Since the release of Pax Dei 1.0, we’ve continued to improve the game with new features, balancing changes, quality-of-life updates, and new reasons to explore the world.

If you are discovering Pax Dei for the first time, there is now a smoother path into the world, especially with the Achievement system, which can help guide your first steps and introduce you to core activities.

If you are returning, there are more goals to pursue, more systems to explore, and more reasons to gather your friends and see what has changed.

Since 1.0, Pax Dei has not only grown in content. It has become easier to approach, more rewarding to play, and more alive when shared with others.

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Starting and day-to-day play are smoother

Many updates since 1.0 have focused on reducing friction and making regular play feel better, especially for players starting fresh or coming back after a break.

Achievements help guide your first steps and give long-term goals. 
The Achievement system adds almost 300 achievements, 

with milestones, rewards, and objectives for both new and experienced players. For newcomers, it can act as a light guide through the first steps of Pax Dei, helping introduce gathering, crafting, building, combat, exploration, and other core activities. For returning and elder players, it adds new objectives to pursue and new rewards to claim without replacing the freedom of the sandbox.

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Crafting progression is more flexible in key professions.


XP curves and crafting XP rewards have been adjusted for Blacksmithing, Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Tailoring, and Leatherworking, so players can choose what to craft based on usefulness or preference rather than feeling forced into a narrow set of “XP-optimal” items. Material recovery on failed crafts has also been improved, especially for lower-tier recipes, making experimentation less frustrating.

Inventory, crafting, and item management are easier.


Increased stack sizes, Quick Stack, Take All for containers and crafters, Craft All for processing crafters, better recipe sorting, and various UI improvements all help reduce the time spent managing items and menus.

Resources, maps, and UI are easier to read and use.


Many resources have been made larger or visually clearer, making them easier to detect in the world. The map has also been significantly improved, with better zoom-in and zoom-out, marker filters, and biome legend/key improvements. Clearer notifications, scalable UI options, better tooltips, and many smaller fixes make the game easier to read, navigate, and understand.

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Playing with others has more tools and more personality

Pax Dei is at its best when players cooperate, trade, compete, and create stories together. Several updates have strengthened the tools and systems that support that.

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Province-wide chat, better chat readability, improved notifications, unread counters, grouped messages, and login notifications make it easier to communicate and stay connected with other players. The clan menu and character stats sheet have also been improved, making it easier to understand your character and manage clan-related information.

Clan permissions have started to improve.


The Homesteader rank and the new Villager & Up permission level are the first step toward more flexible clan management, making it safer to welcome new or returning players into shared spaces.

Players can now challenge each other to consensual duels. This is a major addition for training, testing builds, friendly rivalries, clan events, and learning combat without the risks of open PvP.

Characters have more personality and presentation options.


New emotes and facial expressions have been added to the emote menu, giving players more ways to express themselves, roleplay, celebrate, tease, greet, or simply bring more life to social moments. Sheathed weapons are now visible, and the Hide Helmet option gives players more control over their appearance while adventuring and socializing.

The world has more depth, purpose, and polish

Pax Dei has also gained more activities, more visual polish, more atmosphere, and more reasons to explore, fight, craft, and build.

Dungeons and enemy behavior are more reliable.


Aggro behavior and dungeon encounters have received several fixes and balancing changes, making PvE more reliable and more readable. Enemies should behave more consistently, and several dungeon population and spawn issues have been addressed, helping group content feel better to run.

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Archery, Fletching, and bird hunting have expanded.


Bow handling has been improved, and archery has been expanded with Fletching changes, new bow progression, rebalanced arrows, a new set of Recurve Bows, and archery targets for practice or competitions. Birds have also been added across the world, giving players new creatures to hunt, new resources to gather, and more life and movement in the landscape.

Master Crafting gives exceptional items and crafters more value.


When you achieve a very high success on a craft for an item with Item Power, the item can gain a permanent Item Power boost, and your name is recorded as its master crafter. This gives skilled crafters a new way to create standout items and leave their mark on the world.

Lyonesse now gives clans meaningful PvP objectives.


The open PvP region now has clearer objectives through Mournel trees and Feudal Shrines. These systems give clans reasons to contest resources, claim territory, and establish a lasting presence in the region. Clans can claim and upgrade shrine sites, place Feudal plots, manage upkeep, and use claimed shrines as strategic locations.

Since 1.0, dozens of new decorations and building pieces have been added, including furniture, tableware, candleholders, rugs, statues, benches, hedges, trellises, animal trophies, new climbing plant patches, and more. These additions give players more ways to personalize homes, villages, gardens, halls, and social spaces.

The world looks better and performance continues to improve.


The skybox, clouds, and night sky have been drastically improved, while color balancing across the world has been updated to make environments feel more vivid, natural, and easier to read. The game has also been upgraded from Unreal Engine 5.4 to Unreal Engine 5.6, and we’ve continued profiling and addressing performance issues, with a particular focus on improving render performance during combat and making the game feel smoother in demanding situations.

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For new players, the path into the world is clearer, smoother, and more welcoming.

For returning players, there are new systems to explore, more goals to pursue, better tools to manage daily life, and stronger reasons to reconnect with friends, clans, and neighbors.

The heart of Pax Dei is still the same: a social sandbox shaped by the players who live in it. But since 1.0, that world has become easier to enter, more rewarding to progress through, and more alive to share with others.

New or Returning to Pax Dei? Here’s What Has Changed Since 1.0

 Hello Paxians! Since the release of Pax Dei 1.0, we’ve continued to improve the game with new features, balancing changes, quality-of-life updates, a...

is now available on Steam. This Trial is not a limited-time event like a Steam Free Weekend; it is intended to remain available over time.

New players can now experience Pax Dei for 

and discover everything the game has to offer, from building and crafting to exploration, PvE, PvP, trade, and community life.

The Trial grants access to the full Pax Dei experience for

Progress their character without gameplay restrictions

As part of the Trial, players also receive a temporary Plot that allows them to claim land and establish their own home.

the Trial is not a separate version of Pax De

i. It is the full game experience, limited only by duration.

If you want to know more about how the Pax Dei Trial works, head to our dedicated support article: 

Pax Dei 7-Day Trial is now available for free on Steam

Access to the game ends unless Pax Dei is purchased

Characters and progression remain safely stored on our servers

all items and materials placed or stored on it are transferred to the 

, allowing them to be recovered later if the game is purchased.

Players who decide to continue their adventure later will be able to return

 to the same character and recover their belongings

In other words, progress made during the Trial is not lost. The Trial is part of the same persistent Pax Dei experience.

We have also implemented a system that allows players to try the Trial again after a set period of time, giving them another opportunity to experience the latest changes to the game. This period is currently set to 

 Please note that there may be a short gap between the Trial’s release and the start of this promotion.

Pax Dei 7-Day Trial Is Now Live on Steam

 Hello everyone, We’re excited to announce that the  Pax Dei 7-Day Trial  is now available on Steam. This Trial is not a limited-time event like a Ste...

Given recent news about the MMO industry, it’s completely understandable that some of you may be wondering what the future holds for Pax Dei. We’ve seen your questions and concerns, and we feel it’s important to address them as directly and transparently as possible, while also sharing where we’re headed.

“Are you going to shut down as other studios have recently?”

No. We still have a small, but very passionate, hard-working team working on Pax Dei, and we intend to continue delivering updates regularly.

Let’s be transparent: yes, we’ve had rough moments. Being an independent studio means we rely on a mix of external investment and, increasingly, revenue from the game itself to pay for the ongoing development of Pax Dei. We’ve had to adjust our team size and limit our scope accordingly. 

Since we left Early Access, we’ve been balancing our long-term vision for the game alongside player feedback, and tackling some genuinely tough problems to make sure the game has a stable foundation, technically, operationally, and in terms of the content we’re able to offer.

We understand that progress can sometimes feel slow from the outside. But as long as we have our players' support, our intention is to keep building Pax Dei and delivering on the features we’ve showcased in the past, even if it sometimes takes longer than we, or many players, would like.

Support comes in many forms, and not all of them involve paying money. You can support by:

Sharing feedback and testing new content on the Public Test Shard

Engaging with our posts and updates on Discord and social media

And ultimately, of course, the most direct way to support us, for those who want and are able to, is by purchasing Memberships (plots, Premium, etc.)

All of these matter, especially for a small studio like ours.

“Well, I like the game, but I’m not ready to pay.”

You don’t need a subscription to enjoy Pax Dei. You can join a Clan, contribute to the community, and enjoy the game without your own plot. If you want your own home and play regularly, you can maintain one plot with Grace, which allows you to enjoy the full experience by purchasing the base game alone. Simply being part of the world and its community already helps more than you might think.

“What about the features we’ve been asking for?”

We know this is a sensitive topic, so let’s address some of these features.

: these features were mentioned before Early Access in interviews and Q&As. Their absence from the game so far is due to two main reasons:

First, both farming and fishing primarily add new content loops to the cooking system, and the current state of cooking is not where we want it to be yet. Introducing new resource loops now would only amplify existing balance issues, which doesn’t make sense at this stage.

Second, both systems require significant development, and we haven’t yet been able to allocate the necessary time to them.

That said, the crafting skills related to cooking and potions are next in line for rebalancing. This means we’re very close to removing the main balancing blocker for these features.

: we shared an early concept for mounts last year, but the feature is still a long way from being ready. While the overall design is now complete and some technical challenges have already been addressed, there is still significant work ahead.

We need to implement the gameplay systems themselves, improve animations, particularly those related to the rider, and ensure mounts persist correctly across zones. As we’ve mentioned before, we want horses to be more than a simple movement-speed bonus. This means dedicating time from several team members to build meaningful content and systems around them, even for the initial version you’ll see in-game.

: last summer, recycling was a high priority. Since then, priorities have shifted to address more urgent needs. We know how important recycling is to many of you, and we agree. However, at the moment, we simply don’t have the bandwidth to actively work on it. 

That said, we are continuing to refine the design and hope to have something ready to ship later in the year. In the meantime, the upcoming crafting balance changes in the next update aims to significantly reduce crafting waste. You’ll no longer need to grind a small, specific set of items to maximize XP gains, which we believe will greatly reduce the need for recycling in the short term. Our next step on that front will be to look into failed crafts and reduce material costs.

With the game and the team we have right now, our priority is clear: it makes far more sense to improve, fix, and strengthen what already exists than to keep expanding outward with new zones, biomes, or professions.

For most of this year, our focus will be on making Pax Dei more meaningful rather than simply making it bigger. That means going deeper into existing systems, addressing long-standing friction points, and delivering quality-of-life improvements that make the game more coherent and enjoyable day-to-day. You can already see this direction with XP rebalancing on the PTS, as well as the work we’ve started on Cooking, Jewelcrafting, and Alchemy (with plans to review Fletching as well).

Rather than spreading the team too thin, we want to strengthen the game's foundations so that future additions are built on solid ground.

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: a major pillar of this effort is building. Player feedback has been very clear: the building system is amazing, but its impact is currently mostly aesthetic. We want construction to matter more, not just as decoration, but as a meaningful part of gameplay and social life in Pax Dei.

Building isn’t only about placing structures. It’s about creating places where communities gather, trade, roleplay, and leave a lasting mark on the world. Our goal is to reinforce the building system as the backbone of villages and cities, so future features feel richer and more connected.

: to support this vision, we’re working on several interconnected systems. Alongside ongoing crafting professions rebalancing, we’re introducing mechanics that tie gameplay benefits directly to well-designed structures: systems like Comfort and Rest with crafting bonuses influenced by roofs and layouts. Together, these changes aim to make where and how you build just as important as what you build.

: at the same time, we’ve been spending a lot of time designing Alliances. Our goal is to make Alliances meaningful for all types of players, not just PvP-focused groups, but also Clans who want to build villages and cities together. To achieve that, Alliances need purpose beyond PvP flagging alone, which means introducing supporting mechanics before Alliances themselves go live.

A key part of making this work is giving players better control over access and trust. That’s why we’re finally revamping the permission system. Clans will support customizable membership tiers, each tied to specific roles and permissions. Plot and item access will be more granular, including the ability to define Trusted Friends with elevated rights. The new system is also designed to be safer and more forgiving, with clearer presets and stricter deletion rules, making it easier to welcome new members without fear of losing property or progress. We’ll go into more detail once this reaches the Public Test Shard.

the image hereunder is a UI mockup and is subject to change. We will talk more about it once it is functional, but we wanted to show you how granular we want it to be. Here you can see the Plot Permissions section with its two tabs: one for the Plot itself (building, destroying), and one for the items on the Plot (crafters, storages, decorations, etc.).

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These are long-term goals, and they are only possible if the underlying systems are strong.

This is the direction we’re committed to: stronger foundations, deeper systems, and a world that becomes more meaningful the more you invest in it.

“This all sounds great. What’s the timeline then?”

As we speak, Verse 5 is growing with new content, including Master Crafting, new emotes, UI updates, and more. This update also includes significant rebalancing of crafting XP across most professions, aimed at making crafting progression much more pleasant overall. This content is currently being tested on the Public Test Shard (Arcadia) and should reach live shards in the coming weeks.

After Verse 5, we’ll be moving to Verse 6 (surprising, right?). Verse 6 will focus on building, the comfort system, and permissions. As part of this planning, we made the difficult decision to move Alliances to later in the year, in Verse 7. This allows us to properly lay the foundations first, rather than introducing Alliances before the supporting systems are ready.

Alongside these major features, we also plan to roll out smaller, nice-to-have features and systems throughout the year. Here’s what’s simmering in our magical cauldron: the much-anticipated duelling system, additional building sets, a cooking and food glow-up, and more improvements for Jewelcrafting and Alchemy, combat improvements and PvE content fixes. We’ll also be adding birds, not just ambient “chirp-chirp” ones, but wildlife that can be hunted and that will be tied directly to fletching. And, of course, a few surprises we’re not ready to reveal just yet.

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We remain fully committed to Pax Dei. We’re proud of what we’ve built so far, aware of what still needs work, and grateful for a community that continues to challenge, support, and believe in the project.

Thank you for reading and for sticking with us.
Pax vobiscum,
The Mainframe Team

Future of Pax Dei - A Letter From the Team

 Hello Paxians, Given recent news about the MMO industry, it’s completely understandable that some of you may be wondering what the future holds for P...

We’re hard at work on the next content update, which we already teased in our retrospective. We plan to deploy it on our 

Public Test Shard, Arcadia, in the next couple of weeks

. Rather than introducing entirely new systems, this update refines how existing features feel, look, and connect, to make everyday play smoother, more readable, and more expressive. Let’s dive into the details.

Two of the most requested features from our latest poll relate to crafting, and we’ve already made good progress on both. Work is still ongoing, however, and these changes may not be included in the first round of testing on the PTS.

Crafting is being refined to feel more rewarding and better balanced. 

, exceptionally successful crafts on items with Item Power can 

permanently boost that item’s power and record your name as its master crafter,

 giving standout creations a lasting sense of identity. The Item Power boost is additive with any Enchantment applied to the item, meaning that with Master Crafting, the best possible gear will be rare variants that have been both Master Crafted and Enchanted.

We’re aware that this mechanic does not apply to items with no Item Power, such as foods and potions, and we’ll be exploring ways to add meaningful “exceptional success” mechanics for those professions in a later update.

a major rebalancing pass is being applied to crafting XP for five main professions

: Leatherworking, Weapon Smithing, Tailoring, Blacksmithing, and Armor Smithing. This update adjusts how much experience each item grants to make progression smoother, more consistent, and more rewarding overall.

Importantly, this change is not a nerf to crafting XP. Instead, XP is being rebalanced so that

 recipes that are more expensive to craft grant more experience

, better reflecting the effort and resource investment involved. Cheaper recipes will continue to provide viable progression, while more complex, resource-intensive crafts will now feel appropriately rewarding.

final items will grant more XP than intermediary components

, encouraging players to complete full crafting chains. 

: because the profession relies heavily on crafting intermediary components as a core part of its gameplay loop, these intermediary items will continue to provide strong XP rewards to ensure Blacksmithing progression remains smooth and satisfying.

 the recipe level distribution is being reworked

, so players gain access to useful, viable items more consistently as they level, rather than being constrained by rigid progression gates. This should significantly reduce the number of crafts that feel wasted or inefficient.

we are not changing the leveling curve itself

—only how much XP individual crafts grant.

Finally, while this pass focuses on these five professions, 

other professions will be added when they’re ready. They are currently undergoing a deeper rework

, which requires additional time to get right.

Talking, coordinating, and expressing yourself are becoming more intuitive. 

 for party management, chat, clans, and emotes make it easier to interact quickly, especially when timing matters.

Characters are also gaining more personality. 

 like Insult, Show Respect, Let’s Go!, and Call Out expand non-verbal communication, while a new Moods tab allows you to select a persistent facial expression. Your chosen mood stays active until changed, and 

emotes now include basic facial animation 

that can be subtly altered by combining them with different moods. Note that this is still WIP and might not make it to the next round of testing right away. 

Character Menu: Cleaner, Clearer, more Useful

to better support moment-to-moment play. It now lives in a right-hand side panel, aligning with broader UX plans and improving consistency across menus. Detailed information appears in floating tooltips when hovering over or selecting elements, keeping the interface readable without overwhelming the screen.

The Equipment tab no longer takes control of the camera and instead displays your character directly in the menu

, along with your name and average Item Power. Selecting an equipment slot now shows only the items that fit it, reducing unnecessary friction. The Stats UI has been expanded into a full tab with additional stats and unique icons, and the Skills tab has been moved from the Journal into the Character Menu to keep all character-related information in one place.

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A Small Update with a Big Impact

 Hello Paxians, We’re hard at work on the next content update, which we already teased in our retrospective. We plan to deploy it on our  Public Test ...

Information

New or Returning to Pax Dei? Here’s What Has Changed Since 1.0

Pax Dei 7-Day Trial Is Now Live on Steam

Future of Pax Dei - A Letter From the Team

A Small Update with a Big Impact

Eine Neujahrsüberraschung für all unsere Abonnenten

Steam Free Week is incoming: invite your friends to Pax Dei

New Year Statement from Pax Dei Dev Team (auf Englisch)

Pax Dei – 2025 Developer Retrospective

Verse 5 is on its way! (auf englisch)

Work in Progress, upcoming small features and fixes (auf englisch)