How to Teach Pals New Attacks

Palworld has a lot of different pals with a wide range of abilities and skills that can be used in combat, base operations, or exploration. While some of these skills are permanent Traits of pals, there's a set of skills that can be changed or taught to a pal. In this page, we will discuss the various methods of teaching new skills to Pals.

Skill Types

All pals in Palworld come with three skill types: Partner, Active, and Passive skills. You can review these skills by selecting a pal from your Party menu or Palbox. We will provide the explanation for all skill types further below.

Partner Skills

These are special skills that can be activated only while the pal is the active combatant or partner (hence the name). Some partner skills are unlocked by default while some require specific Pal Gear like mounts or weapons before you can activate them.

All pals of the same type will have the same partner skill so you only need to craft a pal gear once in your playthrough. Any pal of the same species, regardless of level, will allow you to use their partner skills. Partner skills can't be changed or removed.

Passive Skills

Whenever you capture or hatch a pal, a random set of passive skills will be applied to them. Pals can have up to four Passives, with each passive having different levels (bad, normal, best)

When Breeding, if the parent pals have good Passives, there's a high chance that the offspring will have inherited some of those passives. Passive Skills can't be changed though you can directly influence the set of passives that a hatched pal can potentially get through the tedious and time-consuming process of selective breeding.

Active Skills

These are skills that get activated when a pal is in combat. Unlike the other skill types, active skills can be modified or changed. Pals can have up to three active skills at a time. Similar to Pal Elements, each skill also possess elemental type attributes. You can still manually teach pals with full skill slots new skills, even if the skill is different from the pal's type. For example, you can teach a fire skill to a water or ice pal.

Learning New Active Skills

There are currently two methods for Pals to learn new skills: through the traditional leveling up and feeding them with special fruits aptly called Skill Fruits. Leveling up is straightforward; pals will learn them automatically as their level increases. Pals inside palboxes don't earn XP so at least deploy the pal to the base or add them to your party for them to passively earn XP and level up eventually.

Skill Fruits

These are special consumables that will instantly let your pal learn a new skill contained within that fruit. These fruits can be easily distinguished by their shape and color. You can buy these fruits from Wandering Merchants found in the wild or in neutral settlements. However, skill fruits sold by merchants can be quite expensive early on, especially if you don't have a good Gold Farming method set up yet.

You can also pick them up for free from Skill Trees found in the wild. You can easily distinguish these trees thanks to their glowing blue outline and visual effects that stand out even from a distance. Each tree contains three random skill fruits that you can collect. Like other resources in the game, these fruits will respawn after a certain amount of time has passed in-game so it's highly recommended to place custom markers on your map whenever you find one.

Skill Fruits may have similar appearances but the skills your pals can learn from them will be different so try reading their descriptions thoroughly before using them. This is also because some skills are more powerful than others.

Swapping out Skills

As mentioned above, pals can only have up to three different skills yet, the game will still allow you to teach a pal new skill using skill fruits. If you've played any Pokemon game before, you should know that if all skill slots are filled (four skills in Pokemon), you'll have to pick one skill to forget and make room for the new skill. That's not the case in Palworld.

When all three skill slots are occupied, any new skill is added to the pal's "reserve". From there, you can freely swap one of the three skill slots to any skill currently in reserve. This gives you flexibility to your main pals.

Same Type Attack Bonus

You can teach a skill with a different element to any pal. However, that doesn't mean that you should just haphazardly teach them random skills especially if you want to use them in combat since there's a mechanic that you should be aware of. For veteran Pokemon players, they'll be familiar with the Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB). This combat mechanic adds bonus damage dealt by a pal when using a skill that's the same type as the user. For example, a dark pal using a dark skill will have a STAB bonus compared to a dark pal using a neutral skill. As such, it is recommended to try teaching active skills that correspond to the pal's elemental type(s) to take advantage of this mechanic. This is particularly useful when facing tougher enemies like bosses and end-game pals.

Skill fruits can be hard to come by so choose carefully which pal you'll want to use them on. Once you can easily afford them or conveniently collect them in large numbers, then you can use them as you would any other consumables in the game. Even if they're technically fruits, they don't expire or rot so you can store them normally in any container for later use.