Palworld Egg Hatching Settings
What Pal Egg Hatching Time really is (a multiplier, not hours), the range the panel accepts, and how to balance hatching for your server.
It Is a Multiplier, Not a Number of Hours
This is the setting people get wrong most often, and the name is why. Pal Egg Hatching Time (PalEggDefaultHatchingTime) is a MULTIPLIER on however long the game would normally take to hatch an egg. It is not a number of hours.
The default is 1.0, which means normal. 0.5 halves the time. 2.0 doubles it. 0 hatches instantly.
The GameGrid Settings panel accepts 0 to 10 and nothing outside that. If you have read a guide telling you to set 72 for a three-day hatch, the panel will not take it - and if it did, it would mean seventy-two times the normal duration rather than seventy-two hours.
The field is in Settings under Gameplay, and like every Palworld setting it needs a server restart.
How Incubators Work
Players craft incubators in game and place eggs inside. The incubator slowly progresses the egg toward hatching.
In-game environmental factors speed up or slow down hatching: an egg kept at the right temperature progresses faster. That is a gameplay mechanic, not a server setting.
The multiplier scales the base duration; the environmental modifiers are applied on top of it. Halving the multiplier halves the wait in every condition rather than fixing hatching at a particular number of minutes.
Recommended Values
Fast / breeding-focused server: 0 for instant hatching, or 0.1 for a tenth of the normal wait. Players can rapidly test breeding combinations and build their collection.
Standard server: 1.0, the default - whatever the game intends.
Slow server: 2.0 to 5.0, so hatching becomes a meaningful event rather than a formality.
Very slow: 10.0 is the highest the panel accepts, and it is a long wait. Only for servers where breeding is meant to be a major investment.
Changing the Setting
Pal Egg Hatching Time lives in PalWorldSettings.ini. On GameGrid you change it from the Settings tab, in the Gameplay category, and the panel writes the file for you.
A server restart is required. Nothing in PalWorldSettings.ini reloads on a running server.
The change applies to eggs placed in incubators after the restart. Eggs already incubating keep the old timing.
If a change genuinely will not stick, read the WorldOption.sav guide. That file is known to shadow Workers per Base; before deleting it, check the value in game against what the panel shows.