Every Palworld weapon tier list ranks guns by raw attack number. None of them tell you what a Rocket Launcher shot actually costs to craft versus an Assault Rifle burst, or why a weapon with a lower DPS score can still be the better pick for a specific fight. That’s the gap this guide fills: real crafting-material costs from the Palworld Wiki[1] cross-referenced against community DPS testing, broken down by what you’re actually shooting at.
This guide covers five weapons that anchor the mid-to-late-game arsenal: Assault Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Grenade Launcher, Gatling Gun, and Single-Shot Rifle, rather than cataloguing all 40-plus guns in the game. These five cover every enemy category you’ll actually fight, and the material-cost math below scales the same way for their rarer siblings (Overheat Rifle, Plasma Cannon, Beam Launcher) once you unlock them.
Verified against Palworld v1.0 (build 1.100.427, released July 10, 2026) and the July 15 stability hotfix — no publicly documented weapon balance changes since the 1.0 launch. If a number here doesn’t match your game, check your in-game tooltip against the sources cited at the end.
What Changed When Palworld Left Early Access
The 1.0 launch added 13 new weapons, including the Heavy Assault Rifle, Tactical Grenade Launcher, Plasma Rifle, Beam Launcher, Combat SMG, and Prototype Shotgun, most of them crafted from a new Soralite Ingot rather than Coralum or Pal Metal Ingot.[15] If your loadout still runs on pre-1.0 weapon names, the crafting-cost comparisons in this guide use the same base weapons those upgrades build on, so the material logic carries over once you unlock the newer tiers.
Two non-weapon changes matter just as much as the new guns. First, the Extra Weapon Holster now lets you equip up to six weapons at once, up from a much tighter loadout pre-1.0.[15] That’s enough room to carry a Rocket Launcher for burst, a Gatling Gun for sustained fights, and a Grenade Launcher for groups, without ever opening a menu mid-combat. Second, the combat motion rework means you can now attack while dashing and reloading continues through dodges, which narrows the practical gap between single-shot and sustained weapons compared to pre-1.0 combat.[15]
Quick Start: What to Craft First
Skip the guesswork. This is the order that gets you from stone spear to endgame DPS without wasting materials on a workbench tier you’ll abandon in two hours.
- Build a Weapon Assembly Line before anything else. Both the Assault Rifle and Single-Shot Rifle craft here, and neither needs the Tier II upgrade.[1]
- Stockpile Refined Ingot and Gunpowder early. Assault Rifle Ammo and Rifle Ammo use the exact same recipe — 1 Refined Ingot + 2 Gunpowder for 5 rounds — so anything you farm covers both guns.[3][8][12]
- Craft the Single-Shot Rifle first if you’re still catching, not fighting. It’s the cheapest precision weapon in the game: 20 Refined Ingot, 5 Polymer, 20 Hardwood.[7]
- Upgrade to Weapon Assembly Line II as soon as your base can support it. This single workbench unlocks the Rocket Launcher, Grenade Launcher, and Gatling Gun — the entire late-game damage tier sits behind one upgrade.[4][5][6]
- Farm Pal Metal Ingot before Coralum Ingot. Three of the four Tier II weapons (Grenade Launcher, Gatling Gun, and their ammo) run on Pal Metal Ingot. Only the Rocket Launcher itself needs the rarer Coralum Ingot.[4][5][6]
- Don’t craft a Gatling Gun until you have a Gunpowder pipeline running. Its ammo costs 3 Gunpowder per 5 rounds, and the 100-round magazine burns through that fast.[6][11]
- Check the enemy-type table below before you lock in a loadout. The “best” weapon in Palworld changes depending on whether you’re farming a camp or soloing a Tower Boss.
One scaling note before the numbers: every damage figure and cost calculation in this guide uses the Legendary tier of each weapon, since that’s what the community DPS benchmark tested against.[13] Common-tier versions of the same guns deal less damage per shot (Common Assault Rifle is 320, not 560) but use the identical ammo recipe, so the material-cost ratios between weapons hold up at any rarity tier — you’re just moving further down the damage-per-shot column.
Full Weapon Comparison Table
Attack values are only comparable within the same weapon class — a 562 Gatling Gun shot and a 562 Musket shot don’t behave the same way in combat, since magazine size and fire rate do the real work.[14] Here’s how the five weapons this guide focuses on stack up, common to legendary tier.[1]
| Weapon | Attack (Common–Legendary) | Magazine | Priority | Avoid If |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assault Rifle | 320–560 | 20–30 | First real DPS weapon; craft it the moment you hit Weapon Assembly Line | You’re still farming Coarse Ammo materials — wait until Refined Ingot flows |
| Rocket Launcher | 10,000–14,000 | 1 | Best raw damage-per-material efficiency; single-target burst | You’re fighting anything with a phase you need to out-DPS over time |
| Grenade Launcher | 3,000–4,500 | 5 | Best pick vs. clustered/grouped enemies | You’re fighting one isolated high-HP target — the AOE is wasted |
| Gatling Gun | 375–562 | 100 | Sustained-fire endgame DPS once your Gunpowder supply is stable | Ammo production can’t keep pace — you’ll dry-fire mid-fight |
| Single-Shot Rifle | 1,100–2,310 | 1 | Cheapest precision option; shares ammo cost with the Assault Rifle | You need sustained damage — the reload window is long |
Weapon DPS Per Crafting Material Cost: The Real Numbers
This is the number no tier list publishes. Using each weapon’s Legendary-tier damage-per-shot from the wiki[1] against its own ammo recipe,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] here’s what 1,000 damage actually costs in raw materials:
| Weapon | Dmg/Shot (Legendary) | Materials per 1,000 Damage |
|---|---|---|
| Rocket Launcher | 14,000 | ~0.07 Pal Metal Ingot + 0.36 Gunpowder |
| Single-Shot Rifle | 2,310 | ~0.09 Refined Ingot + 0.17 Gunpowder |
| Grenade Launcher | 4,500 | ~0.07 Pal Metal Ingot + 1.48 Fiber + 0.22 Gunpowder |
| Gatling Gun | 562 | ~0.36 Pal Metal Ingot + 1.07 Gunpowder |
| Assault Rifle | 560 | ~0.36 Refined Ingot + 0.71 Gunpowder |
Read that table wrong and you’ll conclude the Rocket Launcher is a strictly better Assault Rifle. It isn’t — because the table only counts materials, not time. A single-shot weapon that deals huge damage per shot needs very few shots to hit 1,000 damage, so its material cost per 1,000 damage looks tiny. But you can only fire it as fast as you can reload a one-round magazine.
This is where community DPS testing fills the gap the wiki doesn’t cover.[13] Legendary-tier benchmarks that include the full shoot-and-reload cycle put the Assault Rifle at roughly 3,254 DPS and the Gatling Gun at roughly 4,073 DPS, against the Rocket Launcher’s roughly 2,295 DPS.[13] So the Rocket Launcher costs less material per point of damage, but the Assault Rifle and Gatling Gun deliver more total damage per second of actual combat time. Materials are the bottleneck for a base that isn’t producing Gunpowder fast enough; real-time DPS is the bottleneck in a fight with a clock on it. Which one matters more depends entirely on what you’re short on — see the player-type table below.
One caveat worth stating plainly: that DPS benchmark is a community test, not an official developer figure, and it doesn’t disclose exact methodology beyond noting it includes reload time.[13] Treat the ranking (Gatling Gun > Assault Rifle > Rocket Launcher for sustained DPS) as reliable; treat the exact decimal numbers as approximate.
Put a number on it: killing a 50,000-HP target with a Legendary Rocket Launcher takes roughly 4 rockets and about 4 Pal Metal Ingot plus 20 Gunpowder in ammo, but at one shot per reload cycle that fight stretches well past what the same target takes under sustained Gatling Gun fire. The Gatling Gun needs roughly 89 rounds to do the same 50,000 damage, costing around 18 Pal Metal Ingot and 53 Gunpowder — over 4x the Pal Metal Ingot and roughly 2.6x the Gunpowder — but finishes in a fraction of the time because it isn’t stopping to reload a single-round magazine between shots. That trade is the entire decision: pay in materials, or pay in time.
Launcher vs. Rifle: When Each One Wins by Enemy Type
Palworld’s harder fights break into four distinct categories — Tower Bosses, Alpha Pals, Raid Bosses, and grouped enemy camps — and each one rewards a different weapon for a specific mechanical reason, not just a bigger number.[17]
| Enemy Type | Best Weapon | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tower Bosses (Marcus, Victor, Zenara, etc.) | Assault Rifle or Gatling Gun | These are endurance fights against one stationary-ish HP pool with attack windows to punish — sustained DPS beats a single burst you have to reload after |
| Alpha Pals (open-world/dungeon) | Rocket Launcher or Single-Shot Rifle | Alpha fights are short and often decided in the opening seconds before the Pal closes distance — a single high-damage shot can end the fight before your material-efficiency argument even matters |
| Raid Bosses (base-summoned endgame) | Gatling Gun | Longest fight category by design — a 100-round magazine and reliable ammo pipeline outlasts a launcher’s reload cycle over a multi-minute encounter |
| Grouped enemies (Syndicate camps, roaming packs) | Grenade Launcher | Splits damage across a cluster instead of overkilling one target — the 3-material-per-round ammo cost is the best per-shot value against 3+ enemies at once |
The one exception: Zenara & Astralym, the final Tower Boss, has no elemental weakness at all — it’s a pure gear check.[17] That’s exactly the scenario where the Gatling Gun’s sustained-DPS advantage matters most, since there’s no shortcut to skip the damage race.
The underlying pattern across all four rows is the same one from the cost-per-damage table above: short, decisive fights reward the weapon with the highest damage-per-shot, because you never live long enough in that fight to pay the sustained-fire tax in ammo. Long fights invert that logic entirely, because a single-shot weapon’s reload time becomes the bottleneck instead of its material cost. Palworld doesn’t have a universal “best gun” — it has a best gun for how long the fight in front of you is going to last.
For the Pal side of that equation — which team compositions actually carry these fights — see our Best Combat Pals guide, and for keeping your Gunpowder pipeline fed during a long Gatling Gun grind, our Ore Farming Guide covers the Pal Metal Ingot and Coralum Ingot routes referenced above.
Which Weapon Fits Your Playstyle
| Player Type | Priority |
|---|---|
| New player | Assault Rifle. It’s the only weapon here that needs just a base Weapon Assembly Line, and its ammo recipe (Refined Ingot + Gunpowder) is the cheapest entry point. |
| Casual player | Grenade Launcher once Weapon Assembly Line II is up. The AOE covers aiming mistakes — you don’t need Gatling Gun-level sustained accuracy to clear a camp. |
| Hardcore/optimizer | Run the material-cost table against your actual base output. If Gunpowder production is your bottleneck, the Rocket Launcher and Single-Shot Rifle win. If real-time DPS in long fights is what you’re optimizing, Gatling Gun and Assault Rifle win instead. |
| Completionist | Every weapon in this guide shares an Ingot-plus-Gunpowder backbone. Stockpile a surplus of both and you cover the entire weapon-crafting list without a dedicated farming run per gun. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Rocket Launcher or Assault Rifle better in Palworld?
Neither is strictly better — they’re solving different constraints. The Rocket Launcher costs roughly a fifth of the Gunpowder per 1,000 damage that the Assault Rifle does, but it can only fire once before reloading. If your base isn’t producing enough Gunpowder, take the Rocket Launcher. If you’re in a multi-minute fight where reload time actually matters, the Assault Rifle’s community-tested DPS is roughly 40% higher.[13]
What’s the cheapest weapon to spam in Palworld?
The Assault Rifle and Single-Shot Rifle tie on raw ammo cost — both use 1 Refined Ingot + 2 Gunpowder per 5 rounds.[3][12] The Assault Rifle wins the tiebreak because its higher magazine size and fire rate turn that identical material cost into more total damage per minute.
Do I need a Gatling Gun if I already have a Rocket Launcher?
For most content, no — a Rocket Launcher one-shots most Alpha Pals before the Gatling Gun’s magazine matters. The Gatling Gun earns its ammo cost specifically in Raid Boss fights, where the encounter is long enough that a 100-round magazine and a working Gunpowder pipeline outlast the Rocket Launcher’s one-shot-then-reload cycle.[17]
Which weapon should I craft first after the early game?
Ignore the attack number and look at the workbench requirement instead. The Assault Rifle and Single-Shot Rifle both craft at the base Weapon Assembly Line, while the Rocket Launcher, Grenade Launcher, and Gatling Gun all sit behind the Tier II upgrade.[1][4][5][6][7] Craft whichever of the first two matches materials you already have, then rebuild your priority list once Tier II is available.
Sources
- Weapons — The Palworld Wiki
- Ammo — The Palworld Wiki
- Assault Rifle — The Palworld Wiki
- Rocket Launcher — The Palworld Wiki
- Grenade Launcher — The Palworld Wiki
- Gatling Gun — The Palworld Wiki
- Single-Shot Rifle — The Palworld Wiki
- Assault Rifle Ammo — The Palworld Wiki
- Rocket Ammo — The Palworld Wiki
- Grenade Ammo — The Palworld Wiki
- Gatling Gun Bullet — The Palworld Wiki
- Rifle Ammo — The Palworld Wiki
- Palworld Weapons Guide: DPS Test, Ammo Efficiency — The Pal Professor
- Best Weapons — Fextralife Palworld Wiki
- Palworld 1.0 Patch Notes — XGamingServer
- All Tower Bosses in Order and How to Beat Them — KeenGamer
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.