Fix Depressed Pals When Players Are Offline

If your Pals are depressed when you log in after a day away, two things are documented. A dedicated server keeps the world running while nobody is online, and the Palworld wiki says a long stretch at low Sanity gives Pals the Depression affliction. Neither Pocketpair nor the wiki documents how being offline affects Sanity, so this guide sticks to what they do say, and to the settings you can change from the panel.

Checked against Palworld 1.0.5 and Pocketpair's server guide for 1.0.4, October 2026.

What causes Depression

The community wiki at palworld.wiki.gg says Pals lose Sanity when they are very hungry, that work generally reduces it, and that sleeping without a bed lowers it while a bed restores it. It adds that "if Sanity remains low for an extended duration, it causes the Depression affliction". The wiki does not mention servers or offline owners, and neither does Pocketpair's configuration page. So the sound fixes are the ones that keep Pals fed and rested, plus the experiments below.

Start with the base

Make sure each base has enough food and enough beds for the Pals working there, and stock the food before you log off. Of the causes the wiki gives, hunger and sleeping without a bed are the ones a base can fix. The wiki also lists work intensity, set at the Monitoring Stand (its higher-quality stands reduce Sanity loss), and says Hot Springs regenerate Sanity quickly and that some foods restore it or slow its drain.

Settings to try

Open the World Settings tab. Stop the server first, because Palworld writes its settings back to the file on shutdown and a change saved while it runs is lost. Change one setting, press Save settings, press Start, then watch your Pals over a few days before you try another.

1. Pal hunger drain (PalStomachDecreaceRate, in the Survival group). Pocketpair describes it as the "Pal hunger depletion rate multiplier". A lower number means Pals get hungry more slowly while nobody is there to top up the food. The tab's lowest value is 0.1 and the game's default is 1.
2. Offline penalty (bEnableNonLoginPenalty, in the World & Misc group). The panel describes it as applying the game's penalty for long offline stretches. Pocketpair's configuration page does not list this key. Its REST settings page lists bEnableNonLoginPenalty as a boolean with no description, so we cannot say exactly what it changes. Switching it off on its own is a fair experiment.

A setting that looks related but is not

Bodies persist offline (bExistPlayerAfterLogout) sounds like the answer. Pocketpair describes it as whether players enter a sleeping state at their current location when logging out, and uses it on its PvP page to stop players escaping combat by logging off. Nothing Pocketpair or the wiki says links it to Pal sanity, so leave it alone unless you want that behaviour for PvP.

If a change makes things worse

Every save keeps a copy of the file it replaced, the newest 10 at most. In the tab's Backups card, press Restore on an earlier copy, check the values it loads and press Save settings. Palworld server settings and best presets explains the other survival rates, and Fix Palworld settings not applying helps if a change does nothing.