Forget humans, Palworld players are now capturing bosses thanks to new exploit

As Palworld continues to set mad records on Steam, the players themselves (all 7m of them, man alive) also seem to be in a race to see just how fast they can break it. Case in point: over the weekend, it was discovered that humans, in addition to Pals, could also be stuffed into balls and set to work in your base camp, but now they've only gone and started capturing the in-game bosses, too, thanks to a surprisingly easy-to-achieve exploit involving my bestest of friends, the island police force.

I've tried it myself with the game's first boss, Zoe and Grizzbolt (thanks for the spot, cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer), and it's almost hilariously easy to get them into your party and start making use of their special talents. Crucially, captured bosses retain their enormous health bars, making them formidable companions (and arguably some of the best Pals in the game) to have on your party docket.

Here's how to do it if you want to give it a go yourself, based on what I did to capture Zoe and Grizzbolt:

• Attack any friendly NPC to give yourself a Wanted status - it can be a campfire survivor or a PIDF guard in the nearby Small Settlement
• Fast travel to the Rayne Syndicate boss tower
• Don't attack Zoe and Grizzbolt, but lure the PIDF police that spawn inside the tower to attack them instead
• When Grizzbolt turns away from you, chuck a Sphere at their back

This worked first time for me, despite the capture rate showing as 0% (because, obvs, it's a boss and isn't meant to be captured). That said, this won't show the boss as being defeated in your tutorial menu, and there's no way to exit the fight unless you enter the menu screen and hit Respawn, effectively killing yourself and respawning back at your base. (Don't worry about your dropped items - these will appear outside the tower for you to pick up afterwards).

When you respawn back at your camp, however, Zoe and Grizzbolt will appear in your Palbox as a friendly Pal to add to your base or party. You can see from the image below that they keep their honking great health bar of 30,500 HP, as well as their attacks and stats, and their base abilities include being good at handiwork, lumbering, transporting and - no surprise - generating electricity. You'll have to craft Grizzbolt's Minigun before you can use their partner skill, however.

Sure, it's cheesing it big time, but in a game which has a police force who won't stop hunting you until you're shot dead, a tech upgrade that lets you butcher friendly Pals, and is generally just quite bleak and cynical anyway, I'd say that turning Palworld against itself like this is pretty fair game, to be honest. There is, of course, every possibility that this glitch will be patched out in a future update, but for now, it remains very much available to any one who'd like an ultra powerful boss Pal on their team.