How to Install Palworld Mods (Safely)

Mods can breathe fresh life into a single-player Palworld run — quality-of-life tweaks, little conveniences, the odd fix that makes the game feel like yours. Before you drop a single file in, let's do it the safe way so a fun afternoon doesn't cost you your save.

Back up your save first (really, first)

Your saves live here:

• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames\<SteamID>\<SaveID>

Copy that whole folder somewhere safe before you touch anything. Mods can break or corrupt a save, and a backup is the difference between "oh well" and "start over." Do this every time.

A quick word on risk

Modding is at your own risk, so let's be square about it:

• Mods are unofficial and unsupported by Pocketpair.
• Keep them to single-player or your own private server. Running mods on official multiplayer or someone else's dedicated server can trip anti-cheat and risk a ban.
• Mods can break when the game patches. That's normal — plan for it.

Know your two mod types

Two flavors, two homes:

• Pak mods — a .pak file you drop into Pal/Content/Paks/~mods. If the ~mods folder isn't there, you create it. This is the simplest kind.
• UE4SS / Lua & Blueprint mods — these need UE4SS (the Unreal Engine Scripting System) installed first. UE4SS goes into ...\Palworld\Pal\Binaries\Win64 and ships a dwmapi.dll proxy plus a Mods folder with a mods.txt enable-list. Blueprint mod loaders build on top of UE4SS. Get it from its official home: UE4SS on GitHub.

The easy road: a mod manager

For most folks, a manager beats hand-copying files. It installs, enables, disables, and updates for you:

• Vortex — Nexus Mods' manager, paired with the Palworld hub on Nexus Mods.
• Thunderstore Mod Manager / r2modman — paired with Palworld on Thunderstore.

On either hub, sort by "most endorsed" or "last updated" to surface mods that actually work right now, then let the manager do the placing. Stick to well-rated, recently-updated mods and read what they do before installing.

The manual road

Prefer to do it by hand? The homes are the same:

• Pak mod: drop the .pak into Pal/Content/Paks/~mods.
• UE4SS mod: install UE4SS into Pal/Binaries/Win64, place the mod in the Mods folder, and add its name to mods.txt so it's switched on.

Always read the mod's own page — the author's instructions beat any general guide.

Verify it loaded

• Launch the game and look for the mod's effect in single-player.
• UE4SS usually opens a console/log when the game starts — a handy way to see what it picked up.
• Nothing happening? Re-check the folder path, and for UE4SS mods make sure the entry in mods.txt is spelled right and enabled.

Removing a mod cleanly

• Manager: disable or uninstall it right there.
• Manual pak: delete its .pak from ~mods.
• Manual UE4SS mod: remove it from the Mods folder and take its line out of mods.txt.
• Still acting up? In Steam you can verify/repair the game files to get back to a clean slate.

Where to go next

Start small — one mod at a time — and keep that save backup fresh. When you're ready to just play, our guides hub, breeding tool, and world map are here, no mods required. And if a patch lands and things go sideways, that's expected; come holler at us and we'll help you sort it.