Pocketpair has just released patch notes for Palworld's next update, and while they aren't very hefty, there is one big change to a bug that had the community questioning whether their Pals were really fighting to the best of their ability.
The only major fix that this patch mentions is one that corrects "an issue that caused all Pal attacks to deal only half the intended damage." But this isn't the first mention of this issue, as the community has been theorising about a secret or unknown bug for a couple of weeks now.
In an information post on Palworld's subreddit 10 days ago, user Automatic_Cheetah500 pointed out that their Pals' damage felt different: "So we all know that Player Attack Builds got nerfed since elemental swap pals got nerfed. But from the looks of it, Pal Damage got changed as well." In this post, they explain how their 28 ATK IV Shadowbeak could deal 18k damage, but for some reason, the move was only doing 6-8k damage.
Another user also shared their own experience with the at-the-time unknown damage reduction: "The damage nerf seems to have applied across the board," _StartNow_ explains. Best example: my Tocotco partner skill hit Blazemut for 500+ before and could kill in one cooldown. Now, hits just over 200, leaving him at half health. I hope this was not intentional."
Luckily, this has all been fixed now, but that does mean Palworld players have effectively been fighting bosses with one hand tied behind their backs. I'm sure most people noticed at least a small change in damage, but as there was no mention of this problem before Pocketpair announced it had been fixed, you wouldn't be blamed if you just thought that your Pals had given up or had enough of your antics and decided to rein their strength in.
The latest patch notes also include a couple of smaller tweaks. This includes a correction with "the hit detection in the latter parts of the 'Nightmare Ray' and 'Nightmare Bloom' attacks," a change to the character edition screen, and a fix for Pals who couldn't stop shaking in their sleep.
