Pocketpair has officially launched Palworld 1.0 on July 10. Over a week since exiting Early Access, the game remains a hit, with Steam concurrent player numbers on the rise. In the midst of the buzz, players in Japan have stumbled upon an extremely powerful new strategy enabled by recent game updates.
The technique revolves around Tocotoco’s Megaton Implode skill, which has been present since Early Access. While the v1.0 patch increased its cooldown from 55 to 60 seconds, it simultaneously more than doubled the skill’s power, boosting it from 500 to 1,200 and making it one of the game’s mightiest attacks.
As its name implies, Megaton Implode comes with the significant downside of your Pal self-destructing when used. Previously, since you had to resurrect the Pal after each deployment, the move was largely impractical despite its massive damage output.
This has changed thanks to the introduction of the new Heavily Armored passive skill. Heavily Armored negates explosive damage, and it seems to safeguard Pals from the self-inflicted harm caused by Megaton Implode. Consequently, Pals can now execute the attack without being destroyed. Although the 60-second cooldown still limits spamming the ability, the skill’s primary drawback has essentially been eliminated.
Heavily Armored can randomly appear on Mutated Pals and can also be obtained via the “Disposable Implant: Heavily Armored” consumable, acquired at random through Glistening Ancient Relics. Securing the passive is no simple feat, however, as you’ll need to breed and hatch Pals or repeatedly farm the World Tree to obtain a Pal capable of endlessly detonating itself.
During Palworld’s Early Access, players were fascinated by the devastating potential of Megaton Implode and had been experimenting with transferring the skill to Gorirat for maximum damage. Gorirat is uniquely suited for this strategy thanks to its Full-Power Gorilla Mode partner skill, which significantly amplifies its attack power. Before Heavily Armored existed, players boosted the skill via Pal Condensation to maximize damage from the prior one-shot attack.
Following the full release, however, Full-Power Gorilla Mode received a major enhancement, with its rank five attack bonus rising from 200% to 300%. Combined with the newfound viability of Megaton Implode, Gorirat builds equipped with both Heavily Armored and the self-destruct skill have drawn fresh attention for effectively enabling infinite Gorilla explosions.
You can further amplify Megaton Implode’s damage by teaming Gorirat with support Pals like Ribunny, whose Happy-Go-Lucky partner skill enhances the attack power of Neutral element Pals. Other Pals also feature partner skills that can boost damage output or attack power under certain conditions even while on the bench, suggesting there may be additional strategies to explore in the quest for maximum damage.
Palworld is available now for PC (Steam/Microsoft Store/Mac App Store), PS5, and Xbox Series X/Xbox One. The game is also accessible via Game Pass for PC and Xbox.