Palworld 1.0 reworked the partner skills of more than 200 pals, the single largest balance pass in the update and the one that most changes how you build a team. The goal Pocketpair states outright is diversity: before 1.0, a handful of partner skills were so strong that optimal teams converged on the same few pals. The rework spreads power across the roster so that many more pals have a reason to ride in your party, and so that combining their skills creates real synergy instead of stacking one dominant effect.
If you are returning from early access, treat your old team as a starting point rather than a finished build. Skills you relied on have new effects, new names, and in many cases new rules about how they combine. This page covers the universal rules that changed for every pal, the headline before-and-after reworks straight from the patch notes, and how to build around the new non-stacking behaviour.
The rules that changed for every pal
Beyond the non-stacking rule, several quality-of-life changes apply broadly. Some partner skills no longer require you to craft Pal Gear first: glider-enhancing pals and pals that follow up on your attacks now work the moment you catch them, so the skill is available immediately instead of gated behind a saddle or harness. That lowers the cost of experimenting with a new catch.
Follow-up attacks were also made catch-safe. Partner skills that perform a follow-up hit can no longer land the killing blow on a pal, so a follow-up will not accidentally defeat the target you were trying to capture. Separately, the "increased item drop" effect now applies simply by having the pal in your party rather than only while it is actively fighting, which makes it far easier to assemble a dedicated exploration and farming team.
A few specific effects were retuned as well. The player-healing partner skills on pals such as Petallia and Lyleen changed from a flat fixed-value heal to a percentage heal based on your maximum health, so they stay relevant into the late game when your health pool is large. Small changes like this are why it is worth re-reading the partner skill of every pal you field.
The rework by the numbers
The headline reworks, before and after
Old and new partner skills as quoted in the 1.0 patch notes. Silvegis and Xenolord new-side values are the rank-1 magnitudes verified in our partner-effects data.
Values you can trust, straight from the data
Where the patch notes quote a specific percentage, we can check it against the effect values in our dataset. Silvegis is a clean example: at partner-skill rank 1 our data carries a 30% shield regeneration-delay reduction and a 65% shield damage cut, matching the patch notes exactly, and both values scale as you condense the pal, reaching 60% and 80% at its top rank. Xenolord's partner-skill damage buff reads 20% at rank 1 in our data, exactly as written, and climbs to 30% at max rank.
That rank scaling is the detail most build guides miss. Many partner skills grow stronger as you condense the pal, so the number in the tooltip is a floor, not a ceiling. Our team builder reads the full rank curve for all 153 effect types, sums your party under the 1.0 non-stacking rules, and shows the real total at the ranks you have actually invested, which is the only reliable way to compare two builds.
Building around the non-stacking rule
Because same-species skills no longer stack, the strongest teams now layer different partner skills that push the same goal from different angles. The patch notes ship several worked examples of this, and every pal in them is in our dataset with a guide page. A bow build pairs Loomen, whose partner skill makes your arrows explode on contact, with Robinquill Terra, which speeds up your bow charge, so you keep both sustained fire and burst at range.
The same layering idea drives the element and status builds below. Instead of five copies of one damage carrier, you stack a defensive buff, an offensive buff, and a weak-point or condition amplifier so the whole party contributes something distinct.
Status ailment build
Open with Burn, then pile on damage against burning enemies. Each pal contributes a different piece, so none of them is wasted by the non-stacking rule.
Water element build
Stack offence and defence on Water pals, then convert it into burst on weak points. Three different partner skills, no overlap.
Fishing build
A non-combat team that shows how broadly partner skills now reach. Each pal improves a different part of the fishing loop.
