Whalaska Saddle
Essential · Essential_PalGear2★Tack that allows Whalaska to be ridden safely.
This is where the crafting chain ends — nothing downstream consumes it, so a stockpile earns you nothing.
Details
It stacks up to 9,999.
Whalaska Saddle Crafting Recipe
Leather×20
Cloth×10
Refined Ingot
Cryogenic Coolant
Paldium Fragment
Coal×40
Ore×40
Wool×20
Aquatic Pal Fluids×10
Ice Organ×10Crafting it takes 85 materials across 5 types.
Where to Find Whalaska Saddle
Whalaska Saddle is not something you find lying around — you craft it, and the recipe is below.
Nothing drops this — it is a Technology entry at level 42 for 3 points, and four of its five lines are stock at that level. The awkward one is 10 Cryogenic Coolant, which is not a drop either: it is a Production Assembly Line craft from 1 Aquatic Pal Fluids and 1 Ice Organ apiece, so you need that bench standing (it opens at level 29 for 3 points) before the saddle is buildable at all. Whalaska funds its own gear from there — it pays 1 to 2 Aquatic Pal Fluids and 1 to 3 Ice Organ on death, both at a flat 100%, so the Pal you caught to ride covers the only line you would otherwise go shopping for. Budget bench time rather than materials: 10 coolant is 100,000 work before the saddle's own 20,000 even starts, which makes the intermediate craft five times the job the saddle is. Level 42 is a crowded rung — eight entries open together and want 22 points between them — and the other piece of Pal gear on it is the Ghangler Ignis Saddle at the same 3.
Using Whalaska Saddle Well
Chilled Whale Cruiser is a fishing skill, and neither half of it has anything to do with being in the saddle. The minigame opens with the capture gauge already part-filled — 5% uncondensed, then 7, 9, 11 and 14% across the four condense stars — and while the two bars are overlapping, the gauge fills 5/7/9/11/14% faster on top of that. Both effects are flagged at you rather than at Whalaska, and both run from a party slot: it does not need to be deployed beside you, ridden, or worked in a base, but the saddle has to be sitting in your inventory or neither number exists. The skill is marked non-stacking within a tribe, so a second Whalaska on the team is dead weight.
A third effect exists that the uncondensed Pal never shows you: swim speed, +10% at one star and then 14, 18 and 25%, with nothing at all at zero stars. This one is the reverse of the fishing pair — it is riding-only and it lands on Whalaska's own swimming rather than on you, lifting 850 cruising and 950 dashing to roughly 1,060 and 1,190 at four stars. Six other Pals read the identical ladder — Azurobe, Azurobe Cryst, Neptilius, Solmora, Solmora Lux and Whalaska Ignis — so it is a shared water-mount bonus rather than anything particular to this saddle, and condensing for it buys you the same thing any of them would.
The no-stack rule is per tribe, which means the fishing Pals do not compete with one another and a fishing team is simply built out of all of them at once. Whalaska covers the gauge itself; Gloopie cuts the progress you lose when the bars come apart by 12% rising to 35%; Jelliette adds up to 95% more items and enemy drops out of the water; Jellroy does the same 95% on salvage; Solmora improves the odds that what you hook is a Pal with good talents. Whalaska is the only one of the five that touches the head start or the overlap rate, and only it and Solmora cost technology points at all — Gloopie, Jelliette and Jellroy fire the moment they are in the party with no gear to build, and Solmora's saddle is 23 levels later at 65. Whalaska Ignis runs the same two effects at 7/9/11/13/17, but its saddle is level 71 for 4 points, so this is the version you fish with for most of a playthrough.
Do not spend the 3 points expecting a mount. Whalaska's 750 ride sprint puts it 109th of the 115 rideable Pals we rank, against a median of 1,050 for ground mounts, and water is its better medium only in relative terms — about 1,190 dashing at four stars, where Ghangler is doing 1,350 in the same water for the same 3 points at level 31. Its 200 stamina is the one flattering number here, above the 170 median across every mount we rank, so it will cross open water without stopping; it just will not do it quickly. Build this because you intend to fish, and treat the ride as the way you get between fishing spots.
Whalaska Saddle — Whalaska's Gear
Whalaska Saddle is Whalaska's own gear — no other Pal can equip it, and Whalaska cannot be ridden or put to work in its geared role until you have this in your inventory.
Equipping it turns on Whalaska's partner skill, Chilled Whale Cruiser.
Whalaska is Ice / Water, which is what decides where it is worth taking — the gear does not change its typing, only what you can do with it.
Alternatives and Upgrades
Other Pal gear items at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:
