How to save and pause in Palworld

Anyone who has played a video game knows how important saving and pausing are, and Palworld is no exception to this rule. Use the guide below if you need help saving in Palworld and how to pause.

How do you pause and save your game in Palworld?

With Palworld's survival mechanics, saving your progress is crucial to avoid losing everything. But how to do so can be confusing, especially after seeing no save button in the pause menu. The reason is you cannot manually save in Palworld without exiting the game. Leaving the game automatically saves your progress. Palworld also has an autosave function that periodically saves your game.

Related: Palworld online session error – How to fix

When playing multiplayer with friends, Palworld will save after each player leaves. Communicating with your group is important, as an ill-timed exit and save can lock you into an unfortunate situation. When playing with a friend, my base caught on fire seconds before they left the game, leaving me stuck with a burning base.

Pausing is as simple as pressing the Esc key on PC or the Start button on console. However, while this brings up your menu, the game itself does not actually stop. Everything in the world continues moving while you have the pause menu, so ensure you pause at the right time. Don't be like me and pause your game and walk away, only to come back to your base being raided.

While there is no way to save outside of leaving the game, developer Pocketpair may add a feature in an update. If they do, this change will be noted in the patch notes for that update.

For more information on Palworld, check out What to do if your Pal develops an eating disorder due to stress in Palworld and How to move when you are overweight in Palworld on Pro Game Guides.