Modder ‘Fr4nsson’ has released a must-have mod for everyone who plays the final retail version of Palworld. This mod enables ray-traced lumen global illumination, lumen reflections, dynamic shadows, and more. So, let’s take a closer look at it.

This Ultra Graphics Mod for Palworld combines Unreal Engine configuration changes with a UE4SS Lua script that enhances selected in-game light sources. Sunlight, torches, wall-mounted lights, and similar sources produce stronger indirect illumination, improved shadows, and more noticeable lighting in their surroundings.

As I said, the mod enables ray-traced Lumen global illumination. It also allows multiple light sources to cast dynamic shadows (however, as of this moment, not all of them cast shadows).

Furthermore, the mod increases distance-field shadow range from 25,000 to 250,000. It also increases the World Partition default loading range, as well as the overall view distance.

Do note that this mod comes with a pretty big performance hit, though. An AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and 64GB of RAM can run the vanilla game with 152FPS at 4K/Max Settings. With this mod, we get down to 142FPS. And then, with the Engine.ini changes, we get to 92FPS. That’s a 40% performance hit. So, use it only if you have a high-end gaming PC system.

You can go ahead and download the mod from here. You’ll also need UE4SS (you can find a download link for its latest version on its NexusMods page).

To install it, you’ll have to extract the mod into the game installation folder. Then, you’ll have to edit your Engine.ini file, which is located in the folder “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\Config\Windows\Engine.ini”. Open the file with a text editor and add the following configuration at the bottom of the file.

[SystemSettings]
; Extends object draw distance
r.ViewDistanceScale=4

; Lumen global illumination
r.DynamicGlobalIlluminationMethod=1

; Lumen indirect lighting
r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.Allow=1

; Lumen reflections
r.ReflectionMethod=1
r.Lumen.Reflections.Allow=1
r.Lumen.Reflections.HierarchicalScreenTraces.RelativeDepthThickness=0.07
r.Lumen.Reflections.MaxRayIntensity=4
r.Lumen.Reflections.MaxRoughnessToTrace=0.25
r.Lumen.Reflections.HierarchicalScreenTraces.MaxIterations=12

; Epic global illumination quality
sg.GlobalIlluminationQuality=3

; Epic reflection quality
sg.ReflectionQuality=3

; Disables screen-space traces for Lumen diffuse global illumination.
; Fixes foliage/grass noise but instead causes shadow pockets on tight
; intersections like clffs.
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces=0

; Enable detailed trace if we later set ScreenTraces to 1
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal=1

; Limit the negative effect of r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces=0
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.TraceMeshSDFs=0
r.LumenScene.GlobalSDF.CoveredExpandSurfaceScale=0.1
r.LumenScene.GlobalSDF.NotCoveredExpandSurfaceScale=0.5

; Forces cheaper software Lumen tracing
r.Lumen.HardwareRayTracing=0

; High shadow quality
sg.ShadowQuality=2

; Sun and moon tree shadows, vanilla is 2048
r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=4096

; Torch and other local lights
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=1024

; Culls very small shadow casters
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.025

Fr4nsson has also shared the following comparison screenshots. These will give you an idea of the visual improvements this mod brings to the table. And, as you will see, there is a pretty big visual improvement.

Speaking of Palworld, I also recommend downloading this HD Texture Pack. This pack is 60GB in size and uses AI tools to improve the original game’s textures. As such, the new textures still look like the old ones, just in higher quality.

Have fun!