Lucky Pals: how 'shiny pals' work in Palworld
The rare Lucky Pals are a little harder to catch, but they come with stat buffs.
Not to be left out of creature catching convention, Palworld does have rarer, more powerful variants that Pokémon players will likely find themselves calling "shiny Pals" out of habit. Officially Palworld calls shinies Lucky Pals instead. You could easily assume otherwise, though, because Lucky Pals literally sparkle while they walk around with a loud, shimmering sound effect.
What are Lucky Pals?
Lucky Pals are rare variants of Pal that have the "Lucky" passive skill, which gives them +15% Attack and +15% Work Speed. More importantly (to me): they are huge. They're like 4x larger than the normal Pal variants, meaning you can essentially have a bunch of Mongos hanging around your base.
Lucky Pals don't seem to inherently have better stats or skills aside from that +15% buff. You can quickly tell Lucky Pals from normal ones in your Palbox by the little sparkle symbol on their portrait.
Where to find Lucky Pals
You can find Lucky Pals out in the wild, and don't worry: they're nearly impossible to miss. As mentioned they're quite large, but they also make a very distinct (and loud) shimmering sound. The spawn rate for Lucky Pals isn't known, so you really do just have to take your chances. Personally I've run into one every 5-6 hours. I'd generally recommend exploring to find them, but as luck would have it I've caught two of mine within sight of my original base. It really is just down to luck.
Catching Lucky Pals is slightly more difficult than regular Pals as well. The percentage catch rate you'll see while aiming at them is lower, and fighting them does take just a bit longer. Be particularly careful about which Pals from your party you deploy to help—killing a Lucky Pal by accident is a real bummer.
Once you have a Lucky Pal, you can breed more Pals with the lucky trait, though they don't retain the big Lucky Pal size when bred (boo!). Check our Palworld breeding guide for more tips on getting started on the cake and egg grind.
Best Pals: What to catch early
Palworld roadmap: The early access plan
Palworld mods: Best tweaks to install
Palworld multiplayer: How to co-op
Palworld dedicated server: Full-time Pals
Palworld breeding guide: Get started with cake and eggs
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Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.