Comment configurer un monde Palworld pour jouer avec ses amis

PalWorldSettings.ini is the file that decides almost everything about a shared Palworld world: how many friends can join, how fast Pals are captured, how much experience drops, and how punishing death is. Below is a field-tested walkthrough of the file, the UDP 8211 traffic it depends on, the save structure behind it, and the habits that keep a small group's world stable over weeks.

Where PalWorldSettings.ini lives and how the game loads it

Palworld ships two configuration files. The first is DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini, sitting in the root folder next to PalServer.sh (or PalServer.exe). It is a read-only reference: the game never applies it directly, and every update overwrites it. The second is the one you actually edit:

Linux   : Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini
Windows : Pal\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\PalWorldSettings.ini

This second file only appears after the world has booted at least once, and it starts almost empty. Most of the handling described here is identical whether you run the binaries manually or use Palworld server hosting with a Pterodactyl panel — in the panel, the same path is reachable from the file manager, and the console gives you a clean stop before editing.

Copy the defaults first, then edit

Never write settings from memory into an empty file. Copy the reference file over the live one so every key exists with a valid value, then change what you need:

cd /home/container
cp DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini
nano Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini

The single-line rule

The whole configuration is one gigantic line. The file looks like this:

[/Script/Pal.PalGameWorldSettings]
OptionSettings=(Difficulty=None,DayTimeSpeedRate=1.000000,ExpRate=1.000000,PalCaptureRate=1.000000,ServerPlayerMaxNum=32,ServerName="Our World",AdminPassword="",PublicPort=8211)

Three rules that break more worlds than anything else:

• Everything stays inside OptionSettings=( ... ) on one line. A line break in the middle means the parser gives up and silently falls back to defaults.
• Values are separated by commas, no spaces around the = signs.
• Text values (ServerName, AdminPassword, ServerDescription) need double quotes. Numeric rates keep their decimals, booleans are True/False.

Also: always stop the world before editing. A running Palworld process rewrites PalWorldSettings.ini from memory when it shuts down, so edits made while it is live disappear on the next restart.

Tuning PalWorldSettings.ini for a group of friends

A world for four to eight people needs different numbers than a 32-slot public one. Small groups do not have the manpower to grind base materials, so mild multipliers keep progression enjoyable without turning the game into a creative sandbox.

Player limit and guild size

Key	Default	Typical for friends	Notes
ServerPlayerMaxNum	32	8	Hard ceiling is 32. Lower values reduce CPU and memory pressure noticeably.
GuildPlayerMaxNum	20	8	Set it to your group size so everyone shares one guild and its bases.
BaseCampMaxNumInGuild	4	3–4	Each camp keeps Pals simulated. This is the single biggest driver of long-term memory growth.
ServerName	-	"Our World"	Shown in the in-game list. Avoid exotic characters.
ServerPassword	""	a real password	Keeps random players out without a whitelist system.
AdminPassword	""	long random string	Required for in-game admin commands and RCON. Never leave it empty.

Difficulty and death penalty

Difficulty accepts None, Casual, Normal and Hard. Setting anything other than None forces a preset that quietly overrides several individual rates — if you want full manual control over experience and capture values, keep Difficulty=None and set each rate yourself.

DeathPenalty is the setting friends argue about the most:

• None — you keep everything. Ideal for a casual co-op run.
• Item — you drop inventory items but keep equipment.
• ItemAndEquipment — inventory and gear drop where you died.
• All — inventory, gear and all Pals in your party stay on the corpse. Brutal in volcano or dungeon runs.

Capture, experience and gathering rates

Key	Default	Comfortable group value
ExpRate	1.000000	1.500000 – 2.000000
PalCaptureRate	1.000000	1.500000 – 2.000000
PalSpawnNumRate	1.000000	0.800000 – 1.000000
CollectionDropRate	1.000000	1.500000 – 2.000000
CollectionObjectRespawnSpeedRate	1.000000	1.500000
PalEggDefaultHatchingTime	72.000000	2.000000 – 6.000000
WorkSpeedRate	1.000000	1.200000 – 1.500000
DeathPenalty	All	None or Item

Two rates deserve caution. PalSpawnNumRate above 1.0 multiplies wild creatures across the map and directly increases CPU work per tick — leave it at or below 1.0 unless you enjoy stutter. And PalEggDefaultHatchingTime is expressed in hours, so 2.000000 means two real hours, not two minutes.

PvP and raids

For a friendly group, this trio is usually the right combination:

bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage=False,
bEnableFriendlyFire=False,
bEnableInvaderEnemy=True,
bEnableNonLoginPenalty=True,
bIsMultiplay=True

(Remember to collapse them back onto one line in the real file.) Keeping bEnableInvaderEnemy=True preserves raid events, which are the main reason to build defences at all. If raids keep flattening bases while nobody is online, that is the switch to flip to False.

A working example

[/Script/Pal.PalGameWorldSettings]
OptionSettings=(Difficulty=None,DayTimeSpeedRate=1.000000,NightTimeSpeedRate=2.000000,ExpRate=2.000000,PalCaptureRate=1.500000,PalSpawnNumRate=1.000000,PalDamageRateAttack=1.000000,PlayerDamageRateAttack=1.000000,CollectionDropRate=2.000000,CollectionObjectRespawnSpeedRate=1.500000,EnemyDropItemRate=1.500000,DeathPenalty=Item,bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage=False,bEnableFriendlyFire=False,bEnableInvaderEnemy=True,PalEggDefaultHatchingTime=4.000000,WorkSpeedRate=1.300000,GuildPlayerMaxNum=8,BaseCampMaxNumInGuild=4,bIsMultiplay=True,bIsPvP=False,bAutoResetGuildNoOnlinePlayers=False,ServerPlayerMaxNum=8,ServerName="Palpagos Crew",ServerDescription="Private co-op world",AdminPassword="ChangeMe_L0ngRandom",ServerPassword="FriendsOnly2024",PublicPort=8211,RCONEnabled=True,RCONPort=25575,bIsUseBackupSaveData=True,AutoSaveSpan=180.000000)

Full key reference and value ranges are maintained in the official Palworld technical documentation, which is worth checking after each major patch since new keys appear regularly.

UDP port 8211 and getting everyone connected

Palworld's game traffic runs over UDP 8211. Not TCP. This is the most common reason a world boots fine, shows healthy logs, and still refuses every connection attempt.

The ports that matter

Port	Protocol	Role
8211	UDP	Game traffic. Mandatory.
27015	UDP	Steam query, needed for community list visibility.
25575	TCP	RCON, if RCONEnabled=True.
8212	TCP	REST API, if RESTAPIEnabled=True.

On a machine you administrate yourself, open only what you need:

sudo ufw allow 8211/udp
sudo ufw allow 27015/udp
sudo ufw status verbose

# confirm the process is really listening
ss -lunp | grep 8211

If ss shows nothing on 8211, the process either crashed at startup or is using a different PublicPort. Two values must agree: PublicPort inside PalWorldSettings.ini and the port= argument on the command line. When they disagree, the command line wins and your friends type the wrong port.

Startup arguments worth keeping

./PalServer.sh -publiclobby -useperfthreads -NoAsyncLoadingThread \
  -UseMultithreadForDS port=8211 players=8

The three performance flags spread work across cores and reduce hitching during asset loading. Drop -publiclobby if you do not want the world listed publicly; friends can still join by IP address and port. On a Pterodactyl panel, these arguments live in the startup tab rather than in a script, so you edit them without touching the filesystem.

Joining

In game, use Join Multiplayer Game and enter IP:8211. If a ServerPassword is set, the prompt appears after the handshake. Console players and the Game Pass build use a separate matchmaking path, so a world built for the Steam client will not accept them — check which build your group owns before tuning anything else.

Save files, backups and long-term stability

All persistent data sits under one folder:

Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<WorldID>/
├── Level.sav          # the world: bases, Pals, containers
├── LevelMeta.sav      # world metadata
├── WorldOption.sav    # optional settings override
└── Players/
    └── <SteamID>.sav  # one file per player

WorldOption.sav overrides your .ini — remove it

If the world was migrated from a local co-op session, the save folder contains WorldOption.sav. That file carries the settings from the single-player world and takes priority over PalWorldSettings.ini. Symptom: you edit rates, restart, and nothing changes in game. Fix it by stopping the world, deleting that one file, and starting again:

cd Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<WorldID>
mv WorldOption.sav WorldOption.sav.bak

Autosave and native backups

Two keys handle this: bIsUseBackupSaveData=True writes snapshots into Pal/Saved/SaveGames/backup/, and AutoSaveSpan defines the autosave interval in seconds. The default of 30 seconds is aggressive on busy worlds; 180.000000 gives a better balance between data loss and I/O spikes. On NVMe storage the write burst is short, but on slower disks a frequent autosave shows up as a visible freeze for every connected player.

Keep an off-box copy anyway. A manual archive before every game update takes seconds:

tar -czf palworld-$(date +%F-%H%M).tar.gz Pal/Saved/SaveGames
sha256sum palworld-*.tar.gz

Automatic snapshots on the infrastructure side, as offered on Fly-Serv game instances, cover the case where the whole filesystem goes bad — but a save archive you can download and restore into any world folder is what actually saves a group's 200-hour run.

Why the world slows down after a few weeks

Palworld's simulation cost grows with what you build. Ranked by impact:

1. Pals assigned to base camps. Each one runs pathfinding and task logic continuously. Twenty Pals across three camps is heavier than twenty in your party.
2. Dropped items and chests. Loose loot on the ground is tracked in Level.sav. Sweep bases occasionally.
3. Structure count. Large decorative builds inflate the save file, which inflates load and autosave times.
4. Wild spawn multipliers. PalSpawnNumRate above 1.0 raises the per-tick cost across the whole map.

Palworld leans heavily on a few fast threads rather than many slow ones, which is why high-frequency Ryzen cores and NVMe storage make a measurable difference to tick stability and save times. Beyond hardware, a nightly restart is the single most effective maintenance habit: it releases accumulated memory and resets the drift that builds up in a long-running Unreal Engine process. On a panel, schedule it during your group's off hours.

Admin commands during play

With AdminPassword set, press Enter in game and authenticate:

/AdminPassword ChangeMe_L0ngRandom
/ShowPlayers
/Save
/Broadcast Restart_in_5_minutes
/KickPlayer <SteamID>
/BanPlayer <SteamID>
/Shutdown 60 Nightly_maintenance

Note that /Broadcast and /Shutdown messages do not accept spaces — use underscores. Running /Save before any manual stop guarantees the last minutes of progress are written to Level.sav.

Survival-game neighbours use the same logic

If you administrate several worlds, the pattern transfers well: a single configuration file, one UDP port, a save folder to archive, and a restart schedule. It works the same way on a Valheim server or across All our game servers, and more configuration walkthroughs are collected on the Fly-Serv blog.

Wrapping up

Getting a shared Palworld world right comes down to four habits: copy the default configuration before editing, keep everything on one line, confirm UDP 8211 is actually listening, and archive the save folder before every patch. Add a nightly restart and a sane camp limit, and a group of friends can run the same world for months without drama.

FAQ

Why do my PalWorldSettings.ini changes disappear after a restart?

Two causes. Either you edited the file while the process was running — Palworld rewrites it from memory on shutdown, wiping your changes — or a syntax error (a line break inside OptionSettings, a missing comma, an unquoted text value) made the parser fall back to defaults. Always stop the world first, keep everything on a single line, and verify in game with /ShowPlayers or by checking a visible rate.

My friends cannot connect even though the world is running. What should I check?

Confirm UDP 8211 is open, not TCP: run ss -lunp | grep 8211 to verify the process is listening, then check the firewall rule with sudo ufw status. Next, make sure PublicPort in PalWorldSettings.ini matches the port= startup argument. Finally, verify everyone uses the same game build — Steam and Game Pass clients cannot join the same world.

Can I raise the player limit above 32?

No. ServerPlayerMaxNum is capped at 32 by the engine, and values close to that ceiling stress the simulation hard once every guild builds multiple camps. For a stable experience, set the value to your actual group size plus one or two slots, lower BaseCampMaxNumInGuild, and keep PalSpawnNumRate at 1.0 or below.