Traits are extremly important for the pals power and speed, here is a small guide on what is optimal for various type of pals.

Collecting the Traits
Breed a Lamball with Lucky, Artisan or Serious with another that has one of the other
this will yield an egg after a few tries at least a Lucky + Artisan or Serious Lamball, continue
until you have a Lamball with Lucky, Artisant, Serious and Swift (or at least runner)
For combat/Speed pals do Lucky, Ferocious, Swift and Runner, will give you a +50% speed and +35% atk combat and speed pal as a base to make other combat and speed pals.
Once you have these "nodes" of traits, breeding better and newer pals, with higher chance of keeping the traits you have collected upon new eggs are a good way.

Use 2 of the same type to create nodes
I prefer to use what I call Hybrid nodes to experiment to bring forth new pals, once i know what they are I might choose other nodes to create another and more suited version, or you can look at a breeding guide for what mixes with what.

Lamball with Work force Traits + Chikipi with Work Force Traits = Mau with those traits
Lamball with Speed traits + Chikipi with combat traits = Mau with a mix or a full set off either.

Bring down Legendary
When you plan to breed down legendary, Having a Swift+Runner+Ferocious Lamball is smart
Lamball + any Legendary tend to make a rather basic Pal, and if one of the many eggs have Legendary and Swift+Runner you can use it to get Legendary to both Speed Pals and Combat Pals with ease and definatly the hybrid variants of the two mentioned earlier.

Legendary Necromus+Lamball = Legendary Foxcicle then add Penking = Legendary Bushi then add Penking with the Legendary Bushi = Legendary Anubis then add Regular Captured lv 47 Earth emperor Anubis and tada, you have a optimized super Anubis.

if the lamball had Ferocious, Swift and Runner or perhaps even lucky instead of runner. You will have a Speed/combat hybrid Foxcicle and Bushi out of it as well, which lets you breed Bushi into a Faelaris which is one off the fastest fliers which will have Swift, runner and Legendary and potentially ferocious.

Type of Nodes: For instance: Lamball with Artisan, Serious, Lucky and Swift would be a "Work Node", a Nitewing with Swift, Runner, Ferocious and Lucky would be a "Speed/Combat Node"

Work Pals: Anyone you are keeping back in camp to mine stone pit, lumbering, cooking, generate drops and farming like: Lamball, Chickpi, Beegard, Mozzarina and so on. Can be anyone really even Anubis or Lunaris are amazing workers, building as well as crafting at amazing speed.

Best Traits
Artisan: +50% workspeed
Serious: +20% workspeed
Lucky: +15% atk and +15% workspeed. (shiny has it 100% of the time)

Good Traits
Swift: +30% speed
Runner: +20% speed

Bad Traits
Workslave: +30% Workspeed but also -30% atk, this makes them horrible to defend themselves during raids, if you want it instead of run speed go for it, but the runspeed makes them move quicker to/from food, sleep, bath, transporting, gathering etc.

Labor Pals: In the field miners and lumberers.
As the Forman traits affect PLAYER efficency they are horrible, as well as vanguard, stronghold and motivation traits, Ignore anything of traits affecting player, instead use Lumber/Mining Combat/Speed Pals instead of a pick or axe.

Speed Pals: Any Mount or Flying Pal, the more speed bonus the quicker it will run and even jump further or fly at amazing speeds.

Best Traits
Swift: +30% speed
Runner: +20% speed
Nimble: +10% speed
Legendary: +20% atk, def and +15% speed

Combat Pals: Anyone you plan to use in a fight.

Best Traits
Mucelhead: +30% atk, -50% workspeed (While superior in omph, you will most likly favor Ferocious while breeding as it gives no penalties, but if you do manage to switch ferocious with Mucelhead on main combat pals, it has 10% more atk than ferocious versions.)
Ferocious: +20% Atk
Legendary: +20% atk, Defense and +15% movement speed

Good Traits
Brave: +10% atk
Lucky: +15% Atk, +15% workspeed (requires Shiny to get)
Advanced Type Dmg Traits: +20% to Type dmg (if you are pure single elemental dmg dealer then yeah this is much better than brave and lucky, but if you plan to use hybrid elemntal builds on your pal then Brave or Lucky is better)

The Advanced Type dmg traits are Earth Emperor, Flame Emperor, Lord of the Sea, Divine Dragon, Celestial Lord and so on these various +20% type dmg traits are found on Jormundtide, Anubis and other bosses found on the map, Breeding a Bushi with a Penking gives you an Anubis without Earth Emperor.

Defense Pals
Yeah... no, Defense is a joke, fight with type advantage (fire vs grass, Dark vs Normal etc) makes you not only do more dmg, but take next to nothing. So yeah, not needed at all.

Hybrid Node
Swift, Runner, Ferocious and Lucky on your early to mid game combat and speed pals saves you a lot of time for breeding up to better types, and when you breed a legendary down to mix in legendary you have a lot of Hybrid nodes that easily can become Speed Pals or Combat Pals. Definatly worth it to get Legendary around to various pals without messing up to much of the traits.

Personal Favoritt Builds:

Hybrid Work Focus
Lucky, Artisan, Serious for 85% workspeed + Swift for increased movement speed at 30% between eating, transporting, geting to work locations and more.y.

Hybrid Combat Focus
Swift, Legendary, Ferocious + Advanced Elemental Type or Lucky for dual elemental types
My Anubis: Earth Emperor (20% ground type dmg), Ferocious +20%, Legendary +20%, souls +30% for a total of 90% dmg bonus with ground (70% for other elements) and 30% speed.
My Orserk: Lucky, Ferocious, Legendary for a 85% dmg increase to both dragon and lightning attacks, with a +30% speed from swift.

(Anubis and Orserk are good to deal with camp stuff, thus Mucelhead is not a good fit for them)

Hybrid Speed Focus
Swift, Legendary, Runner + Ferocious for high speed but also decent combat use.
My Jetragon: Swift, Runner, Legendary for 65% speed and Ferocious, Legendary and souls bringing attack power to 70%.

Souls
Souls is a resource that can even further empower your Pals, they are found in chests, on the ground, gained from beating Alpha Pals (bosses). However until you are at the very end and want to make your monsterous Anubis which is at +60% (or 90% with mucelhead) atk bonus gain another +30% from using all the souls on attack, it is better to save em for later. Using them in pre-end game might give you an edge but you shouldn't need it, and it will make a much larger impact on your finly polished super traited whatever pal that is your go to combat pal.

Pal Essence Condenser
Any surplus pal with bad traits, wrong traits and so on can be used to empower your pals even more. First you need 4, then 16, then 32, then 64 pals of the same type, it takes time but at the final step or 4th star. All of the Pal skills increase with 1, this means that Anubis would go from having
4 Handiwork, 3 Mining and 2 Transporting to become 5 Handiwork, 4 Mining and 3 Transporting.
Or a Lamball or Chikipi would become farming 2 which is amazing for the amount of resources they will produce.

Hope this guide will help you create your own Super Pal.