Why Work Speed Modifiers Do Not Affect Transporting Pals

Work Speed modifiers (Artisan +50%, Serious, and similar traits) scale how fast a Pal performs a work action, swinging a pickaxe, crafting at a bench, watering a crop. Transporting is not a work action in that sense. It is a movement task, so the game reads a completely different set of stats when a Pal picks up an item and walks it to a chest.

What actually scales transport throughput

Transport Work Suitability level controls how many items a Pal can carry in a single trip. The scaling is dramatic: Level 1 handles a 2-item stack, while Level 5 handles up to 40 items at once. A higher suitability level therefore removes trips entirely, which is far more impactful than shaving milliseconds off an animation.

Once carry size is maxed, the remaining bottleneck is the walk itself. That means movement speed passives (Swift, Runner, Legend) plus the raw Walk/Run speed of the species are the true optimization metrics, alongside Nocturnal so the Pal keeps hauling through the night.

The trap players fall into

• Breeding Artisan onto a dedicated transporter: negligible benefit.
• Ignoring the suitability level and using a Level 1 hauler on a 40-stack production line: constant back-and-forth.
• Overlooking Nocturnal, which effectively doubles a transporter's active hours.