Palia Focus Guide for Beginners
If you’ve been playing Palia for a while now, you know that you’ll spend a lot of time honing your skills, whether it be Mining, Foraging, or Fishing. Leveling up your skills lets you craft new items, make upgraded versions of your tools, and fulfill resident-exclusive quests around Kilima Village. The only problem is that increasing your skill level takes a lot of time and experience points.
By managing your Focus—a system implemented to make grinding easier and faster—you can gain additional XP, which lets your skills level up with gusto. In this guide, I’ll explain everything you need to know about Focus and how to utilize it to maximize your skills quickly.
What is Focus in Palia?
Focus is a mechanic unique to Palia that increases your XP gain. The Focus Bar in the top left of your screen indicates how much Focus you currently have. Having Focus increases your additional XP gain, making leveling up skills like Fishing or Furniture Making much easier. At the beginning of your playthrough, your bar can hold up to 200 points, but this can be increased further later on.
When your Focus Bar is filled, it gives you bonus experience points after completing a skill task. As long as you have Focus, you’ll have a 30% bonus when earning XP towards whatever skill you’re doing, while having a full Focus Bar increases it more.
Your Focus Bar will gradually deplete as you complete more skill tasks, so you’ll need to refill it periodically. Also, keeping your Focus Bar full will let you gain skill points more often, which allows you to unlock purchasable rewards, such as upgraded versions of your existing equipment, from NPC skill shops once you reach a certain level.
How to Get Focus in Palia
Every time you gain experience from doing a skill, Focus gets consumed, so you’ll often have to replenish your Focus bar. You can gain Focus by consuming cooked food dishes, crops, and ingredients you’ve foraged in the in-game world. If your level is still low, you can consume ingredients like Mountain Morel Mushrooms, which give five Focus points for each one. Meanwhile, cooked food dishes—like Ramen or Grilled Fish—give more significant Focus gains.
Different foods give different amounts of Focus. To get the most Focus points, you’ll need to learn how to cook more in-depth meals, which can be done later in the game. It’ll cost a lot of ingredients, but in return, you’ll gain a lot of experience in cooking while making higher-rarity foods to replenish your Focus Bar.
Getting advanced recipes and building a stove and prep station in your home can take some time, but it’s an effort worth doing. But if you still don’t have enough materials or money to buy the blueprints, the Palia residents often reward cooked dishes when you complete quests. For example, if you complete a side quest for a character, you might get a vegetable soup or a jar of strawberry jam. But say you really need some meals that offer a lot of Focus. In that case, you can head over to Reth at the Ormuu’s Horn and purchase some of his dishes.
How to Increase Your Focus in Palia
You’ll start with a Focus Bar that can only hold up to 200 Focus points, but it’s possible to increase your maximum Focus by earning Renown. You can get Renown by finishing quests, talking to NPCs around the town on a daily basis, completing accomplishments, and fulfilling community requests.
To permanently increase the Focus your Focus Bar can hold, go towards Maji’s Hollow, where you’ll see a Dragon Statue. Walk up to the shrine and interact with it to Commune. You’ll need at least 100 Renown to store 50 more Focus points on your character. It’s worth noting that Renown points cap at 1,000, so don’t be afraid to spend it regularly on Focus upgrades if you’re not already spending it on Plot Expansion Writs.
How to Increase Your Focus Bonus in Palia
Besides increasing the maximum Focus you can hold, you can also increase the Focus bonus you receive by visiting the Phoenix Statue. The statue is at Phoenix Falls, through the first open cavern on the right. Like with the Dragon Statue, it’ll cost you 100 Renown to commune with it and gain a 5% bonus increase. Each communion will increase your bonus percentage by 5% until you reach the 50% mark. Communions will only give you a 2.5% increase after that.
Utilizing the Phoenix Statue can have a massive impact on your skills. By being able to level them extremely fast, you don’t have to spend as much time increasing your skill points.
