New Save or Continue? Your Palworld 1.0 Day-One Plan

Here is a sentence you rarely hear from a developer: your save is safe, but consider deleting it anyway. That is effectively Pocketpair's advice going into July 10, and unlike most developer advice, this one deserves a real look instead of an eye roll. 1.0 rebuilds the progression your muscle memory was trained on.

This guide gives you the decision framework, then an actual day-one route, not vibes.

What actually happens to your save#

• Existing worlds and pals are not deleted. On first launch, 1.0 runs a one-time conversion on your save.
• The Global Palbox transfers tamed pals between worlds, including from your old world into a brand new one. This is the feature that changes the whole calculus.
• Pocketpair still recommends a manual backup first. On Steam that means copying %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames somewhere safe. Two minutes, zero regret.

The case for starting fresh#

1.0 does not add a new game on top of the old one; it rebuilds the ramp. Story content now flows through missions, the early and mid game are rebalanced, zones you memorized are reworked, and the update's headline systems (World Tree, Sky Islands, Wing Pack flight) are woven into that new curve.

Continue on a maxed save and you experience precisely none of that ramp. You will fly over the rebalanced midgame at 200 hours of power and wonder why 1.0 feels thin. The developers built a new journey; a fresh character is the only ticket that rides it.

Fresh start is right if you barely remember your base layout, you want the story missions in their intended order, or the idea of racing the new curve with 1.0 balance sounds like the actual fun part.

The case for continuing#

Hundreds of hours of breeding lines and a base run by a handiwork-4 Anubis crew is not something you delete for sentiment. And 1.0 quietly made old saves more valuable, not less: Genetic Recombination is built around fusing genes from high-level legendaries, which means that box of maxed Frostallion and Jetragon you are sitting on just became breeding stock for the new endgame.

Continuing is right if your save is a genuine investment, your group is keeping its shared world, or you mainly want the new endgame zones, which an endgame character can hit within the hour.

The verdict: do both, on purpose#

The Global Palbox exists, so this is not actually a dilemma. Keep the old world as your museum and genetic vault. Start a new world for the journey. Once your new base can feed and house them, import two or three veterans, workers first, and let the vault fund the expedition. It is the rare case where the mechanics reward having it both ways.

Your first three hours, routed#

If you do start fresh, the opening is a solved problem, and solving it fast buys you more time in the new content. The classic route still holds at 1.0's start:

1. Catch a handful of Lamball immediately. They punch, they work handiwork benches, and they drop Wool, which gates your first cloth armor and your first bed. Wool scarcity is the real early boss.
2. Add Cattiva for hauling. Transport keeps your base moving while you are out catching; their gathering rank keeps berry farms ticking.
3. Grab Foxparks the moment you see one. Its partner skill, Huggy Fire, turns it into a handheld flamethrower, and its kindling rank cooks and smelts everything your first base produces.
4. Chase the Wing Pack early. Flight is the update's biggest quality-of-life unlock, and every reworked zone assumes you will eventually have it.
5. Point yourself at the World Tree. It has been locked since January 2024. It is the reason to be here.

Hover any pal above for full stats and work suitability; every one links into the Palpedia if you want the deep numbers.

Breeding: your first real power spike#

Breeding still runs on recipes at launch, and the recipes are the fastest legitimate power spike in the game. Two worth planning for before Genetic Recombination even enters the picture:

• Penking + Bushi produces Anubis, the game's best early-obtainable worker (handiwork 4, mining 3, transporting 2), long before you can fight one in the field
• Special combos unlock variant pals outright: Relaxaurus + Sparkit gives Relaxaurus Lux, Incineram + Maraith gives Incineram Noct

Plan pairs with the breeding calculator instead of rolling eggs blind; it knows every recipe in the current dataset.

Your day-one checklist#

Progress here is saved on this device, so tick items off as you go.

For the complete rundown of what is waiting once you are in, from Sky Islands to the raid overhaul, read everything in Palworld 1.0.

See you under the World Tree.