Base Pal Sanity (SAN) & Illness Thresholds in Palworld, Explained

Every base Pal carries a Sanity (SAN) value that drains as it works, gets hungry, or fails to find rest. Let it fall far enough and the Pal develops status conditions (depression, fractures, ulcers) that tank its output or take it out of rotation entirely. A base full of sick Pals is rarely bad luck, it is almost always a layout problem you can fix once you see it.

The thresholds that matter

As a rule of thumb, keeping a Pal above 50 SAN keeps it healthy; sustained time below that threshold is what triggers the illness rolls. The two biggest drains are hunger (undersupplied feed boxes) and idle stress from workers that cannot reach a bed or a relaxation structure. The longer a Pal sits below the threshold, the higher the odds it rolls into a real condition instead of just looking tired.

Reading the warning signs before illness hits

• A gloomy speech bubble or sweat-drop icon over a Pal's head signals a SAN drop worth checking before it worsens.
• Watch for Pals standing idle near a full feed box, that usually means the box is out of a food type they will actually eat, not that they are ignoring it.
• A sudden string of Pals falling sick around the same day often traces back to one shared bottleneck (one bed row, one hot spring, one feed box) rather than several unrelated problems.
• Check condensed or high-star Pals first; they are more expensive to lose to illness and worth a dedicated recovery slot.

Design SAN recovery into the layout

• Place hot spring arrays central to the work floor so recovery walks are short.
• Provide high-tier beds at a ratio that covers your worker cap, not just a few Pals.
• Keep feed boxes stocked and reachable to stop the hunger drain at its source.
• Spread recovery structures across the base footprint instead of clustering them all in one corner, so no single group of workers has a long walk.

Correct ratios of springs and beds relative to your worker cap remove the pathing bottleneck where too many Pals compete for too few recovery nodes, the hidden cause of most base-wide SAN collapses.

Recovering a Pal that is already sick

Once illness sets in, isolating the Pal near a Medicine bench or clinic Pal speeds the cure, but prevention is far cheaper than treatment. A base that never lets SAN bottom out avoids the medicine drain entirely and keeps your best workers producing instead of recovering.