Palworld 1.0.4 Combat Rebalance: What Actually Changed

 

    Patch 1.0.4, released September 7, 2026, is a combat-focused update: no new Pals, no new zones, just five changes to how battles play out, per the patch notes archived at palworld.wiki.gg. Two of them touch Pal AI (how summoned and base Pals pick and use skills), two touch specific abilities (Power Bomb and the Core Eject Shotgun), and one removes a long-standing annoyance around your own campfires. The patch notes describe every change qualitatively — "adjusted," "changed the specification" — without publishing exact before/after numbers, so this article treats every underlying figure as undocumented rather than guessing at one.

 

What Patch 1.0.4 Changed in Combat

 

    Per palworld.wiki.gg's archived notes for version 1.0.4, dated September 7, 2026, the update lists five combat-related fixes:

 

• "Summoned Pals and Base Pals now prioritize skills expected to deal higher damage."
• "Adjusted the backstep behavior for summoned Pals when using certain skills."
• "Adjusted the minimum use distance for 'Power Bomb' to reduce unnatural backstep behavior."
• "Adjusted the damage of the Core Eject Shotgun."
• "Changed the specification so that players, summoned Pals, and Base Pals no longer catch fire when coming into contact with player-built Campfires."

 

    That's the entire combat portion of 1.0.4 as documented. None of these five lines ship with a specific stat delta attached — the notes describe the direction of each change (skills now prioritized differently, a distance adjusted, damage adjusted, a fire interaction removed) but not the magnitude. Where this article needs to reference "how much," it says so explicitly instead of inventing a figure.

 

Pal AI Targeting and Backstep Behavior

 

 

    The first change reshapes decision-making, not raw numbers: "Summoned Pals and Base Pals now prioritize skills expected to deal higher damage." Before 1.0.4, a Pal fighting alongside you (summoned) or defending your base could apparently choose a lower-damage skill over a stronger one available in the same moment — this patch tells the AI to weight expected damage output when picking which move to use. The practical read: a Pal with several skills equipped should now lean on its hardest hitters more consistently, in both active combat and base defense, without you needing to manually cycle its skill loadout to force that behavior.

 

    The second change is related but distinct: "Adjusted the backstep behavior for summoned Pals when using certain skills." Backstepping — a Pal retreating a step before or after using a skill — is common animation behavior in Palworld's combat, but the notes say it could look "unnatural" in some cases, enough that a specific follow-up fix (covered next) was needed for one skill in particular. The patch notes don't specify which "certain skills" beyond that follow-up, so treat the full list of affected skills as undocumented.

 

Power Bomb and Core Eject Shotgun Damage Tuning

 

 

    Two individual abilities got named, specific attention in 1.0.4:

 

• Power Bomb: "Adjusted the minimum use distance for 'Power Bomb' to reduce unnatural backstep behavior." This is the direct follow-up to the backstep adjustment above — Power Bomb specifically had a minimum-range issue that could produce the odd backstep the general AI change didn't fully cover, and 1.0.4 tunes the distance threshold to fix it.
• Core Eject Shotgun: "Adjusted the damage of the Core Eject Shotgun." No direction (buff or nerf) is stated in the notes beyond the word "adjusted," and no before/after damage figures are published.

 

    Neither line comes with a number attached in the source. There's no minimum-distance value for Power Bomb and no damage figure — old or new — for the Core Eject Shotgun anywhere in the archived 1.0.4 notes. If a future source publishes those specifics, this article's numbers should be updated then, not filled in now from an aggregator's guess.

 

Campfire Fire Immunity for Players and Pals

 

 

    The last combat-adjacent change isn't about damage at all — it's a quality-of-life fix for your own base: "Changed the specification so that players, summoned Pals, and Base Pals no longer catch fire when coming into contact with player-built Campfires." Before this patch, standing or fighting too close to a Campfire you built could apparently set you, a summoned Pal, or a Base Pal alight — friendly fire from your own furniture, essentially. 1.0.4 removes that interaction across all three affected parties (the player, any Pal summoned into the field, and Pals working the base itself), so a Campfire placed near a crafting station or a defensive chokepoint no longer risks accidentally burning your own side during a fight.

 

None of 1.0.4's five changes come with hard numbers in the patch notes — plan around the direction of each change (AI now favors bigger hits, Power Bomb's range issue is fixed, campfires won't burn your own team) rather than around a specific percentage or distance you haven't actually seen published.

 

Running your own Palworld 1.0 server

 

    Testing how a patch like 1.0.4 actually plays out — whether summoned Pals really lean harder into their strongest skills, whether Power Bomb behaves differently at close range — is easier on a dedicated server you control, rather than a solo world or someone else's crowded server. A gamever.io Palworld server gives you a private, low-latency space to run these fights yourself, with friends, on the exact patch version you want to test.

 

    Set up your own Palworld 1.0 server today with code WELCOME for a discount on your first month.

 

Conclusion

 

    Patch 1.0.4, shipped September 7, 2026, is a narrow but meaningful combat update: Pal AI now weights higher-damage skills more heavily for both summoned and base Pals, backstep behavior got a general adjustment plus a specific fix for Power Bomb's minimum range, the Core Eject Shotgun's damage was adjusted, and Campfires no longer burn the player or their own Pals on contact. What the patch notes don't give you is magnitude — no percentages, no distance values, no old-versus-new damage numbers for the shotgun — so treat every one of those specifics as undocumented until a source publishes them, rather than trusting any aggregator that claims to know the exact figures.