Palworld's first major update, Sakurajima, lands on June 27 with a new island and new Pals

Palworld | Sakurajima Update Trailer | Palnews | Pocketpair | Summer Game Fest 2024 - YouTube

Survival and crafting sensation Palworld already stole dozens of hours of my life earlier this year and now it's trying to hijack my summer too. Pocketpair has been teasing its plans for the first major update to Palworld for this summer. In a new trailer at today's Summer Game Fest, it revealed lots of other items on the feature list along with a release date: June 27.

As laid out in its Palworld early access roadmap, we've been expecting the three on three PvP arena mode, building updates, raid bosses, and lots of new Pals. Here's what it showed off in the new trailer:

A whole new island with lots of historical Japanese architecture and cherry blossoms
More new Pal reveals, including a mimic chest that seems like a little puppy, but deadly
Dedicated servers for Xbox players
A new level cap
New buildings and crafting stations
New "subspecies" of existing Pals, presumably like the elemental type variants of some current Pals
A new raid
A new stronghold set on an oil rig, of all things
That PvP arena mode
A new faction and boss to fight

Oh, and I spotted a rocket launcher and gatling gun in there too. We'd already seen some new high-tech looking rifles and a flamethrower in a past trailer, but I'm pretty sure the mobile missiles are new.

If you're paying attention, you can also see some new craftable stations to have Pals farm sulphur at your base. As of right now, you've got to head out into the wild to farm sulphur in Palworld, so having a way to produce it on base, even if it's expensive tech to build, will be nice.

As for that new island, it's not clear just how much area that will be adding to the map. Palworld has a pretty dang large explorable area already, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a sizeable addition.

That's what we know so far about the Sakurajima update after its new trailer, and June 27 isn't too far away at all.

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She joined the PCG staff in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.