What the Pal Labor Research Lab Does

The Pal Labor Research Lab unlocks the research system: 168 projects spread across nine work categories, each one a permanent, account-wide upgrade to how your bases run. Assign pals to the lab and they grind out research progress in the background — every project needs a pal whose work suitability matches its category, with later projects demanding higher suitability ranks.

How to Use It

• Unlocked at level 19 for just 2 technology points, and nearly free to build — 30 Paldium Fragments and 30 Ingots. It needs no power.
• Each project consumes materials plus a work amount, and workloads scale steeply — from 50,000 on the first Handiwork project to 5,000,000 on end-tier ones. A dedicated researcher pal is not a luxury.
• Every category's backbone is work speed: researching a line to completion grants up to +45% work speed for that suitability (+40% for Cooling), plus +20% faster future research in the category.

Beyond raw speed, each line carries its own signature bonuses, all straight from the research data:

• Handiwork: −15% material cost on weapons, body armor, and pal gear, and a 15% chance of bonus ammo and Pal Spheres when crafting.
• Kindling: 15% chance of bonus ingots and dishes, and +30% egg hatching speed — Cooling adds another +30% hatching on top, plus −30% food spoilage.
• Planting and Watering: up to +30% and +20% plantation harvest yield respectively, with faster crop growth from both.
• Generating Electricity: +70% power storage and −20% base power consumption.
• Mining: +90% crude oil extraction speed — transformative if you run oil extractors — plus faster, richer expeditions, which Lumbering boosts further.
• Medicine Production: −20% material cost on medicine.

Tips

Build it the moment it unlocks — at level 19 the early projects are cheap, and work-speed bonuses compound over your entire playthrough, so every hour without them is lost value. Prioritize the lines matching your economy: Handiwork and Kindling serve almost everyone, Generating Electricity pays off once machines dominate your bases, and Mining's oil research is the single biggest production upgrade for Crude Oil. Keep an eye on suitability ranks: every line's final projects require a rank 7 worker, which is where condensed or well-bred specialists earn their keep.