Configurer et optimiser un serveur Palworld : paramètres, performances et sauvegardes

PalWorldSettings.ini is the configuration file that determines how a Palworld world actually plays out: how fast you catch Pals, how hungry your character gets, how long nights last, and how generous the loot tables are. If you've only ever touched the in-game host settings menu, opening this file for the first time can feel overwhelming because it exposes far more parameters than the client ever shows. This article walks through the file structure, the parameters worth tuning, the hardware behavior you should expect as your Pal population grows, and the fixes for the save corruption and connection errors that show up once a community settles in.

How PalWorldSettings.ini Actually Works

PalWorldSettings.ini lives inside Pal/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/ (or LinuxServer/ depending on the build) and follows the Unreal Engine convention of packing every option into a single OptionSettings line rather than spreading them across separate key/value pairs. That's why editing it by hand is error-prone: one missing parenthesis or comma and the whole block fails to parse, and the server silently falls back to default values on next boot.

A minimal but representative block looks like this:

[/Script/Pal.PalGameWorldSettings]
OptionSettings=(Difficulty=None,DayTimeSpeedRate=1.000000,NightTimeSpeedRate=1.000000,
ExpRate=1.000000,PalCaptureRate=1.000000,PalSpawnNumRate=1.000000,
PalDamageRateAttack=1.000000,PlayerDamageRateAttack=1.000000,
CollectionDropRate=1.000000,EnemyDropItemRate=1.000000,
DeathPenalty=All,bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage=False,
ServerPlayerMaxNum=32,ServerName="My World",RCONEnabled=False,RCONPort=25575)

Changes only take effect after a full restart of the process; there's no live reload for most fields unless you push them through RCON. If you manage the instance through a panel like Pterodactyl, the file editor lets you edit this line directly and validates the save, which avoids the syntax mistakes that cause silent rollbacks when editing over SFTP with a text editor that reformats line endings.

If you're setting up a fresh world and want the resource allocation sized correctly from the start, our Palworld server hosting page details the specs needed per player slot before you even touch the configuration file.

Key Parameters Inside PalWorldSettings.ini

Most of the tuning work in PalWorldSettings.ini comes down to four families of parameters: difficulty and Pal behavior, world rate multipliers, the day/night cycle, and drop rates. Getting these wrong doesn't just unbalance progression, it can also push more Pals, items and structures into the world than the save file was designed to handle smoothly.

Difficulty and Pal Behavior

The Difficulty field accepts None, Casual or Normal, but most communities get finer control by leaving it on None and adjusting the individual multipliers instead:

• PalCaptureRate – multiplies your chance to catch a Pal. Values above 2.0 noticeably reduce the grind on PvE worlds.
• PalDamageRateAttack / PalDamageRateDefense – scale how hard Pals hit and how much damage they absorb.
• PlayerStaminaDecreaseRate / PlayerStomachDecreaseRate – lower these for a more relaxed survival pace.
• bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage / bEnableFriendlyFire – toggle PvP; leave both False for cooperative bases.

World Rates and Multipliers

Fields like ExpRate, WorkSpeedRate, PalSpawnNumRate and BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate control progression speed and base decay. A PalSpawnNumRate pushed much past 1.5 significantly increases the number of active Pal entities the server has to simulate at once, which matters more than any other single value for performance.

Day/Night Cycle

DayTimeSpeedRate and NightTimeSpeedRate stretch or compress each phase independently. Lowering NightTimeSpeedRate below 1.0 extends nighttime, which is useful if your community wants longer raid windows against nocturnal Pals without touching daytime build time.

Drop and Collection Rates

CollectionDropRate, CollectionObjectRespawnSpeedRate and EnemyDropItemRate govern how fast resource nodes replenish and how much loot enemies drop. Pushing respawn speed too high alongside a high player count increases the number of spawned item actors the save has to track, which feeds directly into the RAM discussion below.

Parameter	Default	Effect when increased
PalCaptureRate	1.0	Faster Pal acquisition
PalSpawnNumRate	1.0	More active Pal entities, higher CPU load
CollectionObjectRespawnSpeedRate	1.0	More resource nodes alive at once
DropItemAliveMaxHours	1.0	Longer item persistence, larger save size

RAM and Single-Core CPU Load as Your Pal Count Grows

Palworld's server process is built on Unreal Engine and, like most Unreal titles, the main simulation thread is largely single-threaded. That means raw core count matters far less than per-core clock speed: a CPU that holds a high sustained frequency keeps the Pal AI, base logic and physics ticking smoothly even when a second or third core is busy with networking or save writes. This is one of the reasons running the simulation on Ryzen hardware with NVMe storage behind it makes a measurable difference once a world gets busy — the save writes don't stall the main tick.

RAM consumption scales directly with three things: the number of active Pals (both owned and wild), the number of placed structures per base, and the number of concurrently loaded item actors on the ground. A small 4-player world with modest PalSpawnNumRate values typically sits in a comfortable memory range, but doubling the Pal multiplier and running multiple large bases can push usage noticeably higher, especially once BaseCampWorkerMaxNum and GuildPlayerMaxNum are both raised.

Practical guidance when tuning PalWorldSettings.ini for a growing community:

• Raise PalSpawnNumRate gradually and watch RAM usage after each change rather than jumping straight to high multipliers.
• Keep DropItemMaxNum reasonable; thousands of persistent dropped items on the ground add up in memory and in save file size.
• Cap ServerPlayerMaxNum to a figure your allocated memory can actually sustain under peak base activity, not just average play.
• Monitor via the console or panel resource graphs rather than guessing — a steady climb in memory usage with no plateau usually points at a specific multiplier set too high.

Fixing Save Corruption and Connection Issues

Two problems dominate support requests for Palworld worlds: a save that fails to load after a crash, and players who can't connect even though the process shows as running. Both are usually traceable to specific causes.

Backing Up Before You Edit

Never edit PalWorldSettings.ini or touch the save folder while the process is live. Stop it cleanly first:

systemctl stop palworld
cp -r Pal/Saved/SaveGames Pal/Saved/SaveGames_backup_$(date +%F)
systemctl start palworld

Automated backups scheduled through your management panel remove the guesswork here — if a world-level save gets corrupted after an unexpected shutdown, restoring the last clean snapshot is faster than attempting a manual repair of a truncated .sav file.

Recovering a Corrupted World

If the server logs show a failure to deserialize the level data on startup, the Level.sav file itself is likely truncated, usually from a power loss or forced kill mid-write. Recovery steps, in order:

1. Stop the process and copy the entire SaveGames folder elsewhere before touching anything.
2. Check for a .sav.bak auto-backup Palworld may have generated before the crash.
3. Restore the most recent scheduled backup if no usable auto-backup exists.
4. Re-apply any PalWorldSettings.ini changes made since that backup, since the config file is separate from the save and survives independently.

Common Connection Problems

When players report timeouts, check these in order before touching the configuration file again:

• PublicPort mismatch – confirm the port in PalWorldSettings.ini matches the one actually forwarded or opened in your firewall rules.
• RCON left enabled with a weak password – set RCONEnabled=True only if you need remote console access, and always pair it with a strong AdminPassword.
• Stale player max – if ServerPlayerMaxNum was lowered after being full, new connections silently fail until the count clears.
• Outdated server binary – a version mismatch between client and server after a patch is one of the most common causes of connection refusals; check the console log for a version handshake error.

For firewall-level checks on a Linux box running the process yourself, confirming the rule is simple:

ufw status
ufw allow 8211/udp
ufw allow 25575/tcp

If you're managing the whole stack yourself rather than through a managed panel, our Pterodactyl VPS guide covers setting up the panel layer that handles backups, file editing and restarts without manual SSH work each time. You can also browse All our game servers if you're comparing resource requirements across titles before deciding how much capacity to allocate.

Official reference for the full parameter list and updates is maintained on the Palworld Wiki, which is worth bookmarking since new fields get added with major patches.

Tuning PalWorldSettings.ini is mostly a matter of changing one multiplier at a time, restarting cleanly, and watching how memory and CPU load react before pushing further. Combine that discipline with regular backups and you'll avoid most of the corruption and connection headaches that show up once a world grows past a handful of players. For more configuration walkthroughs, check the Fly-Serv blog.

FAQ

Why don't my PalWorldSettings.ini changes apply after I save the file?

Most fields only load on process startup. Save the file, then fully restart the server process rather than relying on a hot reload, and confirm the OptionSettings line has no broken parentheses or trailing commas.

How high can I safely push PalSpawnNumRate without causing performance issues?

Raise it incrementally, around 0.2 at a time, and monitor RAM and tick stability after each change. There's no universal safe ceiling since it depends on player count and base density, so test under real load rather than applying a high value upfront.

My save file won't load after a crash — is it permanently lost?

Not necessarily. Check for an auto-generated .sav.bak file first, then fall back to your most recent scheduled backup. Always copy the corrupted save elsewhere before attempting any repair so you don't lose a recoverable version.