How to Get a Gun Fast and Early: Unlocks, Buys, and Drops

Everyone hits the same wall in their first few hours: clubs and bows feel awful, and the first gun you can actually craft, the Musket, sits behind technology level 21. This guide covers the four real routes to a gun — the Pal gear that shoots for you ten levels earlier, the Musket craft and its ammo chain, the two merchants who sell a gun outright, and the loot pools that drop gun schematics.

Fastest Routes to a Gun, Compared

The headline number most players want is level 21, but that is only true if you insist on holding the gun yourself. Pal gear counts, and Lifmunk's Submachine Gun unlocks at technology level 11 for a single point — a full ten levels before the Musket, on a Pal you can catch on the starting beaches. If you have Gold instead of levels, a wandering desert merchant sells a Musket for 9,940 Gold, which skips the 3-point unlock entirely. Everything below is ordered by how early you can realistically pull it off.

Route	Unlock Lv.	Tech Points	What You Get
Lifmunk's Submachine Gun	11	1	Lifmunk fires as your partner, no ammo needed
Tanzee's Assault Rifle	12	1	Tanzee fires as your partner, no ammo needed
Tanzee Ignis's Assault Rifle	13	1	Fire-element version of the same trick
Pengullet Rocket Launcher	17	2	Pengullet becomes a launcher you fire
Musket (craft)	21	3	1,000 Attack, single shot, in your own hands
Musket (buy)	None	0	9,940 Gold at the Desert Shop merchant
Makeshift Handgun (buy)	None	0	13,970 Gold at the Volcano Shop merchant
Musket Schematic 1 (loot)	None	0	Drops from enemy camps at up to 37.4%

What You Need Before Any of This

Every gun route runs through Ingot, so the Primitive Furnace at technology level 10 is the true gate — it costs 3 points and turns 2 Ore into 1 Ingot. Pal gear needs the Pal Gear Workbench, which is cheap and early at level 6 for 2 points. Crafting a Musket yourself adds two more prerequisites on top: Wooden Board at level 15, and the Weapon Workbench at level 20, which is the actual station the Musket is built on.

Prerequisite	Tech Lv.	Points	Needed For
Pal Gear Workbench	6	2	Every Pal gear gun below
Primitive Furnace	10	3	Ingot — every route needs it
Wooden Board	15	1	Musket craft (×3)
Weapon Workbench	20	3	Musket and Coarse Ammo
Gunpowder	21	2	Coarse Ammo

Add it up and the do-it-yourself Musket path costs 9 technology points across four unlocks plus the 3 for the Musket and 1 for its ammo — 13 points total, and you cannot finish it before level 21. The Pal gear path costs 3 points total and finishes at level 11. That gap is the whole reason this guide exists.

Pal Gear Guns You Can Unlock Before Level 20

Pal gear turns a partner Pal into a weapon. You unlock the gear in the technology tree, craft it at the Pal Gear Workbench, then equip it to that Pal — after which sending them out lets them fire on their own or hands you the Pal as a weapon, depending on the skill. The huge advantage early is that none of it consumes ammo, so you skip the entire Gunpowder and Coarse Ammo chain that gates the Musket. The trade-off is a cooldown between uses and no manual aim, which matters against fast Alphas and not much else at this stage.

Pal	Gear	Tech Lv.	Points	Craft Cost
Lifmunk	Lifmunk's Submachine Gun	11	1	Ingot ×5, Stone ×10, Wood ×20, Paldium Fragment ×10
Tanzee	Tanzee's Assault Rifle	12	1	Ingot ×5, Stone ×15, Wood ×15, Paldium Fragment ×10
Tanzee Ignis	Tanzee Ignis's Assault Rifle	13	1	Ingot ×6, Stone ×18, Wood ×18, Flame Organ ×10, Paldium Fragment ×20
Pengullet	Pengullet Rocket Launcher	17	2	Ingot ×20, Stone ×20, Wooden Board ×3, Paldium Fragment ×20
Pengullet Lux	Pengullet Lux's Rocket Launcher	18	2	Same shape as Pengullet's, with the Electric variant

Lifmunk is the pick if you just want the earliest possible gun, because the gear is one level and one point cheaper than Tanzee's and the material bill is five Ingot and some Wood and Stone you already have piled up. If you would rather have the Fire element for the Grass-heavy early islands, Tanzee Ignis at level 13 is worth the extra two levels and the Flame Organ. Pengullet's launcher is a different animal — it lands at level 17 for 2 points and needs Wooden Board, so it arrives only a few levels before the Musket and is mostly a fun option rather than a fast one.

Lifmunk: the Earliest Gun in the Game

Lifmunk is a Grass-element starter-zone Pal whose partner skill, Lifmunk Recoil, is exactly what the gear name suggests. It spawns at 211 recorded spots across the map, concentrated on Sea Breeze Coast, Small Cove, and Isle of Murmurs Beach, which are all within a short walk of where you wake up. Catch one on day one, bank a technology point at level 11, and you have a gun before most players have built a Weapon Workbench.

Pull up every Lifmunk spawn on the Palworld interactive map to plan the catch, and check Lifmunk's stats, drops, and work suitabilities if you want it doing base labour between fights.

Tanzee: One Level Later, Assault Rifle Instead

Tanzee runs the Cheery Rifle partner skill and unlocks at technology level 12 for one point. It is rarer in the wild than Lifmunk at 72 recorded spots, clustered around Sea Breeze Archipelago's Castaway Beach, Isle of Silence Church Ruins, and the Desolate Church. If you find one before you find a Lifmunk, take it — the level difference is trivial and the gear cost is nearly identical. Tanzee's spawn locations are mapped here.

Musket: The First Gun You Craft Yourself

The Musket unlocks at technology level 21 for 3 points and is built at the Weapon Workbench. It hits for 1,000 Attack with a 1-round magazine and 200 durability, and that Attack figure is genuinely enormous for the point in the game where you get it — among assault-rifle-class weapons nothing else comes close until the Single-Shot Rifle at level 36. Attack numbers only mean anything inside a weapon class, so do not read the Musket's 1,000 against a shotgun or a bow; read it against the Makeshift SMG's 100 and the Makeshift Assault Rifle's 170, both of which unlock later.

The catch is the one-shot magazine and a reload long enough that a charging Alpha will reach you mid-animation. Treat it as an opener, not a sustain weapon: land the first shot from range, then swap to melee or let your Pal finish. Crafting it once is enough — a Musket only needs materials again if it takes durability damage and you repair it.

Stat	Musket	Makeshift Handgun (Lv. 24)
Attack	1,000	320
Magazine	1	6
Durability	200	300
Class	Assault Rifle	Handgun
Ammo	Coarse Ammo	Coarse Ammo
Tech Lv. / Points	21 / 3	24 / 3

Those two are the only guns worth a point before level 25, and they answer different questions. The Musket is the burst option — one huge hit, then a long, ugly reload. The Makeshift Handgun trades most of that damage for six rounds and 100 more durability, which makes it the better weapon for clearing trash mobs and chipping down a Pal you are trying to capture. Both feed off the same Coarse Ammo, so unlocking the second one costs you nothing extra in ammo infrastructure.

Material	Qty	Where It Comes From
Ingot	25	Smelt 2 Ore per Ingot — 1,632 Ore nodes are mapped
High Quality Pal Oil	5	Drops, or buy at 300 Gold each from four merchant families
Wooden Board	3	Crafted from Wood once you unlock it at level 15

The whole bill is 50 Ore, 5 High Quality Pal Oil, and 3 Wooden Board, and the Oil is the only piece that can stall you. If you have not fought anything that drops it yet, four merchant families sell it at 300 Gold apiece, so 1,500 Gold clears the requirement outright. Failing that, Dumud produces High Quality Pal Oil on a Ranch at rank 1, which makes it the cheapest permanent supply in the early game.

Coarse Ammo: the Part People Forget

A Musket without Coarse Ammo is a very expensive stick. The ammo unlocks at the same level 21 for 1 more point, and each craft turns 1 Ingot and 1 Gunpowder into 20 rounds, which is a far better ratio than most players assume when they see the recipe. Gunpowder is its own level 21 unlock at 2 points and is made from 2 Charcoal and 1 Sulfur.

Sulfur is the bottleneck, not the Ingot — there are 655 Sulfur nodes recorded on the map against 1,632 for Ore, and they sit in the hotter regions. Open the Sulfur layer on the map before you commit to the Musket line so you know where your ammo actually comes from. If you would rather not mine at all, five merchant families stock Coarse Ammo at 40 Gold a round, which is fine for a stockpile of 100 and painful beyond that.

Buy a Gun Instead of Unlocking It

This is the route the level requirement makes people forget: guns are on merchant shelves, and buying one costs zero technology points. The Musket is the cheaper of the two at 9,940 Gold from the Desert Shop merchant, which is less than the Makeshift Handgun even though the Musket unlocks three levels earlier. There are 12 merchant pins on the map, so finding a stocked one is a short trip rather than a hunt.

Item	Price	Merchant	Notes
Musket	9,940 Gold	Desert Shop	Cheapest gun on any shelf
Makeshift Handgun	13,970 Gold	Volcano Shop	Six rounds instead of one
Coarse Ammo	40 Gold	Caravan, Desert, Dungeon, Volcano, Wander	Feeds both guns above
High Quality Pal Oil	300 Gold	Caravan, Desert, Volcano, Wander	Skips the Musket's only awkward material

Roughly 12,000 Gold gets you a Musket and 50 rounds for it, which is a realistic afternoon of clearing enemy camps. If you are short, the fastest Gold farming methods will get you there quicker than grinding Pal sales, and the merchant buying priorities guide covers what else is worth the same Gold at this stage.

Farm Gun Schematics from Camps and Chests

Schematics drop as world loot and hand you a ranked-up version of a gun to build. The commonly repeated advice is to crack open treasure chests, and that does work — but the numbers say enemy camps are dramatically better. Regular camp loot in the Forest and Mount Obsidian drops a Musket Schematic 1 at 37.4%, against 15.3% for Forest chests and just 3.1% for Grasslands chests. Roughly three camp clears will produce one.

Two things stand out. First, the Forest and Mount Obsidian camps carry identical odds, so run whichever is closer to your base rather than travelling for the "better" one. Second, chests are the worst listed route for the Musket schematic and you will open a lot of them for a 3.1% roll in the Grasslands — the 177 Grasslands chests and 247 Forest chests are still worth looting in passing, just not worth a dedicated run for this. There are 48 enemy camps on the map, and the camp layer is the one to leave switched on.

Some chests are locked and want a Copper Key before they open, so keep a few in your bag if you are doing a chest route anyway. For the full picture on the top-tier versions of these weapons, every legendary weapon schematic location covers where the 4-star builds come from.

The Short Answer

If you want a gun tonight: catch a Lifmunk, unlock the Pal Gear Workbench at level 6, and spend one point at level 11 on Lifmunk's Submachine Gun. If you want a gun in your own hands and have Gold, buy the Musket for 9,940 and start banking Sulfur for ammo. If you want the real thing and are close to level 21, unlock the Weapon Workbench at 20 first, then spend 6 points at 21 on the Musket, Coarse Ammo, and Gunpowder together — splitting that unlock across two play sessions is how people end up with a gun and nothing to fire from it.

Related Guides

Weapons and progression: Best Weapons at Every Tech Level · Best Guns Tier List: All Guns Ranked · All Legendary Weapon Schematic Locations · How to Get More Technology Points

Early game and resources: Best Early Game Pals · Best Partner Skills and Their Effects · How to Farm Ore: Best Locations · How to Farm Gold Fast · What to Buy from Merchants

Databases: All Palworld Guides · Palworld Weapon Database · Palworld Interactive Map · Palworld Technology Tree