Palword is filled with over one hundred Pals to befriend, fight, and find - but which ones are the best? With a whole wide Pal-filled world to explore, you'll need to cover a lot of ground to find every single Pal for your Paldeck. Which Pals, particularly Dark Pals, are the absolute best and strongest? We've ranked every Dark Pal from best to worst - take a look to find out the best Dark Pals in Palworld.
Disclaimers About This Tier List
This Tier List ranks Pals on their base type, power, ease of catching, and general abilities. Keep in mind that Pals have different passive and active skills, so a lower-tier Pal with great passive or active skills might outperform a higher-tier Pal without them. This list also only considers Dark Pals to be those with the Dark Element as their primary element - some Pals, such as those with Fire-Dark typing, will be considered on their own primary element list so as not to overlap.
Best Dark Pals in Palworld - Tier List
In the dark of the night, most Pals sleep - but some come out to play. Dark Pals are some of the strongest Pals available in Palworld, and it shows - with a large elemental family and a heavy presence among Legendary and pseudo-legendary Pals, Dark is an element not to be trifled with. Add in the fact that these Pals will stay up all night working for you, and you've got a recipe for incredibly useful Pals - take a look at the best Dark Pals in Palworld.
S-Tier Dark Pals
No. 104B - Lyleen Noct
No. 107 - Shadowbeak
No. 109 - Necromus
No. 110B - Frostallion Noct
A-Tier Dark Pals
No. 94 - Felbat
No. 99 - Menasting
B-Tier Dark Pals
No. 40B - Incineram Noct
No. 66 - Maraith
No. 97 - Helzephyr
C-Tier Dark Pals
No. 15 - Hoocrates
No. 19 - Daedream
No. 21 - Nox
No. 23 - Killamari
No. 46 - Loupmoon
No. 75 - Katress
No. 17 - Depresso
D-Tier Dark Pals
No. 24 - Mau
No. 44 - Cawgnito
No. 45 - Leezpunk
No. 68 - Tombat
More Palworld Tier Lists:
- Best Grass Pals in Palworld - Grass Pal Tier List
- Best Fire Pals in Palworld - Fire Pal Tier List
- Best Ground Pals in Palworld - Ground Pal Tier List
How We Ranked the Best Dark Pals
When coming up with our rankings for the best Dark Pals, we looked at several different categories: power, Partner Skills, Active Skill pools, how easy it is to obtain them, and general overall usefulness. Here's what our Tiers mean at a glance:
- S-Tier: The best of the best, Pals in this category are the best in almost every situation.
- A-Tier: Great in all situations, these Pals are well-rounded and will be more than adequate for most players.
- B-Tier: Average to Good in a wide variety of situations, these Pals are solidly useful, but may be outpaced by higher tier Pals.
- C-Tier: These Pals are not generally recommended, however they still can find situational usefulness.
- D-Tier: The worst Dark Pals - unless you have no other options, not recommended for long-term use.
S-Tier Dark Pals: The Best Dark Pals
The absolute best of the best - Dark Pals have so many incredible Pals to choose from that we chose four as our absolute best-in-slot Pals.
Healing in Palworld is an incredibly rare and powerful ability - and Lyleen Noct can not only heal the player, she can also heal your entire team. This Partner Skill is phenomenal - we'd argue one of the best in the game - and will absolutely save the day in endgame boss battles. She's quite handy around a Base, too!
Shadowbeak and Frostallion Noct are two heavy-hitter choices as well. While Frostallion Noct is annoying to get, it more than makes up for it with its power, speed, ability to fly, Partner Skill, and the unique capability of inheriting the Lucky Passive Skill from its non-Legendary parent. Shadowbeak, meanwhile, boasts the single most powerful non-exploding attack in the game, the exclusive Divine Disaster with a devastating 160 power.
Finally, Necromus rounds out the S-Tier Pals with power, speed, and that ever-important cool factor. Access to Rock Lance and its exclusive move Twin Spears makes it incredibly powerful on its own, but adding Dark Laser to its moveset is the icing on the powerful cake.
A-Tier Dark Pals
While not quite S-Tier, our A-Tier picks are versatile, powerful Pals that make for a great addition to any team.
Much like the S-Tier Lyleen Noct, Felbat has one of the coveted healing abilities as its Partner Skill. Instead of healing the entire team and the player, however, Felbat has a slightly less effective version: it heals through life steal, which is still fantastic, but not quite up to snuff for an S-Tier spot. Don't write it off, though - Felbat is still a powerful Pal to have around.
Menasting can't heal you, but it can do the next best thing: make you take less damage in the first place. As if that wasn't enough, this Pal is deadly in combat - two 150 power moves as well as a powerful Nightmare Ball ability mean it will rip through whatever enemies come at you. There's no need to heal if nothing is left to hit you, after all.
B-Tier Dark Pals
B-Tier Pals are solid middle of the pack choices - each with something a little special to make them stand out.
Dark Pals tend to have dual-typing, and Incineram Noct is no exception. Pairing it with the powerful Fire elemental family means that it has access to the best of both worlds in terms of power, and its moveset certainly reflects that. Unfortunately, its Partner Skill just isn't quite up to snuff, and power alone can't carry a Pal in as competitive a family as the Dark Pals.
Maraith and Helzephyr, meanwhile, can both be ridden, which adds utility poits for them both. They may not have as much raw strength as other Pals, but that utility makes up for what they lack. These two Pals also have decent Work Suitabilities as well, meaning they wouldn't be out of place in a mid-to-late game base.
C-Tier Dark Pals
Our C-Tier Pals suffer from the niche use curse - while in specific situations they're great, those situations just don't happen very often.
Some Pals may have the fact that they're a Mount Pal going for them, but these Dark Pals were better off in the shadows. Hoocrates might be useful in a full Dark Pal team, but otherwise, it's fairly outstripped - it just can't keep up with stronger Pals. Nox might add Dark damage to the Player's attacks, but other Dark Pals that have more going for them do this as well, and Nox just doesn't have the power to make up for the lack of originality.
Killamari can be ridden as a Glider, but doesn't have much happening outside of that, and it can be annoying to find as well. Loupmoon likewise has decent power, but poor Work Suitability and a lacking Partner Skill, meaning nothing really wows about it either. Katress is in the same boat, with the downside of an even poorer Partner Skill than Loupmoon, and Depresso, while its ability is funny the first few times, just isn't a late-game Pal.
Daedream is an interesting Pal due to its key item, Daedream's Necklace. This item allows Daedream to stay out with you at all times - meaning a full team of Daedream will all be out and battling at once, instead of the normal restriction of one Pal at a time. The downside is, Daedream just isn't that strong - so while it's a funny interaction early on, it quickly loses its luster.
We wish these Pals had more versatile uses - unfortunately, outside of their specific niches, these aren't the Pals for a hard-hitting team.
D-Tier Dark Pals: The Worst Dark Pals
Unfortunately, there always has to be a Pal that wins the title of Worst Dark Pal - and with the large pool of S-Tier Pals comes a similarly large pool of D-Tier Pals.
Mau has one of the absolute worst Partner Skills in the game. Leaving it in your base will allow it to occasionally dig up a gold coin, but selling literally anything to a Merchant will generate more gold than this. Being cute is the strength of this Pal, and nothing more.
Similarly, Leezpunk and Cawgnito may have decent power, but their Work Suitability and Partner Skills are both poor - unless you're going out of your way to find every single dungeon on the map, or really want to see a plague doctor bird peck something to death, there's no use for these Pals.
Finally, one of the absolute worst Partner Skills we've seen belongs to Tombat. Its entire Partner Skill is dedicated to finding nearby Pals. That's it - the thing that you could already do because they show up when you look in their general direction. While we might see a very niche case of "where is this Boss" happening, Tombat is unfortunately the Pal who may have gotten the shortest end of the stick when it comes to powers.
These Pals just couldn't quite cut it - and we recommend bringing any other Pals on this list along on your adventures before these two.
Which Pal is your favorite Dark friend? Let us know in the comments below!
