Best Pals for Expeditions, Strength, and Rewards

Expeditions are the one job where your bench pays rent — you drop Pals off at the Pal Expedition Station, they vanish for 30 minutes to two hours, and they come back carrying Ancient Pal Manuscripts and raid slab fragments you can't pick up off the ground. This guide covers the best Pals to send for every element quota, the party strength each of the 18 missions demands, exactly what they pay, and how to shove an underpowered roster over the gate.

Expeditions at a Glance

Every expedition checks two things before it lets you press go: a total party strength number, and how many Pals of one specific element you're sending. Miss either and the mission stays greyed out. The strength range across the 18 runs is enormous — the opening mission asks for 25,000 and the last one asks for 2,100,000, an 84× jump — while the element quota barely moves at all: almost every mission wants 20 Pals of one type. That second requirement is the one that actually blocks people, because a box full of your six favourite fighters can't fill a 20-slot Fire quota no matter how strong they are.

Expeditions	What you're looking at
Missions in total	18 — 2 Easy, 2 Normal, 5 Hard, 9 Very Hard
Run time	30, 45, 60 or 120 minutes
Party strength needed	25,000 at the bottom, 2,100,000 at the top
Element quota	20 Pals of one element on 15 of the 18 runs
Elements asked for	Grass, Fire, Ground, Ice, Water, Dark, Dragon, Neutral
Element never asked for	Electric — not one mission wants it
Missions with no element rule	3 (Verdant Hollow and both World Tree runs)
Unlocked by	Pal Expedition Station, Technology Lv 22
Signature payout	Ancient Pal Manuscript — 5 to 30 per run

The Electric row is the free lunch here. Electric is the only element in the game no expedition ever asks for, so your Grizzbolt and friends can stay on generator duty forever without you feeling guilty about it. At the other end, Dragon is the tightest squeeze — the game only has 25 Dragon Pals to choose from and two separate missions want 20 of them at once, so Dragon is the quota you should start hoarding for first. Full mission-by-mission loot tables live on the list of all expeditions and rewards.

How to Unlock the Pal Expedition Station

The station is a Technology Lv 22 unlock, which puts it comfortably in mid-game reach rather than being an endgame toy. It costs nothing exotic to put down — 100 Stone and 20 Cement are the only two lines that need a real supply chain behind them, and by Lv 22 you'll have both running. Build it somewhere you walk past, because collecting finished runs is a manual trip and forgotten expeditions just sit there.

Material	Qty	Notes
Stone	100	The bulk of the cost
Cement	20	Needs a Crusher running
Paldium Fragment	20	Same stuff your spheres eat
Wooden Board	10	Cheapest line on the list

Before you commit a party, check you can actually clear the gate: you need the station built, the mission's unlock condition met (most of them want a specific region boss dead), 20 Pals carrying the right element, and enough combined strength. Verdant Hollow at 25,000 strength with no element rule is the one you can attempt basically the moment the station goes down, which makes it the natural first run.

What Makes a Pal Good on an Expedition

Expeditions don't care about work suitability, partner skills, movement speed or anything else you normally pick a Pal for. Pocketpair hasn't published the exact strength formula, so treat the practical version as the real one: level and raw stats do the work, and a high-level Pal with a fat statline contributes far more than a low-level one with the same name. That flips your usual instincts — the Pal you'd never take into a boss fight is fine here, as long as its numbers are big and it's the right colour.

That last point is why this page ranks by statline but keeps flagging the ordinary Pals too. You are not building a six-Pal party here, you are building a twenty-Pal warehouse per element, and the last ten slots get filled by whatever you've got.

Best Pals for Expeditions by Element

Eight elements get asked for across the 18 missions, and the pools they draw from are wildly uneven. Dark is the easy quota — 70 species to pick from, more than any other element, and two of the game's absolute statline monsters sit in it. Dragon is the nightmare — 25 species, the joint-smallest pool in the game, and two missions that each want 20 of them. Neutral is the odd one out with a single mission attached, so it's the last quota worth building.

Element	Missions	Pals needed	Species pool	Strongest pick
Dark	2	20 each	70	Frostallion Noct
Water	2	20 each	47	Panthalus
Grass	2	15 and 20	46	Silvance
Ground	2	20 each	44	Anubis
Fire	2	20 each	43	Jormuntide Ignis
Ice	2	20 each	38	Frostallion
Neutral	1	20	36	Paladius
Dragon	2	20 each	25	Jetragon
Electric	0	—	25	Nothing — no mission wants Electric

Read the last two columns together and the plan writes itself. Grass gets a discount nobody mentions — Secret Realm of the Forest only asks for 15 Grass Pals, the single lowest quota in the game, which makes it the easiest element mission to unlock early. Dragon is the opposite: smallest pool, two missions, both wanting the full 20. Start catching spare Dragons long before you think you need them, and lean on dual-types like Astegon, Aegidron and Shaolong that cover a second quota at the same time.

Best Grass Pals for Expeditions

Grass is the friendliest element to start with because of that 15-Pal discount on Secret Realm of the Forest. Silvance is the pick of the pool — 140 HP behind a 120 Shot Attack is the most complete Grass statline here — but Dandilord hits harder at 135 and drags a Dark typing along with it, which quietly covers your Feybreak quota too. If you're short on bodies, Lyleen and Mammorest both turn up in the wild, so you can farm duplicates instead of breeding them one at a time.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Silvance	140	100 / 120	110	Best all-round Grass block — nothing on its sheet is a weak spot
Dandilord	125	100 / 135	110	Hardest-hitting Grass pick here, and Dark on the side
Mammorest	150	100 / 85	90	Biggest Grass health bar on the list; also Ground for the Desert runs
Ophydia	130	100 / 115	120	Grass and Water, so one Pal is eligible for four different missions
Lyleen	120	100 / 120	110	Spawns in the world — the realistic way to stack duplicates
Wumpo Botan	140	100 / 80	110	Cheap bulk once your attackers are locked in

Best Fire Pals for Expeditions

Fire is where the melee monsters live. Jormuntide Ignis is the standout because it doesn't compromise anywhere — 150 Melee, 130 Shot and 130 HP — and its Dragon half means it's simultaneously solving your hardest quota. Blazamut matches that 150 Melee, which is the highest melee value any Pal in the game reaches. For the back half of the roster, Faleris is the sensible filler: unremarkable numbers, but it spawns out in the world, and you need twenty bodies rather than twenty legends.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Jormuntide Ignis	130	150 / 130	100	No weak column, and it counts for the Dragon runs too
Blazamut Ryu	105	150 / 130	125	The raid version — best Fire block here if you've landed one
Blazamut	100	150 / 125	120	Matches the game's top Melee Attack of 150
Knocklem Ignis	105	100 / 115	135	Highest Defense of the Fire picks
Eidrolon Ignis	115	100 / 130	120	Fire and Dragon — Blazing Cavern and Sunreach Isle from one slot
Faleris	105	100 / 110	115	Wild spawn, so it's the one you can actually own several of

Best Water Pals for Expeditions

Water has the single most absurd defensive Pal outside the World Tree. Panthalus carries 180 HP and 200 Defense — the 180 is the second-highest health pool in Palworld and the 200 Defense ties for the highest number any Pal reaches. Neptilius is the offensive answer at 145 Shot Attack. Between them and the two Dragon-typed Water Pals, this is the easiest strong roster to assemble: 47 species to draw from and several of them doing double duty.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Panthalus	180	100 / 120	200	Second-highest HP in the game and joint-highest Defense
Neptilius	105	100 / 145	125	One of the biggest Shot Attack values in the game
Shaolong	140	100 / 135	120	140 HP with 135 Shot — and it's a Dragon
Jormuntide	130	150 / 120	100	Top-tier melee, Dragon typing attached
Ophydia	130	100 / 115	120	Doubles as your Grass entry
Faleris Aqua	110	100 / 110	115	Balanced filler for the tail end of the twenty

Best Ice Pals for Expeditions

Frostallion is the obvious headliner at 140 HP and 140 Shot Attack, but the useful news is how close Bastigor gets to it — 140 HP and 130 Shot — while being a Pal you can find in the world rather than a one-off legendary. The two Cryst variants are the smart picks underneath: Mammorest Cryst brings the biggest Ice health bar at 150, and both it and Moldron Cryst carry Ground as a second type, so every one you catch is also a body for the Desert quota.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Frostallion	140	100 / 140	120	Strongest all-round Ice statline on the list
Bastigor	140	100 / 130	120	Nearly matches Frostallion and turns up in the world
Mammorest Cryst	150	100 / 85	90	Biggest Ice health bar; Ground typing covers a second quota
Moldron Cryst	110	100 / 125	120	Ice and Ground again — two quotas per catch
Cryolinx	100	140 / 100	110	140 Melee, and easy to pick up duplicates of
Wumpo	140	100 / 80	100	Pure bulk filler at 140 HP

Best Ground Pals for Expeditions

Ground is the most balanced pool on the page. Anubis leads it with 130 in both Attack columns, which no other Ground Pal here manages, and Aegidron backs it up with the highest Defense of the group at 140 plus Dragon typing — genuinely valuable when Dragon is the quota you'll struggle with. The rest of the twenty comes cheap: Gildane and Dualith are unspectacular, which is exactly what you want from slots 10 through 20.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Anubis	120	130 / 130	100	Only Ground pick here with 130 in both attack stats
Aegidron	105	100 / 125	140	Highest Ground Defense, and a Dragon body as well
Mammorest	150	100 / 85	90	Biggest health bar in the pool; Grass on the side
Cryolinx Terra	100	140 / 105	110	140 Melee Attack from a common-tier Pal
Dualith	110	100 / 105	125	125 Defense, and it fills a Grass slot too
Gildane	120	100 / 110	110	Flat and unspectacular — perfect quota filler

Best Dark Pals for Expeditions

Dark is the quota you'll fill without trying. 70 species is the largest element pool in the game, and it happens to contain two of the best statlines going. Frostallion Noct has no weak column at all — 140 HP, 140 Shot, 135 Defense — while Necromus pushes 145 Shot Attack. Astegon is the one to prioritise catching spares of, because its Dragon half feeds the quota you'll actually run short on.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Frostallion Noct	140	100 / 140	135	140 HP, 140 Shot, 135 Defense — no soft spot anywhere
Necromus	130	100 / 145	120	Hardest-hitting Dark Pal on the list
Shadowbeak	120	130 / 120	140	140 Defense with 130 Melee behind it
Astegon	100	100 / 125	125	Dark and Dragon — worth two quotas, catch every spare
Selyne	130	100 / 115	110	Dark and Neutral, covering the Smuggling Warehouse run
Lyleen Noct	115	100 / 120	115	Solid numbers and it spawns in the field

Best Dragon Pals for Expeditions

This is the quota that decides whether you ever run Sunreach Isle. 25 Dragon species, two missions, 20 Pals each — start collecting long before you need them. Jetragon leads on 140 Shot Attack and is the fastest mount in the game while it's sitting idle, but the workhorses are the dual-types: Jormuntide Ignis at 150 Melee, Shaolong with the pool's biggest health bar at 140, and Orserk, the only place on this page where an Electric Pal is any use at all.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Jetragon	115	100 / 140	120	Top Dragon Shot Attack, and the fastest mount in the game
Jormuntide Ignis	130	150 / 130	100	Biggest melee number in the Dragon pool, plus a Fire slot
Shaolong	140	100 / 135	120	Highest HP of the Dragon picks; covers Water too
Orserk	120	100 / 130	115	130 Shot — the one job Electric typing has here
Aegidron	105	100 / 125	140	Best Dragon Defense, and a Ground body as well
Xenogard	110	100 / 120	130	Sturdy filler for a pool that has none to spare

Best Neutral Pals for Expeditions

Only one mission asks for Neutral — the Rayne Syndicate Smuggling Warehouse — so this is the last quota worth building, but it's a Very Hard run with a 1,600,000 strength gate, so the twenty you send need to be good. Paladius is the anchor at 145 Defense, the highest of any Neutral Pal here, and Hartalis out-attacks it if you've beaten it in a raid. Below those two the pool thins out fast, which is why Celesdir makes the list: plain numbers, but it's the sort of Pal you'll genuinely end up owning twenty of.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Paladius	130	110 / 120	145	Highest Defense of any Neutral Pal here
Hartalis	135	100 / 130	110	Best Neutral attacker — but you have to raid it first
Selyne	130	100 / 115	110	Neutral and Dark, so it never sits idle
Celesdir	120	100 / 110	100	Ordinary, common, and that's the point at 20 slots

No Element Required: The Two World Tree Runs

Verdant Hollow and both World Tree missions skip the element check entirely — they just want bodies and raw strength. That makes Astralym the single best expedition Pal in the game and also the strangest: it carries no element type at all, so it can never help you fill a Fire or Ice quota, but it posts 200 HP, 200 Shot Attack and 200 Defense — the highest health pool and the highest Shot Attack of any Pal in Palworld, and a Defense value tied with Panthalus for the game's best. On the two runs that don't check colour, twenty of anything strong beats twenty of anything specific.

Pal	HP	Melee / Shot	Defense	Why it earns a slot
Astralym	200	100 / 200	200	Highest HP and Shot Attack in the game, joint-highest Defense
Panthalus	180	100 / 120	200	The other 200 Defense in the game, on 180 HP
Frostallion Noct	140	100 / 140	135	Best balanced block when nothing needs a colour
Necromus	130	100 / 145	120	Pure attack contribution
Paladius	130	110 / 120	145	145 Defense on a 130 health bar

All 18 Expeditions: Strength, Element and Time

Here's every mission with its actual gate. The difficulty curve is not smooth — it climbs steadily from 25,000 to 851,000 across the first nine runs, then the entire Very Hard tier jumps to a flat 1,600,000 with the final World Tree run at 2,100,000. That flat wall matters: once you can clear one Very Hard mission, you can clear eight of them, so the effort of getting from 851,000 to 1.6 million unlocks the whole back half of the list at once. The 120-minute runtime on that tier is the trade — you're getting roughly one Very Hard cycle per play session rather than four.

Note how many unlocks are region boss kills. Six of the eighteen are gated behind a specific area's boss, so if a mission you want isn't showing up, the fix is usually a fight rather than a stronger party. The expeditions page shows each mission's full loot pool with the exact roll ranges.

Which Expeditions Are Actually Worth Running

Nearly every expedition pays Ancient Pal Manuscripts — the two World Tree runs are the exception, handing back ancient relics instead — and that's the real reason to bother with any of this: 157 of the 168 research projects at the Pal Labor Research Lab need manuscripts, and no Pal in the game drops one. Expeditions are the tap. The payout scales cleanly with difficulty too: Verdant Hollow returns 5 to 7 per run, while the Very Hard missions return 25 to 30, so the same slot is worth roughly five times as much once you're through the 1.6 million wall.

Run this one	Time	For	Headline haul
Sunreach Isle	60 min	Soralite	30–50 Soralite plus 30–50 Coralum Ore — the two tightest endgame ores
The World Tree's Forbidden Area	120 min	Ancient Relics	Gorgeous, Glowing and Glistening relics, 2–5 at a time
Celestial Sakura Cavern	60 min	Slab Fragments	Xenolord, Hartalis and Blazamut Ryu fragments in one pool, plus 50–80 Ore
Moonflower's Secret Hideout	120 min	Large Pal Soul	7–11 Large and 5–10 Giant Pal Souls per run
Ancient Feybreak Ruins	120 min	Hexolite Quartz	10–20 Hexolite Quartz and 10–20 Chromite
PAL Genetic Research Laboratory	120 min	Diamond	6–12 Diamonds and 10–20 Pure Quartz
Dark Cave of Feybreak	60 min	Exotic Sphere	Top-tier spheres plus 30–50 Chromite

Two of those rows change how you plan a session. Sunreach Isle is the best Soralite source that doesn't involve flying to Sunreach, which is worth knowing given how few Soralite nodes exist on the map — see how to get Coralum Ore for the ground-level version. And the Pal Soul runs pay for themselves: the Large and Giant Pal Souls you bring back go straight into raising the stats of the Pals you're sending, so the loop compounds.

Expeditions are also a quiet source of raid slab fragments. Bellanoir's, Bellanoir Libero's, Blazamut Ryu's, Xenolord's and Hartalis's fragments all appear in expedition pools, 1 to 2 at a time. If you're stuck summoning a raid, running expeditions in the background is free progress — details on the raid bosses page.

How to Hit the Strength Gates

If a mission is greyed out with the element quota satisfied, you're short on strength, and there are only really three levers. Levelling is the blunt one and it works — the same Pal at level 50 is worth far more than at level 20. After that it's about permanently raising the statlines of the Pals you already own, which is exactly what the Pal Condenser and the Statue of Power exist for.

The Short Answer

Build the Pal Expedition Station at Technology Lv 22, then work down the 18 missions in strength order from Verdant Hollow's 25,000 to the World Tree's 2,100,000. Each mission wants 20 Pals of one element — 15 for the Grass starter — so you're building warehouses, not parties. The strongest picks by element are Frostallion Noct for Dark, Panthalus for Water, Jormuntide Ignis for Fire, Frostallion for Ice, Anubis for Ground, Silvance for Grass, Jetragon for Dragon and Paladius for Neutral — with Astralym and its 200/200/200 statline going on the three runs that don't check element at all. Prioritise Dragon, ignore Electric entirely, and remember why you're doing it: 157 of 168 research projects need Ancient Pal Manuscripts, and expeditions are the only place they come from.

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