How To Enable Proximity Chat In Palia

Palia’s social features allow players to chat with other players in their current server, manage and send friend requests, join parties, and create new communities. The latest patch update, v0.170, added a new social feature, Nearby Chat, which functions similarly to proximity chat.

Turning on this feature is more straightforward; players can view its chat channel for sending and receiving messages. This guide provides more information on the latest social feature, Nearby Chat, and how to enable it in Palia.

How To Enable The Nearby Proximity Chat In Palia?

Developer Singularity 6 confirmed in their Developer Update in September 2023 that a new in-game social feature is be included in a future update for Palia. The proximity chat has been a prominent feature in multiple online multiplayer games, allowing players to broadcast their voice to nearby players, which can be toggled on or off within the game’s settings.

The developer has rebranded this feature for a more cozy feel called Nearby Chat, which does have a few tweaks. This feature swaps out the voice broadcast for text as players can text nearby players, which pairs wonderfully with the recently included Flare Arrows to coordinate players for various in-game activities.

Nearby Chats also encourage deep immersion for roleplay interactions between players, allowing players to have more intimate conversations. Luckily, players don’t need to toggle any settings to enable this as it’s toggled by default when joining a server, and its channel can be selected in-game.

When bringing up the chatbox and hitting the ENTER key, players will have the option to view various chat channels: Server, Nearby, Party, Whisper, and Community channels. Players can select any of these channels to remain highlighted, which for the Nearby channel, they can select and click where they can view and respond to messages promptly.

They’ll also receive a real-time count of how many players are within their vicinity below the Nearby Chat channel. This changes when players walk, sprint, and glide around Kilima Village and Bahari Bay but will reach 0 when no players are around or are visiting their housing plot.

To not view incoming messages within the Nearby Chat channel, players can once again hit ENTER to bring up the chatbox. Locate the Nearby Chat channel, highlighted in yellow, and they can click on it to turn off receiving messages and real-time player count.

Palia is currently available in Open Beta for PC, as players can install the game launcher detailed in this guide. The cozy MMO will be available on Nintendo Switch consoles, releasing Holiday Season 2023.