Oh man, I was not expecting Palworld to force me to look in the mirror. I play games to help my depression and now I have to help my depressed virtual babies? Fortunately, fixing depressed Pals is much easier than fixing myself.
Have you tried just being happy?
Monitoring the health of your Pals is important if you want your bases to remain largely self-sufficient. When you’re in a base, there will be notifications of status effects. Unlike low SAN, these status effects won’t clear themselves. So, channel your inner veterinarian to heal your unpaid labor.
Palworld is truly a fantasy world in that there is a dedicated medicine with a 100% success rate for curing depression. At level 12, you can unlock the Medieval Workbench from the Technology tree. Both that and the Electric Medicine Workbench (unlocked at level 43) allow you to manufacture High Grade Medical Supplies. This item is guaranteed to cure what ails your Pal.
To use the medicine, you’ll need to put the afflicted Pal in your Party. From there, the High Grade Medical Supplies can be administered in the same way as you would feed them. “Choo choo! Here comes the happy brain chemicals train!”
Taking a page from reality, your Pals’ depression can be mitigated by improving their quality of life. At minimum, build a Straw Pal Bed for each one assigned to the base, a Feed Box, and a Hot Spring. In regards to the Hot Spring, having multiple available is ideal so your Pals don’t have to go without. Pals will use each as necessary and this will help stave off the Depressed status effect.
Of course, should your Pal not be worth the time and effort to cure, you can always take the Meat Cleaver to them and fill the vacancy in your base stable. Perhaps fear will keep the others from feeling oppressive sadness.
