This guide will help you understand the beginning of the game and will greatly facilitate gameplay in the future.
Contents
Guide to Basics
What is Pax Dei? In the assembly Pax Dei is a game developed by Mainframe industries. It is a sandbox MMORPG set in a medieval world, enchanted by magic and mysteries. The goal is simple: Build your fortified city with the help of other players, become powerful and conquer the world of Gallia.
In this guide, we will explore all aspects of the game and the content. In this context, we will provide you with a detailed overview of all the content to give you a clear idea if this game meets your expectations so that you can be certain of your choice of game.
Character Creation
Character Creation is rather classic like many MMORPGs of this type. You will see similarities to New World. Although we are far from the level of detail seen in other big classics of the genre such as Archeage or Elder Scroll Online, or even BDO.
- Choice of over 24 hairstyles.
- Some varied skin details.
- A simplistic body morphology system.
- 42 choices of facial makeup and cosmetics.
The customization content, while nice at first glance, is very minimalistic and simplistic.
Hopefully this can change, the choice of a username is also limited, with a maximum of 13 characters and a minimum of 2. No spaces or symbols, no numbers, and only one capital letter allowed.
Once the character is created, you will also need to choose your spawning location, which will place you in one of the many locations in Gallia. There are about 4 major provinces in Gallia, each adorned with a multitude of valleys known as “Ancestral Sites”. There are approximately 24 in total, and you must select only one. Take note, as the map is relatively large and objectively, this choice greatly influences your ability to play with your friends.
The First Steps
You are one of the pioneers of the world of Gallia. You arrive at the ancestral site of your choice, naked, without knowledge, without a tutorial. You are left to yourself in a safe place, but without knowledge, guided by your instincts, in a warm yet haunting music. Guided by your insatiable ambition and your endless dreams of conquering and exploring this magical world.
What about the graphics? They are very nice, especially with an adequate PC. The atmosphere is captivating and highly immersive. The audio quality is enchanting, and the game is smooth, meaning it’s not difficult to stay captivated by the scenery. The weather system is fluid, and you can really feel the presence of the wind, although it’s far from perfect, like when surrounding leaves disappear out of nowhere, or when fire loops like a GIF. But overall, you get your money’s worth, as there is a lot of beautiful work done on the graphics engine.
However, I don’t give much credit to the control system. Indeed, as you can see in the image below, CTRL is, in my opinion, too heavily used in this context. Keys like L Shift+T which are somewhat unnecessary since the simple key “T” isn’t useful at all by itself, and F4 to open menus? Simply put, the controls of the overall interface are terrible, and I hope we could go back to using the good old ESC key to access all options. As for the graphic settings, they are sorely lacking.
Exploration and training of skills.
I am stuck between two distinct opinions regarding the exploration and skills of Pax Dei. You will quickly be asked to go get Gneiss stones and small pieces of wood to build the first tools such as axes, wooden shields, and furniture like campfires. It seems like a remix of Medieval Dynasty, albeit slightly less complex. And the mount is not existent into a Huge map.
Construction requires a plot, which designates a territory belonging to you and granting you the right to live there as you see fit. Once this plot is acquired, you can procure a construction hammer and build your home. Between Gneiss Stones and Sapwood, the other materials are very easy to acquire if you just look around a bit.
Overall, it is a pretty construction and housing game, but the challenge and complexity of such a game mode are completely absent. For now, in this alpha version, the content is relatively basic and not very different from the first Alpha.
As in any MMORPG, acquiring skill levels comes with practice. Chopping down a tree, mining an iron deposit, fishing a fish, or fighting will earn you experience. These will unlock further knowledge that will allow you to build other objects, furniture, and tools. With the workbenches, decorative furniture, and tools, it is very similar to Medieval Dynasty with the essence of New World, unfortunately.
Crafting skills are quite classic overall. Cutting down a tree simply involves giving a few hits to a trunk to extract branches and logs. The originality here is that it is indeed realistic that the action requires stamina to be produced, and it is possible to cut down the fallen trunk to obtain more materials. However, all skills are complex, and it makes one wonder if they all have any usefulness in this game.
Concerning combat skills, it is disastrous. Firstly, because the first weapon that can be made without knowledge is a lumberjack’s axe. Useful for cutting down trees but that’s about it. The other weapons need to be looted or their blueprints discovered. And it’s quite embarrassing, as there are no fewer than 16 different types of weapons. I fear this pushes a large majority to play and specialize only in the axe instead of diversifying into other types of weapons.
In other words, if you don’t have armor, you can try to find the recipe, but without combat, I doubt it will be simple. You can also fight to loot armor, but without armor beforehand and with a stone axe, acquiring decent combat gear is complicated. Aside from a simple use of each weapon without skills or abilities, the combat side of the game is boring. A bow shoots arrows. Not flaming ammunition, filled with hate, and projecting a line of infernal fire! Do you understand? The combat is certainly very realistic, but in a magical universe, it is a bit disappointing and each player’s pleasure is at stake.
At the beginning of the game, you will spend a lot of time killing foxes, boars, wolves. They will only give you ordinary materials like meat and fur. Cultists and knights are very difficult to kill alone and without equipment, so the game will call you to play in a group, while playing alone will be mainly for the housing aspect.
Dungeons are absent, caves are rare. Epic boss battles are almost non-existent. PvP is only found in one location on the map and is not everywhere. It seems like Mainframe is trying to create a peaceful world without rage.
The absence of mounts makes escaping difficult, if not almost impossible in some battles. The damage is not balanced and seems to be calculated poorly in the game due to the lack of logic in some damage points received/inflicted. As mentioned earlier, unless you are lucky enough to have a friend, a stranger, or a chest that gives you the ideal weapon right from the start, you will be condemned to fight with a lumberjack’s tool for long hours. I do not deny the idea that even cultists and knights can be killed quickly in a group, but there will inevitably be difficulty.
Death – as in most MMORPGs – is not nonexistent, quite the opposite. However, like in survival games in general, it is very punitive. Dying in “Pax Dei” condemns you to lose absolutely everything you have crafted, including your clothes. You will then find yourself completely naked, with an empty inventory, unable to defend yourself. Of course, like in “No Man’s Sky”, there is a grave where you can retrieve your inventory and forget about this unfortunate incident, unless you died at the feet of a monster. Retrieving your inventory will not be without hiccups.
Combat and Skill
In Pax Dei, you have 16 combat skills and 16 crafting skills. Let’s delve deeper into the subject.
The game is filled with various useful skills like Cooking or Alchemy that will help you throughout your adventures. Where I struggle is when you don’t have the necessary level to extract resources from a specific rock or tree, you won’t receive any information regarding it. You will have to continue cutting smaller trees and attempt every 2-3 levels to see if you can cut a rarer tree because the game provides no guidance on this. This applies to all skills. Except for my own assumption that higher levels unlock superior resources, you won’t know until you try it yourself.
Furthermore, you cannot practice desired skills without discovering the associated recipes. As mentioned earlier, these recipes are only unlocked once you acquire the appropriate resources (sometimes requiring a higher level in another skill) or if you loot the specific item.
You will be required to create toolboxes with the surrounding resources. These are necessary for crafting higher-level weapons and armor. There is no specific level requirement to craft the best armor. However, as explained earlier, the game is based on a luck-based system. So the lower your skill level, the higher the chance of failing your crafts. Failing a craft consumes the resources, so you will need to spend a lot of time farming resources. It is advisable to prepare a house with 20 chests as you will need to spend the first few days gathering resources.
The resources, in theory, will first allow you to unlock workbenches. These will enable you to create more elaborate raw materials, which will then unlock the toolboxes, and eventually, these will unlock the ability to craft armor. Taking into account the luck factor, you may have to spend around fifty hours crafting a complete set of armor.
The Combats
Once you have your armor, sharpened sword, shield, potions, spells if possible, and food, you are finally ready to begin your battles. However, be prepared for a long journey. A very long journey. Too long. Besides the “epic” battles you will encounter on your adventure, you will quickly realize that the world of Gallas is empty. Completely empty. In a 2 km walk, you will come across 2-3 rabbits, 2-3 wild boars, maybe a pack of wolves? And even without criticizing the combat aspect, in caves where demonic monsters reside, you will find only wild boars or wolves with a different appearance.
Their names are also very original – a wild boar will be called a Wild Boar, and a wolf will be called a Wolf. There are no different names or species, and even if you encounter a mysterious white boar, it will simply be named “a white wild boar”.
Beyond the almost non-existent fauna, what really interests you are the combats, which are… simple and “realistic” if realism means hitting a monster without any skills or abilities. Although there are magical spells, you have nothing else to do but to attack a creature with your weapon and block at the right moment. Rare loot does not seem to exist. Most items are crafted because Pax Dei is heavily focused on crafting. Combat here is clearly highlighted as an additional feature or an extreme optional necessity.
Regarding statistics, there is not much to say. While you have overall statistics specific to your character like slash, piercing, and HP, everything else remains a mystery. You have no idea about the monsters’ levels, their overall statistics, or their abilities, if they have any. Even the monsters do not have levels, and you must “guess” whether you are ready to face a creature by risking your entire arsenal. Imagine dying at the hands of a creature, losing everything you crafted and farmed over several days, and respawning with nothing, no weapons. Good luck.
In essence, this game is designed to be played in a group. If you are alone and without friends, it may not be the best choice for you unless you enjoy housing aspects.
The Pax Dei Lore
The story of Pax Dei is very mysterious and will surely enchant players who are eager for knowledge and thirst for solving mysteries. Apart from the Petra Dei altars, created by Pope Mellephaneous during the golden age of Pax Dei to highlight the commandment of the Holy See, a text that can be read on each of them and which is now the only teleportation system and the source of Pax Dei’s existence in the Valleys of Galas. The rest of the lore is completely absent. There are ruins, but they are often guarded by very high-level monsters, making access to the lore difficult if there is any. However, this is an alpha version, so I will refrain from adding more.
To Conclude…
Although it is only a second test of the Alpha, the game is not currently offering any groundbreaking features that have been promised for the past 2 years. I believe I was charmed by Mainframe’s beautiful speeches, but it turned out to be just selling a dream for most of us.
Let me explain: Where it was said that players would be called upon to create their own fortified cities to conquer the world, we actually find ourselves as several individual players creating a house each on our own, and only if we decide to build them next to each other, it will eventually create a semblance of a city.
On paper, the game is a classic MMORPG that does not stand out from anything we already know, except for the story itself, but there is nothing unique about it. The skills and exploration are similar to other famous games like Ark Survival or No Man’s Sky or New World.
PvP is clearly neglected, even though the game seemed to be on track to become a semblance of Gloria Victis for connoisseurs. The social aspect and mutual aid are strongly emphasized, and that’s good. Although I doubt that some rebels will become the lone players that we have all known.
If I had to say one last thing about this second alpha, it is that for now, the developers have disappointed me. I expected much better and that is not the case. Since it is an alpha, I will limit my comments and my constructive criticism for now, as I will wait for the open beta to judge the game completely. So, you currently only have an opinion shared from my point of view. And I hope that it will help you form an opinion on the upcoming updates to the game.
If you are someone who loves exploration, building houses, and turning them into real palaces (be careful with microtransactions) without focusing on combat and PvP, then this game will satisfy you. Otherwise, if you are a valiant knight in search of epic battles, strategic bosses, dungeons filled with creatures and treasures of all kinds, look elsewhere… Pax Dei is clearly not made for your caliber, gentlemen and ladies.
Fixes and Workarounds
Possible workaround for login issue for launcher version (not Steam)
- Navigate to the game files:
- pax dei \default\game\Engine\Binaries\ThirdParty\Steamworks\Steamv153\Win64\
- (Windows key + R to open a run window, then type %localappdata%)
- pax dei \default\game\Engine\Binaries\ThirdParty\Steamworks\Steamv153\Win64\
- Rename the Steam_api.dll to something else (e.g., . Steam_api.dll.bak)
- Relaunch Pax Dei
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