PalCraft | Updated

Updated 13 October 2026. Version 0.2.2 fixes the crash a minute into a world and most crashes while a world loads. The full list sits under "New in 0.2.2".

Play Palworld as Steve. You move, look, build, dig and fight with Minecraft's controls, and you see it happen inside Palworld's world.

PalCraft runs both games at once. Minecraft: Java Edition owns your player, your camera, your blocks and your weapons. Palworld owns the islands and the Pals. Palworld draws its frame from Minecraft's camera, then PalCraft paints Minecraft's blocks, hand and hotbar into that frame, hidden behind Palworld's hills and trees where they should be.

What you can do

• Walk, sprint, jump and swim on Palworld's terrain with Minecraft movement.
• Place and break blocks anywhere on the islands. Build a cobblestone hut next to a Lamball.
• Hold attack on Palworld's ground, rock and trees to dig Minecraft materials: logs, dirt, seeds, cobblestone, coal, iron, gold, diamonds. Better tools dig faster and find better ore.
• Hit Pals with a sword, shoot them with a bow, or light TNT beside them. A Pal you kill drops Minecraft loot and experience, and your Palworld character earns experience and levels for it.
• Farm, craft and smelt. The kit holds water, seeds, saplings and a crafting table.
• Wear armor. A Pal's hit goes through Minecraft's armor, toughness, Protection and shield rules.
• Eat golden apples. Alpha Pals drop the enchanted one, and the old recipe is back: eight gold blocks around an apple.
• Watch your body. Steve's hunger feeds your hidden Palworld character, AppleSkin shows saturation, and a gauge above the hunger bar shows Palworld's temperature. Campfires, torches and leather armor keep the cold off.
• Press F5 for third person.
• Press F8 for Palworld mode: catch Pals, build a base, craft, talk to people and fast travel, with Steve as your character.

You start in survival with a kit: iron sword, bow and arrows, iron pickaxe, building blocks, TNT, food, torches, two water buckets, seeds, saplings, a crafting table and two golden apples. Type /gamemode creative if you would rather build without limits.

Palworld mode

Press F8 and Palworld takes the keyboard and mouse. Its rules and its menus are yours, and Steve stays on screen as your character, walking, crouching, swimming, gliding and swinging where Palworld's own would. Press F8 again for Minecraft's controls.

The HUD stays Minecraft's. The hearts show your Palworld character's health, the hunger bar its stomach and the experience bar its level. The hotbar holds Palworld's tools as Minecraft items, in the order the mouse wheel picks them: a stone pickaxe for the Stone Pickaxe, a bow for a bow, a crossbow for a gun. Your Pal Spheres sit in the last slot with their count. A tool that takes rounds shows the rounds loaded on its slot and the rounds you carry beside the hotbar. Minecraft's crosshair marks the point Palworld aims at.

Open Palworld's inventory and Steve stands in it. Palworld keeps what Minecraft has no picture for: prompts, the compass, your Pal party and boss bars. Minecraft's HUD steps back while another Palworld menu, build mode, a conversation, a cutscene or the defeat screen is up.

Played this way so far: the fast travel statue, the first quests, talking to the islander, the tech tree, the build menu, a workbench, a pickaxe, mining, fighting Lamballs, Pal Spheres, catching a Chikipi, summoning it, cloth and a parachute, gliding, swimming, the cold at night, the Rayne Syndicate Tower fight, defeat, the respawn map and respawning.

The two modes keep separate health. In Palworld mode the hearts are your Palworld character's, and nothing in Minecraft hurts Steve. Back in Minecraft mode the hearts are Steve's own again.

What you need

• Palworld on Steam, version 1.0, running in DirectX 11 (the default).
• Minecraft: Java Edition on your Microsoft account.

How to play

Press Play. The first Play downloads Minecraft 1.21.1 and takes a few minutes. Then:

1. In Palworld, start or load a single-player world.
2. Minecraft opens its own PalCraft world by itself. Steve appears where your Palworld character stands.
3. Play. Minecraft's window sits unseen on top of Palworld's and takes your keyboard and mouse, so you look at one picture: Palworld's, with Minecraft drawn into it.

Add your own mods

PalCraft's Minecraft is Java Edition 1.21.1 on Fabric. It lives in its own folder, apart from your other Minecraft installs.

1. Close Palworld and Minecraft.
2. Download the mod's Fabric file for Minecraft 1.21.1 from CurseForge or Modrinth.
3. Press Win+R, paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\PalCraft\Prism\instances\PalCraft\.minecraft\mods and press Enter.
4. Drop the .jar file into that folder.
5. Press Play.

Fabric API is in the folder already. Forge and NeoForge files do not load, and neither do files for other Minecraft versions. Mods that add items or change the HUD and inventory fit best. A mod that replaces Minecraft's renderer can break the picture inside Palworld. If the game stops starting, take your last jar out. If a mod is gone after a PalCraft update, drop it in again.

Change your skin

PalCraft signs Minecraft in with your own account, so Steve wears your account's skin.

1. Sign in at minecraft.net, open your profile and choose Change skin. The official Minecraft Launcher has the same setting under Skins.
2. Pick or upload a skin and save.
3. Press Play, then press F5 in the game to see it.

New in 0.2.2

• Fixed: Palworld crashed about a minute into a world.
• Fixed: Palworld crashed in most world loads. One crash in 6 test loads remains.
• Fixed: Steve began some worlds 10 km up and fell.
• Fixed: Steve fell through ground that had not loaded yet. After a long fall with no ground under him he goes back where he last stood.
• Fixed: Steve stuck on Palworld's slopes.
• Fixed: Minecraft froze at a high render distance. PalCraft caps it.
• Fixed: a Pal waiting in your party showed as a creature in the sky above you.
• Faster: Minecraft no longer waits for the screen's refresh between frames, and Palworld spends less time on terrain.

New in 0.2.1

• Palworld mode shows Steve. In 0.2.0 F8 showed Palworld's own character.
• Fixed: Palworld's memory grew by about 1 GB a minute while Minecraft was linked. A long session could run the PC out of memory. Update if you play 0.2.0.
• Fixed: progress in the Minecraft world could be lost when Palworld closed first. The world now saves every 45 seconds, and Minecraft closes by itself when Palworld is gone.
• Fixed: the tool your Palworld character holds floated on Steve's chest. In Palworld mode Steve holds the Minecraft item that stands for it.
• Palworld mode keeps Minecraft's HUD: hearts for your character's health, hunger for its stomach, the experience bar for its level, with your armor and temperature gauge. Palworld's own gauges, level display and tool panel step aside.
• The hotbar in Palworld mode holds Palworld's tools as Minecraft items, with your Pal Spheres and their count in the last slot.
• Palworld's inventory screen shows Steve in place of its own character.
• Minecraft's crosshair shows behind Steve too: in F5 third person, and in Palworld mode at the point Palworld aims at.
• Fixed: mining and melee hit nothing in Palworld mode. The hidden character's bones stood still, so its tool swept through nothing.
• Fixed: the pickaxe stowed on the character's back showed on Steve while he aimed a Pal Sphere.
• Steve falls on Palworld's defeat screen and gets up when you respawn.
• A swimming Steve floats at the waterline. He lay under the surface before.
• With a wall right behind you in Palworld mode, the camera shows the world ahead instead of Steve's back.
• Kills as Steve give Palworld experience. A message tells you when your character levels up.
• A kit that gained items in an update tops itself up for existing players.

Limits in 0.2.2

• Single player.
• Palworld can still crash while a world loads, once in 6 test loads. Press Play again.
• Palworld's memory grew by up to 70 MB a minute while Steve explored in testing. Restart both games after a long session.
• DirectX 11 only. Remove -dx12 from Palworld's Steam launch options if you added it.
• Digging gives materials and leaves Palworld's terrain in place. You cannot tunnel through a hill.
• Nights are cold. Hold a torch, stand by a fire or wear leather.
• Your Palworld character stays hidden and follows Steve. If a single blow kills it outright, press F8 and respawn in Palworld.
• Chests, Pal Spheres and Palworld menus need F8 first.
• In Palworld mode the mouse wheel picks Palworld's tools. Steve's own items wait in his inventory until you press F8.
• Steve stands 1.9 m tall and 0.9 m wide. When a wall pushes Palworld's camera close, he covers more of the picture than Palworld's character would.
• Steve is wider than Palworld's character, so he covers more of an over-the-shoulder conversation shot.
• Tree chopping and the bow work in Palworld mode. Riding, guns and raids are untested there.

Credits

• Minecraft Ring by siddoff and justbustin (MIT): the bridge protocol and the Fabric mod PalCraft forks.
• universal-modder by rehan-remade (MIT): the passthrough method.
• AppleSkin by squeek502 (The Unlicense): saturation on the hunger bar.
• MinHook by Tsuda Kageyu (BSD 2-Clause), UE4SS by the UE4SS-RE team (MIT), Fabric (Apache 2.0), Prism Launcher 11.1.1 (GPL-3.0, shipped unmodified).

PalCraft's own code is MIT licensed. Palworld belongs to Pocketpair. Minecraft belongs to Mojang and Microsoft. Neither company made or endorses PalCraft.