| Parameter | Easy | Normal | Hard | Kaizo | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day Time Speed | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How quickly the day passes. Days are bright, hot, and unfortunately a little foggy. |
| Night Time Speed | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How quickly the night passes. Nights are dark, cold, and dangerous, but can be skipped by sleeping. |
| EXP Rate | 1.3 | 1 | 0.8 | 0.5 | How much EXP is gained from all actions. Working hard, or hardly working. |
| Pal Capture Rate | 2 | 1 | 0.8 | 0.5 | How likely you are to capture a Pal with a Sphere. Humans aren't affected for some reason, probably a bug. |
| Pal Appearance Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3* | How many pals are spawned in a pack. *This setting is optional if playing on hardware weaker than an XBox or a Steam Deck. |
| Damage From Pals Multiplier | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How much damage ALL Pals inflict, regardless if wild or your own. This forces you to rely on your Pals more to survive a wild Pal onslaught, and will also "fix" Pal attacks being too slow. |
| Damage To Pals Multiplier | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How much damage ALL Pals take, regardless if wild or your own. Setting this to 2 allows you to STILL beat Syndicate towers below the time limit, while also making it a lot harder for your Pals to survive. |
| Pal Hunger Delpetion Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How fast Pals will get hungry. They will rest their chin on your thigh and beg for food, and you will like it. |
| Pal Stamina Reduction Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How fast Pals will get tired, especially when riding them. You're too heavy smh. |
| Pal Auto Health Regeneration Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How fast Pals naturally regenerate their health when out of the Pal Sphere, or in front of your team. This also affects Pals working at the base. |
| Pal Sleep Health Regeneration Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How fast Pals regenerate their health when in a Pal Box, or sleeping in a comfy Pal Bed. This also affects the revive timer in the Pal Box. |
| Damage From Player Multiplier | 1.5 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | How much damage you inflict. Turns out building a GUN out of things you find in an island is really, really hard. |
| Damage To Player Multiplier | 0.7 | 1 | 4 | 5 | How much damage you take. ARE YOU TAKING NOTES, FROM SOFTWARE??? |
| Player Hunger Depletion Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How fast you get hungry. Try running around an island, in real life. See how long you last. |
| Player Stamina Reduction Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How fast you get tired, especially when climbing. No, seriously, try it. Go ahead. |
| Player Auto Health Regeneration Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How fast you naturally regenerate your health. Welcome to the Salty Spitoon, how tough are ya? |
| Player Sleep Health Regeneration Rate | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How fast you regenerate your health when sleeping in a shoddy bed during the day. Remember, sleeping at night skips it and fully regens you. |
| Damage To Structure Multiplier | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How much damage from attacks structures can take before breaking. Turns out building a fortress out of things you find in an island is really, really hard. |
| Structure Deterioration | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | How quickly structures deteriorate when outside a Pal Box's range, or in a dungeon. No megalopolis for you. |
| Maximum Number Of Dropped Items In A World | 3000 | 3000 | 3000 | 3000? | How many dropped items there can be in the world. High is easier but has more performance impact and memory leaks, Low is harder but less performance and RAM hungry. Your choice really. |
| Gatherable Items Multiplier | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | How many items you get from one swing of your weapon, or one attack from your Pals, on a resource. |
| Gatherable Objects Health Multiplier | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | How much health a resource has, for example how quickly a tree falls or a rock is destroyed. |
| Gatherable Objects Respawn Interval | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | How long it takes for a resource to respawn, or regrow. Have you ever watched a tree grow? Watching paint dry is more entertaining. |
| Dropped Items Multiplier | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | How much loot a Pal, Human, or anything else drops when captured, defeated or destroyed. |
| Time (H) To Incubate Massive Egg | 0 | 2 | 4 | 6 | How many hours a Massive Egg takes to hatch. Hope you have lots of Fire and Ice Pals in your boxes, or lots of technology points. |
| Enable Raid Events | ON | ON | ON | ON | How likely you are to get raids, right now it's ON or OFF but hopefully it becomes a slider with an update. |
| Death Penalty | No Drops | Drop Items | Drop Items And Pals | Drop Items And Pals | How hard Paid From Software Fanboy Shills will rage quit and screech and smash their controller when they die. Unfortunately, there is no Nuzlocke mode to make them suffer as hard as possible. |
| Max Number Of Guilds | 20 | 20 | 20 | 100* | How many guilds players can create, useful with the Dedicated Server Tool for a truly old school experience. *This setting is optional if playing on hardware weaker than an XBox or a Steam Deck. |
| Max Pals Working At Base | 15 | 15 | 15 | 20* | How many Pals can work in one fully leveled up base, useful with the Dedicated Server Tool for a truly old school experience. *This setting is optional if playing on hardware weaker than an XBox or a Steam Deck. |
To make the game even harder, you can add external mods that force permadeath (nuzlocke), randomization, single slot team, and PalBox limits, etc. although it's not recommended due to the game still being in Early Access. Eeeeehhh I'm sure it'll be fiiiiine.
Palworld Kaizo is a difficulty setting I created for Palworld out of spite because I really, REALLY hate people that claim From Software games are "hard" when they're some of the easiest games ever made, and harass for a whole decade other people who don't worship them until they buy them and find out they've been scammed.
I've always been frustrated how ever since Demon's Souls released, video games have been getting easier and easier, to the point that failing a level or losing your life had no consequences whatsoever and you could retry as many times as you'd like. There's just no motivation whatsoever to survive any more, it's all just trial and error.
It's gotten so bad that most Paid From Software Fanboy Shills now proudly boast to have "beaten all three Dark Souls with just the starting weapon" while at the same time rage quitting and smashing their controller at the fourth chapter of Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, a Generation 6 game that has literal children as the target audience.
This is because unlike soulslikes, rougelikes and "foddylikes" have actual consequences for failing, which From Software Fanboys cannot handle. And the worst part is, soulslikes don't even have the excuse of having "hard levels that require many tries to beat", because soulslikes are just not hard at all, as I am about to demonstrate here.
My main inspiration is the IronMON Challenge for Pokemon games. It's a bunch of rulesets that takes an easy game like Pokemon and turns it into a true nightmare, mostly due to trainers being frustrated that Game Freak never made a TRULY hard game since that's obviously not their target audience at all.
And yet, even this ruleset tries to take any grinding out of the equation, and allows using speedup to get through the game quicker. Even if the game is harder, each run ends up being just a couple hours long, which reduces the pain of having to start over, which in turn makes players spend less time thinking and feel less in danger. On top of that, players have to use external tools to keep track of these rules.
This is particularly damning with Palworld, since it's a game so successful that everyone has been burning through it too quickly, finishing it in 20 hours, and then putting it to rest while they wait for an update or a big mod to release. This reduces player count and makes people think that the game failed, when it actually didn't and in fact reached overwhelmingly positive reviews (95%), and outsold every single Pokemon game ever made except RGBY in just one month, much to Nintendo's dismay.
To fix this, I took advantage of Palworld having the greatest Difficulty Settings Menu ever put in a videogame, as well as the fact it has a Dedicated Server Tool on Steam (If you know, you know), to create a difficulty setting that will mostly fix all of these problems.
Install Palworld on the best PC you have, pick up your best controller, and unleash your best survival instincts. No cheating. Alternatively, take any Nintendo or From Software fanboy and make them play through this to detox them. (This works btw, I actually tested this with several.)
Leave a comment below for any suggestions.