Reading a card

Every card prints the same set of fields in the same places. Once you can find them, you can read a card you have never seen before.

Top of the card#

• Cost — the number in the corner. This is what you pay in souls to play the card.

• Colour — not printed as a word: the background colour of the cost is the card's colour. Red, blue, green or purple, or nothing at all for a colourless card. Colourless is the absence of a colour, not a fifth colour.

• Lucky icon — a star badge in the opposite corner. It marks a lucky Pal, and it is checked when a player takes damage.

• Quick icon — marks a card that can be played outside the normal window, during your opponent's attack.

Middle of the card#

• Card type — Pal, Structure, Gear, Event or Soul.

• Card name — the name the 4-copy deck limit counts.

• Sub type — for Pals, "normal Pal" or "lucky Pal".

• Element — one of nine icons: Neutral, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ground, Ice, Dark, Dragon. Neutral is a real element, not a blank.

• Work suitability — the job icons, for cards that put Pals to work.

• Ability text — what the card does. Text in round brackets is reminder text: helpful, but it changes nothing.

Bottom of the card#

• Power (or durability on a structure) — damage dealt in battle, and damage survivable.

• Strike — damage dealt to a player.

• Flavour text and collection data — artist, collector number, copyright. None of it has any rules meaning.

Main names and sub names#

Some cards print a name in two halves separated by a spaced en dash, such as Cattiva – My First Pal. The part before the dash is the main name and the part after is the sub name. Cards that reference "《Cattiva》" are talking about the main name, which is how a whole family of printings can be referenced at once. Without that spaced dash, the card simply has no main or sub name — a hyphen inside a word does not count.

Card text always beats these rules. If a card says something that contradicts anything on this page, the card is right.

Source: Comprehensive Rules ver. 1.00 (30 July 2026) §2 “Card Information”, and the Palworld OFFICIAL CARD GAME Play Guide.