Base Levels in Palworld 1.0: Worker Capacity, Extra Bases & Every Objective
Two of the most important numbers in Palworld are hidden behind a progress bar most players never look at. Your base level decides how many Pals can work there — one at level 1, thirty at level 30 — and it decides how many bases you may build at all, from one to four. Neither is tied to your character level. Both are raised by completing construction objectives, which means the answer to "why can I only have two bases?" is almost always "because you skipped some buildings."
What Base Level Controls
| Base level | Worker capacity | Maximum bases |
|---|---|---|
| 1 – 7 | 1 → 7 | 1 |
| 8 – 14 | 8 → 14 | 2 |
| 15 – 20 | 15 → 20 | 3 |
| 21 – 30 | 21 → 30 | 4 |
| 31 – 35 | 30 (capped) | 4 |
There are 35 base levels. Worker capacity rises by one per level until it caps at 30 workers at base level 30 — the last five levels give you objectives and structures but no additional staff.
Base quantity is gated by base level, not player level. This is the part people get wrong. Reaching character level 40 does not give you a third base; reaching base level 15 does.
Why Worker Capacity Is the Real Constraint
Standard base advice is to overstaff the low-priority jobs, and it is correct — Palworld runs a fixed work priority order in which Mining sits 14th and Lumbering 15th out of 19, so extraction only happens with whatever labour is left over. More bodies means more leftover time.
But you cannot overstaff past your worker cap. A base at level 10 holds ten Pals, and if four of them are on plantations and two on furnaces, your mining crew is four regardless of how many Mining Lv10 Pals you own.
That makes base level the gate on every staffing strategy in the game, including:
- Rotation against SAN drain. Every extraction site drains -0.15 SAN per second per working Pal, the highest bracket. More Pals means each one spends less time at the site — but only if you have slots for them.
- Covering all three plantation phases. Every plantation needs Planting, Watering and Gathering; miss one and the farm stops. That is three suitabilities before you have mined anything.
- Manning defences. Every mounted weapon — Crossbow, Machine Gun, Missile Launcher — requires a Handiwork Pal, and an unstaffed turret does nothing.
The practical reading: if your base feels like it is doing nothing despite a full roster, check the worker count before blaming the Pals. Ten jobs and ten workers means nothing is redundant, and the bottom of the priority list starves.
Why the Fourth Base Matters
Extra bases are not just more space — several structures are limited to one per base, so a second base is the only way to run a second one.
The Pal Expedition Station is the clearest case. It unlocks at Technology 22 and you may build only one per base camp. Expeditions run 30 to 60 minutes each and return Pal Souls, Coal, Cavern Mushroom, Slab Fragments and — from hard difficulties at a 100% rate — Kinship Peach. Four bases means four expeditions running in parallel instead of one.
Function-splitting is the other reason. Because work priority is fixed and unchangeable, the only way to make Pals reliably mine is to put them somewhere with nothing higher-priority to do. A dedicated extraction base with no plantations, no cooking pot and no assembly lines will out-produce a mixed base with twice the staff.
A sensible four-base layout:
- Main base — crafting, cooking, plantations, comfort structures.
- Extraction base — mines, quarries and logging sites only, plus a Hot Spring.
- Ranch and breeding base — Ranch, Breeding Farm, Mill, plantations for Cake.
- Expedition base — the station, plus whatever else fits.
Each still needs its own comfort infrastructure. A Hot Spring at Technology 9 restores SAN at +0.50/s — matching the Technology 73 Ancient Pal Bed — and an extraction base needs one more than any other kind.
Levelling Your Base
Base levels come from construction and capture objectives. The early ladder:
| Level | Objectives |
|---|---|
| 1 | Build a Wooden Chest and Primitive Workbench; capture 1 Pal |
| 2 | Build a Campfire, Shoddy Bed, Repair Bench |
| 3 | Build a Feed Box and 3× Straw Pal Bed |
| 4 | Capture 4 Pals; build a Pal Gear Workbench and Berry Plantation |
| 5 | Build a Crusher, Stone Pit, Logging Site |
| 6 | Build a Primitive Furnace, Statue of Power, Hot Spring |
| 7 | Build a High Quality Workbench, Medieval Medicine Workbench, 2× Berry Plantation |
| 8 | Capture 8 Pals; build a Metal Chest and Sphere Workbench |
| 9 | Build a Cooking Pot, Wheat Plantation, Mill |
| 10 | Build a Weapon Workbench, Research Lab, Expedition Station |
Levels 11 – 35 continue the same way, progressing through assembly lines, the higher furnaces and eventually the ancient facilities.
Two things worth noticing about this list.
First, the objectives are things you want anyway. The Stone Pit and Logging Site at level 5 are the cheapest automation in the game; the Hot Spring at level 6 is the best SAN recovery per material; the Metal Chest at level 8 gives 24 slots for 5 Ingot and 10 Wood. Following the ladder is not a detour.
Second, it is easy to stall by building the better version. If an objective asks for a Berry Plantation and you have gone straight to a Wheat Plantation, the objective still wants the berries. The same applies to beds and chests — build the specific structure listed, even if you have something better.
Level 8 is the first real milestone, unlocking your second base. Level 15 gives a third and level 21 the fourth, which is the last one.
Practical tips
- 35 base levels. Worker capacity equals base level, capping at 30 workers at level 30.
- Base count is gated by base level, not character level — 1, 2, 3 and 4 at levels 1, 8, 15 and 21.
- Worker capacity is the ceiling on every staffing plan — including rotation against SAN drain.
- The Expedition Station is one per base. Four bases means four expeditions in parallel.
- Split extraction onto its own base — with nothing higher-priority around, Mining actually happens.
- Build the exact structure an objective names, not a better one, or the level will not advance.
- Level 8 is the first milestone — it doubles your bases.
Running your own Palworld 1.0 server
Base levels turn directly into throughput: more workers, more bases, more expeditions running at once — and all of that only produces while the world is live. A dedicated Palworld 1.0 server keeps four bases, thirty workers apiece and four expedition timers all running around the clock, which is a completely different scale of output from a save you open in the evenings. Full crossplay lets a group divide bases by function across platforms, and one-click backups protect layouts that took weeks to level.
Conclusion
Palworld has 35 base levels, and they control the two numbers that decide what a base can actually do. Worker capacity equals your base level, rising one per level to a cap of 30 workers at base level 30 — which is the real ceiling on overstaffing low-priority jobs like Mining (14th of 19) and on rotating Pals against the -0.15 SAN per second that extraction sites charge. And the number of bases you may build is gated by base level, not character level: 1 base at levels 1 – 7, 2 at 8 – 14, 3 at 15 – 20 and 4 at 21+. Since structures like the Pal Expedition Station are limited to one per base, those extra slots are what let you run four expeditions at once and split extraction onto a site where it is not outranked by anything. Follow the objectives — they ask for things worth building anyway — and build exactly the structure named, not a better one.
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