Palworld 1.0 Guide: Where to Find Hardwood and Build Better Boards
Cruising through the early tech tree feels great until the game suddenly slams the brakes and demands a material you've never seen before.
The massive 1.0 update completely overhauled the late-game building economy. If you checked out my Palworld 1.0 technology unlocks level 80 guide, you already know that reaching the new cap requires an absurd amount of grinding. You can't just rely on the basic logs your starter Pals chop down in the Windswept Hills anymore. Sometime around level 40, your blueprints will start demanding a brand new resource: Hardwood. If you don't know where to look, you'll end up deforesting half the map just hoping for a lucky drop. Before you ruin the archipelago's ecosystem, I mapped out exactly where to find this new timber and how to process it for your endgame structures.
The Best Locations to Farm Hardwood
You won't find Hardwood sitting in the grassy plains near your starting base. You have to push into the mid-to-late game biomes and look for highly specific tree models.
The Twilight Dunes
If you need Hardwood early in your progression, pack some heat resistance gear and head straight for the Twilight Dunes. The easiest way to get there quickly is to unlock the Anubis Dunes fast travel point, which sits just northeast of the actual Anubis boss arena.
Once you hit the sand, stop looking for normal pine trees. You need to target the weird, twisting trees with spiky green leaves sprouting out of the dunes. You don't need any high-tech lasers to harvest them, a standard Metal Axe works perfectly fine. Just keep an eye out for aggressive fire types while you're swinging.
The Sakura Shrines
If you're already pushing into the late game and have a flying mount equipped, set your sights on Sakurajima. You can use the Moonflower Tower Entrance fast travel point to drop right into the best farming zone.
Instead of twisting desert plants, you're looking for the massive Sakura trees dotting the landscape. Not every tree works, you have to specifically chop down the ones featuring distinct red or white trunks. The density here is much better than the dunes, making it a fantastic spot to set up a dedicated logging outpost if you don't mind occasionally dealing with high-level raids.
Processing Timber into Boards
Finding the wood is only half the battle. You have to actually refine these materials to construct the new weapon benches and assembly lines.
Crafting Wooden Boards
Before you even worry about Hardwood, the game introduces standard Wooden Boards at level 15. You can craft these at any Primitive Workbench, but you shouldn't be making them by hand. The recipe requires 10 Wood, 5 Fiber, and 1 Nail.
If your storage chests are constantly empty, you need to automate your logistics. Set up a Logging Site to passively farm Wood, but remember that the automated site does not drop Fiber. To keep your Fiber stocks high, build a Crusher and assign a Water Pal to it. The Crusher breaks down one unit of Wood into two Fibers. If you want to maximize your yield, check my Palworld 1.0 best early game pals guide to find the most efficient workers for your water wheels and logging sites.
High Quality Wooden Boards
Once you cross into the level 40s, standard boards won't cut it anymore. At level 43, the tech tree introduces High Quality Wooden Boards, and this is exactly why you've been farming in the Twilight Dunes.
Each High Quality Wooden Board costs an agonizing 10 Hardwood to craft. You'll need hundreds of these boards to build out your base. If you don't want to spend your entire weekend manually chopping red trunks on Sakurajima, find a dense cluster of Sakura trees and drop a Palbox right in the middle of them. Throw a few high-tier lumbering specialists into the camp, set a chest next to the spawn point, and let your automated workforce handle the deforestation for you.
