How to get Gold Keys in Palworld

The Palpagos Islands in Palworld are a massive swath of land waiting to be explored. You will spend plenty of time catching a team of Pals in the early going, as well as collecting plenty of materials to build up a base and upgrade your gear, but exploration will always pull you out into the dangerous wilds. While you’re out there, you will eventually happen upon various treasure chests with the promise of some great loot inside. These chests come in different types, with each requiring a unique type of key to be opened. The rarest of these chests need a Gold Key, which is obviously the hardest to find. In fact, you can look high and low and never find one. There’s a trick to getting these special keys, and we’ll share all those juicy details.

How to get Gold Keys

While Copper and Silver Keys can be collected as loot from certain Pals, Gold Keys won’t drop from any monster in the game, even the Legendaries. The only way we’ve found to get a Gold Key is to kill an unlikely and dangerous target.

Gold Keys will drop when you fight and defeat a Black Marketeer. These special merchants are non-hostile by default, but once you attack, be ready for a fight. They, and their Pal, will be at level 40 and will not hold back in defending themselves. Once you finish them off, grab the key off of their body and hang on to it until you find a chest to use it on.