Palworld Hardwood Guide: Where to Farm It After the 1.0 Update

Palworld’s 1.0 launch didn’t just close out Early Access, it quietly reshuffled the crafting economy with a new late-game material called Hardwood, and players are already discovering it isn’t as simple to farm as regular lumber. According to Shacknews, the resource only drops from a specific type of tree found in one corner of the map, which means anyone hoping to stockpile it for late-game gear needs to know exactly where to look.

Where to find Hardwood on Sakurajima Island

Shacknews reports that the most reliable source of Hardwood is the Dancing Sakura Shrine, located on Sakurajima Island in the northwest section of Palworld’s map. Reaching it typically means cutting through the Mushroom Wetlands or the Southern Sandbar first, unless a player has already unlocked fast travel points closer to the shrine from earlier exploration.

Once there, the pink cherry blossom trees scattered around the shrine are the actual drop source, not the surrounding foliage or standard timber. Shacknews notes that no special tool is required to chop them down; anything from a basic stone axe upward will do the job, which at least removes one barrier for players who haven’t invested heavily in tool upgrades yet.

Why Hardwood Is Gated Behind Late-Game Areas

Sakurajima Island sits among Palworld’s tougher regions, so stumbling onto Hardwood early isn’t really the intended path. Shacknews points out that players shouldn’t stress about missing it in the opening hours, since the crafting recipes that actually need Hardwood tend to unlock around the same time a player is strong enough to survive the island in the first place.

That kind of soft gating is a familiar Pocketpair design choice, echoing how earlier ore and metal tiers in Palworld were tied to specific biomes rather than simple progression milestones. It keeps exploration meaningful well past the early hours, which matters for a game that leaned so heavily on open-world discovery during its Early Access run.

Buying Hardwood From Wandering Merchants

For players who don’t fancy the trek to Sakurajima Island, Shacknews confirms there’s a shortcut: Wandering Merchants occasionally stock Hardwood for purchase. The Village Shop merchant and the Fisherman’s Point merchant are both cited as reliable vendors carrying the item, priced at 100 Gold Coins per unit.

That gold cost isn’t trivial early on, but it does give players a way to skip the shrine run entirely if they’d rather grind currency through hunting, farming, or base production instead. It’s a useful fallback for anyone who’s cleared the surrounding areas but doesn’t want to keep backtracking every time Hardwood runs low.

What This Means for Post-1.0 Palworld Progression

Hardwood’s introduction lines up with Palworld’s broader shift since exiting Early Access, where Pocketpair has been layering in more structured endgame content to give long-time players fresh reasons to keep building. A material this tightly restricted to one region signals that the studio wants players actually visiting Sakurajima Island rather than farming it passively from a base built elsewhere on the map.

For newer players jumping in post-launch, this is also a solid marker of how far the crafting tree now stretches beyond the early loop of paldium fragments and basic ingots. Anyone chasing top-tier gear or structures should expect a few more resource runs like this one before Palworld’s 1.0 crafting ladder is fully cleared.

Read also: Palworld Exits Steam Early Access, Leads July 10 Weekend PC Deals