2026-08-14

Work Speed Fundamentals: 3 Mechanisms and Multiplicative Math

Work speed is the underlying currency of base production: one article to understand the 3 mechanisms, the 10-factor multiplication chain, and where the gap between 3 seconds and 12.96 days comes from.

Intro: 3 Seconds vs 12.96 Days

The same player (work speed = 100) crafting different things:

Item	Work Amount	Solo Time
Pal Sphere	300	3 s
Cloth Outfit	2,000	20 s
Metal Armor	80,000	13.3 min
Drone Launcher	112,000,000	12.96 days

The gap comes from two places: base work amounts and the speed multiplier chain that follows. The 11 work suitabilities look like one system, but underneath there are only 3 independent mechanisms, and 10 of the work types share a single time formula. This article is the shared foundation for the upcoming plantation, industrialization and other deep dives.

1. The 3 Underlying Mechanisms

Palworld's 11 work suitabilities run on just 3 mechanisms underneath:

Mechanism	Work Types	Formula Shape
A. Progress accumulation (per second)	Handiwork, Kindling, Watering, Planting, Cool, Generating Electricity, Medicine Production, Mining (facility), Lumbering (facility) — 9 in total (Gathering — its action time also runs on this mechanism)	Time (s) = work amount / Σ effective speed of assigned pals
B. Drop-count multiplier	Gathering (yield only; speed is in A)	Yield = base count × drop multiplier (level)
C. Interval division	Grazing	Net interval = drawn interval / multiplier chain (base speed not used)

This article covers base facility work only. Players or pals attacking ore/tree nodes directly in the wild use a separate HP damage system — unrelated to base output and out of scope here.

2. Base Work Speed Values (by Work Suitability Level)

Work speed is determined by both the work type and the suitability level; every work type has an 11-tier value table (Lv0 no skill ~ Lv10 maxed). The table below is grouped by identical scales, listing all 11 tiers:

Work Type	Lv0	Lv1	Lv2	Lv3	Lv4	Lv5	Lv6	Lv7	Lv8	Lv9	Lv10
Handiwork, Kindling, Cool, Medicine Production	0	50	80	140	240	400	680	1,100	1,900	3,200	5,400
Generating Electricity	0	250	325	400	500	750	1,000	1,500	2,000	3,000	4,000
Watering, Planting, Gathering, Mining, Lumbering	0	50	70	100	140	190	260	370	510	720	1,000
Transport	0	2	5	10	20	40	70	120	200	320	500
Grazing	10	12	14	16	18	20	22	24	26	28	30

3. The Effective Speed Formula (Multiplicative Math)

Actual progress is the product of 10 independent multiplier buckets:

Factor	Description
Base speed	Looked up from the table by suitability level (see Section 2)
Passives	Additive within the bucket: (1 + Σ passive %)
Food multiplier	Each food is its own multiplier and can stack
SAN/fullness	Low SAN or an empty stomach slows work directly
Pal Soul upgrades	+3% per level, +60% fully upgraded
Partner skills	Species-specific multipliers, an independent bucket (typically +20% to +120%; see the Sekhmet deep dive for BOSS outliers)
Inspiration auras	Large Toolbox, Flame Cauldron, Water Fountain and 10 efficiency buildings in total, each +20% (×1.2); same type doesn't stack
Workbench multiplier	Varies by workbench: Ancient Workbench (×8), Weapon Workbench (×1.5) → Weapon Assembly Line (×2) → Weapon Assembly Line II (×4) → Advanced Weapon Assembly Line (×6), etc.
Work intensity	Base difficulty tier (Relaxed 0.7 / Normal 1.0 / Heavy 1.25 / Very Heavy 1.5), see Section 5
Server settings	The work speed multiplier in the World Settings, default 1.0

Actual progress = the 10 factors multiplied together
Time (s) = work amount / actual progress

Grazing (Mechanism C) is the exception: ranch intervals don't use this 10-factor formula — they use a completely different interval division. See Section 8.

Two Multiplication Rules

1. Passives add together. Multiple passive entries sum, they don't multiply.

• Example: Serious (+20%) + Artisan (+50%) = (1 + 0.20 + 0.50) = 1.70×, not 1.20 × 1.50 = 1.80×.

2. Everything else multiplies. Passive bucket × food × SAN × Pal Souls × partner skill × inspiration aura × workbench × work intensity × server — the buckets multiply with each other.

• Example (full chain): passives 1.70× × Salad 1.30× × Normal intensity 1.0× × default server 1.0× = 2.21×.

Only one food is active at a time: although food is an independent bucket in the formula, the game allows only one food buff to be active at any moment — the latest meal overwrites the previous one, so multiple foods never multiply together.

4. Food Buffs (an Independent Multiplicative Bucket, Stackable)

Food is an independent multiplicative bucket — a different bucket from passives, and the two multiply. But the game limits you to one active food buff at a time (the latest meal overwrites the previous one), so in practice you pick just one. All 13 foods in the game that affect work speed:

Food	Work Speed Boost	Duration	Fullness	Side Effect
Mushroom Stew	+10%	600s	212	Attack +10
Stir-Fried Vegetables	+10%	600s	54	Defense +10
Salad	+30%	600s	84	None
Pizza	+30%	600s	184	Hunger resistance 25
Chikipi Sauté	+30%	600s	92	None
Grilled Lamball	+30%	600s	147	SAN +20
Fried Chikipi	+30%	600s	108	SAN +25
Minestrone	+40%	600s	146	None
Mozzarina Hamburger	+50%	600s	162	Hunger resistance 25
Dumud Chowder	+50%	600s	170	Hunger resistance 25
Suspicious Juice	+200%	10s	None	SAN -25000
Strange Juice	+400%	10s	None	SAN -50000
Mysterious Mushroom Juice	+600%	10s	None	SAN -100000

In practice, long-running bases mostly pick Salad: a simple recipe ( Lettuce ×2 + Tomato ×2), a solid +30% bonus, and crucially a fullness of only 84 — pals get hungry fast and eat often, so the buff refreshes frequently with high uptime. High-fullness foods (like Mushroom Stew at 212 or Pizza at 184) tend to leave buff gaps between meals instead.

5. Work Intensity and Server Settings

Work intensity is a base-level difficulty tier that can be set to Relaxed / Normal / Heavy / Very Heavy. Each tier adjusts 4 fields at once:

Mode	Work Speed Mult	Move Speed Mult	Extra SAN Change	Fullness Drain Mult
Very Heavy	1.5	1.5	-0.2	1.5
Heavy	1.25	1.25	-0.1	1.25
Normal	1.0	1.0	0.0	1.0
Relaxed	0.7	1.0	+0.08	0.8

For extra SAN change, positive = SAN recovery, negative = SAN loss. Relaxed's +0.08 actually helps pals recover SAN, while Very Heavy's -0.2 accelerates the spiral. So Very Heavy isn't a free 1.5× output — it comes bundled with 1.5× movement, faster SAN decay and 1.5× hunger drain. To squeeze pals dry you have to keep supplying food, hot springs and medicine.

Server settings live in the World Settings panel, with an independent multiplier slider for each of the three mechanisms:

Mechanism	Server Setting	Range	Default
A (progress accumulation)	Work speed multiplier	0.1 ~ 5.0	1.0
B (gathering drops)	Gathering item drop rate	0.5 ~ 3.0	1.0
C (ranch interval)	Ranch output speed	0.1 ~ 10.0	1.0

The three don't affect each other. A private server cranking work speed to 5× only accelerates Mechanism A's progress bar — it won't drop extra gathered items or speed up ranch output.

6. Mechanism A: Progress Accumulation (per Second)

10 work types (Handiwork, Kindling, Watering, Planting, Cool, Generating Electricity, Medicine Production, Gathering, Mining (facility), Lumbering (facility)) share a single formula (Gathering's action time is on this list too; only its yield runs through Mechanism B instead):

Time (s) = work amount / Σ effective speed of assigned pals

The work amount comes from recipe tables or facility output tables, ranging from 300 ( Pal Sphere) to 112,000,000 ( Drone Launcher). With multiple pals on duty, effective speeds add together — no diminishing returns or sharing penalty: 2 Lv4 pals = 140 + 140 = 280.

Extreme Comparison: Crafting a Drone Launcher

Work amount = 112,000,000. The times below are all computed for a realistic setup: crafting on the Advanced Weapon Assembly Line (×6) with a Large Toolbox (handiwork aura ×1.2) in the base, Normal work intensity, default server.

Setup	Effective Speed (incl. ×6 assembly line + ×1.2 aura)	Time
Cattiva Handiwork Lv1 (lowest tier)	50 × 6 × 1.2 = 360	3.60 days
Anubis Handiwork Lv6 (no passives)	680 × 7.2 = 4,896	6.35 h
Anubis Handiwork Lv6 + Remarkable Craftsmanship + Artisan + Serious + Salad	2,166 × 7.2 = 15,595	1.99 h
BOSS Sekhmet 5★ Handiwork Lv6 (no passives)	3,400 × 7.2 = 24,480	76 min
BOSS Sekhmet 5★ Handiwork Lv6 + Remarkable Craftsmanship + Artisan + Serious + Salad	10,829 × 7.2 = 77,969	23.9 min
BOSS Sekhmet 5★ Handiwork Lv10 (maxed with books) + Remarkable Craftsmanship + Artisan + Serious + Salad	5,400 × 5.0 × 2.45 × 1.30 × 7.2 = 619,164	3 min

The extreme gap: Cattiva Lv1 (3.60 days) vs BOSS Sekhmet Lv10 fully built (3 min) = about 1,720×. That's why BOSS Sekhmet is called "the god of handiwork", and why "work speed" is a system worth studying in its own right.

Base Facility Production Rhythm

Stone Pit, Logging Site, Ancient Material Synthesizer, Pure Quartz Quarry — this class of facility also runs on Mechanism A, structurally identical to handiwork; the only difference is that the work amount comes from the facility output table instead of a recipe table. Below are the per-item work amounts of the key facilities, plus the solo time of a single pal at various suitability levels (computed from the base speeds in the previous section, no passive/food bonuses):

Facility	Product	Work Amount	Lv3 (100)	Lv4 (140)	Lv6 (260)	Lv10 (1000)
Ancient Material Synthesizer (Paldium Fragment)	Paldium Fragment	450	4.5 s	3.2 s	1.7 s	0.45 s
Stone Pit	Stone	800	8.0 s	5.7 s	3.1 s	0.8 s
Logging Site	Wood	800	8.0 s	5.7 s	3.1 s	0.8 s
Ore Mining Site II	Ore	1,600	16 s	11.4 s	6.2 s	1.6 s
Ore Mining Site	Ore	8,000	80 s	57 s	31 s	8 s
Coal Quarry	Coal	8,000	80 s	57 s	31 s	8 s
Sulfur Quarry	Sulfur	8,000	80 s	57 s	31 s	8 s
Ancient Material Synthesizer (Chromite)	Chromite	8,000	80 s	57 s	31 s	8 s
Logging Site II	Hardwood	8,000	80 s	57 s	31 s	8 s
Pure Quartz Quarry	Pure Quartz	10,000	100 s	71 s	38 s	10 s
Hexolite Quartz Mine	Hexolite Quartz	20,000	200 s	143 s	77 s	20 s
Ancient Material Synthesizer (Coralum Ore)	Coralum Ore	20,000	200 s	143 s	77 s	20 s
Soralite Quarry	Soralite	25,000	250 s	179 s	96 s	25 s

7. Mechanism B: Gathering Drop Multipliers

What makes Gathering (Gathering) special is that it spans two mechanisms: the action time runs on Mechanism A (every crop has a "harvest work amount" between 1500 and 21000, which a pal grinds down to 0 to complete one harvest), while the yield per harvest runs on Mechanism B, this section. This section covers only the yield side — for the time formula see Section 6. Each harvest's yield goes through an independent multiplier:

Yield per harvest = base count × drop multiplier (by suitability level)

The drop multiplier scales linearly with suitability level, starting at 1.0 at Lv1 and gaining +0.5 per level:

Suitability Level	Lv1	Lv2	Lv3	Lv4	Lv5	Lv6	Lv7	Lv8	Lv9	Lv10
Drop Multiplier	1.0	1.5	2.0	2.5	3.0	3.5	4.0	4.5	5.0	5.5

Plantation Loop: 10 × Multiplier

Every crop has a base yield of 10, so one field's yield per harvest is simply 10 × multiplier:

Suitability Level	Lv1	Lv2	Lv3	Lv4	Lv5	Lv6	Lv7	Lv8	Lv9	Lv10
Yield per Harvest	10	15	20	25	30	35	40	45	50	55

The community long ago observed "5 more per level" — the underlying formula is just base count 10 × multiplier, with the +0.5 multiplier per level mapping exactly to +5 yield per level. A perfect match.

The three server multipliers from Section 5 don't affect each other: the work speed multiplier only governs Mechanism A's time, while Mechanism B's counts are controlled by the separate gathering drop rate.

8. Mechanism C: Ranch Interval Division

Grazing (Grazing) is the third exception. It has neither a progress bar nor drop-count multipliers — it's a fixed-interval timer loop: each round uniformly draws a base interval from [50, 80] seconds, shortens it by dividing through the multiplier chain, counts down, draws one product from the drop table when it hits zero, then starts the next round.

Net interval = randomly drawn interval (50~80 s) / multiplier chain

The Multiplier Chain: Only 4 Factors

Multiplier chain = (1 + Σ passive %) × food × SAN factor × Pal Souls

Compared with Mechanism A's 10 factors, ranching keeps only the 4 tied to the pal's own state. Bypassed are: base speed (the suitability-level table value), partner skills, inspiration auras, workbench multipliers and work intensity — none of them appear in the interval formula. So putting a high-suitability pal on ranch duty leaves the draw cadence completely unchanged; the only things that speed up ranching are passives, food, SAN and Pal Soul upgrades, plus the dedicated server setting from Section 5 (ranch interval multiplier).

Worked Example

Take the median base interval of 65 seconds:

Setup	Multiplier Chain	Net Interval
No passives, full condition	1.0	65 s
Artisan + Serious	1 + 0.50 + 0.20 = 1.70	65 / 1.70 ≈ 38 s
Remarkable Craftsmanship + Artisan + Serious + full Pal Souls	2.45 × 1.60 = 3.92	65 / 3.92 ≈ 17 s

The Suitability Level Controls the Drop Table

Although base speed is skipped, the suitability level also controls another piece of data: the ranch drop table (10 tiers). The higher the level, the higher the row read from the drop table, unlocking different products and probabilities. Condensing raises suitability → a higher drop-table row → a different product distribution. Speed only affects "how often it drops", not "what drops or how many" — types and quantities are a weighted draw from the drop table, independent of any speed. See the Ranch Guide for the detailed ranch drop tables.

9. Summary

Behind the 11 work suitabilities there are only 3 sets of math:

Mechanism	Who Uses It	In One Sentence
A. Progress accumulation	Handiwork, Kindling, Watering, Planting, Cool, Generating Electricity, Medicine Production, Mining (facility), Lumbering (facility), Gathering (action time)	Time = work amount / Σ effective speed, 10 factors multiplied, multiple pals add
B. Drop-count multiplier	Gathering (yield — the only one)	Yield = base count × multiplier (level), +0.5 per level, independent of speed
C. Interval division	Grazing (the only one)	Net interval = random 50~80 s / 4-factor chain, base speed bypassed