Turning On PvP in Palworld: Three Settings, and the Twelve Things They Change

 

    Enabling PvP on a Palworld server takes three settings. What almost nobody tells you is that flipping them changes twelve documented behaviours — including one that will surprise your players: missions are disabled entirely. Pocketpair also publish their own recommended PvP configuration, and it is revealing, because it is mostly about taking mobility away.

 

The Three Toggles

 

 

bIsPvP=True
bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage=True
bEnableDefenseOtherGuildPlayer=True

 

    All three are required. bIsPvP is the master switch, bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage is what actually lets players hurt each other, and bEnableDefenseOtherGuildPlayer is what makes base Pals defend against trespassers. Setting only the first is the common half-measure, and it produces a server where nothing much happens.

 

    Read the status line before you plan a community around this. The official documentation states plainly: "Please note that this is only a trial feature and is not covered by support."

 

    That is worth taking at face value. PvP in Palworld is not a finished, supported mode — it is something the developers have exposed for people who want to experiment. Run it as an experiment, tell your players it is one, and expect the behaviour to change between patches.

 

Twelve Things PvP Changes

 

 

    The documentation lists every behaviour that changes once PvP is active:

 

Change	What it means in play
Missions are disabled	The entire mission layer switches off
Players can harm each other	The obvious one
Base Pals engage hostile trespassers	Your base fights back on its own
Base Pals engage over a wider area	The defended radius grows
Airborne players and ride Pals take increased damage	Flying is punished, deliberately
Damage to summoned and base Pals is reduced	You cannot trivially delete someone's workforce
Melee damage to other players' structures is reduced	Bases are not torn down by hand
Players can open other guilds' chests	Storage stops being private
You cannot build or repair inside a base during an attack	No rebuilding walls mid-fight
A notification fires when your base is attacked	You get told, wherever you are
Name and damage-number display distance changes	Different information at range
Some weapons have range and damage retuned for PvP	Your PvE weapon rankings do not carry over

 

    The disabled missions are the one to announce in advance. Players who came for progression will notice immediately, and it is not a bug. If your group cares about missions, PvP is not compatible with that on the same world.

 

    Three of these are clearly anti-frustration rules rather than combat rules. Reduced damage to base Pals, reduced melee damage to structures, and no repairing during an attack together mean a raid is a fight you can lose without losing your base to a single determined player with a hammer.

 

    And the airborne penalty is a deliberate counter to the flying meta. In PvE, a flying mount is the answer to nearly everything; in PvP it makes you a target, which is the point of the next section.

 

Pocketpair's Own Recommendations

 

 

    The docs go further, with a recommended configuration spanning fourteen areas. Three of them do most of the work.

 

    Block stat allocation, so nobody out-levels the field:

 

bAllowEnhanceStat_Health=False
bAllowEnhanceStat_Attack=False

 

    Restrict fast travel, so nobody escapes a fight by warping:

 

bEnableFastTravel=True
bEnableFastTravelOnlyBaseCamp=True

 

    And deny the technologies that break PvP balance, using the DenyTechnologyList setting:

 

DenyTechnologyList=("SkillUnlock_JetDragon", "SkillUnlock_IceHorse",
  "SkillUnlock_IceHorse_Dark", "SkillUnlock_SaintCentaur",
  "SkillUnlock_BlackCentaur", "SkillUnlock_DarkMechaDragon",
  "SkillUnlock_PoseidonOrca", "GrapplingGun", "GrapplingGun2",
  "GrapplingGun3", "GrapplingGun4", "GrapplingGun5", "GuildChest")

 

    Decode that list and the intent is obvious. Those seven SkillUnlock_ entries are the game's fastest mounts — Jetragon, Frostallion, Frostallion Noct, Paladius, Necromus, Xenolord and Panthalus. Add all five Grappling Gun tiers and the Guild Chest, and the recommendation is: remove the ability to cross the map quickly, and remove shared storage.

 

    That is a coherent design position, not a random blocklist. Palworld's PvE game is built around mobility — the whole Air Walker and jump boots family exists to make travel trivial. In PvP, trivial travel means nobody can ever be caught, so the official answer is to take it away and let the airborne damage penalty handle whatever mobility remains.

 

    Note that the Guild Chest is on the list for a different reason. With PvP active, players can already open other guilds' chests — denying the Guild Chest removes the shared-storage target rather than the mobility.

 

    The rest of the recommended block is about denying escapes and slowing the churn:

 

Setting	Value	What it stops
bExistPlayerAfterLogout	True	Logging out mid-fight to escape — your body stays
DeathPenalty	All	A kill actually costs the loser something
bCanPickupOtherGuildDeathPenaltyDrop	True	The winner can take the drop
bIsStartLocationSelectByMap	True	Players choose where they start
bEnableAimAssistPad	False	Gamepad aim assist off, so aim is aim
bBuildAreaLimit	True	Buildable area is restricted
bInvisibleOtherGuildBaseCampAreaFX	False	You can see where other guilds' bases are
GuildPlayerMaxNum	4	Small guilds, so numbers do not decide fights
BaseCampMaxNumInGuild	2	Two bases per guild
MaxBuildingLimitNum	1000	A cap on structure spam
GuildRejoinCooldownMinutes	60.0	No guild-hopping to dodge consequences
BlockRespawnTime	5.0	A pause before you are back
RespawnPenaltyDurationThreshold	1800.0	Repeat deaths start costing more
RespawnPenaltyTimeScale	2.0	And the penalty scales

 

    bExistPlayerAfterLogout=True is the one with teeth. Without it, the counter to losing a fight is Alt+F4 — your character vanishes and the kill never lands. With it, logging out leaves your body behind, which is the difference between a PvP server and a game of tag.

 

    The guild and respawn numbers are a balance position, not a technical one. GuildPlayerMaxNum=4 caps a guild at four players and BaseCampMaxNumInGuild=2 at two bases — deliberately small, so a PvP server does not resolve into one mega-guild. The respawn penalty pair — a 1800-second threshold at a 2.0 time scale — makes dying repeatedly progressively more expensive rather than free.

 

    These are recommendations, not requirements. A server that wants chaotic flying PvP can simply not apply them. But if your PvP experiment feels like nobody can ever engage anybody, this list is why.

 

Practical tips

• All three toggles, not just bIsPvP — otherwise players cannot damage each other.
• PvP is a trial feature and explicitly not covered by support. Say so to your players.
• Missions are disabled while PvP is on. Announce this before you flip it.
• Airborne players and ride Pals take increased damage — flying is punished on purpose.
• You cannot build or repair inside your base during an attack.
• The official deny list is seven fast mounts, five Grappling Guns and the Guild Chest.
• bExistPlayerAfterLogout=True stops players escaping a fight by logging out.
• Pocketpair also recommend DeathPenalty=All, GuildPlayerMaxNum=4 and a respawn penalty.

 

Running your own Palworld 1.0 server

 

    PvP is a configuration you will change your mind about — enabling it, testing a deny list, restoring the world after an experiment goes badly. A gamever Palworld server puts the settings file and one-click restarts in the same place, with automatic backups taken before updates, so trying a PvP ruleset is reversible rather than permanent. Full crossplay and 24/7 uptime come as standard, which matters more here than in PvE: a PvP server nobody can reach at the same time is not a PvP server.

 

Conclusion

 

    Palworld's PvP needs three settings — bIsPvP, bEnablePlayerToPlayerDamage and bEnableDefenseOtherGuildPlayer — and Pocketpair label it a trial feature not covered by support. Turning it on changes twelve documented behaviours, and the one to warn players about is that missions are disabled entirely. The rest split into combat changes (airborne players and ride Pals take increased damage, some weapons retuned) and anti-grief rules (reduced damage to base Pals and to structures, no building or repairing inside a base under attack). Pocketpair's own recommended configuration blocks HP and Attack stat allocation, restricts fast travel to base camps only, and denies the seven fastest mounts, all five Grappling Gun tiers and the Guild Chest — a deny list that reads, decoded, as take mobility and shared storage out of the game. The fourteen recommended areas go further still — bExistPlayerAfterLogout=True so nobody escapes a fight by disconnecting, DeathPenalty=All, small guilds at GuildPlayerMaxNum=4 and BaseCampMaxNumInGuild=2, and a scaling respawn penalty.

 

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