Guide
Prioritize Cattiva and Chikipi as Starter Pals
When starting out, focus on capturing **Cattiva** and **Chikipi**. These are essential starter Pals that will help manage early base labor and resource farming.
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Counter-Strike 2
Shooter · Counter-Strike 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed and published by Valve. Released in September 2023, it is the fifth main entry in the Counter-Strike series and serves as a direct replacement for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Steam. Two teams, Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists, compete in objective-based rounds across modes such as bomb defusal and hostage rescue. Built on the Source 2 engine, the game introduced volumetric smoke physics, revised weapon handling, and a new sub-tick server architecture. It inherited all cosmetic items from its predecessor and features both a map-specific Competitive mode and a numerically ranked Premier mode.
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Patch 1.0
Essential guides & builds
Meta
Deploy Daedream for Early Game Combat
**Daedream** is highly effective for early-game combat encounters, making it an essential Pal to capture for early survival and combat safety.
Trick
Use Vixie in the Ranch for Free Pal Spheres
After unlocking the **Ranch** at Level 5, assign **Vixie** to it. This allows you to generate free Pal Spheres early in your playthrough, saving valuable crafting resources.
Guide
Establish an Early Base Near 8 Iron Nodes
For the ultimate early-game base setup, locate and build your base at an area featuring **8 Iron Nodes** to secure a steady supply of metal for crafting.
Trick
Skip Nightwing for Fengalope Ground Mount
In Palworld 1.0, you should skip mounting **Nightwing** and instead prioritize getting **Fengalope**, which serves as the premier early-game ground mount.
Tip
Use Daedream as Your Early Game Combat Companion
In the early phases of the game, capture and deploy **Daedream**. It serves as an exceptional combat option to help clear content and defeat early-game targets.
Tip
Establish Your Early Base Near 8 Iron Nodes
To optimize your transition into mid-game crafting, search for an early-game base location that contains **8 Iron Nodes**. Setting up your base here ensures you have immediate, dense access to essential iron ore.
Trick
Build a Ranch at Level 5 and Use Vixie for Free Pal Spheres
As soon as you reach Level 5, unlock and construct the **Ranch**. Assigning **Vixie** to the Ranch allows you to farm free Pal Spheres passively, saving you valuable crafting resources in the early game.
Guide
Skip Nightwing and Get Fengalope as Your Early Ground Mount
When planning your progression path for mounts, skip Nightwing. Instead, prioritize securing **Fengalope**, which is highly rated as the best early-game ground mount for efficient map traversal.
Trick
Adjusting to Tuned Melee Soft-Lock Controls
Melee soft-lock has been optimized to prevent accidental camera pulls and target mistakes: * **Triggers:** Soft-lock only activates upon attacking or being hit by an NPC, rather than just standing near them. * **Controller Play:** Soft-lock no longer uses your camera's orientation to influence which target is selected. * **Mouse & Keyboard:** Soft-lock now heavily respects your directional movement keys/inputs for target selection.
Guide
Overland Dungeon Difficulty and Loot Thresholds
Difficulty and reward scaling in overland dungeons have been redesigned to make high-tier progression smoother: * **Difficulty 20 and under:** Grade 3 items and augmentations stop dropping entirely after Difficulty 20. Grade 5 rewards begin dropping at Difficulty 20, but are less common since the challenge level is lower than in previous versions. * **Difficulty 27 and above:** Grade 4 item drops decrease starting at Difficulty 27 to make room for a higher rate of Grade 5 item drops. * **Group Play Scaling:** Boss bonus health has been reduced for 3-player and 4-player groups, making group dungeon farming significantly more efficient.
Meta
Optimized Augment Crafting Probabilities
The probability curve for augment stat rolls has been restructured to follow a **bell curve** rather than an exponential curve. This means that when crafting augments, you are significantly more likely to secure better mid-to-high range stats. Note that while average rolls are much stronger, the odds of getting a absolute maximum stat roll remain the same.
Trick
Using Dashing and Second Wind to Survive Combat
Combat movement and recovery have received significant updates: * **Dash Phasing:** You can now dash directly through NPCs to reposition or escape tight corners. * **Second Wind Recovery:** Taking health damage while in the "second wind" state will instantly return all your stamina and free you from the state, allowing you to immediately move or retaliate.
Trick
Melee Parry Stamina Recovery and Window Buff
When engaging in melee combat, parrying with **swords, daggers, or dual blades** is highly rewarded: * **Stamina Return:** A successful parry now returns **25 stamina** to the player. * **Increased Window:** The parry window has been buffed from **0.25s to 0.33s**, making timing less punishing. * **Block Transition:** Holding right-click after a successful parry will instantly transition you back into a blocking state, allowing you to maintain defenses against subsequent attacks.
Tip
Stat Progression via Mimog Effigies and the Metal Merchant
Ensure you collect **Mimog Effigies** and offer them to statues (such as the one located at the **Desolate Church**). Every 3 Mimog Effigies turned in permanently increases your character's movement speed by 0.5% (stacking up to 30%+). Additionally, speak to the **Metal Merchant** located at the Desolate Church. He sells extra accessory slots and stat-increasing potions for Dog Coins: * **Early-Game Stats**: Prioritize leveling up Health (to become a tank), Stamina (for more dodge roll i-frames), and Weight (if you mine frequently). * **Stat Potions**: Don't worry about making perfect stat choices early on; you can always buy potions from the Metal Merchant later to boost or adjust your stats up to their cap.
Guide
Dog Coin and Loot Farming on Sunlit Isles
Once you capture the **Chillet** boss, craft its saddle to use it as a mount. While Chillet has average movement speed on land, it gets an extreme speed boost when riding in water. Use Chillet to easily cross the ocean to the **Sunlit Isles**. This island features very weak Pals (Level 3 to 10) but is densely packed with salvage and chests. Regularly looting these chests is the easiest early-game method to farm **Dog Coins**, rare schematics, armor, accessories, and Pal souls without engaging in high-level combat.
Guide
The Ultimate Early-Game Base Location
The absolute best starting base location is situated right next to the **Chillet boss** cliffside. Building here grants several distinct geographical advantages: * **8 Iron Ore Nodes**: Located directly inside the base perimeter for easy automated mining. * **Pal Metal Fragments & Egg Spawns**: Easily accessible just below the cliffside. * **Dungeon Access**: A dungeon spawns right below the base for quick farming. * **Clovis Spawns**: You can find Clovis nearby. Putting one Clovis in your base grants a non-stacking `+1 gathering` work suitability passive, effectively doubling your early planting and harvesting base production speed.
Tip
Automate Free Sphere Farming with Vixy
Unlock the **Ranch** at Level 5 and assign **Vixy** to it. When stationed at a Ranch, Vixy will continuously dig up free blue, green, and yellow Pal Spheres. Accumulating yellow spheres early in the game is exceptionally powerful, as they provide significantly higher capture rates—even granting up to a 100% guaranteed capture rate on early bosses like Chillet.
Trick
Stacking Herbals for Infinite Self-Revives
The Pal **Herbal** possesses a highly powerful passive ability that triggers a self-revive, instantly restoring your health to 30% of your total HP upon dying. Because this effect stacks, you can run up to four Herbals in your active party to chain multiple self-revives back-to-back, allowing you to survive highly punishing boss encounters.
Trick
Daedream Combat Trick for Safe Capturing
In the early game, **Daedream** is an incredibly valuable combat helper because its bullets will not reduce a target's health below 1 HP. This ensures you never accidentally kill a Pal you are trying to capture. * This strategy completely bypasses the need for the **Mercy Ring**, which is expensive and locked until Level 18. * To optimize this setup, carry four Daedreams and one **Hoocrates** in your active party. Hoocrates passive ability increases the attack damage of dark-type Pals (which Daedreams are) by 15%.
News
Patch shifts CT utility timings on Anubis
The latest map pass changed the A connector geometry, so the old default molotov lands short. Re-learn the lineup from the pillar instead of the doorway.
10,400Release notes
Trick
Mirage window smoke from T spawn
Line up on the corner of the wall in T spawn, aim at the top-left corner of the antenna, jump-throw. Lands full window every time and buys your mid player four free seconds.
26,100
Tip
Counter-strafe timing is 8 ticks, not a tap
Hold the opposite key just long enough to zero your velocity — roughly one eighth of a second — then shoot. Tapping too briefly leaves residual movement and your first bullet drifts.
11,800
Patch diffs · factual balance changes
[News](https://www.counter-strike.net/news) [FAQ](https://steamcommunity.com/faqs/steam-help/view/5ED2-ED8E-81F4-0C18)
Patch 1.0 · www.counter-strike.net