Best early-game base locations in Palworld

You’re going to spend a lot of time at your base in Palworld making sure your pals are happy and working. But that base has to be convenient for both them and yourself, which is why location is so important.

In your first playthrough, you probably threw your Pal Box down right away, perhaps even just a ledge down from the first NPC you talk to after you wake up. I mean, that’s absolutely what I did. And that’s not a bad location; you can glide down to the river, and the rocks surrounding it deter raiders.

But there are better early-game base locations in Palworld.

What to look for in an early-game base in Palworld

Nearby resources

Your biggest priority when selecting a base should be to place it near resources your Pals can actively mine. You shouldn’t have trouble finding locations with plenty of trees and stone veins around, so look for a spot that features one or more Ore veins.

In the Plateau of Beginnings, there should be some Ore veins close to the coast that you can build near if you want to get a base setup early with plenty of low-level Pals to grab.

On a ledge or in a valley

Raiding Syndicate members or rampaging wild Pals will present an occasional problem, seemingly deciding to come attack at a moment’s notice. But other than your bow and your Pals, there’s another defensive option: natural geography.

Building up on a plateau or down in a beach-side valley will potentially stop a raiding party in their tracks as they can’t figure out how to path to your base. In these scenarios, the raiders will reach as far as they can go, stand around for a while, and eventually turn around and flee.

In a space not near a fast travel point

Given that your base will serve as its own fast travel point, you should make a point not to build directly next to one that already exists. There are a few dozen fast travel points spread around the map, so it’s hard to find somewhere completely isolated, but getting as far away from a point as possible means you’re effectively making the map more accessible.

Best spots for a starter base in Palworld

One of my favorite spots for a starting base is the large peninsula directly west of the Plateau of Beginnings and south of the large aquatic skeleton. It has a lot of flat land to work with, there are Ore veins and other resources, raiders can only come from one direction, and there’s no fast travel point there already.

The Plateau of Beginnings itself is also a fine place to put your base, with a plethora of beginner Pals to capture and resources to gather. The valley between that peninsula and the Small Settlement fast travel point is also ideal, given how tough it is for raiders to reach you. And you can’t beat that ocean view.