How to Get the SMG: Level 37 Unlock, Stats, and Schematics

The SMG unlocks at Technology Lv 37 for 3 Technology Points and is the mid-game gun that finally makes automatic fire cheap — 130 attack across a 24-round magazine, built from 25 Refined Ingot and 6 Polymer on the Weapon Assembly Line. This guide covers the full stat card, the unlock chain you need before Lv 37, the exact material trace, why its ammo is the cheapest of any submachine gun in the game, all five rarity tiers, and every place the schematics drop.

SMG Stats

The number that matters here is not the 130 attack — it's the 24 rounds behind it. The SMG puts 3,120 damage in a single magazine, which is more than the Handgun you were using at Lv 28 manages in its whole 8-round clip (2,000), and it does it off the same ammo. Durability is the quiet upgrade: 2,000 against the Handgun's 400, so it survives five times as long between repairs. Weight is 15, standard for the class, so it eats a real chunk of your carry limit — check the best Pals for carrying more items if that's already a problem.

Stat	SMG
Weapon class	Assault Rifle
Rarity	Common
Base Attack	130
Magazine	24
Damage per magazine	3,120
Durability	2,000
Weight	15
Technology level	Lv 37, 3 Technology Points
Crafting station	Weapon Assembly Line (Tech Lv 32)
Crafting work	75,000
Ammo	Handgun Ammo — Tech Lv 28, 1 point
Legendary schematic	SMG Schematic 4
Item value	29,380 Gold

One honest caveat before you compare it to anything else on the tech tree: attack is a per-bullet figure, and the SMG's whole design is firing a lot of small bullets fast. Pocketpair hasn't published rate-of-fire values, so a 130 next to the Single-Shot Rifle's 1,100 tells you nothing useful — those two guns fire on completely different terms. Compare the SMG to other rapid-fire guns and to the other SMG families, and the numbers mean something.

How to Unlock the SMG

The Lv 37 unlock is the last step, not the first — the gun is useless until four earlier things are in place, and they're spread across nine levels. The one people forget is Polymer at Lv 33, which needs a Production Assembly Line you may not have built yet; the other is the Improved Furnace at Lv 34, because Refined Ingot doesn't come out of the primitive one. Spend the points in the order below and the SMG is craftable the minute you hit 37. Full costs are on the Palworld technology tree, and if you're short, see how to get more Technology Points.

Level	Unlock	Points	Why you need it
Lv 28	Handgun Ammo	1	The round the SMG fires — no ammo, no gun
Lv 29	Production Assembly Line	—	The station that makes Polymer
Lv 32	Weapon Assembly Line	—	The station that makes the SMG itself
Lv 33	Polymer	2	6 needed per SMG
Lv 34	Improved Furnace	—	Smelts Refined Ingot — 25 needed per SMG
Lv 37	SMG	3	The recipe

SMG Crafting Materials

Two lines on the recipe card, but they trace down to four raw resources and 118 raw units per gun. The Refined Ingot half is the bulk of it — 50 Ore and 50 Coal through the Improved Furnace — and Coal is the pinch point at this stage of the game, so park a base near a coal seam before you start. The Polymer half is small but annoying: 12 High Quality Pal Oil means butchering or farming oil-dropping Pals, covered in the best Pals to butcher guide.

Material	Qty	Traces down to
Refined Ingot	25	50 Ore + 50 Coal
Polymer	6	12 High Quality Pal Oil + 6 Sulfur
Total raw	118 units	50 Ore, 50 Coal, 12 High Quality Pal Oil, 6 Sulfur

At 75,000 crafting work the SMG is a quick build by mid-game standards — the Assault Rifle eight levels later is nearly triple that. Put Handiwork Pals on the Weapon Assembly Line and it finishes inside a single in-game day. The best base locations guide lists the coordinates with both Ore and Coal nodes in range, which is the setup you want here.

SMG Ammo and Running Costs

This is the SMG's real selling point and nobody mentions it. It fires Handgun Ammo, the same round as the Handgun, Old Revolver, Marksman Revolver and Ballistic Shield — so five weapon families share one stockpile and you never split your crafting queue. One craft is 1 Ingot + 1 Gunpowder for 20 rounds, which traces to just 2 Ore, 2 Charcoal and 1 Sulfur. A full 24-round magazine is 1.2 crafts.

SMG	Ammo	Recipe	Rounds per craft	Damage per craft
Makeshift SMG	Coarse Ammo	1 Ingot + 1 Gunpowder	20	2,000
SMG	Handgun Ammo	1 Ingot + 1 Gunpowder	20	2,600
Combat SMG	Combat SMG Ammo	2 Soralite Ingot + 6 Gunpowder	20	18,140

Read the first two rows together: the SMG and the Makeshift SMG cost exactly the same to feed, and the SMG gets 30% more damage out of every round. The moment you unlock it there is no reason to keep firing Coarse Ammo. The Combat SMG at the bottom hits far harder but burns Soralite Ingot, an endgame material — it's a different budget entirely. Every other weapon's running cost is on the Palworld ammo database.

Every SMG Rarity Tier

The SMG comes in five versions. The Common one is the tech-tree unlock you craft for free at Lv 37; the four above it each need a schematic in your inventory, and from Uncommon upward they also demand Ancient Civilization Parts — 1 to 4 of them, which is the real gate, not the ingots. Legendary is 1.75× the attack and 2.33× the damage per magazine of Common, plus four times the durability, so it's worth chasing if you plan to live in this gun until Lv 45.

Version	Attack	Magazine	Damage per mag	Durability	Materials	Work
SMG (Common)	130	24	3,120	2,000	25 Refined Ingot, 6 Polymer	75,000
SMG (Uncommon)	156	26	4,056	3,000	31 Refined Ingot, 7 Polymer, 1 Ancient Civilization Parts	300,000
SMG (Rare)	175	28	4,900	4,000	37 Refined Ingot, 9 Polymer, 2 Ancient Civilization Parts	600,000
SMG (Epic)	195	30	5,850	6,000	43 Refined Ingot, 10 Polymer, 3 Ancient Civilization Parts	1,200,000
SMG (Legendary)	227	32	7,264	8,000	50 Refined Ingot, 12 Polymer, 4 Ancient Civilization Parts	2,400,000

Note the work column — the Legendary takes 32× longer to craft than the Common for 1.75× the attack, so build the Common the day you hit 37 and treat the upgrades as a background project. Ancient Civilization Parts come off Alpha and tower bosses; the Ancient Civilization Cores guide covers the farming routes for that whole material family.

Where the SMG Schematics Drop

All four SMG schematics live in the Forest loot pool and the enemy-camp tables, and the odds fall by exactly a factor of five each step up the ladder — 5.23% to 1.05% to 0.21% to 0.04% in Forest supply drops. That symmetry is the whole strategy, because the Drafting Table turns 5 of any tier into 1 of the next, so a stack of cheap Schematic 1s is worth just as much as a lucky Legendary roll. Every source and every rarity is listed on the Palworld schematics database. (Heads up on the pictures below — every schematic in the game shares the same rolled-scroll icon, so we show the gun each one builds instead.)

Source	Schematic 1	Schematic 2	Schematic 3	Schematic 4 (Legendary)
Alpha Beakon	—	—	—	3.00%
Crates on the large oil rig	—	—	—	1.47%
Enemy camp loot, Snowfields	24.82%	3.55%	0.71%	0.14%
Enemy camp loot, Desert	24.39%	4.88%	0.98%	0.20%
Camp boss stashes, Mount Obsidian (sea base)	—	14.92%	2.98%	0.60%
Chests in the Desert	10.36%	2.07%	0.41%	0.08%
Fishing in the Desert	8.58%	1.72%	0.34%	0.07%
Camp boss stashes, Mount Obsidian	5.64%	1.13%	0.23%	0.05%
Forest supply drops	5.23%	1.05%	0.21%	0.04%
Chests in the Forest	2.61%	0.52%	0.10%	0.02%
Fishing in the Forest	2.61%	0.52%	0.10%	0.02%
Treasure map digs (tier 1)	—	1.60%	0.64%	0.26%

Alpha Beakon Is the Direct Route

Beakon is the only Pal in the game that drops an SMG schematic, and it drops the Legendary one at 3.00% — the best single roll for it anywhere. The alpha is a fixed level 37 Electric bird in the north, which is a neat coincidence: it stands at exactly the level the gun unlocks. Bring a Ground Pal, and shoot it with the SMG you just built. Roughly 33 kills is the expected wait for the schematic, so treat it as a repeat stop on your alpha hunting route rather than a single trip. Find its pin with the interactive map.

Enemy Camps Are the Fast Route

If you want the Legendary sooner, ignore the 0.04% supply-drop roll and farm enemy camps — there are 48 land camps and 10 sea-base camps on the map, and Desert camp loot alone hands out Schematic 1 at 24.39%. Bank every tier and combine upward: counted in Legendary-equivalents, a Desert camp clear is worth 0.78%, so about 128 camps gets you there against 513 if you only ever count the 0.20% Legendary roll. That's a 4× cut to the grind for doing nothing except not selling the cheap schematics. Switch on the camp layer with the camp map view.

SMG vs the Rest of the Class

Against the other rapid-fire guns the SMG is a clear step up from the Makeshift Assault Rifle you unlocked at Lv 31 — more damage per magazine, more than a full magazine's worth of extra rounds, and better durability. What it isn't is a replacement for the Assault Rifle at Lv 45, which more than doubles the damage per magazine. The SMG owns the automatic-fire slot from Lv 37 to Lv 45, an eight-level window, and its job is to carry you through the mid-game bosses cheaply. The full ladder is in the best weapons at every tech level guide.

Weapon	Tech Lv	Attack	Magazine	Damage per mag	Durability
Makeshift SMG	26	100	24	2,400	1,000
Makeshift Assault Rifle	31	170	15	2,550	1,500
SMG	37	130	24	3,120	2,000
Assault Rifle	45	320	20	6,400	3,000

All four of these fire conventional automatic bursts, so the per-magazine column is a fair comparison between them — it is not a fair comparison against the Semi-Auto Rifle, a shotgun, or the beam-firing Laser Rifle at Lv 51, all of which spend their magazines on completely different terms. The whole class is ranked head to head in the Palworld guns tier list.

Makeshift SMG and Combat SMG

There are three separate SMG families and they don't share a tech path, a station or an ammo type — they're three different guns that happen to fire the same way. The Makeshift SMG at Lv 26 is the scrap-built starter you use for eleven levels; the Combat SMG at Lv 68 is the Soralite endgame version that hits seven times harder than the one in this guide. Ignore the Makeshift as soon as the SMG is up — same ammo cost, worse output — and treat the Combat SMG as an Ancient Workbench project for after Lv 67.

Family	Tech Lv	Station	Base Attack	Magazine	Ammo	Legendary Attack
Makeshift SMG	26	Weapon Workbench	100	24	Coarse Ammo	175
SMG	37	Weapon Assembly Line	130	24	Handgun Ammo	227
Combat SMG	68	Ancient Workbench	907	42	Combat SMG Ammo	1,587

The magazine column tells the story of the family: 24 rounds at the bottom, 24 in the middle, 42 at the top — and 50 on the Legendary Combat SMG, the largest magazine of any gun in the class. Every version is listed with its full recipe in the Palworld weapons database.

The Short Answer

Unlock the SMG at Technology Lv 37 for 3 points, then craft it on the Weapon Assembly Line from 25 Refined Ingot and 6 Polymer — 118 raw units, 75,000 work. It does 130 attack across a 24-round magazine for 3,120 damage per mag with 2,000 durability, and it runs on Handgun Ammo, the cheapest round any SMG fires and one you're probably already stockpiling. For the Legendary version, kill Alpha Beakon in the north for a 3.00% roll, or farm enemy camps and bank all four schematic tiers for the Drafting Table — about 128 Desert camps versus 513 if you only chase the top tier. It's the best automatic weapon you can hold between Lv 37 and Lv 45 — the Semi-Auto Rifle at Lv 41 hits far harder per shot but fires on completely different terms — and the Assault Rifle takes the slot over at 45.

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