Palworld Guide

Pals Not Working: 9 Causes and How to Assign Pals to Jobs

Why your base Pals stand around doing nothing in Palworld, and how to fix it: all 12 work suitabilities with how many Pals have each, the stations that demand a specific job, the 15-Pal deploy cap, Monitoring Stand work orders, and the sicknesses and passives that quietly halve your output.

Updated 2026-08-209 min read10 data tables

A Pal standing next to a workbench doing absolutely nothing is the single most common base problem in Palworld, and it almost always has a boring, fixable cause. This guide runs through all nine reasons a base Pal refuses to work, lists every one of the 12 work suitabilities with how many Pals actually have it, and shows you how to force the assignment you want through the Palbox and the Monitoring Stand.

9 Reasons a Base Pal Won't Work

Work through this table top to bottom before you touch anything else — the first three causes account for most idle Pals, and none of them are bugs. The order matters: a Pal that lacks the suitability entirely will never work at that station no matter how much you feed it, so check the species first and the status effects second. Only the last two rows are actual problems with the game rather than with your setup.

Cause	What You See	Fix
It doesn't have the job	The Pal walks past the station and does something else	Check its suitabilities — a species either has a job or it never will
Its level is too low	It ignores one specific station but works everywhere else	Only two structures demand Lv. 6; see the station table below
The job is switched off	It has the suitability but skips that work type entirely	Re-enable it in work preferences at the Monitoring Stand
Hungry or starving	It runs to the Feed Box, or stands still with a hunger icon	Stock the Feed Box — Starving costs 20% work speed
Sick or injured	A status icon on the Pal and a red flag in the base list	Dose it from the Medicine Rack or rest it in a Pal bed
SAN has bottomed out	Depressed, then it stops entirely and eventually runs off	Build a hot spring and upgrade the Monitoring Stand
It's on lookout duty	The Pal sits at a defensive post and never leaves	A Pal on a Sandbag stops all other work by design
The base is in alert mode	Every Pal drops its job at once	Flip the Alarm Bell back to work mode
It's stuck in the scenery	The Pal is wedged in a wall or floor and can't path anywhere	Dismantle the structure trapping it, or box and redeploy it

All 12 Work Suitabilities and Who Tops Each One

Work suitability is a species trait — it's baked in, and the level caps at Lv. 8 for every job except Farming, which stops at Lv. 4 because no Pal in the game ranches harder than Dumud Gild. The numbers in the second column are the real reason bases stall: 140 Pals can haul goods to a chest, but only 25 can run a generator, so power is the job most players are missing without realising it. Transporting is also the odd one out — no structure asks for it, because transporters just pick up finished output and walk it to storage on their own.

Work	Pals With It	Max Lv.	Top Worker	Stations That Need It
Transporting	140	Lv. 7	Knocklem	None — it hauls on its own
Handiwork	109	Lv. 8	Solenne	23
Gathering	109	Lv. 8	Jetragon	8
Lumbering	63	Lv. 8	Celesdir Noct	2
Mining	57	Lv. 8	Aegidron	8
Watering	46	Lv. 8	Shaolong	11
Planting	45	Lv. 8	Dandilord	8
Kindling	44	Lv. 8	Renjishi	17
Medicine Production	43	Lv. 8	Silvance	5
Cooling	38	Lv. 8	Bastigor	6
Farming	29	Lv. 4	Dumud Gild	1
Generating Electricity	25	Lv. 8	Orserk	3

No Pal Can Do Every Job

Out of 288 Pals, the widest worker in the game is Beegarde with 7 of the 12 jobs, and it pays for that spread with terrible levels — 16 combined levels across seven suitabilities is barely more than Dandilord manages across five. That's the trade-off in one line: generalists fill gaps, specialists actually produce. If a station is crawling, the answer is usually a Lv. 8 specialist, not another jack-of-all-trades. 67 Pals have exactly one suitability, so a bad deploy slot is easy to create by accident.

Pal	Jobs	Combined Lv.	What It Covers
Beegarde	7	16	Gathering 3, Farming 3, Planting 2, Handiwork 2, Lumbering 2, Medicine 2, Transporting 2
Vaelet	6	16	Planting 3, Handiwork 3, Gathering 3, Medicine 3, Transporting 2, Farming 2
Robinquill	6	13	Handiwork 3, Gathering 3, Planting 2, Lumbering 2, Transporting 2, Medicine 1
Dandilord	5	28	Planting 8, Handiwork 6, Medicine 6, Gathering 5, Transporting 3
Silvance	5	26	Medicine 8, Planting 6, Handiwork 6, Gathering 4, Transporting 2
Dualith	5	23	Mining 6, Transporting 6, Lumbering 5, Planting 3, Gathering 3
Verdash	5	20	Handiwork 5, Gathering 5, Planting 4, Lumbering 3, Transporting 3

Two Pals have no work suitability at all, and if one of those is sitting in a deploy slot it will never do a single thing at your base. Both are rarity 10 combat Pals that exist to fight, so keep them in your active team and give the base slot to something that works.

Panthalus

Astralym

How to Assign a Pal to a Job

You never assign a Pal to a *station* in Palworld — you assign it to the *base*, and it picks up whatever work it is capable of and allowed to do. That's why "assigning" is really two steps: get the right species into a deploy slot, then narrow what it's permitted to touch so it stops wandering to the wrong job.

Deploy It From the Palbox

The Palbox unlocks at Tech Lv. 2 for a single Paldium Fragment plus Wood x8 and Stone x3, and it defines the base radius as well as the roster. Drag a Pal from storage into a work slot and it spawns in and starts hunting for a job; drag an idle one out and the slot frees up instantly. Throwing a sphere containing the Pal into the base area does the same thing in one motion, which is faster when you're already carrying it. Pals sitting in the Palbox also regain Health over time, which is why boxing an incapacitated worker is the only way to bring it back.

Set Work Orders at the Monitoring Stand

This is the tool that actually stops a Lv. 8 miner from wandering off to water crops. Interact with the stand and you can allow or prohibit each work type per Pal, which doubles as the fix when a Pal "has" a job but refuses to do it — someone switched that suitability off. The two upgrades add a second benefit on top of the same controls: they cut how fast base Pals burn SAN, so a hard-worked base stops sliding into Depressed. The full Monitoring Stand guide covers whether the Ancient tier is worth its Soralite bill.

Stand	Tech Lv.	Build Cost	What It Adds
Monitoring Stand	7	Wood x30, Stone x10	Per-Pal work orders — allow or ban each job
High Quality Monitoring Stand	28	Ingot x100, Cement x30	Same orders, plus lower SAN cost for base work
Ancient Monitoring Stand	71	Soralite Ingot x100, Ancient Civilization Core x5	Base-wide holographic orders and the strongest SAN reduction

Free Up a Slot — the 15-Pal Cap

If a newly deployed Pal refuses to appear at all, you're at the cap. Base levels hand out one work Pal slot per level from Lv. 1 to Lv. 15 and then stop dead — levels 16 to 35 give you nothing more. Fifteen is a difficulty setting rather than a hard rule, and both sliders below live in World Settings, but be honest about your hardware first: 50 Pals pathing around one base is the quickest way to wreck your frame rate. The base level requirements guide lists which level unlocks each slot.

Setting	Default	Maximum
Work Pals per base	15	50
Bases per guild	4	10

Stations That Demand a Specific Job

Almost every production structure only asks for Lv. 1 in the matching suitability, so a Lv. 1 miner really can run an Ore Mining Site — level changes how *fast* the work goes, not whether it happens. There are exactly two exceptions in the whole build list, and both are endgame ancient tech that flat-out refuses anything under Lv. 6. The Ancient Farm is the harshest, because it wants three separate Lv. 6 workers on one plot and the pool is tiny: only 6 Pals reach Planting 6, 5 reach Watering 6 and 7 reach Gathering 6. The Ancient Power Generator is worse in one way — just three Pals in the entire game hit Generating Electricity 6, and they are Orserk at Lv. 8 plus Dynamoff and Solmora Lux at Lv. 6. Use the work suitability tool to see who clears each bar.

Structure	Tech Lv.	Requires	Notes
Ancient Farm	78	Planting 6, Watering 6, Gathering 6	Three Lv. 6 workers on one plot — the strictest station in the game
Ancient Power Generator	75	Generating Electricity 6	Only 3 of the 25 electric workers reach Lv. 6
Power Generator	26	Generating Electricity 1	Any electric worker will do — speed scales with level
Ore Mining Site	24	Mining 1	One of 8 stations that call for a miner
Logging Site	7	Lumbering 1	Only 2 structures use Lumbering at all
Ranch	5	Farming 1	The single Farming station — everything ranch-related runs through it
Berry Plantation	5	Planting 1, Watering 1, Gathering 1	Every plantation needs all three jobs covered somewhere on base

TipPlantations are the most common "my Pals aren't working" trap, because one plot silently needs three different suitabilities. If nothing is growing, you're usually missing a waterer, not a planter — only 46 Pals have Watering at all, against 109 with Gathering.

Jobs Any Pal Can Do

Six structures ignore work suitability completely and take literally any Pal you assign, which makes them the escape hatch when your roster has a hole in it. The Human-Powered Generator is the important one: it keeps the lights on before you ever catch an electric worker. The catch is in its own description — efficiency is low and the Pal running it loses SAN, though it does earn experience while it grinds. Note that the Sandbag belongs on this list for the opposite reason: assigning a Pal there deliberately *stops* it working.

Structure	Tech Lv.	What Assigning a Pal Does
Human-Powered Generator	26	Makes power without an electric Pal, at low efficiency and a SAN cost
Breeding Farm	19	One male and one female produce eggs, fuelled by Cake
Ancient Hatchery	76	Automates laying and incubation, and raises rare skill inheritance
Flea Market (Items)	22	Sells items to other players; an Ice Pal slows spoilage inside
Flea Market (Pals)	22	Sells Pals to other players
Sandbag	7	Puts the Pal on permanent lookout — it stops all other work

Sick, Starving and Depressed Workers

A Pal that works *badly* is a different problem from one that doesn't work at all, and status effects cover both ends. Depressed is the one that ends careers — it takes 20% of a Pal's work speed and is the last stop before a Pal downs tools and leaves, while Troublemaker halves both work and movement and no medicine touches it. Hunger is cheaper to fix than any of them: keep the Feed Box stocked and you never see the 10% and 20% penalties below. The full sickness and injury list has all 13 conditions with their cures.

Condition	Work Speed	Fix
Hungry	−10%	Stock the Feed Box
Starving	−20%	Feed it immediately
Sick	−5%	Low Grade Medical Supplies
Ulcer	−10%	Medical Supplies
Weakened	−10%	High Grade Medical Supplies
Depressed	−20%	High Grade Medical Supplies
Troublemaker	−50%	No medicine works — replace the Pal
Incapacitated	No work at all	Store it in the Palbox for 10 minutes

Stop SAN From Emptying Your Base

SAN is the slow leak behind most long-run base failures: it drains while Pals work, drags them into Depressed, and eventually they quit. Build a hot spring early — the base Hot Spring is available at Tech Lv. 9 for Wood x20, Stone x15, Paldium Fragment x7 and Aquatic Pal Fluids x3, which is nothing. Later, the Alpha Wave Generator slows the drain across the whole base, and its description is explicit that a second one does nothing, so build exactly one. Beds matter too: a Straw Pal Bed costs Wood x10 and Fiber x5 at Tech Lv. 3 and gives Pals somewhere to sleep instead of collapsing.

Structure	Tech Lv.	Effect on Workers
Straw Pal Bed	3	Somewhere to sleep and to rest off injuries
Hot Spring	9	Restores SAN after a work shift
High Quality Monitoring Stand	28	Lowers the SAN cost of base work
Alpha Wave Generator	41	Slows SAN drain base-wide; a second one adds nothing
Beta Wave Generator	46	Raises work speed base-wide; a second one adds nothing
Japanese-Style Hot Spring	64	Late-game SAN recovery for a full roster
Ancient Hot Spring	76	The strongest recovery station, and it clears major injuries

Slow, Not Idle: the Passives to Watch

Before you assume a Pal is broken, read its passives — a Musclehead worker crafts at half speed and looks exactly like a Pal that's slacking off. The spread between the best and worst rolls is enormous: Remarkable Craftsmanship at +75% against Musclehead at −50% on the same species is a night-and-day difference in a workbench queue. Note these are Craft Speed numbers, so they only compare against each other, not against a suitability level. Artisan at +50% is the realistic target for a base Pal, and the best base passives guide covers how to breed it in.

Passive	Work Speed	Verdict
Remarkable Craftsmanship	+75%	The best pure work passive in the game
Artisan	+50%	The realistic breeding target for every base Pal
Work Slave	+30%	Strong, and easy to find on early catches
Serious	+20%	A solid filler on a four-slot roll
Clumsy	−10%	Minor, but never worth keeping on a crafter
Slacker	−30%	Re-roll it — the name is accurate
Musclehead	−50%	Halves crafting output; keep this Pal in combat instead

Pals Stuck in Your Base Layout

The last cause is the genuinely annoying one: a Pal that wedges itself between two structures built too close together and then can't path anywhere, so it reads as idle even though it's trying to work. Big Pals do this far more than small ones, so if it keeps happening to the same worker, its size is the culprit. Fixes, roughly in order of effort:

Dismantle whichever structure it's clipped into and rebuild it with a gap — you get the materials back
Box the Pal in the Palbox and redeploy it, which respawns it in open ground
Leave one clear lane between production stations and storage so transporters aren't squeezing past crafters
Keep workbenches off tight corners and out of doorways, which is where most wedging happens
Reload the world if a Pal is stuck in mid-air with no structure to blame

The short version: check the species has the job, check the job isn't switched off at the Monitoring Stand, check it isn't hungry or Depressed, then check you're under the 15-Pal cap. If all four are clean, it's a layout problem, and dismantling one structure usually solves it. Build your roster around the suitability table above rather than around your favourite Pals and most of this list stops happening in the first place.