PalworldSaveTools: a Palworld save editor that stopped at version 2.4.5

The README's first real section is a discontinuation notice

The most consequential thing in this repository is a block of text at the top of the README, and it is worth reading before any feature list. Version 2.4.5 is the final release. The project is described as outdated, several features are broken because Palworld has moved past what this version supports, and continued use is not recommended.

The notice also explains the history. The project was originally started by Pylar, who has since moved on, and it has been merged into a successor toolkit called PalStudio, previously known as Palworld Save Pal, which combines PST and Palworld Save Pal into a single maintained tool. Development continues there, with a website, a Discord server and a Nexus Mods listing, all pointed at from the README.

There is a third path. The outdated codebase lives on as a legacy project at PalworldSaveTools-Legacy under Cyrix, Pylar's former co-partner, who took it over and keeps it as an outdated archive that serves as a learning resource for how save editing works.

Three states, then: a frozen final release here, an archive under another name, and a maintained successor that absorbed the work. Anyone arriving at this repository today is arriving at the end of a line, not the start of one.

A PySide6 desktop app that reads and writes the compressed save format directly

Setting the discontinuation aside, the design of the tool is coherent. It is a desktop application for inspecting and editing Palworld save files, built with Python and PySide6, and it reads and writes the game's compressed save format directly with no game mods required. That last point is what separates it from the mod-based approach, where a modded client does the editing inside the running game and you need a compatible game build to do the work at all.

The parsing engine is called palsav, and the README credits it as the reason the tool is one of the quickest save file readers available. In the project layout, palsav is a first-class workspace member rather than a vendored dependency: the pyproject file declares a uv workspace whose members list includes src/palsav, and the tool configuration adds src/palsav to the extra paths for type checking.

The dependency list tells you what the save format actually needs. Alongside the GUI toolkit pyside6-essentials and Pillow for images, the list carries brotli, cbor2, msgpack and zstandard, four different compression and serialization formats, plus orjson for fast JSON handling. A save format that needs four codecs is a format that has been through several engine generations.

What the feature table covers, from guilds to exclusion zones

The feature table is organised by category rather than by screen, which makes the scope easy to scan. Player management covers editing names, levels, stats and tech points, bulk managing items, pals and tech across players, and cleaning up inactive or duplicate players. The Pal editor goes deeper, with stats, IVs, souls, rank, skills, passives, work suitability and boss or lucky flags, plus export and import of pals, detection and fixing of illegal pals, and a cheat mode for uncapped editing.

Guild management covers renaming guilds, changing leaders, setting levels, opening up lab research, moving players between guilds and deleting empty or inactive ones. Base camp tools list viewing all bases with guild info, blueprint export and import, cloning a base to another guild, repositioning bases on the map, adjusting the radius and deleting inactive bases.

The Map Viewer is an interactive world map with base and player markers, exclusion zones, a calibration mode, world map and tree map views, and zoom, pan and fly-to controls. Save tools handle conversion between SAV and JSON, conversion of GamePass saves to Steam, transfer of characters between worlds, fixing host saves, restoring map progress and expanding palbox slots.

Two features stand out for administrators rather than players. Bulk deletion and cleanup are grouped as server-grade tooling, and the exclusions list persists entries that protect players, guilds and bases from those cleanup passes, with additions from context menus. A destructive tool that can exclude its targets is a different proposition from one that cannot.

Automatic backups before every write, and a self-contained Python layout

The stated safety net is that every save operation creates a backup before writing. Given that the tool can bulk delete guilds, bases and players, and can trigger a cheat mode with uncapped values, that guarantee is the feature that makes the rest of the feature table usable.

The repository is laid out like a normal Python project rather than a loose script collection. At the top level there are src/ with the application code, resources/ for assets and the translated READMEs, scripts/, build/, tests/, changelogs.md, an AGENTS.md file, start.py, start.cmd, test.cmd and a pyproject.toml.

The build configuration declares itself as the PalworldSaveTools package, requires Python 3.11 or newer, and lists the same dependency set seen in requirements.txt. Two packaging tools appear side by side: cx-freeze, pinned at 8.3.0 or newer in the project dependencies, and nuitka at 4.1.2 or newer. cx-freeze and nuitka both appear in the dependency list, which suggests either was used at build time, but the README does not say which produced the pre-built Windows, Linux and macOS binaries.

The runtime requirements for a source install are visible in the requirements file, which also includes pefile and the local path for the palsav engine:

pyside6-essentials
cx-freeze>=8.3.0
nerdfont
orjson
pefile
packaging
Pillow
brotli
cbor2
msgpack
zstandard

That is a moderate dependency set, and the fact that it is pinned by name rather than by version for most entries means an environment you build today may differ from the one the project tested against.

Nine localizations and a typing SVG banner, plus a Discord support channel

The project carried a lot of polish, and the polish is documented. The user interface, in-app guides and documentation are localized into nine languages, and the README links each translation directly, including Simplified Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Korean and both Brazilian and European Portuguese.

The README itself is built around animated typing SVGs rather than static text, which is a choice that trades grep-ability for presentation. It also means a reader looking for a specific instruction in this repository is searching a generated image.

Support runs through a Discord server, and the repository's homepage field points at a Discord invite rather than a documentation site, which tells you where the project's audience actually gathered. Downloads are offered on both GitHub Releases and Nexus Mods.

Two aspects of the presentation are worth a caution for anyone evaluating the code rather than using the binary. The license badge in the README points at a different repository, the CyrixJD115 PalworldSaveTools-Legacy one, while the licence recorded for this repository is MIT and the pyproject file also declares MIT. The acknowledgements and the Palworld team sections in the table of contents indicate the project was a community effort around a third-party game rather than an official tool.

What to use instead, and why the difference matters

The alternative is not another save editor with a different interface. The README states that PST has been merged into PalStudio, formerly Palworld Save Pal, which combines PST and Palworld Save Pal into one modern, maintained tool, and that PalStudio is still the better option. That is a merge of two projects into one maintained codebase, not a feature comparison.

The difference in approach is therefore about maintenance status, and PalworldSaveTools loses on it by definition. The game itself is the moving target here. The README says the project is broken in several places because Palworld has moved past what version 2.4.5 supports, which is a category of failure that a feature list cannot repair. A save parser that does not understand the current format either refuses the file or, worse, misinterprets fields, and a tool that rewrites a save on the basis of a stale schema can turn a recoverable problem into an unrecoverable one.

The second option is the legacy archive, and its purpose is explicitly different. Cyrix keeps it as an outdated archive that now serves as a learning resource for how save editing works. If your goal is to understand the format, to write your own parser, or to study the design of a save editor, that archive is the more sensible target, precisely because it is not trying to be the tool you run against a live save.

For a live save in a current Palworld world, the sensible reading is that this repository documents a finished project rather than offering one.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt PalStudio rather than PalworldSaveTools for any real save work, since the README states plainly that 2.4.5 is the final release, that several features are broken because the game moved past this version, and that continued use is not recommended. PalworldSaveTools is worth adopting only as a learning reference for save format internals, or if you are pinned to a Palworld build from the era it still supports. Before you open a save with it, check which Palworld version your save came from, keep the automatic backup the tool creates, and confirm the palsav engine still parses your file rather than assuming it does.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. deafdudecomputers/PalworldSaveTools on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases