Do Passive Skills stack in Palworld?

From Passive Skills to Partner Skills to Active Skills, keeping track of all the different buffs and weaknesses in Palworld can get a little bit confusing. This is especially true because there isn’t any mention of what skills do or do not stack in this game.

Passive Skills might not seem as important as Partner Skills at first glance, but finding the right combinations can end up having a critical impact on your character’s overall strength.

Palworld: Passive Skills, explained

The basics of Passive Skills are quite easy to understand in Palworld. So long as a Pal is in your Party or assigned to a base for work, that Pal’s Passive Skills will be in effect. You benefit from the Passive Skills of the Pals in your Party no matter where in the world you are, but you only benefit from the Passives of Pals assigned to your base when you are in the base as well. Passive Skills of the Pals in your Palbox do not apply no matter where in the world you are.

Passive Skills will always specify whether they affect the player or only the Pal that carries them. For example, the Passive Skill Hydromaniac reads, “+10 percent to Water Damage.” This Skill only affects the Pal that carries it, because the player is not mentioned. On the other hand, the Skill Stronghold Strategist does affect the player because it specifies “player defense” in its description. But what happens if you have two Pals that both have Stronghold Strategist in your Party?

Can you stack Passive Skill effects in Palworld?

All Passive Skills can be stacked in Palworld, and there are no diminishing returns when you have two or three of the same Passive Skill in your Party. The game doesn’t tell you this outright, but there is actually a way that you can check and confirm this for yourself.

If you equip a Pal with Stronghold Strategist, which grants a 10 percent bonus to player defense, you can see a blue arrow next to your Defense stat on the Inventory menu page. Hovering over the stat will show that you currently have a 10 percent bonus. Equip a second Pal with Stronghold Strategist, and hovering will now show a 20 percent bonus because the Passive Skill is being applied twice.

While most Partner Skills do not stack in the same way (you can’t stack a Mount ability), some Partner Skills such as the Cattiva’s bonus to carry weight do stack. If you want to check any skill for yourself, simply hover over the stat in question to see whether or not it’s being buffed up as high as it should be.

A related side note; I myself just learned that the Passive Skill Motivational Leader does not affect movement speed, but rather Work Speed by using this hovering method. The description for the skill reads “+20 percent to Player Speed,” which definitely sounds an awful lot like movement speed. However, equipping a Pal with this Passive Skill and then hovering over Work Speed will clearly show that the bonus is applied to Work Speed, not to movement speed.