You’ve been grinding for hours in Palworld, chasing that elusive Anubis or Frostallion you’ve seen other players roam around with, and you keep hearing people mention the summoning altar as the fast track to get them without wandering the map for days. If you're confused about how to use summoning altar in Palworld, you’re not alone—lots of new players miss this mechanic early on, and it’s a game-changer once you figure out how it works. I’ve spent over 80 hours testing every trick for this altar, and I’m breaking down everything you need to know to get the most out of it, no wasted resources or failed summons required.
What You Need Before You Use the Summoning Altar in Palworld
First off, you can’t just stumble on the summoning altar right when you spawn. You’ll need to hit level 22 first, and unlock the recipe via the technology tab. Don’t waste your tech points on it before that, because you won’t have the resources to build it anyway. The crafting requirements are pretty straightforward once you unlock it, but you’ll want to farm these materials ahead of time to avoid running back and forth across the map.
- 20 Stone: You can mine this easily from any rocky area around your base, no special tools needed.
- 10 Pal Fluids: Dropped from water-type Pals like Pengullet or Fuack, you can farm these in 10 minutes near any river or lake.
- 5 Ancient Civilization Parts: These are the tricky part, dropped from alpha bosses or chests in ancient ruins. You can get 2-3 per alpha boss kill, so prioritize taking down low-level alphas first if you’re short on these.
If you’re having trouble finding ancient civilization parts to build your summoning altar in Palworld, you can also buy them from wandering merchants for 1000 gold each, though that’s pretty expensive early on. Once you have all those materials, you can place the summoning altar anywhere in your base, but I recommend putting it near your fast travel point so you don’t have to walk across your entire base every time you want to use it. Don’t place it too close to your breeding farms or storage chests, either—some summons can spawn aggressive Pals that might attack your base workers if you’re not careful.
How to Summon Pals With the Altar Step-by-Step
Now that your altar is built, using it is simpler than you might think, but there are a few small details that will save you from wasting rare materials on bad summons. First, interact with the altar to pull up the summoning menu. You’ll see a list of all possible Pals you can summon, sorted by their required summoning cost. Each Pal requires a specific combination of Pal souls and regular items to summon, and higher rarity Pals will cost way more resources. The summoning altar in Palworld will also let you filter summons by type, so if you’re looking for a specific water-type Pal for your farm, you can easily find it without scrolling through the entire list.
Always check the required materials twice before confirming a summon, because you can’t cancel it once you hit confirm, and there’s no refund for wasted materials. I learned this the hard way when I accidentally spent 10 legendary Pal souls on a common Chillet when I was half-asleep playing at 2am. Once you select the Pal you want to summon, you’ll see a success rate percentage below the material list. That rate isn’t just a random number—it’s affected by the level of your altar, the rarity of the Pal, and even the time of day in-game.
For example, dark-type Pals have a 15% higher success rate if you summon them at night, while fire-type Pals get the same boost during the day. You can increase the success rate further by placing lucky statues within 10 tiles of the altar, each one adds a 3% boost, up to a maximum of 30% total. If your summon fails, you don’t get any of your materials back, but you do get a small amount of “summoning experience” that permanently increases your base success rate for all future summons by 0.1% per failure. It’s not much, but it adds up over time, so don’t get too discouraged if your first few rare summons don’t work out.
Advanced Tricks to Get Exclusive Pals From the Summoning Altar
Most players only use the summoning altar to summon pre-listed Pals, but there’s a hidden “fusion summon” feature that lets you combine two existing Pals to create a completely new one that you can’t find anywhere else in the wild. This is the only way to get some of the strongest Pals in the game, like the fused version of Anubis and Grizzbolt that has both dark and electric type attacks. The summoning altar in Palworld has a lot of hidden features that most players don’t discover until they’re dozens of hours into the game, and fusion is easily the most useful one.
Fusion summons have a 100% success rate as long as you have the two required Pals and the fusion material cost, so they’re a way more reliable way to get top-tier Pals than regular summons, especially if you’ve already got a large collection of Pals in your Palbox. But there’s a catch: the two Pals you use for fusion will be permanently consumed in the process, so don’t use any Pals that you use regularly for work or combat. I always make sure to breed extra copies of the Pals I need for fusion before I use them, so I don’t lose my main workhorses.
Another little known feature of the summoning altar in Palworld is that you can increase the maximum level of summoned Pals by upgrading the altar with more ancient civilization parts. Another trick I’ve tested is that if you summon multiple Pals back-to-back within 10 minutes, you get a stacking 5% success rate boost for each consecutive summon, up to 25% total. This is perfect if you’ve farmed a ton of materials and want to try for multiple rare Pals in one sitting. Just make sure you have enough health and weapons ready, because if you summon an aggressive Pal, it will attack you immediately, and you don’t want to get caught off guard without gear.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using the Summoning Altar
Even if you follow all the steps above, it’s easy to make small mistakes that cost you a lot of time and resources. I’ve made almost all of these myself, so I’m listing them out to save you the headache. One of the most common mistakes new players make with the summoning altar in Palworld is not checking the level requirement of the Pal they’re summoning. Don’t summon high-rarity Pals when you’re still early in the game. Even if you can afford the materials, a level 50 legendary Pal won’t listen to you if your player level is below 30, and it will attack you and your base the second it spawns. I saw a new player post a clip last week where they summoned a level 60 Frostallion at level 18, and it destroyed their entire base in 30 seconds before they could even fast travel away.
Second, don’t waste your ancient civilization parts on summoning common Pals. Those parts are way better saved for upgrading your altar or summoning exclusive fusion Pals, because you can find common Pals literally anywhere on the map. The only exception is if you need a specific common Pal for a base work task and you can’t find it anywhere nearby, but even then, it’s usually cheaper to just go out and look for it instead of wasting rare parts on summoning it.
Third, don’t forget to claim your summoned Pal immediately after it spawns. If you leave it unattended for more than 5 minutes, it will despawn, and you’ll lose all the materials you used to summon it. I’ve had this happen twice, and it’s so frustrating to spend hours farming materials for a rare Pal only to have it disappear because I got distracted by a raid on my base. If you’re playing on a multiplayer server, make sure no other player is standing near your summoning altar in Palworld when you summon a rare Pal, because they can steal it right from under you if you’re not fast enough.
Learning how to use summoning altar in Palworld effectively will save you dozens of hours of grinding for rare Pals that might never spawn naturally. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to build a team of exactly the Pals you want, tailored to both your base work needs and your combat playstyle. You don’t have to grind for dozens of hours to get the strong companions you want, just follow the tips I laid out, and you’ll be summoning top-tier Pals in no time.