Palworld: How To Use Poacher Camps For Free Pals

A large portion of the millions of people playing Palworld so far are finding that it’s a lot less ‘Pokemon with guns’ and much more ‘Ark Survival with Pokemon’ than they initially expected. This means there are many other things you can do in Palworld outside of battling your Pals against ones found in the wild.

These other activities include clearing Dungeons, fighting the larger ‘boss’ variants of Pals, building the perfect base, collecting Lifmunk Effigies, and so much more. That said, between the level 15-20ish point for your character and your Pals, the progression speed slows down slightly. You’ll find a lot more Pals are either way too weak for you or way too strong. You won’t be able to build the things needed to advance your base level quite yet, and it can be difficult to find new Pals to catch at all.

Related: How to Restore Lost Palworld Save Data on PC

Poacher Camps In Palworld

While wandering around the islands of Palworld looking for new Pals, you might stumble across Poacher camps full of human enemies (of which there are about four different factions) steadfastly guarding a poor captured Pal in a locked cage.

Depending on the average levels (and types, such as Syndicate Crushers) of baddies in these camps, it might seem impossible to actually ‘clear’ this camp in order to free said caged Pal. Well, there’s a pretty reliable way to get the Pal out of this cage without getting shot down, which makes encountering Poacher camps a more exciting affair.

How To Use These Poacher Camps To Your Advantage

To go a bit more into this strategy, it basically takes advantage of the human enemy’s AI not being ‘the best.’ As long as the Syndicate, Free Pal Alliance, or other nefarious organization members are distracted with another ally Pal or wild Pal in combat, they rarely interrupt you while you’re unlocking the caged Pal. Or, at the very least, anyone who does try won’t be able to deal enough damage before you unlock the cage.

To provide this distraction, you can use one of your own Pals that is either a bit above the level of the Poachers or a Pal that’s been buffed up using Pal Souls at the Statue of Power. It helps a bit if your Pal has an attack with a decent AoE range, as this can pull the attention of all the camp members a bit easier.

When the human enemies are distracted, run up to the cage lock and hold the Interact input. Once it’s unlocked, the Pal inside automatically becomes ‘yours’ and gets transferred to your Palbox, so you can then skedaddle out of the camp as fast as you can after this.

Alternatively, if you’re not confident in the ability of your Pals to survive long enough as a distraction, then you can see if there are any high-level wild Pals nearby. If there are, simply fire an arrow at them to get their attention, then steadily have them follow you (you’ll probably have to hit them with another arrow to keep their attention) toward the Poacher Camp. When they get close enough, the enemies inside will typically also trigger and attack the wild Pal as well, letting you circle back around and unlock the cage as they battle. However, keep in mind, while rare, this technique can backfire if the human enemies and Pal don’t seem to notice each other and both turn their full attention towards you.

It’s not entirely clear what the ‘rules’ are for which Pals can appear in these Poacher Camp cages, but in our experience using this strategy to get 5+ Pals this way, we’ve seen lower-level versions of Pals that are typically found in higher-level zones relatively often. This is obviously not the ‘best’ way to get Pals overall, but it’s a much better method to acquire them in terms of resource usage than spending thousands at a Pal Vendor or Black Market NPC.