Palworld devs accidentally patch the tower boss capture glitch with v0.1.5.0: “We apologize for inadvertently fixing a bug”

Palworld’s biggest exploit just got fixed unintentionally.

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What you need to know

While players have discovered a wide variety of different useful glitches and exploits inPalworld— you can refresh food expiration timers, duplicate items, and revive fallen Pals instantly, for example — none of them hold a candle to the power of thetower boss capture bug. With this, players could easily catch tower bosses and use them in battle, taking advantage of their sky-high health pools to easily dominate any fight in the game.

Many players expected developer Pocketpair to quickly patch out the glitch given how wildly overpowered it is, but it actually survived multiple bugfix updates since the game’s January 19 launch…until now. Following the arrival of version v0.1.5.0 on Steam on Monday evening, the tower boss catching exploit stopped working, which led many to believe it was stealthily fixed with the update. According to Pocketpair, though, this resolution came inadvertently, as fixes for other bugs ended up taking care of this one as well.

“As a result of various bugs that we fixed in the most recent patch, a bug that allowed players to capture the tower boss was unintentionally fixed,” wrote the studio in aposton social media. “We apologize for inadvertently fixing a bug.”

While Pocketpair’s apology does seem to indicate that the developer didn’t consider fixing the glitch to be a priority, I wouldn’t expect a rollback or anything of that sort. I’m sure someone will make a mod that restores it in some way, though — and when they do, I hope the process is more intuitive than the original method. For the exploit to work, you had to aggro PIDF soldiers, lead them into a tower boss fight, and get them to accidentally shoot the boss before you could capture it with a Pal Sphere.

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The good news is that all tower boss Pals captured before the v0.1.5.0 update can still be used in combat or as workers in yourPalworld bases(I verified this with my test save and my capturedZoe and Grizzboltbefore writing this), so for now, you don’t need to worry about losing busted companions you got previously. Also, the patch hasn’t gone live for the Xbox or Microsoft Store versions yet, so if you play on those platforms, you still have a window of opportunity to use the glitch before it’s gone.

It’ll be interesting to see how Pocketpair chooses to deal with remaining tower boss Pals moving forward, if it does anything about them at all. Right now, Palworld is strictly a PvE game, so some ridiculously tanky summons here and there aren’t ruining things for anyone. We know some form of PvP is coming in the future thanks to thePalworld roadmap, though, and when it does, we may see the developer step in to restrict the use of caught tower bosses or remove them outright.

On top of laying the tower boss capture exploit to rest, Palworld version v0.1.5.0 also brings a number of different fixes and improvements to the “Pokémon with guns” third-person survival game. The most significant of these are some big upgrades to Pal AI combat and base work behavior, but there are lots of other bugfixes and enhancements, too. The full patch notes can be viewed in the section below.

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Unquestionably, Palworld is the biggest game of 2024 so far, and launched with unbelievable success that dwarfs the numbers of other popular new games likeHelldivers 2. Just days after its Early Access release,it broke 2 million concurrent players on Steam alone and became the second most-played Steam game of all time, with its 2,101,867 peak only beaten by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds' 3,257,248 record from 2018.It also had the biggest third-party Xbox Game Pass launch in history, and over 7 million fans played it through the Xbox ecosystem by the end of January.

Palworld version v0.1.5.0: Patch notes

Below are the full version v.0.1.5.0 patch notes, taken directly from theofficial news poston Palworld’s Steam page as well as apostfrom the game’s official X (Twitter) account.

Major Fixes

Key Configuration

Guild

Player Issues

Pals

Base Issues

Balance Adjustment

Network Related

Others

We are currently working on an issue where auto-save fails on the Xbox and Xbox Game Pass versions. We expect that this will be resolved in an upcoming update.

We will continue development placing top priority on fixing major problems and issues. Thank you for your continued support of Palworld.

Palworld is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One consoles, and Windows PC via either the Microsoft Store or Steam. It’s quickly become the biggest and one of thebest Xbox gamesandbest PC gamesof 2024 so far, and it’s also playable throughXbox Game Pass.

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).