If your base Pals keep dozing off mid-shift or wandering around looking miserable, the culprit is almost always low Sanity. Sanity (shown in-game as SAN) is the wellbeing meter every captured Pal carries, and letting it bottom out tanks your whole base’s productivity. This guide explains what SAN is, what drains it, how the Depressed status works, and the most reliable ways to keep your Pals happy and working. Where exact figures can shift between patches, we flag it: Palworld updates frequently, so treat tuning numbers as version-dependent.
What Is Sanity (SAN) in Palworld?
Sanity is a mechanic that tells you the status of your Pals. Every captured Pal has a SAN level, and you can check it in three places: the Party menu, the Palbox, and next to a Pal’s health bar when you look at one directly. Think of it as a morale or wellbeing gauge separate from health and hunger. A Pal with full SAN works cheerfully and efficiently; a Pal with low SAN starts cutting corners.
SAN matters most for base Pals. Pals assigned to work stations are the ones grinding through tasks all day, so they’re the ones whose morale you have to manage. The payoff for keeping SAN topped up is simple: faster, more consistent base output and far fewer status problems down the line.
What Lowers a Pal’s Sanity?
According to the official wiki, several things chip away at SAN, and they tend to stack:
- Overwork / forced labor — Pals that are pushed to work without rest (for example, kept grinding via a Monitoring Stand) lose SAN steadily. The harder and longer they work, the faster it drops.
- Hunger and starvation — A Pal that’s hungry or starving loses SAN. An empty or under-stocked feed box is one of the most common causes of a base full of unhappy Pals.
- No place to sleep — Pals without a bed won’t sleep properly through the night, and that lack of rest steadily erodes SAN.
When SAN gets low, Pals start to dislike their work. You’ll see the symptoms clearly: they slack off, sit around, or lie down and sleep in the middle of the day instead of doing their job. That’s your warning sign that morale is failing before things get worse.
The Depressed Status
If SAN stays low for a prolonged period, a Pal can develop the Depressed status condition. This is the serious end of the problem. A Depressed Pal suffers a 30-point reduction to Work Speed and a 20-point reduction to Movement Speed, which makes it close to useless at a work station and slow to get anywhere.
Crucially, you can’t fix Depressed just by waiting or feeding the Pal. Removing the condition requires High Grade Medical Supplies. Depressed sits alongside other neglect-and-stress afflictions you may run into, summarized below.
| Status condition | Penalty | Cure item |
|---|---|---|
| Cold / Sick | Work Speed -10 | Low Grade Medical Supplies |
| Sprain | Movement Speed -10 | Low Grade Medical Supplies |
| Ulcer | Work Speed -20, Movement Speed -10 | Medical Supplies |
| Fracture | Work Speed -10, Movement Speed -20 | Medical Supplies |
| Depressed | Work Speed -30, Movement Speed -20 | High Grade Medical Supplies |
| Weakened | Work Speed -20, Movement Speed -30 | High Grade Medical Supplies |
High Grade Medical Supplies are crafted at the Medieval Medicine Workbench, which unlocks at Technology tier 12. Building that bench early is worth it precisely so you’re never caught without a way to cure a Depressed (or Weakened) Pal. Note that exact penalty values can be retuned in updates, so verify against your current patch if you’re theorycrafting work-speed builds.
How to Restore Sanity
The good news is that SAN recovers on its own when a Pal’s working conditions are decent. If Pals are fed, rested, and not overworked, they slowly regain SAN. To speed that up and prevent dips in the first place, lean on the following.
Hot Springs
The Hot Spring is the dedicated relaxation facility for restoring SAN. It unlocks at Technology tier 9 and lets Pals rest and recover SAN after a hard day’s work; paldb.cc lists its base SAN restoration rate at 0.5. There’s also a High Quality Hot Spring that unlocks later at Technology tier 31 and restores SAN more effectively (its recovery was buffed in patch 0.1.5.0). If you have the tech and resources, a hot spring near your work stations is the single best passive SAN solution.
Beds
Every base Pal needs somewhere to sleep. The Straw Pal Bed unlocks at Technology tier 3, so you can supply beds almost from the start. Build at least one bed per working Pal so nobody loses SAN overnight from poor rest. This is the cheapest, earliest fix and prevents one of the three core SAN drains outright.
Food
Keeping the feed box stocked stops hunger-driven SAN loss, and certain foods actively restore SAN when eaten. You can also feed a Pal directly through the Command menu to top it up on the spot. Honey is the classic early-game pick because it’s easy to gather in the wild (and Beegarde on a Ranch will produce it), and it doesn’t spoil. Higher-tier cooked dishes restore noticeably more SAN, with Cake generally cited as the strongest single SAN food, though it’s slow to make and you’ll also want it for breeding. Exact SAN values per dish vary by patch, so prioritize whatever sanity food you can reliably mass-produce rather than memorizing one number. For a deeper breakdown of dishes and their effects, see our Palworld cooking and food guide.
Reduce the workload
Finally, don’t run the same Pals into the ground. Rotating Pals in and out of the Palbox, keeping enough workers so no single Pal is overloaded, and avoiding constant forced labor all let SAN recover naturally. A well-staffed base barely needs micromanagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check a Pal’s SAN level?
You can see a Pal’s Sanity (SAN) in the Party menu, in the Palbox, or next to the Pal’s health bar when you look at it directly. Check it regularly for base workers, since they’re the ones who drain SAN fastest.
How do I cure a Depressed Pal?
The Depressed status requires High Grade Medical Supplies to remove — food and rest alone won’t clear it. Craft High Grade Medical Supplies at the Medieval Medicine Workbench (Technology tier 12). After curing the Pal, fix the underlying cause (hunger, no bed, or overwork) so it doesn’t relapse.
What’s the fastest way to keep base Pals happy?
Cover the three SAN drains: build a bed for every worker, keep the feed box stocked (ideally with sanity-restoring food), and avoid overworking the same Pals. Add a Hot Spring (tier 9) for passive SAN recovery and you’ll rarely see a Depressed Pal again.
Keep Your Whole Base Healthy
Managing SAN is mostly about good base design: beds, food, a hot spring, and not burning out your workers. Once those are in place, your Pals stay productive with almost no effort. For more on related systems, browse our guides on Palworld status effects and ailments, the Palworld skill fruits guide, and what’s hidden in Palworld dungeons.
Running a base full of happy Pals is even better with friends. If you want a shared, always-on world where your bases keep ticking over while you’re offline, you can rent a Palworld server and play together with persistent progress. For setup walkthroughs and configuration tips, check the Palworld server documentation.
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