Palworld Announces Pal Arena PvP Mode

Palworld currently lacks anything resembling a PvP mode, but that'll change later this year whenever the Pal Arena is released. Revealed during the excellent Triple-I Initiative showcase, Palworld players Pocketpair provided a first look at the Pal Arena where Pals and human players alike will be able to do battle in an arena against one another. This was just a teaser for the new mode, however, so there are still plenty of questions to be answered ahead of its Summer 2024 release.

The teaser seen below offers a quick look at the mode where we see Pals lining up opposite each other on a battleground alongside their Pal collectors who will most definitely be fighting with them since we see them shooting at Pals in the teaser trailer. Based on what's shown, it appears you're able to bring three Pals with you into a battle, though it's unclear if that's the setup overall or if 3v3 is one option next to a 1v1 mode and so on.

Palworld's First Look at the Pal Arena

"The Pal Arena makes its way to Palworld in 2024! Battle against other players, pitting both yourself and your pals against them," a preview of the new PvP mode said. "Train the strongest Pals and defeat all your rivals!"

Right now, Palworld's servers allow players to join up with one another if they're friends, but you can also join public servers to play with strangers. One question to be answered about this PvP mode is whether or not it'll restrict players to battling only players that are on their servers or if there'll be a matchmaking pool for anyone who's trying to do PvP at the time. Pal restrictions, possible rewards for fighting in the PvP arena, leaderboards, and more are all topics that are typically associated with these kinds of PvP setups that we'll want to learn more about before this feature goes live.

Around the time Palworld launched earlier in the year, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe spoke about the potential plans for PvP and entertained two kinds of ideas for what a PvP mode might look like. 

"In the arena format, Palworld is an action game, so I think that real-time action battles would be the first thing that users would imagine," he said at the time. "On the other hand, we are actually envisioning an asynchronous battle pattern in which pals fight each other automatically."

This first look at the Pal Arena is clearly a version of the former given that players take on a role in the fight themselves, though again, it's unclear if you can issue commands to your Pals or if they are actually just fighting on their own with you present.

It's also worth pointing out that this Palworld teaser seems to be hinting at new types of Pals, too. The green Pal in the trailer is a Quivern, though a Quivern Botan is not currently in the game, so we'll expect that to be added soon enough.