Before the Tower · Chapter 5
Tower 5: Victor & Shadowbeak
From this fight on, Dragon is a required role rather than an option.
| Tower boss Pal | Recommended level | HP | Element | Counter direction | Region |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shadowbeak | Lv50 | 105,000 | Dark | Weak to Dragon | Around the Astral Mountains |
Shadowbeak used to be the hardest tower boss in the game. In 1.0 it has slipped to fifth, and 105,000 HP barely registers next to the towers that follow — yet it is still where most people first feel, seriously, that they need to raise a Pal on purpose. Dark fears Dragon, and Dragon Pals are not lying around the way Fire and Water ones are.
Pre-fight checklist
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Recommended entry level | The site data anchor is Lv50. |
| Element to bring | Dragon. There is no second counter face to fall back on here — Dragon damage is a hard requirement. |
| Your own kit | When it strafes across the arena your Pals often cannot keep up, and your own damage is what covers the gap. Per this site's 1.0 technology table, the best tier reachable before Lv50 is the Assault Rifle (Lv45) and the Semi-Auto Shotgun (Lv47); the general Rocket Launcher needs Lv65, so the old advice to bring a rocket launcher simply does not hold at this point in 1.0. |
| Supplies | The site's recomputation shows most 600-power Dragon moves are only learned at Lv50. Which means your Dragon Pal has to be levelled to 50 alongside you — catching one at the door is too late. |
Counter picks you can actually catch before this tower
Computed from this site's 1.0 data: wild, dungeon and alpha catches only, with skill-learning level at or below this tower's recommended level. High power does not guarantee a win — cooldowns, durability and your own weapon tier all count.
Dragon coverage
| Pal | Counter skill | Power | Learned at | Earliest catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relaxaurus | Dragon Meteor | 600 | Lv50 | Lv10–10dungeon |
| Azurobe | Dragon Meteor | 600 | Lv50 | Lv11–18dungeon |
| Chillet | Dragon Meteor | 600 | Lv50 | Lv11–11alpha |
| Jormuntide Ignis | Dragon Meteor | 600 | Lv50 | Lv13–13dungeon |
| Elphidran | Dragon Meteor | 600 | Lv50 | Lv20–23wild |
| Wixen | Dragon Meteor | 600 | Lv50 | Lv23–27wild |
Route and anchors Human guide experience (EA walkthrough layer; 1.0 pacing not yet re-verified)
The thing worth saying about this stretch isn't the route, it's the timing. The cheapest Dragon candidates show up in dungeons as early as Lv10–13, but they only come into their power at Lv50. That forty-level gap is what decides when you should start preparing for Tower 5 — and the answer is: right after you clear Tower 2.
Chillet deserves a line of its own here. It appears at Lv11 as a fixed alpha, at a location with player in-game witness, and it is Ice + Dragon — meaning it can serve the Ice face of Tower 3 and the Dragon face of Tower 5. One Pal spanning two towers is rare on this main line.
The cold around the Astral Mountains is a genuine threat. Bring cold-resistant gear or keep a Fire Pal on the field — at minimum, one of the two.
Inside the tower
Shadowbeak streaks across the arena, and losing sight of it behind a pillar is normal. The fix is to sidestep first and open the sightline back up, then resume sustained fire — not to stand still waiting for it to come back around.
The pace here is faster than the earlier towers, and you'll repeatedly choose between chasing it and hitting it. The right call is usually not to chase: let your Pal harry it while you wait at a spot it has to pass through.
105,000 HP across five minutes is 21,000 a minute. If your Dragon Pal hasn't reached Lv50 and hasn't learned that high-power Dragon move, you will not hit that number.
Failure diagnosis
| What you're seeing | Fix this first |
|---|---|
| Your Pal can never catch it | Stop chasing. Camp its landing spot instead, and cover the damage lost during its movement with whatever gun tier you actually have. |
| Your Dragon Pal hits softer than expected | Check the learning level. Most high-power Dragon moves gate at Lv50; below that, your Pal only has the weak ones available. |
| The whole team wipes midway | Not enough durability. From Tower 5 onward, Pal level and passives become the bottleneck before type advantage does. |
After the fight
Tower 6 immediately asks for both Dragon and Dark, and the Dragon Pal you just raised carries straight over. That's a rare tailwind on this main line — don't waste it; fill in the Dark side now.
Where every claim in this chapter comes from
Item by item: which source each number and claim came from, and which evidence layer it sits in. Whatever has not been obtained is listed as a gap rather than filled in by guesswork.
| Item | Evidence layer | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Recommended level | Site 1.0 data recomputation | PalDB 1.0 tower boss page: primary source for level, HP and element |
| HP | Site 1.0 data recomputation | PalDB 1.0 tower boss page: primary source for level, HP and element |
| Element and counter direction | Site 1.0 data recomputation | This site's 1.0 Pal, spawn and skill datasite/palworld/data/pals.json、pal-details.json、pal-skills.json |
| Counter-pick table | Site 1.0 data recomputation | Build-time recomputation script for counter pickssite/palworld/lib/tower-counters.mjs |
| Weapon and armor unlock thresholds | Site 1.0 data recomputation | This site's 1.0 technology table: weapon and armor unlock levelssite/palworld/data/a10-production-core.json |
| Route and anchors | Human guide experience | Area walkthrough distillation (EA 0.6.x experience layer)site/palworld/data/walkthrough-areas.json |
| Fight mechanics and dangerous moves | Human guide experience | Boss walkthrough distillation (tactics experience layer)site/palworld/data/walkthrough-bosses.json |
| Editor's in-game witness | Not obtained | No editor in-game witness for this tower yet; the recommended level is the data anchor only |