How to breed Pals in Palworld

All of the Pals in Palworld can breed with each other, which means there are thousands of combinations in the game that will spit out different Pals depending on who you set up. Breeding in Palworld isn’t super complex, but you’ll need to be mindful of what you’re breeding in order to get the results you want.

There are also some subspecies of Pals that you can almost only get from breeding.

To start breeding in Palworld, you’ll need a breeding farm, some cake, and two Pals. Below, we detail how Palworld breeding works and how to unlock breeding, and list some breeding combos that result in subspecies.

Update (July 14): We’ve updated this guide with information from Palworld 1.0.

How breeding works in Palworld

After building a breeding farm (see below), place one female and one male Pal in the farm, along with at least one cake in the chest that’s attached to the farm. For each cake in the chest, the two Pals will produce one egg. Any cake placed into the farm chest will not go bad (the way food usually does), so you can make tons of cake and leave it in there.

Any Pals you breed have a chance to pass down their passive skills. So if your Pal has the “work slave” skill, there’s a chance their child will, too. It’s not guaranteed, but this is a good way to breed particularly powerful Pals. You can see our example below, where our Solenne child adopted traits from its parents (Frostallion and Blazamut) while also hatching with its own trait, “wellness watcher,” that came from neither of the two parents.

Image: Pocketpair via Polygon

This being said, you will want to breed your Pals to try to pass down the best abilities to make even stronger, faster, and more useful Pals.

The Pal that comes out of the egg is not random, but from an in-game formula that we can’t see. This is functionally just to make sure you can’t breed two early-game Pals and get a super-strong end-game Pal.

You can also hatch Alpha Pals (bigger Pals with beefier stats) from eggs, meaning that if you want a specific Alpha that isn’t a world boss, breeding one is your best bet. You have a 5% chance to get an Alpha, though, so it is reliant on a bit of luck.

Once the Pals are all done breeding, they’ll produce an egg that you can stick into an egg incubator. There is a chance that your Pals will create a mutated egg, which will hatch into a random Pal with enhanced stats and rank. Not too shabby.

How to unlock the breeding farm in Palworld

Once you hit level 19, you’ll be able to unlock the breeding farm from your technology tree. It takes 10 wooden boards, 20 stone, and 50 fiber to build one.

Note that the breeding farm is quite big, so if you didn’t build your base on a flat area, you may have a hard time finding a spot for it. Since you can have multiple bases, if you plan on going hard with breeding, you may want to dedicate a base for breeding and hatching eggs.

How to make cake in Palworld

You’ll need to make flour, so make sure you make a mill, which unlocks at level 15. Build one of these with 10 wooden boards, 40 stone, and 10 ingots. Insert any wheat you farmed using your wheat plantation (another level 15 unlock) to make flour.

At level 17, you’ll unlock a cooking pot (5 wooden boards, 15 ingots, and 3 flame organs). You need this to make cake, since it can’t be made over the beginner campfire.

Once you have all of that, you can make a cake in your cooking pot using five flour, eight red berries, seven milk, eight eggs, and two honey.

There are also four more cake recipes that have specific boosted effects to your breeding:

Palworld breeding combos

There are so many breeding combinations in this game that if we listed them all out, I think the spreadsheet would crash the page. For a full list of potential breeding combinations, we recommend using the Palworld Database Wiki’s breeding calculator. This has all the information you’d ever want, whether you’re trying to calculate how to make a specific Pal or you’re trying to figure out what two Pals would make.

There are, however, some unique subspecies of Pals that can be found in the wild, but if you want to breed them you need to use a specific combination. They can be bred using the combinations below, or with another Pal of the same subspecies, and that’s it.

Notably, some subspecies can be bred from multiple combinations, like Shroomer Noct. These have been excluded from our table. Blazamut Ryu is another exception, as it can only be obtained from raids.

Palworld unique breeding combos for subspecies

For more Palworld guides, we’ve got you covered. If you’re just starting out, we’ve got a beginner’s guide, a list of all Pals, and a type chart. We also have explainers on eggs, and a rundown of how multiplayer works.

On the hunt for resources? Check out our guides on how to get ore, coal, polymer, leather, sulfur, wheat seeds, pure quartz, Ancient Technology Points, and ancient civilization parts. For advanced players, consult our lists of all tower boss locations, all passive skills, all flying mounts, and the best base locations.