Palworld 1.0 to 1.0.3: What Changed on Dedicated Servers
Palworld left early access on July 10, 2026 and has patched three times since. Here is the server side of 1.0, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3: new settings, dedicated-server fixes, what carried over, and what still has not shipped.
July 11, 20265 min read
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Palworld left early access on July 10, 2026, three and a half years after its record-breaking launch. The 1.0 update is free for everyone who owns the game, and the player response was enormous — Steam concurrents passed 470,000 on launch day and kept climbing past 700,000 the day after, putting Palworld back among Steam's most-played games.
Since then Pocketpair has shipped three follow-up patches — 1.0.1, 1.0.2 (July 29) and 1.0.3 (August 12) — and each one touched dedicated servers. This page tracks the server side of all of it, separated from the marketing. We update it when a new patch lands.
The big one first: no save wipe
Existing worlds carry straight into 1.0. Your bases, Pals, breeding lines and player progress continue exactly where they were. If your server auto-updates on restart, the transition is a normal restart, not a migration.
That also means an existing co-op save can still be uploaded to a dedicated server the same way as before — nothing about the save format's portability changed.
The headline content, briefly, since it drives what your players will be doing:
A new endgame built around the World Tree
A new region that roughly doubles the explorable map
20+ new Pals to catch and breed
Genetic Recombination — a deeper breeding system
Official PvP and reworked tower bosses
Structured story missions and ocean/offshore building
More endgame means longer sessions, bigger bases, and heavier breeding programs — all of which increase server memory pressure over time (more on that below).
New server-side settings in 1.0
Three additions matter for server configuration:
In-game voice chat. Off by default, enabled per-server, with configurable audible distance. Whether you want proximity voice on is now a server decision, not a mod.
Per-role guild permissions. Guild leaders can restrict who can build, dismantle, and invite — a big deal for public servers that previously relied on trust and rollbacks.
PvP mode defaults. With official PvP shipping in 1.0, servers get settings for the new mode rather than the old ad-hoc player-damage toggles alone.
Palworld's crossplay support (Steam, Xbox, PS5, Mac on one server) predates 1.0 and is unchanged — console players still join through the in-game community server browser rather than by IP.
Patch 1.0.2 (July 29): the Panthalus disconnect
The first patch that mattered for server owners. If your whole server dropped at once during the Panthalus fight in the fortnight after launch, this was why — 1.0.2 fixed "an issue where all players could be disconnected during the Panthalus battle on dedicated servers" and a separate client crash in the same fight.
Also in 1.0.2:
Terrain in The World Tree area could fail to render for the host when a guest was already there — fixed.
The tower boss Victor & Shadowbeak could vanish after a teleport attack — fixed.
Sunreach performance: "reduced the processing load during gameplay in Sunreach." Server-side this shows up as lower tick cost when players are in that region.
Patch 1.0.3 (August 12): one new server setting
1.0.3 added a server option — the first new PalWorldSettings.ini key since launch:
bAllowEnemyCampSpawnNearBaseCamp=False
By default Palworld suppresses enemy camps spawning near player bases. Set this to True if your players want raids and camps closer to home; leave it alone for a quieter PvE server. Like every other key, it lives in PalWorldSettings.ini and only takes effect after a restart.
Dedicated-server bug fixes in 1.0.3:
Fast Travel could activate unintentionally during Tower Boss battles — fixed.
Pals could appear to vibrate rapidly on the client screen — fixed. (Players reported this as "lag"; it was a replication bug, not your server.)
Attack Chopper BGM triggered by other players could play from far away — fixed.
Two co-op fixes: client-side lighting after cutscenes, and stutter during The World Tree entry cutscene.
1.0.3 also fixed platform-specific crashes (PS5 Global Palbox with parental controls, Xbox One near World Tree field bosses) — worth knowing if console players on your server report crashing where PC players don't.
What 1.0 did NOT include: server clustering
The most-hyped server feature — clustering, which would let multiple servers link into one connected world, ARK-style — did not ship in 1.0, and none of the three patches since have changed that. The server binary contains cluster-related fields, but there is no supported way to configure it. We cover the details in our clustering explainer.
The memory leak survived 1.0 (and 1.0.3)
Long-running Palworld servers still accumulate RAM until performance degrades — rubber-banding first, crashes eventually. 1.0's performance work helps, and the Sunreach change in 1.0.2 helps a little more, but nothing in the patch notes claims to eliminate the leak and our servers still show the same slow climb. The reliable fix remains a clean daily restart plus sensible settings; our memory leak guide covers exactly what works.
What server owners should do now
Be on 1.0.3 — on Connect Hosting servers this happens automatically on the next restart. Self-hosting? Here's how to update your Palworld dedicated server without breaking it — clients on 1.0.3 cannot join a 1.0.2 server.
Review the new settings — decide on voice chat, PvP and now bAllowEnemyCampSpawnNearBaseCamp before your players ask.
Keep daily restarts scheduled — the leak is still real.
Our 1.0-ready Palworld hosting runs the current patch from day one, with all 32 player slots on every plan and automated daily leak-protection restarts built in.
