"Ultra" Palworld 1.0 mod adds ray-traced lighting, and it's already got 18,000 downloads

A new Palworld mod, launched to celebrate 1.0, has already racked up over 18,000 total downloads since it was published.

The survival game already has pretty high visual fidelity - the Palworld system requirements ask for a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, with options for DLSS, shadows, and textural detailing like grass. One thing it's missing, though, is enhanced light sources like torches - ones that more widely affect the area around them. That's where Nexus Mods user 'Fr4nsson' comes in. Having created another incredibly popular lighting tweak in Fallout 4 (with 1.2 million downloads since it was published in 2015), the Ultra Graphics Palworld mod aims to add even more detail to the Palpagos Islands through improved lighting.

Said to enhance "the visuals with ray-traced Lumen global illumination," it also brings in additional effects such as "extended view distance, improved sunlight and ambient lighting, and dynamic shadows for torches and other light sources."

The Palworld mod will require a little bit of setup in order to get it running - it's not something you can download instantly with something like the Vortex mod manager, for example. But Fr4nsson includes a set of detailed instructions to follow along with. These changes are only available client-side, though. If you tend to play Pocketpair's title with others, unless they also have the mod installed, the effects provided won't appear for them.

So whether you're playing alone or with friends, the Palpagos Islands are about to get a whole lot more beautiful with this particular little download.