If you’ve ever hosted a Palworld server for friends and gotten tired of everyone complaining about too many aggressive Pals spawning near base, or not enough coal to keep your furnaces running, you’re not alone. Tinkering with server configs is the best way to tailor your playthrough to exactly what your group wants, no mods required. We’ve hosted over a dozen Palworld servers for our own friend groups over the past few months, so we’ve tested every common setting change to find the fastest, most reliable process. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to change Palworld server settings without breaking your existing save or locking players out of your world.
Key Settings Worth Adjusting for Most Palworld Servers
You don’t have to edit every single line in your server config to get a better play experience. Most groups only need to tweak 3-5 core settings to match their playstyle, whether you prefer casual building, fast-paced exploration, or competitive PvP. The most popular adjustments usually relate to survival difficulty, Pal spawn rules, and progression speed, and you can always revert changes later if they don’t feel right.
These are the settings we adjust for almost every server we host, depending on what our group wants to focus on that playthrough:
- Taming speed: Adjust from 0.1x (extremely slow) to 20x (instant taming for casual play)
- Pal spawn rate: Raise to 3x to see more rare Pals, or lower to 0.5x to reduce server lag for small groups
- Player hunger and stamina drain: Lower to 0.2x if you want to focus on building and exploring instead of survival mechanics
- Base damage resistance: Raise to 2x to stop wild Pals from destroying your hard-earned base while you’re offline
- EXP multiplier: Crank up to 5x if you want to level up fast and unlock endgame content in a few play sessions
We usually set our casual friend servers to 3x taming speed, 2x spawn rate, and 0.3x hunger drain, and that works for groups that only play a few hours a week. If you’re running a competitive PvP server, you’ll probably want to leave most survival settings at default to keep the challenge high. Always write down your original settings before making any changes, so you can revert if something breaks.
How to Change Palworld Server Settings for Both Steam and Xbox Hosts
The process varies slightly depending on whether you’re hosting a Steam PC server or an Xbox/Game Pass cross-play server, but neither requires advanced technical skills. If you’re wondering how to change Palworld server settings for a self-hosted server, the process only takes a few minutes if you follow these steps.
For Steam PC servers, if you’re using a third-party hosting provider, most have a built-in settings editor in their dashboard, so you don’t have to edit config files manually. Just log into your host account, find the Palworld server tab, look for the “Configuration” or “Settings” menu, adjust the sliders to your preferred values, save, and restart the server. If you’re self-hosting on your own PC, you need to find the PalWorldSettings.ini file, usually located in the Saved/Config/WindowsServer folder of your server files. Open it with a plain text editor, don’t use Word or other rich text editors, as they’ll add hidden formatting that breaks the file. Make sure your server is completely shut down before editing the ini file, or your changes won’t save and you might corrupt your config.
For Xbox/Windows Game Pass servers, the process is a bit more limited right now, since console-native servers don’t let you edit ini files directly. You can adjust basic settings from the in-game host menu when you first create the server, or if you’re using a cross-play compatible hosting provider, you can edit settings through their dashboard just like Steam servers. Some advanced settings aren’t available for Xbox hosted servers yet, but Pocketpair is rolling out more options all the time. We’ve found that third-party hosts make this process 10x easier for new server owners, since they handle all the file management for you, and you don’t have to worry about messing up line items in the ini file.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Editing Your Server Config
Even simple edits can cause headaches if you skip basic prep steps, and we’ve made almost every possible mistake in our own server hosting experience. One of the most common errors we see new hosts make when they learn how to change Palworld server settings is adjusting 10+ sliders at once without testing.
The first mistake to avoid is editing the config while the server is running. We’ve done this before, and half our changes didn’t save, and we had to redo all the adjustments from scratch after a restart. Second, don’t use a rich text editor to edit your ini file. If you see curly quotes or weird formatting when you open the file, that’s going to break your server on restart. Always use a plain text editor like Notepad, Notepad++, or the built-in editor in your hosting dashboard.
Third, don’t forget to back up your save before making big changes. If you mess up the config bad enough, you could corrupt your existing world save and lose dozens of hours of build progress. Save a copy of your entire Saved folder to your desktop before making any major edits, so you can restore it if something goes wrong. Also keep in mind that most settings require a full server restart to take effect, so don’t panic if you don’t see changes right away, just shut down the server and boot it back up.
How to Test Your New Settings Without Wiping Your Save
You don’t have to open your server to all players immediately after making changes, and we always recommend testing first to avoid frustration for your group. After you make changes and restart the server, log in as an admin first, don’t let all your players join right away. Spawn in a few different areas, check if Pal spawn rates feel right, test taming a low level Pal to see if the taming speed is what you wanted, and check if your base is still intact if you changed decay or damage settings.
If you’re testing PvP settings, ask one other admin to join you to test damage numbers before opening the server to everyone. That way you won’t have players complaining that one-shot kills are enabled by accident, or that base damage is so high anyone can raid a base in 30 seconds. If a setting doesn't feel right, shut down the server and adjust it again before regular players log in, so no one loses progress from unintended changes.
Most settings don’t affect existing saves, but things like EXP multiplier will apply to all players moving forward, so if you crank it up after people have already played 20 hours, new players will be able to catch up really fast. That’s great for casual groups that want to let new friends join without grinding for hours to catch up, but it might annoy long-time players on public servers. We usually ask our friend group for feedback after 2-3 play sessions, then adjust settings again if people are still complaining about something, like if Pals are still too aggressive or resources are too hard to find.
At the end of the day, half the fun of playing Palworld with friends is building a world that fits exactly what your group wants to play. You don’t need advanced technical skills to tweak your server to feel perfect, even if you’re a first-time host. Once you get the hang of how to change Palworld server settings, you can experiment with weird and fun custom setups, like no-death casual servers, 10x spawn rate legendary Pal servers, or ultra-hard PvP servers for competitive groups. Don’t be afraid to test small changes first, and always back up your saves, and you’ll have a custom Palworld experience that everyone in your group loves.