Palia NPC romance guide
We've gathered a comprehensive Palia romance guide featuring all of your burning questions about the cozy multiplayer game, like can you get married, how to unlock romance, and which NPCs can you romance in Palia?
Palia has taken the cozy games market by storm since its successful round of open-beta access, but you may wish to share your adventures with a special someone, and there's plenty to catch your eye in the game.
NPCs are key to your progression in Palia, many of them control 'Guild Stores' which in turn, dictate how you can upgrade some of the key skills of the game, like fishing, mining, gardening and bug catching.
You'll be happy to know that Palia has a long list of romance options. Below, we'll go through the full list of romance characters and the steps you need to take to initiate dating.
How to unlock romance
As addressed above, you can romance NPCs in Palia.
To do this, you must first become friends with the resident of your choice first. Once you are friendship level three with them, you can gift them a box of chocolates to show your romantic interest (these can be purchased from the General Store from Zeki).
This will unlock romance dialogue and a questline separate from their friendship questline, which is unique to each NPC.
The quickest way to level up friendship is by giving an NPC their favourite gifts and fulfilling weekly wants.
Once you have secured friendship and registered romance with a character, you will be rewarded with a Romance Pin that you can wear to earn bonus romance points. Wearing your romance pin will also unlock new interactions with NPCs around you, as they will comment on it.
All romance options
Now that you know how to romance in the game, here's a list of all romanceable characters in Palia to help you choose wisely. As of writing, there are ten romance options in the game.
- Einar
- Hassian
- Jel
- Jina
- Kenyatta
- Nai'o
- Reth
- Tamala
- Tish
- Hodari
As per the Palia 0.170 patch, Hodari is now a romaneable character! If you have your sights set on the shy blacksmith, you'll need to first complete the final quest for the Temple of the Waves (Echoes of the Unknown) and achieve friendship level 4 with Najuma.
Click to enlargeThis sets the precedent of developer Singularity 6 adding more romantic questlines to the game in the future. Indeed, within the 0.170 patch notes blog, they recognised how popular Sifuu is within the community and mentioned:
"Sifuu is complicated for Lore Reasons, so we beg your patience. Thank you!"
Can you get married?
At the time of writing, you cannot get married in Palia and the developer hasn't specified that this will change later on or during the official release.
Click to enlargeAlthough Palia follows suit from other cosy games like Stardew Valley, it is also an online multiplayer experience so it's a little trickier to implement a relationship mechanic like this.
As it stands, each player has their own hub lot in which they can build a home, while NPCs have separate homes dotted around Kilima Village and Bahari Bay.
Can you romance more than one NPC at a time?
Click to enlargeYou can romance multiple characters in Palia. Moreover, players are able to romance any NPC they want, regardless of gender.
According to the official blog post regarding romantic relationships with NPCs, the developer has specified that they aren't currently pursuing storylines involving jealousy or cheating as they want players to play in a way that's authentic to them.
If you're playing in multiplayer with friends who share the same romance interest, this will not affect gameplay. Relationships with NPCs are treated as a solo experience. Meaning that you can romance the same character if you wish, and they will not acknowledge other partners to you.
That rounds off our Palia romance guide containing all the information you need to pursue the Palia NPC of your choice. For more on Palia, check out our homepage or see our guide on where to get the Old Coin in Palia, a hidden quest that yields a free Lucky Coin from Zeki.
