Part of the charm of Palworld is its lunacy and janky chaos, and the Xbox Game Pass hit’s debut raid boss appears to be continuing that trend. The new Palworld update has just added Bellanoir in as the game’s first raid boss, and while we expected a tough fight, what we didn’t expect was for the battle to literally be on your doorstep.
Palworld first showed us Bellanoir in a trailer for the new raid battles a couple of weeks ago, and now she’s been unleashed into the survival game for real. While PC players can take her on right now, Xbox players will have to wait a couple of days due to Pocketpair staggering its updates across the two platforms. However, even if you are a console player patiently twiddling your thumbs, you should absolutely prepare yourself for a bloody (and potentially base-wrecking) battle in one of the best Xbox Game Pass games.
We absolutely expected Bellanoir to have massive, devastating attacks and a large health bar to give players a significant challenge, and that is certainly the case. However, we weren’t prepared for the fact that you need to invite this powerful Pal over to your place. Yep, despite the open-world game having tons of space in the overworld, and dedicated arenas for regular Palworld bosses, Bellanoir can only be taken on once you’ve built the new Summoning Altar item within one of your bases.
So, be warned – if you’ve put dozens of hours into crafting an elaborate and impressive home base, do not build your Summoning Altar here. You can have up to three primary bases, so either craft a new (and less-cherished) one somewhere else, or pick your least-developed base out of the three. When Bellanoir shows up, she’s gonna probably blast everything in sight to smithereens.
There is an upside though to having the battle in your front yard – as well as your six-strong team of Pals you carry around, all of the Pals assigned from your Pal Box to that particular base will be able to join in the fight too. So make sure you’ve got plenty of high-level and strong Pals roaming around that base before you summon Bellanoir.
It is somewhat disappointing that a significant piece of new content such as a raid boss doesn’t come with its own new arena or dungeon to do battle in. But what we’ve got is certainly better than not having new, high-level enemies at all. You can read the full patch notes for the new update here.
This update is the latest step in Pocketpair’s quest to sharpen up the experience on Xbox, deliver its roadmap of new additions, and maybe even expand by releasing a Palworld PS5 version (which seems likely, given the developer’s recent comments). It may still be quite, erm, clunky, but it’s still one of the best Xbox games of the year so far, despite that.
For more Xbox news, it sounds like we may finally hear about what The Coalition has been up to, as Gears 6 is touted for a “teaser” at Xbox’s summer showcase. Also make sure you’re checking out this month’s new Game Pass games, which include a couple of great day-one releases.