Best Passive Skills in Palworld

The more you play Palworld, the more you'll be looking to optimise how your Pals work, and beyond their intrinsic traits, the best Passive Skills are the key for the nitty-gritty min-maxing needed for effective optimisation.

Passive Skills are random across all Pals however, so there's no guarantee you'll even get one when catching a Pal in Palworld, just as there's no guarantee that what you'll get is beneficial.

Since there are so many to unlock, varying in tiers and strength, we've provided this handy explainer to run through what Passive Skills are, how to find Lucky and Legendary traits, as well as the best Passive Skills you'll want to be keeping an eye out for.

On this page:

Lucky and Legend Passive Skills in Palworld explained

As mentioned, Passive Skills are random across all Pals, meaning you may not always get the ones you want, or that pair with the kind of role you want to place a particular Pal into.

While most Passive Skills can roll on any Pal, there are a select few that can’t, such as those from Lucky and Legendary Pals.

In the case of the 'Lucky' Passive Skill found on Lucky Pals, it provides a 15% increase to both attack and work speed, making it the only known trait in the game that boosts work speed and attack. The 'Lucky' trait will always be present on any Lucky Pal you find, however there’s no guarantee you’ll have any additional traits beyond that.

As for the 'Legend' Passive Skill found on Legendary Pals, it is similarly rare, and a bonus unique to a select few Pals in the entire game, boosting a selection of combat-focused stats.

Since these two traits are rather rare, whilst they may feature some of the best or most unique stat boost combos in the entire game - and are still certainly worth working towards getting - actually getting them isn’t the most feasible, especially if you’re still somewhat new to the game.

In the next section then, we’ve put together a couple of lists covering the best Passive Skills you can find in Palworld not just for general use, but also for those of you trying to hunt the absolute best version of Lucky and Legendary Pals in the game.

Best Passive Skills in Palworld

The Passive Skills you'll be hunting for Pals working at your base are different to the ones you'd want for a companion Pal you'll be taking with you on expeditions.

With that in mind, we’ve split our recommendations up into two sections, one focused on the best resource gathering and base-building Passive Skills, and another focused on the best Passive Skills for combat and party-based Pals.

Best Passive Skills for resource gathering and base Pals

Whether it's bonus work speed or a reduced speed at which sanity drops, there are a few skills you'll want to keep an eye out for when optimising the Pals working at your base, or for any you’d like in your party whilst out resource gathering.

Below are our picks for the best resource gathering Passive Skills in Palworld:

• Artisan is probably the best of the bunch here, boosting your overall work speed by 50%, though keep an eye out for Serious - it's only a +20% increase in work speed, but still useful in the meantime until you’re lucky enough to roll Artisan on one of your Pals.
• Workaholic is a trait that slows the rate at which a Pal’s sanity level will drop by 15%, meaning they’ll be able to work more before needing to take a break.
• Mine Foreman and Logging Foreman both provide a 25% increase to the player’s efficiency of their respective tasks, though at the time of writing, this only applies to physical trees and mining points in the world, not the logging site and stone pits you can work from within your base. Of course, the Pals with these traits also have to be in your party for you to gain this benefit.
• A similar situation applies to the Passive Skill Motivational Leader, whereby it says it grants +25% bonus to 'player speed', but this is actually referring to your own work speed from within structures inside your base. Again, the Pal with this trait needs to be inside of your party for this trait to function.

If you’ve not been as lucky with getting some of the larger boosts provided by the above Passive Skills, you can still find some nice stat buffs from lower tier Passive Skills too.

Some of these are fairly close to their higher tier counterparts, such as Positive Thinker for example, which slows the rate a Pal’s sanity will drop by 10%, making it only 5% less effective than Workaholic, and a good alternative until you find a Workaholic Pal.

Other lower tier traits have tradeoffs alongside a stat boost, but these can still be useful in the early game until you start really optimising which Passive Skills you want.

Best Passive Skills for combat and party Pals

When it comes to your party, you'll ideally be looking for Pals that suit different use cases, whether it be bonuses for your own statistics, or ways in which your Pals can be more effective in combat.

Many of these are as simple as attack or defence buffs, but others are more specific with movement speed increases and elemental-damage-based adjustments.

Below are the best combat-focused and party Passive Skills in Palworld:

• Swift is a Passive Skill bonus that provides your Pals a 30% movement speed increase, which is perfect for any Pals you might be using as mounts. As an alternative, Runner has the same effect, just with a 20% increase instead.
• Musclehead is one of the strongest Passive Skills in the game when it comes to combat, boosting attack by 30%. There’s a work speed reduction of 50%, but if you wanted a frontline Pal in your party, Musclehead is a trait worth hunting.
• Diet Lover isn’t so much a Passive Skill you’re likely to hunt down in particular, but it can be a nice bonus for any Pal in your party, decreasing the chance of drops in their hunger by 15%.
• Vanguard and Stronghold Strategist are two player-stat-buffing Passive Skills a Pal can be found with, each boosting player attack and defense by 10% respectively. These are two of the only player-focused stat boosts you can get, but best of all, they stack, meaning you could have up to 50% bonus attack and/or defense.

There are various Passive Skills you’ll come across that provide bonuses to either your Pal’s resistance to a damage increase from a particular element.

Each of these grants either a 10% increase to outgoing damage of an element, or a 10% decrease to incoming damage of an element.

Generally, these elemental-based traits are very situational, but can come in handy should you be wanting to curate a party specifically geared towards a particular region of the map, or type of Pal, such as a dungeon boss or anything of the sort.

Passive Skills and how to target farm via breeding explained

The more you play Palworld, the greater variety of Passive Skills you'll begin to discover. Most of these generally can appear on any Pal and so if there's a particular trait you'd like on a specific Pal, whilst it might take some grinding and repeat catches, it is usually possible to get a Pal with a combination you like.

There are also stronger, higher tiers of Passive Skills you can find, and these are colour-coded yellow with multiple up-facing arrows.

Some Passive Skills you’ll come across aren’t always positive however, and there are plenty of negative effects you’ll no doubt find on several of the Pals you find. This doesn’t always affect the role of that Pal, but it’s a negative nonetheless and not particularly ideal as they take up one of the four slots available for those traits.

Progressing further into the game, you’ll eventually reach level 19 and unlock breeding as a feature. By investing into this, you’ll be able to pass various Passive Skills down to newborn Pals, essentially allowing you to target farm specific traits you like.

For more on Palworld, be sure to check out the various guides we're posting including how to get leather, all you need to know about hatching eggs, and a whole slew of other tips and tricks if you're still fairly new to Palworld.