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Guide

How Palworld breeding works

Breeding looks random the first time you try it, but the result is completely predictable once you know the one number every Pal hides. This guide explains that number, the rules the game layers on top of it, and how to use them to plan the fastest route to the Pal you actually want.

Getting started

You breed Pals at a Breeding Farm, which you unlock through the Technology tree. Assign one male and one female Pal to the farm and place a Cake in its storage box. After a while the pair produces an egg, which you hatch in an Egg Incubator. The parents are not used up, so a good pair can keep producing eggs as long as you keep the farm stocked with cake.

Breeding power: the hidden number

Every Pal has a hidden breeding power. Confusingly, a lower number means a stronger, rarer Pal. In PalDeck's data, Bellanoir sits at the strong end with 1, while Clovee sits at the weak end with 2970. You can see each Pal's value in the Breeding section of its page.

How the child is chosen

When two different Pals breed, the game does three things:

  1. Adds the two parents' breeding power together, adds one, and halves the result, rounding down.
  2. Looks through every Pal that can hatch from the formula (Pals that only come from special combos are skipped).
  3. Picks the one whose breeding power is closest to that number.

Take Penking (520) and Bushi (640). Their average is 580, and the closest Pal that can hatch from the formula is Anubis (570), so that's what the egg contains.

Ties

Sometimes two Pals are exactly as close to the average. The game then uses a hidden duplicate priority value, and the Pal with the higher priority hatches. Lamball and Vixy average 1460, and Hangyu (1420), Chikipi (1500) and Skutlass (1420) are all 40 away. The winner is Hangyu. Some guides say ties simply go to the higher (or lower) breeding power; PalDeck uses the game's own priority values instead.

Special combos (a big deal in 1.0)

Palworld 1.0 leans heavily on fixed parent pairs. PalDeck knows 1,904 special combos: pairs that always produce a set child, whatever the formula says. Only 149 of the 286 breedable Pals can hatch from the averaging formula at all; the other 137 come only from their special combos. That includes all the elemental variants, the legendaries and, perhaps surprisingly, some common Pals like Lamball (for example, Chikipi and Sparkit make Lamball).

  • Same species. Two Pals of the same species always make that species. For legendaries such as Jetragon this is the only way to breed them.
  • Gender-specific pairs. A few combos depend on which parent is male. Katress and Wixen make Wixen Noct when Katress is the male, and Katress Ignis when Wixen is.
  • Pals you can't breed. Panthalus and Astralym can't be used at the Breeding Farm at all, and Aegidron never hatches from mixed parents.

The breeding calculator includes every special combo, and each Pal's page lists the exact pairs that make it.

Why you can't breed "up" from weak Pals

Because the child lands near the average of its parents, two weak Pals can only ever make another weak Pal. To reach a strong Pal you need at least one parent that is as strong as the target, or stronger. A common trick is to pair one strong Pal with a range of weaker partners, which spreads the results across many different children.

Planning the shortest route

If the Pal you want isn't one breeding away, you need a chain: breed A and B to get C, then C and D to get your target, and so on. Working that out by hand gets slow quickly, because with a dozen Pals there are dozens of pairs to try at every step.

PalDeck's calculator does the search for you. Add the Pals you own to your pool and set a target. It tries every pairing, keeps each new Pal it can reach, and returns the route with the fewest breedings. Each step lists the two parents and the child, special combos are marked so you know to use those exact Pals, and ♂/♀ shows when a parent has to be a particular gender.

Passive skills

Babies can inherit passive skills from their parents, and which ones carry over is random. When you're chasing a Pal with specific passives, find the right species first, then keep breeding parents that already carry the passives you want. Breeding two of the same species is handy here, because the species never changes while you reroll passives.

Ready to try it? Open the breeding calculator or browse the Paldeck to find parents.