A Beginner’s Guide to Palia: Everything You Need to Know Before You Play

11 min readApr 15, 2024

What do you need to know about Singularity 6’s blossoming new MMO Palia before diving headfirst in Kilima?

Palia is a vibrant new world made just for you. Craft, cook, fish, and farm with friends as you live the life of your dreams and discover an enchanting adventure filled with colorful characters and a mystery to unravel.

With the release of Palia on Steam on March 25th along with Patch 0.178, a ton of new humans are coming to Kilima this spring season!

Have you wanted to jump into the fun, but are looking for a quick start guide? Let me tell you about some of the things I wish I had known as a new Palia player.

Starting your epic adventure

As a re-emerging human, a legendary race thought to have completely disappeared from Palia thousands of years ago, you’ll be introduced to gameplay mechanics and the tools for your adventure through the starting quest line, beginning with “Welcome to Palia”. It is important you complete these quests before pursuing other ventures as certain gameplay aspects may be locked until you finish.

The first person you talk to is Jina, a Majiri: the elf-like race of people you’ll meet throughout Palia, and she’ll give you a warm (but confused) welcome and set you out on your journey to learn how to be a member of their society. During this quest, you’ll receive all the tools you need for foraging, fishing, bug catching, hunting, and mining as well as your very own worktable. All Kilima villagers will be stationary so that you can easily introduce yourself. The only players you’ll see during this time will be other players still doing the quest.

Once you complete “Welcome to Palia,” you’ll automatically start the quest “Learning the Ropes” where you’ll learn about gardening and cooking. Gardening and cooking may not seem like the most exciting tasks, but they’re integral to building your skills and getting the most out of your experience in Palia.

Making money in Palia

Via the quest “Gardening 101,” you’ll get two plots of soil and some seeds to start growing your own little garden. Gardening can be a lucrative source of making gold early in the game. With the right rotation of crops and the dedication to check on your garden every hour, players can make 2,000 gold or more per 10 crops grown. Some resources for learning how to set up a healthy crop rotation are the Palia Garden Layout Generator and the Palia Garden Planner. Be aware that gardening in Palia is a bit different from other RPGs and sims you’ve played before; certain crops give certain boosts to the plants grow adjacent to them, so pay careful attention to these boosts as they can save you a lot of trouble (via water retention and weed prevention) or increase your profit (via increased yield, increased quality, and faster growth). Check out Arenvanya’s Guide to Gardening for more detailed information on gardening.

Hunting can be a very profitable way to spend time in Palia. With higher quality arrows to ease the process, you can earn 10,000 gold or more by hunting packs of Sernuk (the deer-like creatures across Kilima Valley and Bahari Bay) to sell their antlers and hides. Typically, I like to keep the meat to use in recipes to keep my Focus Bar full (and level up my cooking!) and a few of the hides to process into leather. The best locations for hunting Sernuk in the early game are: Mirror Fields, Leaf Hopper Hills, and Whispering Banks in Kilima Valley.

If you’re the gambling type, mining copper and iron ore nodes can rake in 7,000 to 15,000 gold an hour, but it’s mainly based on luck! With each node you mine, you have a chance to get a gemstone (also referred to as starstones) in addition to other materials. These typically sell for a high profit. Much like real life birthstones, starstones are associated with the Palian’s astrology and thus can be gifted for friendship gain if the starstone given corresponds with the sign of the Palian.

Etiquette for interacting with other humans in Palia

Every other player in Palia is also a human who mysteriously arrived via the same process as you. Palia as a game is unique in its strong social aspect with an interest in developing community within its player base. Let me give you some quick tips on interacting with other players that I’ve picked up over my time in Palia:

Be kind! Treat other Palians just like you’d want to be treated.

Call out rare resources in the server chat. Typically, resources like Flow-Infused Wood (the purple glowing flow trees that heal when you chop them and the groves that spawn with them — you’ll see a cluster of flow-infused trees with a pinkish magical swirl in the air above them), Palium Ore (the mining nodes with blueish stone outcroppings), and Proudhorned Sernuk (a deer-like creature with blue patterns in its fur that may be teleporting around on your screen) are rare and nearly impossible to gather singlehandedly, so it serves you to take them on as a team with other players nearby. A good example of a call out would be something like:

“Flow tree on the cliffs north of Statue Garden”
“Palium node in the cave near Hassian’s house”
“Grove in Proudhorn Pass”

If you see any of these callouts in chat, feel free to head that way to grab some rare materials! But remember, let them know that you’re on your way in chat so they don’t snag it before you get there. Most Palians will wait until a certain time (usually called out in chat) before they harvest the resource. Also, remember if there’s a group of resources in an area, you can hit each one with the corresponding tool as everyone who hits a resource at least once will get the full reward when it’s broken, so there’s no need to compete for resources. This goes for more common resources like trees, stones, fishing spots, animals, and even bugs!

You might notice that when you’re trying to craft something at the worktable and you don’t have enough of a specific material, you’ll have the option to request a set amount of that material. You can only request items you’ve previously obtained, so you won’t be able to snag something you’ve never seen. Maybe you’ve had a request filled and you want to pay-it-forward? If you open the requests tab (in the friend’s list on PC or in the general menu on Switch), you can use the gift icon to find a list of requests from other players. By filling these requests, you can gain a little bit of renown.

What is renown and how do I use it?

Renown is a secondary currency in Palia. It is earned by almost everything you do in Palia: gifting villagers and raising their friendship levels, completing accomplishments, leveling your skills, filling player requests, and completing quests. In addition, some events and limited-time activities can reward renown. Be aware: renown caps at 1,000, so use it or lose it!

You can spend renown in a few very important ways:

After completing “The Dragon Shrine” quest, you can spend renown at the Dragon Shrine to increase your total focus.

After completing “The Phoenix Shrine” quest, you can spend renown at the Phoenix Shrine to increase your focus bonus.

After starting the “Strong Foundations” quest, you can spend renown at City Hall for Writs that allow you to unlock swaths of land on your housing plot as well as purchase new roofing and wallpaper.

Ok… so what is focus, then?

Focus is a resource used when you gain experience. Every time you do an action that would cause you to gain experience, a bit of your focus is used to increase the total experience you gain. So if you’re raising your skills (via mining, foraging, hunting, etc.), it’s important to have focus to help you level them up faster! If you’re noticing that you’re not gaining any experience when you’re completing actions that typically give it, make sure your focus bar isn’t empty.

Every Palian has a focus bar — filling it is as simple as eating something. Remember how I said cooking would come in handy later? Dishes give the most focus, but some ingredients also give focus. Each item will have the amount of focus you’ll receive in their tooltip. The better you are at cooking, the higher the amount of focus you can receive as the recipes get better and better.

Earlier I said you could spend renown to increase your max focus and your focus bonus, so let’s talk about that.

Your max focus starts at 200 and increases by 50 focus for every 100 renown you offer at the Dragon Shrine until you hit 500 focus. After that it’s 25 focus gained per 100 renown until 750 focus, and then 10 focus per 100 renown until you hit your max of 1,000 focus. You must increase your focus 40 times and spend 3,900 renown to reach max focus.

Focus bonus is the amount of focus gained from eating food and the amount of experience gained when utilizing skills. Everyone starts with 20% focus bonus and your focus bonus increases by 5% for every 100 renown spent at the Phoenix Shrine up until 50% focus bonus. After that it’s 2.5% increase focus bonus per 100 renown until 75% focus bonus, and then 1% increase focus bonus per 100 renown until a maximum of 100% focus bonus. You must increase your focus bonus 41 times and spend 4,000 renown to reach max focus bonus.

Increasing your focus bonus can be a game changer as it will speed up the progress of your skill experience, allowing you to access more content quicker. However, it is important to increase both max focus and focus bonus similarly as you progress because increasing your focus bonus causes you to consume more focus meaning your focus bar will deplete faster and you must consume more food.

Some of the items I’ve gathered have gold stars, what does that mean?

Some items can have a quality marking; this marking means that item can give more focus if eaten or sells for more gold. Quality = better stats. Also, star quality produce can be turned into star quality seeds with the seed maker, increasing the likelihood of more star quality produce. There are only Star Quality items and not; there aren’t levels of quality or anything to worry about. In addition to better stats, star quality bugs, fish, dishes, and even gems can be placed as decor or collection items within your housing plot.

I want to make friends with the villagers!

The best way to raise your friendship is to talk to them every Palian day (day cycles in Palia are equal to one real-life hour) and to gift them once per real-life day. Completing quests involving each villager will also increase their friendship. When you reach a new friendship level with a villager, you will be given a specific quest which you can complete to earn rewards. The rewards for each villager are listed on the relationships tab in the player menu. Each week, villagers have a new list of four weekly wants which are items they request (or another villager requests on their behalf) that will give increased friendship; two are liked gifts and two are loved gifts. These gifts can only be given once a real-life week.

Some villagers have a romance bar in addition to their friendship bar in the relationships tab; these villagers can be given a Heartdrop Lily or Box of Chocolates once you reach friendship level 3 to start their romance quest lines and unlock the romance bar. To raise their romance, you can flirt with them once per Palian day or gift them a Heartdrop Lily or Box of Chocolates once per real-life week.

I’ve heard about something call cake parties… what’s that?

Cake parties are in-game unofficial events that players can arrange to create Celebration Cake, an Epic consumable that sells for 176 gold each, fills 825 focus, and requires a large amount of ingredients. Celebration Cake has one of the most complex recipes in the game consisting of fifteen individual steps during the making process. Like other activities, if someone does even one step during this, they receive the full rewards. Each set of ingredients will produce 3 of the recipe and there are 18 roles to be filled, so even if you only create one cake and have 18 people participating, that recipe will make 3 for each participant, so 54 total cakes! For more information on cake parties, check the wiki. To find a cake party to join, check out Palia Party or snag a bunch of friends (and maybe some friends-of-friends) to try it out today.

How do I get around to all these cool people and places?

Fast travelling is an option in Palia. To fast travel, you’ll need to search out for the horseshoe locations on the map. At these locations, there are maps you can interact with to travel to any other horseshoe location for a small amount of gold.

On your map, you may have noticed a Return Home button that will teleport you back to your housing plot. This button has a 30 minute cooldown so be aware.

You can even unlock a glider by completing the quest “Like a Bird” that will help you get around a little quicker when jumping from high places!

The biggest takeaways for beginners

For true newbies to Palia, focus for the first few days should be on completing quests, leveling up your skills and upgrading your tools, and earning money to pay for your extravagant lifestyle (AKA buying tool upgrade recipes). Also, repair your tools and water your plants regularly. Don’t forget to be kind to other players and befriend a villager or two as well!

Some additional resources for new players: