Hello Paxians,
Since the beginning of Early Access, Pax Dei has been a journey shaped by you — our passionate players. As we reflect on the progress we’ve made and the path ahead, we want to be transparent about the challenges we’ve faced, priorities we’ve had to adjust, and our ongoing commitment to building a game that thrives on meaningful player interactions.
Reflecting on Early Access
The main goal for us moving into Early Access was to get constant feedback from a live community to help us develop the game. And wow, did the community deliver!
We’re grateful for, and humbled by, your continuous engagement. Over 70,000 of you are following Pax Dei’s development journey on our official Discord, and sharing tips and tricks daily to help other players.
Looking at the different parts of the game, here is where we stand today. We spent the first months stabilizing the game. Then, our first update, Proving Grounds, was about addressing some of the biggest challenges we saw emerging before we could focus on adding new systems to deepen the game with Market Square onwards.
We also had to make tough decisions. Some features we initially planned had to be deprioritized as we focused on strengthening the foundations of Pax Dei.
While this meant delays in some areas, like the highly expected PvP system or the Knight/Soldier feature, it has also allowed us to deploy some elements sooner than planned in the roadmap — and even to add new elements that will make Pax Dei stronger in the long run.
Early game
The first obvious lesson from Early Access was that it took too long to get to the fun at the first contact with the game. Part of Proving Grounds was about addressing this: we placed enemy camps in the Heartland valleys and added basic gear and spells so that players now have the option to go on an adventure within the first few hours of play.
The introduction of the Journal, along with an overall balancing pass, also helped make the learning curve for crafting less steep.
And talking about adventure, the world revamp also included our first new biome since Alpha, the Corrupted Plains. More recently, the addition of the Compass makes finding your way around the world of Pax Dei more convenient.
We’re far from done with this aspect of the game and intend to keep iterating on it in upcoming content updates.
Combat
Combat remains a major focus. In Proving Grounds, we reworked the animation and player movement systems to improve the sec-to-sec combat experience, making it feel smoother and more responsive, while also laying a stronger foundation for future improvements.
We also added new spells, rebalanced gear, and gave the Inquisitors and Lost Souls a full rework.
In its current form, however, combat often lacks meaningful decision-making. We aim to move to a state where your gear choices and abilities will shape your tactics, encouraging you to build specialized roles.
This will be the central part of our next Verse. Check below for a sneak peek, and we look forward to sharing more soon.
Building
Building is undoubtedly the most complete system in the game. We’re amazed at how it unlocks the creativity of the community. Watching the world fill up with beautiful villages, mighty fortresses, and sprawling cities is a constant joy.
We’ve been regularly adding new pieces to the game and plan on expanding the building sets to give even more options to our master builders. Yes, the highly expected Limestone should be part of Verse 3!
That said, the free-form nature of our building system comes with a number of challenges, notably on the performance side.The valleys with the most spectacular creations tend to be the hardest on framerate.
We’ve already rolled out a number of performance improvements — it was one of the underlying reasons for our recent shift to Unreal Engine 5.4 — and more are in the works.
Finally, we still have to tackle the “ghost town” syndrome, when the world gradually fills up with the homes of inactive players. Work on a more robust system to clean up plots of inactive players has started — more details will come soon.
Building Bridges Between Players
At the heart of any MMO lies one simple truth: connection fuels the experience. That’s why Pax Dei was among the first games to integrate the new Discord Social SDK—bringing seamless text chat, friends lists, voice chat, and more into the game.
Our goal is to make it easier for players to communicate, coordinate, and share adventures—whether they're crafting in a village or battling side-by-side.
And because connection also means speaking your language, Pax Dei is now available in German and French, with Polish and Spanish coming soon.
Closing the loop
As a player-driven Social Sandbox MMO, the heart of Pax Dei is very much its economy, thriving not through scripted content but by fostering meaningful social interactions, trade, and competition.
If we take a bird’s eye view, Pax Dei relies on one core engagement loop: Harvest, Create, Destroy — a cycle that empowers players to shape the world of Pax Dei.
Harvest covers actions like cutting wood, mining, hunting, and ‘farming’ PVE enemies for gold and loot. Create encompasses crafting and building systems. While much work remains, these two parts of the loop are now firmly in place.
For the game economy to become self-sustaining on a larger scale—to truly close the loop—we now need to offer players meaningful ways to spend what they earn.
In other words, there must be systems that allow value to be removed from the economy, balancing what’s gained through harvesting and crafting.
By “value,” we mean your gear, gold, and Grace. Don’t worry—your plots remain safe and will continue to be protected under the Pax Dei.
From that perspective, Market Square added two crucial components to the game.
- Market Stalls and the Gold economy allow player-to-player trading, which opens ways for players to specialize. If you prefer playing a crafter rather than a fighter, you now have a way to get the components you need from other players — by selling them the equipment they require for the part of the game they prefer to engage with.
- By spending Grace, players can now access effects that will help them progress in the game. We’ve only added a few spells for now, and more are coming. This is one part of the game where we want to give players ample opportunities to feel good about spending some of the value they have accumulated.
Balancing the in-game economy will require more work, not only to make it more profound and more rewarding, but also to ensure it's sustainable long term. It’s the reason we will be focusing more on this part of the game loop in the coming months.
What’s Next
Our next major update, Verse 3 - name still to be decided, will mark a significant step forward for Pax Dei. With it, you’ll experience a world that feels more rewarding and more strategic.
We’re making some changes to the combat system by adding several new spells and new characteristics to gear. We are adding a new weapon type, staves, which will be dedicated to healing spells.
Additionally, all melee weapons will have three distinct abilities to further differentiate their playstyles. These additions aim to create a more dynamic combat experience, deepen the interplay between roles, and offer more tactical options.
Whether you prefer the brute force of melee, the steadfastness of a tank, or the supportive role of a healer, you'll find more ways to customize your build.
Naturally, these combat updates will impact the crafting system, particularly Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Blacksmithing. We’re refining onboarding, dependencies, and progression pacing.
We aim to simplify the early game with more intuitive crafting chains, meaningful low-tier items, easier access to spells, and reduced cross-profession dependencies in the first levels.
We’re also adjusting the balance to emphasize gathering over extended crafting sessions.
Another major component of Verse 3 is a world revamp. We aim to increase player density and interaction by adding more Heartlands per Province and slightly reducing the overall size of the Wildlands. While resource locations will shift, biome gathering rules will remain consistent.
Additionally, a new Fast Travel Miracle will be introduced, reshaping how players traverse the world and improving the global economy.
The revamped world will also feature improved starting areas: Petra Dei will offer limited storage for all players and include pre-placed, entry-level public crafting stations, making the onboarding experience smoother and more accessible to newcomers.
Looking Further Ahead
Later this year, we’ll be expanding PvP in meaningful ways. PvP will play a key role in keeping Pax Dei’s economy vibrant and dynamic. Central to this evolution is a reimagined Lyonesse—a larger, high-stakes PvP zone where risk and reward go hand in hand.
Players will battle for control of valuable, exclusive resources, but success won’t come easily.
Coordination, strategy, and bold action will be essential to claim key locations, like what we currently call the Trade Towns.
We’re also planning to introduce new customization options, including a cloth dye system that gives crafters greater creative freedom.
Alongside this, expect quality-of-life improvements—and, if all goes well, mounts may finally make their way into the game.
Transitioning Beyond Early Access
Pax Dei is a live, evolving world — we will continue to deliver meaningful updates as we expand the game.
To sustain this, we’ll soon share more details on our monetization plans designed to support server costs while ensuring fair value for players.
We sincerely appreciate your ongoing support, and we remain committed to delivering an experience that empowers you to shape your own adventures in Pax Dei.
Thank you for being part of this incredible journey — we can’t wait to see what stories you create next.
Pax vobiscum,
The Mainframe Team