Palworld 1.0 Dedicated Servers: Wipe or Keep?

Palworld 1.0 was released on July 10, 2026. Existing early-access saves are compatible with the release, so characters, bases, and Pals do not require a forced wipe.

Pocketpair publishing head John Buckley nevertheless recommended starting over. As reported by PC Gamer, he wrote on Discord: “You do NOT need to wipe your data for Palworld 1.0… but you should.” His recommendation reflected the scale of the changes and the experience of beginning the redesigned game with a new character.

What changed in 1.0

The release adds 72 Pals, bringing the total to 287, and raises the level cap to 85. It also rebalances combat and Pal statistics, reworks the story with continuous story-driven sub-missions and new NPCs, and introduces Awakening and Mutation systems. Awakening uses Radiant Gems obtainable in the World Tree area. Base building, multiplayer, and graphics also received substantial changes.

These changes create two reasonable options for a dedicated-server community:

• Keep the existing world if preserving established characters, bases, and progression is the priority.
• Start a fresh world if players want to experience the revised progression and story from the beginning.

Using the Global Palbox

The Global Palbox provides a middle path by letting players save tamed Pals and load them into another world. Dedicated-server operators control this feature with two configuration settings:

• bAllowGlobalPalboxExport permits players to save Pals to the Global Palbox.
• bAllowGlobalPalboxImport permits players to load Pals from the Global Palbox.

Operators planning a fresh world can enable export on the existing server and import on the replacement server. Testing the process before the reset is prudent so players can confirm that their transfers work as expected.

Player capacity

Palworld dedicated servers support up to 32 players through the ServerPlayerMaxNum setting. Operators should confirm that this value matches the capacity announced to their community when preparing either an existing or fresh world.

Bottom line

Palworld 1.0 does not require a server wipe. Keeping an existing world preserves its established progress, while starting fresh follows Pocketpair's recommendation for experiencing the redesigned game. The Global Palbox can reduce the cost of starting over by allowing players to transfer their tamed Pals when the server's export and import settings are enabled.