Palworld: How to Get Ancient Civilization Cores

7 hours ago 4

Published Jul 18, 2026, 9:20 PM EDT

Laurence Wall is a Contributor at DualShockers who has been writing professionally since 2022 and covering games since 2023. He primarily writes guides and lists, with a focus on indie games, RPGs, ARPGs, Soulslikes, MMOs, card games, boss fights, and detailed tutorials.

Before joining DualShockers, Laurence worked as a game reviewer for Movies, Games and Tech. He also co-founded and served as a contributor liaison for a university creative writing magazine, where he was one of the publication’s principal contributors. Laurence holds a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.

As you get further and further in Palworld, the recipes used to create certain items become more and more complicated, with the ingredients becoming equally tricky to find and keep in good supply!

At some point, as you start getting towards the late game, you’ll start noticing new items start cropping up in recipes, the Ancient Civilization Core. While you don’t need a massive amount of these, getting them can be a real pain, especially when the game doesn’t exactly point you in the right direction.

Let's take a look at how to stockpile these cores and what we can use them for.

Pre World Tree

Expeditions

I want to start with the easiest way to get these cores relatively early on. If you haven't done any expeditions yet, then don't worry, it's pretty simple.

First off, you’ll need to create a Pal Expedition Station, which is unlocked via the technology tree at level 22. Once you've done this, you'll be offered a bunch of different expeditions. Every time you explore a new location and defeat its tower boss, new expeditions will unlock, granting better rewards.

After defeating the Tower boss of Sakurajima, every expedition after will offer Cores as a reward, so long as you’re successful, of course. Make sure you train up a decent team and have at least 20 pals of the required type, and you should have a good chance of getting the maximum rewards.

Simply auto-assign the required Pals, then leave and do something else for an hour while the Pals go off on an exploration. You’ll be notified when the exploration is complete, and you can return to collect your items.

Raid Bosses

Another relatively simple way to gather a few of these cores is to complete a Raid Boss. You might have found a few fragments throughout your travels, either from opening chests scattered around the map or even from completing expeditions.

When combined, these fragments create a slab, which you can use at a Summoning Altar to summon a Raid Boss.

Be wary of the level of these bosses, as their power and HP scale far beyond their shown level.

This Boss can either be summoned to your base or you can open a separate instance to fight it on your own terms. Beating these bosses will net you some great rewards, along with a few Ancient Civilization Cores.

Oil Rigs

At the moment of writing, there are 3 Oil Rigs, situated in different parts of the ocean. Each Rig is controlled by a whole host of enemies, which need to be taken down as you make your way across the structure. However, it’s not just Pals and their trainers whom you’ll need to be wary of.

On the higher-level platforms, which you’ll need to do for the cores, you’ll also find auto-turrets, which automatically lock on and fire at you, along with Anti-Air towers, which deal massive damage to any flying Pals. On the 3rd and final Oil Rig, you’ll also have to deal with an Attack Helicopter Boss, which prevents you from opening the final chest.

It’s recommended to reach these rigs by water via a surfing pal, and then fight your way up and across. If you fly there, you’ll be shot down very quickly. At the end of the area, there will be a large gold chest, which may contain Ancient Civilisation Cores, if you’re lucky.

This isn’t the best way to obtain cores, and it can take a long time if you’re unsure what you’re doing. Better methods are available.

Post World Tree

Scavenging

As soon as you’ve taken down and captured Panthalus, you can enter the World Tree, located on the edge of the World Map.

As soon as you’re here, you can wander around the map, searching for chests and piles of scrap. Simply opening these chests and digging through these scrap piles can often grant you Ancient Civilization Cores. Quickly flying around the map and looking for these piles and glowing chests can get you a good amount of cores fairly quickly!

Ancient Relic Recycler

Alright, well, I’ve saved the best for last. I only found out about this one super recently, but it’s honestly the best way to get as many cores as possible, and not many people know about it.

Once you’ve unlocked Paloxite and reached Level 74, you’ll unlock something called the Ancient Relic Recycler. This is a machine that turns Ancient Relics, dropped by creatures in the World Tree, into a bunch of random useful items.

First off, before you go around slaughtering everything in sight, you’ll want to grab a few Pals that have increased item drops, like Elphidran and Blazehowl Noct, for example. These Pals increase drops by 40% from defeated Dark and Neutral Pals. If you condense and raise the star levels of these, pals, you’ll get even higher percentages.

Next, take a Fast Flying Pal, like Jetdragon or Eidrolon, with a strong AoE attack like Meteorain, and mow down huge groups of Pals that cluster together. This way, you can grab a massive amount of relics pretty quickly.

If you see a Pal with a glowing blue aura, you’ll get a huge amount of relics by capturing it!

Bring these relics back to the Recycler, and then insert them into the machine with some Holy Water to speed up the process. Assign some Pals with good Handiwork, and then switch the machine on with the “On” button at the bottom of the Recycler Menu.

Now just sit back and let the Ancient Civilization Cores roll in. Once you’ve discovered this method, you’ll have more cores than you know what to do with!