Horn, Bone & Predator Core in Palworld 1.0: The Materials You Cannot Automate
Almost everything in Palworld can eventually be automated. You build a mine and stop mining; you build a plantation and stop farming; you build a furnace and stop smelting. Three materials break that rule entirely — Horn, Bone and Predator Core come off Pals and nothing else, and between them they gate the whole medicine tree and every permanent stat point available after Level 80. Here is where each one comes from and how to keep a stock without turning it into a chore.
The Three at a Glance
| Material | Source | Gold value | Buyable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horn | Pal drops | 200 | Yes |
| Bone | Pal drops | 200 | Yes |
| Predator Core | Rampaging Pals only | 20,000 | No |
Their in-game descriptions are terse and tell you most of what you need:
- Horn — "Horn collected from Pals. Used to create medicines and more."
- Bone — "Bone collected from Pals. A valuable source of premium calcium."
- Predator Core — "Core dropped by Predator Pals. It is filled with mysterious energy."
The gold values tell you the real story. Horn and Bone at 200 are ordinary materials with an inconvenient source. The Predator Core at 20,000 is a hundred times either — and unlike them, it cannot be bought at any price.
Horn and Bone: Buy Them
These two gate every tier of medical supplies:
| Medicine | Horn | Bone |
|---|---|---|
| Low Grade Medical Supplies | 2 | — |
| Medical Supplies | 3 | 1 |
| High Grade Medical Supplies | 5 | 2 |
| Suspicious Juice | 3 | 1 |
| Strange Juice | 5 | 2 |
| Memory Wiping Medicine | 50 | 50 |
The easy answer is that merchants sell both. At a gold value of 200, and with 1 Successful Bounty Token converting to 2,000 Gold Coins, a single bounty token buys ten Horn or ten Bone. Bone in particular is stocked widely — Village Shop 1, Duneshelter, Fisherman's Point and various caravan merchants. For most players this is simply faster than hunting.
If you would rather farm, the sources are unambiguous:
| Horn | Rate | Bone | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hartalis | 2 – 3 (100%) | Anubis | 3 – 5 (100%) |
| Elgrove | 2 – 3 (100%) | Dragostrophe | 3 – 5 (100%) |
| Eikthyrdeer / Eikthyrdeer Terra | 2 (100%) | Cawgnito | 2 – 4 (100%) |
| Reindrix | 2 (100%) | Turtacle / Ghangler | 2 – 3 (100%) |
| Fenglope / Celesdir | 2 (100%) | Vanwyrm, Rushoar, Vixy, Maraith | 1 – 2 (100%) |
| Caprity | 1 – 2 (100%) | Kikit | 1 – 2 (60%) |
Reindrix is the overlap worth exploiting. It drops Horn at 2 (100%) and is also a Level 80 World Tree farm target for Ice Radiant Gems at 10 – 20 per kill (100%). A gem circuit you were running anyway stocks your medicine cupboard for free.
Note Kikit is the only listed source below 100%, at 60%. Everything else on these lists is a guaranteed drop, so your yield is purely a function of how many you kill.
Predator Core: The Genuine Bottleneck
Predator Cores come from Rampaging Pals and nothing else. They cannot be crafted, cannot be bought, and no base structure produces them. The drop rate is 100%, so every Rampaging Pal you defeat is a core — the only variable is how many.
There are 47 Rampaging Pals, and in 1.0 they no longer appear at fixed locations — they spawn at a low rate across the whole map, which makes them something you encounter rather than something you route to. Every one also drops a Giant Pal Soul at 100%, so these fights pay twice: cores for permanent stats, souls for condensing.
Quantity scales with the Pal's tier:
| Tier | Cores | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Lower | 1 | Gorirat, Vanwyrm, Direhowl, Lovander |
| Mid | 1 – 2 | — |
| Higher | 2 – 4 | Loupmoon Cryst, Elphidran (3 – 4) |
| Strongest | 4 | Silvegis, Helzephyr Lux, Bushi Noct |
Take the top tier whenever it appears. A Silvegis or Helzephyr Lux at 4 cores is worth four Direhowls, and since the drop is guaranteed at every tier there is no gamble involved — only which fights you choose to accept. Because spawning is random rather than fixed, this is target selection rather than target hunting.
What cores buy you:
| Item | Cores | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Vital / Stamina / Might / Speed / Burden Remedy | 1 | +1 permanent stat point |
| Vital / Stamina / Might / Speed / Burden Elixir | 2 | +2 permanent stat points |
The rate is fixed at one core per point, and it does not improve at the higher tier — an Elixir is two cores for two points, exactly what two Remedies would give. So there is no reason to hoard cores waiting for the better recipe; there isn't one.
This makes your Predator Core count your permanent stat ceiling. Everything else in Palworld is a matter of time; this is a matter of how many Rampaging Pals you have actually fought.
Building a Stock Without Grinding
None of these three reward a dedicated farming session. All three reward attaching collection to content you were doing anyway:
For Horn and Bone, the practical order is:
- Buy them. 200 gold each, and bounty tokens convert at 2,000 gold apiece.
- Run Reindrix if you are already farming Level 80 Ice gems.
- Kill Anubis or Dragostrophe when you meet one — 3 – 5 Bone at 100% is the best single-kill yield in the game.
For Predator Cores, engage every Rampaging Pal you encounter and prioritise the strongest ones. Since a Helzephyr Lux drops 4, one high-tier fight is worth an afternoon of low-tier ones.
Two warnings worth carrying. First, Memory Wiping Medicine — the status point respec — costs 50 Horn and 50 Bone on top of 99 Beautiful Flower and 30,000 gold. If you think you might respec, start stockpiling well before you decide. Second, the medicine tree does not scale down: a base that hits three Depressed Pals needs High Grade Medical Supplies at 5 Horn and 2 Bone each, and no amount of mining, planting or smelting substitutes.
The structural answer to that second problem is not more Bone — it is not needing the medicine. Build a Hot Spring at Technology 9 (+0.50 SAN/s), an Alpha Wave Generator at Technology 41 to slow the drain, and a Clinic at Technology 24 staffed with a Medicine Production Pal, and the High Grade supplies stay in the chest.
Practical tips
- Horn and Bone are buyable at 200 gold. One bounty token buys ten of either — usually faster than farming.
- Anubis and Dragostrophe drop 3 – 5 Bone at 100% — the best single-kill yield.
- Reindrix gives Horn on a route you may already run for Level 80 Ice gems.
- Predator Cores cannot be bought at any price. Rampaging Pals only, 100% drop.
- 47 Rampaging Pals, spawning randomly map-wide — encounter them, do not hunt them.
- Each also drops a Giant Pal Soul at 100% — carry Nitemary for +100~200% more.
- Target the strongest Rampaging Pals — Helzephyr Lux and Bushi Noct drop 4 against a Gorirat's 1.
- Cores are your permanent stat ceiling. One core = one point, at both tiers.
- Memory Wiping Medicine costs 50 Horn and 50 Bone. Stockpile before you need to respec.
Running your own Palworld 1.0 server
These three materials are the part of Palworld that a base genuinely cannot do for you — they come from going out and fighting. What a persistent world changes is everything around that: your plantations, mines and medicine benches keep producing while you are away, so the hours you do play go into hunting Rampaging Pals rather than restocking basics. A gamever Palworld 1.0 server also lets a group hunt together with full crossplay, which turns core collection from a solo grind into a shared route, and one-click backups protect a stockpile that took real time to build.
Conclusion
Horn, Bone and Predator Core are Palworld's three un-automatable materials. Horn and Bone gate every tier of medical supplies and are the easy pair — both carry a gold value of 200 and both are sold by merchants, which usually beats farming, though Anubis and Dragostrophe drop 3 – 5 Bone at 100% and Reindrix hands you Horn on a Level 80 gem route you may already run. Predator Core is the real bottleneck: Rampaging Pals only, at a 100% rate scaling from 1 core to 4 by tier, impossible to buy, and worth exactly one permanent stat point each whether you spend it on a Remedy or an Elixir. Target the strongest Rampaging Pals, and remember that the cheapest way to handle the medicine tree is to build the comfort structures that stop you needing it.
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