How I Earn Gold in Palia as a Semi-Newbie

We all game differently. There is no right or wrong way, especially in cozy games. Recently I started playing Palia and decided to hyper-focus on hunting, mining, and foraging, leaving fishing and bug catching for a later date. It took me two weeks of playing here and there to level up to 12 in mining and 11 in hunting. I have a fully functioning farm and am crafting at a medium level. Yeah, yeah… I need the glow worm farm. I know, I know.

But what is working for me? Mining! I have already upgraded to the Grand Harvest House, with three additional large rooms, four medium, eight hallways, two Kilima fireplaces, and two Kilima windows. I only have two rooms fully furnished, so I still have a ways to go and I'm eagerly anticipating the courtyard and conservatory. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is how my method goes:

Forage for the materials needed for repair kits, campfires, flares, standard arrows, and ore compasses.

Next, you'll want to hunt. I just use standard arrows in Kilima and go after Sernuks. I find the best spawns in the early morning hours, between 6 and 10 am. I don't know if there's real truth in that, but it has worked beautifully for me. I turn Kilima into the killing fields during those hours, and honestly, I'm still a little shocked I can hunt in a game, but the animals simply melt into little bags of meat, so nothing too traumatic happens.

After I finish, I head back to my plot and cook the meat on the campfires. I have about ten fires lined up so I can rapidly cook through everything and level up my cooking along the way! I keep some cooked meat on me during mining for energy.

I then craft repair kits to bring along. I prefer mining in Bahari Bay…that's where the gold hides. If you frequent that area, you may already know there's a repair station at the stables, but you need to have your repair kit on you, not tucked away in storage.

I also craft and bring along flares for when I do find gold. If you're a little fuzzy on how to properly flare, don't shoot it into the air. Take a few steps back and aim the flare directly at the mining node; from there it will shoot up into the sky on its own. Make sure to announce each gold node you find as small, medium, or large, share the coordinates, and let everyone know you've flared.

And most importantly, craft your ore compasses! I only use two or three at a time while mining, but it's good to keep a small store of them. I always save one to use in Kilima to find silver, since you need one silver bar to craft one compass, but trust me, it's absolutely worth it.

So head over to Bahari Bay and off you go! Make sure to activate your ore compass as soon as you arrive. It takes a little practice to learn the lay of the land, when and where to climb, and how to recognize a cliff face that's simply too steep to scale. You'll get the hang of it. And I'm confident you'll come home with a lovely haul of iron ore and more gold than you've ever seen before.

After your jaunt is over, turn those gold nuggets into bars and sell away! Gold nuggets are only useful for honey lures, gifting, and crafting gold ramps, crates, walls, and pillars, so the bars are where the real value lives. I mined for two hours one day, turned my crops into pickles and jams, and earned around 20k in gold. I let the machines run overnight and came back to a tidy little fortune the next morning. This method does require some active gameplay, but it's well worth it if you love mining.

I wish you many golden hours of joy in this game.

Please note: I have done most of this playing solo.