay down heavy fire on targets with deadly accuracy.
Catching Traders
One of the neat parts of Palworld is that you can catch different NPCs and people scattered around the game. Both roaming traders and black marketeers are on the list of potential captures, both of which are extremely potent. Not only can you still use their shops which cycle with the passing of days, but also get their firepower. What’s great about this is, that once you finally get your hands on a black market trader, you’ll have access to the minigun extremely early. The only downside to this is that capture rates are low, and you’ll need to deal with law enforcement and the syndicate to get them.
The ethical pal market tends to be cheaper than the black market.
Using Traders In Parties
Using the traders in your party isn’t the best option, since they tend to fall off compared to other pals. However, another interesting thing that can occur is that these traders will catch pals for themselves to trade with. A cycle can be created through this where you can buy things that got away from you initially. I don’t personally recommend this though as you should be able to just catch the pal with craftable spheres. However, in combat, they will use their chosen weapon, as well as stay at a range rather than getting close. Against other pals, they even can move out of the way, and evade incoming attacks.
Pal Values
Figuring out which pals have the most value can be a tricky matter; but it all boils down to your size, rarity, and exotic nature of the pal. If you can catch the legendary pals and breed them, these will fetch you the most coins. Keep in mind that power level is not the most important thing, so don’t worry about the level or moves learned. Instead focus on getting duplicates of these rarer pals, and trading them in if that’s how you want to make your money. If you can think about it in terms of how hard the pal is to catch, you can easily determine what they may be worth.
Taking some examples from the starting areas, pals like the elk are harder to catch than those like the chickens, thus the elk are more valuable. Raid bosses and larger editions of the basic creature are incredibly valuable and also go for higher prices. One example of this is that a raid boss durmond goes for about 1200 coins by the trader. Keep in mind that raid bosses are better versions than standard editions so keeping them around might be worth losing the extra income.
Black market traders tend to look muscular and strong, and are able to wield mini guns.
Trading As A Whole
Overall, trading in Palworld is incredibly different than what you’ll find in most other elemental monster games. It’s interesting to see that they chose to go with such an open market system, however, it can benefit the player greatly. By trading away stuff you don’t need you can declutter your pal box. Additionally, no matter how you choose to go about it, Palworld offers you a means of progression without solely crafting. The coins are a currency you can keep with you, weightless, and powerful, but your extra pals can become that resource as well. The ethics behind it might vary from person to person, however, I see it a lot like our modern pet trading industry.
