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 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.

Crafting with Better Progression

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. With Master Crafting, 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.

At the same time, 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.

In most professions, finished, final items will grant more XP than intermediary components, encouraging players to complete full crafting chains. Blacksmithing is a deliberate exception: 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.

Additionally, 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.

Note that 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.

Smoother Communication and Expression

Talking, coordinating, and expressing yourself are becoming more intuitive. New slash commands for party management, chat, clans, and emotes make it easier to interact quickly, especially when timing matters.

Characters are also gaining more personality. New emotes 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

The Character Menu is being redesigned 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.

Clan Management: Simplified

Clan tools are also getting a clarity pass. The Clan Menu now uses the same right-hand side panel layout and tooltip system as the Character Menu. Players without a clan will see options to join or create one, while clan members gain clearer access to announcements, member lists, and applicants.

Clan settings, such as heraldry changes and leaving or disbanding a clan, have been moved to the top-right corner of the menu. Permission changes are not included in this update, but they remain a high-priority feature for the future.

World: Easier to Read

A broad visual pass improves how resources appear across biomes. Many small or low-profile resources have been converted into larger clusters, while others have been resized, recolored, or reworked to stand out more clearly from surrounding foliage. Non-interactive plants have been toned down to reduce visual noise, and some resources have been fully recreated to improve overall quality.

The goal is simple: make it easier to spot what matters without losing the world's natural feel. The end result is that finding resources that used to be extremely hard to spot is now easier, while you’ll still be able to gather more by building knowledge and skill on where to find resources and exactly how to spot them.

Performance Where it Counts

Performance improvements are underway, with focused profiling aimed at improving render performance during combat. The intention is to make intense encounters feel smoother and more responsive. This update includes fixes for several rendering performance issues discovered when profiling issues reported by the player community.

Looking Ahead

This upcoming update is all about refinement. By improving readability, usability, expression, and performance, it brings Pax Dei a step closer to the experience it’s aiming to be: cohesive, immersive, and rewarding in the details. We plan to deploy this update on our Public Test Shard, Arcadia, very soon - aka in the coming weeks - with several stages of testing. As usual, we’ll make adjustments as needed based on relevant feedback.

Keep an eye on the official channels for the details that should be communicated pretty soon!

Pax vobiscum,
The Mainframe Team