All Handbooks and the Best Pals to Use Them On

Applied Handbooks are the only items that permanently raise a Pal's work suitability, and there are exactly twelve of them — one for every job your base runs. This guide lists all 12 with what they raise, both ways to get them, and the specific Pal each book is worth spending on.

What Applied Handbooks Do

Every handbook is a rarity-4 consumable that weighs 1 and stacks to 9,999, and letting a Pal read one adds +1 to that job's affinity, permanently. The upgrade lands on that one individual Pal, not on the species — a book fed to your Anubis does nothing for the next Anubis you catch, so it belongs on a keeper you have already condensed and passived, not on a fresh capture you will replace. This is a completely separate track from star ranks: the Pal Essence Condenser raises stars, and the rank-up guide covers that side. Pocketpair hasn't said whether a Pal with no rating at all in a job can be taught one from scratch, so plan around Pals that already have the suitability.

Handbook	Raises	Pals With the Job	Highest Base Rank	Top-Ranked Pal
Applied Handiwork Handbook I	Handiwork +1	109	8	Solenne
Applied Transporting Handbook I	Transporting +1	140	7	Knocklem
Applied Gathering Handbook I	Gathering +1	109	8	Jetragon
Applied Lumbering Handbook I	Lumbering +1	63	8	Celesdir Noct
Applied Mining Handbook I	Mining +1	57	8	Aegidron
Applied Watering Handbook I	Watering +1	46	8	Shaolong
Applied Planting Handbook I	Planting +1	45	8	Dandilord
Applied Kindling Handbook I	Kindling +1	44	8	Renjishi
Applied Medicine Production Handbook I	Medicine Production +1	43	8	Silvance
Applied Cooling Handbook I	Cooling +1	38	8	Bastigor
Applied Ranching Handbook I	Farming +1	29	4	Dumud Gild
Applied Generating Electricity Handbook I	Electricity +1	25	8	Orserk

Two numbers in that table decide everything. The Pals With the Job column shows how crowded a job is — Transporting is open to 140 Pals while Generating Electricity is open to 25, so a book spent on electricity is filling a much thinner bench. The Highest Base Rank column is the ceiling, and for ten of the twelve jobs exactly one Pal sits on it; Transporting caps at 7 with two Pals tied there, and Farming caps at a very low 4. That means a single handbook is usually the difference between a good worker and one that matches the best in the game, and the best base Pals rankings show the full ladder under each of those top names.

How to Get Handbooks

There are two sources and they behave completely differently. One is a fixed shop with unlimited stock, which is how you should plan to buy them; the other is a rare roll you will pick up by accident while doing something else. Neither is craftable, and no boss drops them.

Medal Shop: 300 Dog Coins Each

All twelve handbooks sit permanently in the Medal Shop, which trades in Dog Coins rather than gold, and each one costs 300 Dog Coins. There's no rotation and no luck involved — the whole set is 3,600 Dog Coins whenever you can afford it, and you can buy the same book repeatedly for a whole roster of workers. The full stock list for every trader is on the Palworld merchants and shop stock page.

Farming Dog Coins from Mimog

Mimog is the currency. Every wild one you catch or defeat hands over 170-250 Dog Coins guaranteed, plus a Training Manual (XL), which puts a handbook at roughly a Mimog and a half and the complete set at about 15-20 of them. The catch is that Mimog is a rare filler spawn rather than a fixed encounter — it turns up across 5,302 spawn points, so the reliable approach is to run a dense area on the interactive Mimog spawn map and grab every one you see. Skip the alpha version if coins are the goal: the field-boss Mimog pays only 35 Dog Coins, a fifth of what an ordinary one carries.

Supply Drops

Handbooks also appear as a rare roll inside supply drop crates, and the odds scale hard with how dangerous the region is. Sky Island and Dark Island crates put each individual handbook at 8.33% — over a hundred times the Grasslands rate — so late-game crates are genuinely worth opening for them, while early-region crates effectively never produce one. Every crate's full loot table is on the supply drops page.

Best Pals to Use Each Handbook On

The rule that makes a handbook pay for itself: spend it where the job's top-ranked Pal is something you can't realistically farm. Six of the twelve ceilings are held by Pals that never appear as a normal field spawn — Aegidron, Celesdir Noct and Renjishi only show up as level 78-79 alphas, Jetragon is a legendary alpha, and Dandilord and Silvance don't spawn in the wild at all. In those jobs a 300-coin book turns a catchable Pal into a ceiling-level worker, which is a far better trade than grinding an alpha. Here's the target for each book, with the rank it starts from and the other jobs it keeps.

Handbook	Best Pal to Feed It	Rank	Other Jobs It Keeps	Why This One
Mining	Knocklem	7 → 8	Transporting 7, Gathering 4	Reaches the ceiling while still hauling at the game's top rank
Lumbering	Celesdir	7 → 8	Gathering 4	1,613 spawn points — the cheapest ceiling-rank worker you can build
Kindling	Jormuntide Ignis	7 → 8	None	Pure furnace specialist with nothing else competing for its slot
Gathering	Starryon Primo	7 → 8	None	63 spawn points versus a legendary alpha for the same rank
Planting	Lyleen	7 → 8	Gathering 6, Handiwork 5, Medicine 5	Four jobs on one body, and the ceiling holder never spawns
Medicine Production	Lyleen Noct	7 → 8	Gathering 6, Handiwork 5	Same catchable Pal, and the only other Medicine 8 is unfarmable
Handiwork	Anubis	6 → 7	Mining 6, Transporting 4	Handiwork is the busiest job in any base, and Anubis triples up
Ranching	Beegarde	3 → 4	Gathering 3, Planting 2, Handiwork 2	Ties the Farming cap and it's your Honey supply
Transporting	Dualith	6 → 7	Mining 6, Lumbering 5, Planting 3	Ties the game's Transporting cap on a four-job body
Electricity	Dynamoff	6 → 7	Gathering 3, Transporting 3	Best second generator behind Orserk in a 25-Pal job
Watering	Faleris Aqua	6 → 7	Transporting 5	197 spawn points, so a whole plantation crew is easy to build
Cooling	Whalaska	6 → 7	Watering 5	Doubles as a waterer, which no other high-rank cooler does

Note that these ranks only compare inside their own job — a Mining 7 and a Farming 3 aren't the same amount of work, because Farming's whole ladder tops out at 4. The four books at the bottom of that table are the ones to buy last, and the section further down explains why.

Mining Handbook: Feed It to Knocklem

Aegidron is the only Mining 8 Pal in the game and it has zero field spawns — it exists purely as a level 79 alpha. Knocklem sits one rank below at Mining 7 and is catchable at 33 spawn points plus a level 55 alpha, and it carries Transporting 7 as well, which is the highest Transporting rank that exists. One book gives you a Pal that mines at the ceiling and hauls at the ceiling on the same body, and that combination doesn't exist anywhere else. Knocklem Ignis has the same 7/7 split with Kindling 5 instead of Gathering if you want the fire variant.

Lumbering Handbook: Feed It to Celesdir

This is the single best-value handbook in the game. Celesdir appears at 1,613 spawn points — it's one of the most common Pals you'll ever run into — and it already sits at Lumbering 7. Its dark variant Celesdir Noct holds the Lumbering 8 ceiling but only spawns as a level 79 alpha, so 300 coins and a Pal you can catch in your first hour of hunting gets you the same output. Check the best Lumbering Pals list for the rest of the 63-Pal bench.

Kindling Handbook: Feed It to Jormuntide Ignis

Kindling is a job where you want raw throughput and nothing else, because a furnace Pal never gets pulled onto another task. Jormuntide Ignis has Kindling 7 and no other work suitability at all, so it will never wander off to a workbench mid-smelt, and it's catchable at 21 spawn points. The Kindling 8 holder, Renjishi, is a level 78 alpha only. If you'd rather have a Pal that pulls double duty, Flaracle is also Kindling 7 with Handiwork 6 attached and turns up at 26 spawn points.

Gathering Handbook: Feed It to Starryon Primo

Gathering 8 belongs to Jetragon, a legendary that only appears as a level 70 alpha, which makes it a terrible plan for a harvest crew. Starryon Primo is Gathering 7 across 63 spawn points and has no other job pulling at it, so a single book puts a farmable Pal on the ceiling. If you want gathering plus coverage instead, Lyleen runs Gathering 6 alongside Planting 7, which makes it the better body for a plantation base.

Planting Handbook: Feed It to Lyleen

Dandilord holds Planting 8 and never spawns in the field, so the practical ceiling is whatever you can catch. Lyleen is Planting 7 at 42 spawn points with a level 58 alpha, and it also brings Gathering 6, Handiwork 5 and Medicine Production 5 — four jobs on one Pal, which matters when base worker slots are the real constraint. Feeding it the Planting book makes it a ceiling-rank sower that still sweeps up crops and crafts between planting cycles.

Medicine Production Handbook: Feed It to Lyleen Noct

Only 43 Pals have Medicine Production at all, and the two above rank 6 — Silvance at 8 and Bellanoir Libero at 7 — are both unavailable as wild catches. Lyleen Noct is the third at Medicine 7, shares Lyleen's 42 spawn points and level 58 alpha, and keeps Gathering 6 and Handiwork 5 on the side. One book puts it level with a raid boss at healing your injured Pals.

Handiwork Handbook: Feed It to Anubis

Handiwork is the job your base leans on hardest — 109 Pals have it and almost every structure wants it — so this is the book most players end up buying more than once. Anubis is the classic target at Handiwork 6 with Mining 6 and Transporting 4 attached, catchable at 35 spawn points plus a level 55 alpha. The ceiling here is genuinely reachable without a book, though: Solenne holds Handiwork 8 and does spawn in the field at 47 points, so if you're short on coins, catch Solenne first and save the book for a job where the top Pal is locked behind an alpha.

Ranching Handbook: Feed It to Beegarde

Farming is the odd one out — its entire ladder tops out at rank 4, held by Dumud Gild and Sibelyx Primo, so a single +1 is a quarter of the whole scale. Beegarde sits at Farming 3 and is the only Pal that produces Honey at a ranch, which is the material that gates cakes and therefore your entire breeding operation. It also has just 43 spawn points, so you won't be swapping in a better one. Push it to 4 and your honey ranch runs at the game's maximum ranching rank — the honey farming guide covers the rest of that pipeline, and the ranch Pal list shows what every other ranch body produces.

Which Handbooks to Buy First

Buy priority follows one question: can you catch the Pal that already holds this job's ceiling? Where the answer is no, the handbook is doing work no amount of hunting can replace. Where the answer is yes, the book is a convenience, and 300 Dog Coins are better spent elsewhere until the rest are done.

Priority	Handbook	Reason
1	Lumbering	Ceiling Pal is a Lv 79 alpha; the rank-7 alternative has 1,613 spawn points
2	Mining	Ceiling Pal is a Lv 79 alpha; Knocklem gets you 8/7 mining and hauling
3	Kindling	Ceiling Pal is a Lv 78 alpha; furnace uptime is a permanent bottleneck
4	Planting	Dandilord doesn't spawn in the field at all
5	Medicine Production	Both Pals above rank 6 are unavailable as wild catches
6	Gathering	Ceiling belongs to a legendary alpha
7	Ranching	+1 is a quarter of a 4-rank scale, and it's your Honey line
8	Handiwork	Busiest job in the base, but Solenne is catchable at rank 8
9	Transporting	Knocklem already sits on the rank-7 cap and is catchable
10	Electricity	Orserk holds rank 8 at 33 spawn points; one generator is usually enough
11	Watering	Shaolong is rank 8 across 63 spawn points
12	Cooling	Bastigor is rank 8 across 69 spawn points and adds Lumbering 6

The bottom four aren't bad books, they're just late books. Cooling, Watering, Generating Electricity and Transporting all have a catchable Pal already sitting on the ceiling, so the +1 only helps once you're building a second or third worker for that job. The work optimizer will tell you which of your own Pals is actually short a rank for the structures you've built.

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