First of all, we’d like to thank everyone who participated in the 

 and took the time to provide us with your invaluable feedback! Overcoming the challenge of inviting more than 100,000 participants was a huge achievement for us, especially as we managed to maintain minimal latency throughout.

While the initial server rush kept our Live Ops team on high alert for a few days, we navigated through the chaos. Our instancing systems performed very well, efficiently handling tens of thousands of building pieces and props. You can read about this in our 

The sight of numerous campfires lighting up the night sky and your intricate, impressive buildings gave us goosebumps. The emotional reactions of content creators, whether wide-eyed wonder or tears of joy, upon encountering the ethereal beauty of our world were also very moving.

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But the absolute pinnacle was in the stories you shared: reading about players gathering, exchanging advice and tips about resource spots, trading goods, and forming alliances to try to overcome the challenges of the wild filled us with joy. Observing all these moments, big and small, of emerging gameplay was like witnessing the actual birth of our game.

Making a massive sandbox like Pax Dei is a very unique challenge because it requires thousands of players to become real. As you were able to observe, the world looked totally different at the opening of the servers compared to a few days later. Can you imagine what it might look like after a few months? How will your alliances evolve? 

And best of all, there’s a big part of the game that we have yet to talk about in detail: the social fabric and the economy. We are still not fully ready to unveil this part, but we promise it will make Pax Dei deeper and richer.

Now, let’s jump into some of the specifics we saw and heard:

What we’re aiming for in combat is a system that feels like a modern action-oriented MMO combat system, which balances well between player skill and RPG progression. The gear you have will matter a lot, the preparation and how you specialize in a role in a party raiding a dungeon will also matter to you and your group. But so will your skill and your knowledge of the game.

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The combat systems in Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 were almost 100% different under the hood. Those who played in both probably noticed the whole system, in terms of gear progression, stats and movement, was very different and much improved. However, we fully agree that we still have a long way to go to get the combat system into a state that feels great.

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As such, the work we’re doing right now - based on your feedback and internal testing - spans a vast spectrum, from improving movement and responsiveness during melee to adding more visual and audio feedback on your actions. We’re confident we’ll get to a state that feels great, but it’ll take some more time and continuous feedback from players.

Of note, we’ve already fixed some performance issues that contributed to the ‘floaty’ feeling of the combat in Alpha 2 and tuned the movement system so melee attacks lock you in place for a shorter duration. Additionally, we’ve rebalanced some of the gear and enemies, including adjusting Shield Bash, which was 

Let’s start with apologies for those who wanted to participate in PvP but couldn’t due to the short duration of the test. Many of you still did get to play though, and we got a lot of great feedback from them.

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The full loot was considered extremely hardcore. We somewhat agree! The test was intended to gauge how far we can go with the system. As we’ve said before, we’d like PvP in Pax Dei to be very consequential, and at this point, full loot rights are part of the design in the open PvP areas. 

Related to this, constricting PvP to only the Lyonesse region was considered too challenging, as the travel time was very long for many of you. Be reassured we will be expanding PvP to include some options outside of Lyonesse.

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What we want to get out of the PvP system is pretty challenging - we know many of you absolutely love PvP, but many of you don’t like it and will not want to play a game that forces you to PvP.

We want Pax Dei to be a game that both types of players can love. What this means in practice is that PvP will continue to be optional in the future, and we will avoid making content that players cannot experience without participating in PvP. 

On the very practical side - Shield Bash did not do great things to PvP and has been nerfed, so you won’t be able to stun-lock people in the future. And when you’re PvP flagged, you’ll no longer see players on the map who are not on your side!

We've made many balancing tweaks to the recipes and are considering improving the resource distribution to make some resources easier to find and others more scarce.

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We agree that the starting experience in crafting is currently overwhelming and a bit confusing. One of our priorities here is to make balancing changes to address that part of the game specifically, in addition to looking at adding some tutorial steps for the most essential related features.

We also have a long list of suggestions for quality-of-life features related to inventory management, pinning recipes, stack sizes, labeling containers, trading between players, recipe durations, and so on. We’re committed to improving all of this, and the feedback we received was very helpful in prioritizing this work.

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We were blown away again at the creations you made. Before the test, there was a lot of debate on whether you’d have the time to build enough in a week, so seeing some clans build full-blown fortified villages and solo players managing to have their little homes fully decorated was pretty amazing.

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As with crafting, we’re parsing a long list of your suggestions for improving the usability of the building system and for new content. A notable part of the system we plan to improve soon is the permissions, and the first step will be to fine-tune them for the clans with more member levels, to better manage containers, crafting stations, and the building part.

A notable bug we already addressed in our internal build was related to the system used to prevent building on roads. In some locations, this system was overridden by another one. It should no longer be possible to block access to areas the road network is intended to guarantee access to.

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We found and fixed the problem causing inventories to sometimes go out of sync when transitioning between game areas. This was caused by a memory leak in the deferred logout system, sometimes causing an object with the player's inventory state to remain on the server. The actual inventory contents of the players were still correct, as the inventory state is in our backend, but we can see how this was very disruptive to play.

Another hiccup we encountered was a permissions system bug, which allowed some people to access any plot and chest while not being able to access their own. This issue was easily fixed at the individual level with a logout/login, but from a global perspective, it was a critical bug involving several subsystems. We patched the issue during the Alpha, and are now working on a more robust solution by refactoring some of the involved subsystems.

We captured a considerable amount of performance profiling data during the Alpha and have already fixed many issues that caused server and client stuns, so the next time you play, the game should perform more smoothly. 

, we also found and fixed issues in our overall setup that led to the downtime during the first two days. From a technical perspective, the Alpha was a great success, and we got all the information we needed to fix a multitude of issues.

Last but not least, keyboard control rebinding is coming! We can’t promise to have it for Early Access as we still have some issues to overcome, but it is one of our top priorities.

On that topic, we know you are eager to learn more about Early Access. It is coming, for sure, and on time! Stay tuned, we will tell you more, before too long!

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Wilderness Alpha - Learnings

 Hello Paxians, First of all, we’d like to thank everyone who participated in the   and took the time to provide us with your invaluable feedback! Ove...

Our team of will-o-wisps has dug into our database in search of some fun numbers to share with you regarding the latest Alpha test.

We hope you’ll like our infographics! A special mention to everyone who was killed by a badger. We’re curious to learn how this happened. Tell us more on 

Wilderness Alpha in Numbers.jpg

Wilderness Alpha in Numbers

 Hello Paxians, Our team of will-o-wisps has dug into our database in search of some fun numbers to share with you regarding the latest Alpha test. We...

We have written a comprehensive guide to help you prepare for the Alpha and assist you during your first hours of gameplay.
As a reminder, here is the main information related to the Wilderness Alpha:

The Wilderness Alpha will start on Tuesday, April 23, at noon UTC and last one week!

Invitations will be sent on Friday, April 19, to give you time to download the game and prepare.

If you want to know more, need help, or discuss with the Pax Dei community:

Our Discord community is pretty knowledgeable and welcoming, so head to 

 for fresh information about the state of the game.

, which feature gameplay footage and interviews with our development team.

Paxdei_Screenshot_2024.04.16_-_06.12.07.78.jpg

DirectX12 is technically the only mandatory requirement

, but let's be honest: even if the game is already optimized, we tend to recommend an RTX 2070 or higher. 

Apart from your graphics card, the most crucial factor is 

While you can install the game on an HDD, we don't recommend it! Unreal Engine 5 and our launcher are pretty demanding in reading and writing, and using an HDD can result in the game getting stuck or appearing stuck for several minutes during installation or launch.

If you need to know what your hard drives are or how to check them, there are plenty of tutorials on the net. Here is one of the simplest:

You can see the types of your Hard Drives in the column Media Type - for an SSD, it is… SSD.

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We're sorry, but you can't remap keybinds yet. We set up our controls on a QWERTY keyboard layout, so you will need to use WASD to move your characters and numbers to select slots.

If you use a different layout (AZERTY, DVORAK…)

, you will need to make some adjustments to Windows to be able to switch from your current layout to a QWERTY layout:

You can check Microsoft Help to add English language and QWERTY layout.

," and you should find many detailed tutorials on how to do it.

Once done, ALT+SHIFT will switch your keyboard layout (an alternative is to use Windows+Space).

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This Controls sheet is available in both dark and light in our 

When you open the game for the first time, you will have to create a character.

Pax Dei does not have a class system, and characters don't have physical characteristics, so the choice is a matter of taste and roleplay, not gameplay.

important decisions when picking the location where you will start to play.

The world is vast, and even if you pick the same shard, it can take a long time to regroup if you don't start in the same location.

This is the server's location (in the real world). As a rule of thumb, pick the closest one to your location. If you lead a clan, choose the one that best suits your members; everybody can create a character in any region.

The Alpha will open its gates with 3 shards per region. As for the Region, make sure you sync with your friends!

-> Pick your starting Province and Home Valley

There are four Provinces to choose from and six Home Valleys in each Province. The Home Valleys are areas inside the Provinces where you can build your home/base/village.

If you play with friends or with a Clan, the most important thing is that everyone picks the same. All the Provinces contain all the resources in good quantity, so the occupation rate should guide your choice - there is an indicator when selecting your Home Valley.

The proximity of dungeons and gates to other Provinces is also a factor that you may consider.

The Province of Lyonesse is the only one you can’t pick as it is impossible to claim a plot in it. Lyonesse is our 

 where you can find some rare resources (mainly Pure Iron for this Alpha).

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The one tip you need to know: Pax Dei is designed as an MMO

Even if most of the social features are not there yet, the world, progression, and difficulty are already designed and - somewhat - balanced as for an MMO.

In other words, and we won't repeat this enough, 

Pax Dei is more approachable if you play with others

You will often have people to refill processing crafters – kiln, furnace…

You will discover the resource spots faster.

Everyone can focus on a different craft to make the group progress faster.

So you will be able to go to combat faster.

You can mutualize your plots, assign more crafting stations to them than if you were alone, and keep one or more plots to build outposts next to resources.

Finally, because people enjoy different activities, in a group, you often have the one who wants to gather resources, the one who wants to explore, the one who wants to build, the one who is an expert at sorting and managing chests and resources.

Basically, with a group, there is generally a role for everyone and a person for each role!

And if you don't have a Clan yet, head to our official 

! You will find a channel dedicated to clan recruitment smartly named 

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! 
For example, you can use the second plot on another shard with another character - you can create up to four characters - expand your home by combining the two, or even use it as a temporary outpost next to some resources to process them and avoid going back and forth to your main plot. 
The choice is yours, and the possibilities are (almost) endless!

For your first steps in the world of Pax Dei

, we recommend you read the advice below:

Start scouting to find the perfect location for your home

; don't hesitate to stack some Gneiss rocks and Branches, as they will be helpful later.

and probably a shield. Press TAB and click on the 'Craft' tab to find it. It can come in handy if you meet a boar – if it is a bear, run, just run.

 to build your home and host crafting stations (see the next section for more details).

Be careful while exploring the mountains. Falling is easy, and retrieving your equipment on your corpse can be challenging. However, there is now a way to summon your corpse if you are close enough on the X and Y axis, wherever it is on the Z axis – Hold T and click on Summon Corpse.

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 to learn more about plots, their constraints, and advantages. In short, a plot is where you can build a home, and you can only place Crafting stations on a plot.

can only claim a plot in the Home Valleys

You start in the Home Valley you picked at the end of the Character Creation. If you 

, you can see the Home Valleys' names and borders in red. The zone in between is called the 

Many look for a place close to Clay, Mining Nodes, and Flax, while others prefer a fantastic view. Once again, the choice is yours!

to place your plot, you'll need to craft the Construction Hammer

. Open the Inventory menu—press 'i' or 'TAB'—and navigate to the Craft tab at the top. The required ingredients should be available close to where you started.

Equip the Hammer by either double-clicking on it or dropping it into a quick slot before pressing the corresponding key. 

With the hammer equipped, right-click to open the Building menu

You can now claim your plot and start building foundations and crafting stations!

 to your Clan-mates or even Everyone. This will allow others to build on your plot and potentially destroy your creations. To change the plot's permissions, equip your Construction Hammer, right-click to open the Building Menu, and select the Plots tab.

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How can you be sure you are in the right place?

You can't, except if you love the view from your terrace! 
Technically, you could prefer being close to a specific biome to focus on a particular craft or activity. For example, you could set your home close to a forest for hunting and leatherworking or close to a path to 

 to have access to more pure iron nodes.
You have to take into account that the crafting professions are interconnected, so you or your clan will need to do a bit (or a lot) of everything, and no location will give you all the resources in profusion.

Ultimately, Pax Dei is an MMO, so you may need to trade with others or use your second plot (yes, all testers will have two plots during the Wilderness Alpha) as a temporary outpost.

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At this point, you should only have a few available (equip the Hammer, right-click, select the Crafting tab).

Don't hesitate to craft the simplest pieces for each Crafting station you build, as most will unlock valuable recipes for your next steps – a 

Stone pickaxe is on the Basic Carpenter's Workbench

 in the Building menu. To place them, right-click while you have the Construction Hammer equipped, after crafting them on your workbench. 

Now, you should know enough to start crafting your way! Have fun! Be careful with corrupted animals, the ones with a swarm of flies, as they can be 

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Yup. It is a rabbit. We told you to be careful in the wilderness!

Wilderness Alpha - First steps in the world of Pax Dei

 Greetings Paxians, We have written a comprehensive guide to help you prepare for the Alpha and assist you during your first hours of gameplay.
As a r...

The first quarter of 2024 is drawing to a close, and an update on our second Alpha test is overdue. We know many of you are eager to dive back into Pax Dei, and we kindly ask for more of your patience.

We have decided to take a few extra weeks to improve the game and remove some of the rough edges before opening our next public Alpha test, codenamed 

Pax Dei’s second large-scale Alpha test will start on April 23rd, 2024, and last a week.

Codenamed “Wilderness,” this Alpha test will invite you to explore beyond your home valley.

We plan to invite at least 100,000 players from day 1, including players who were part of the first Alpha.

This Alpha won’t be confidential (aka “It will be ok to stream the game”).

For a chance to participate, sign up and fill out your profile on 

Check out Eltarii’s latest video for a sneak peek of the changes since the previous Alpha!

 to check how things are going once we’re live!

Some of the critical features we wanted to test during the second Alpha ended up being more challenging to implement than expected, thus requiring additional attention before we can share them with a broader audience.

Meanwhile, other team members have been working on new features and content not initially planned for Alpha 2, prompting us to expand the scope. While our initial goal was to launch this Alpha in Q1 2024, this slight delay will enable us to align the build more closely to our vision, ensuring a better experience for you. Thanks again for your patience!

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What awaits over the horizon when you leave your home valley? For this second large-scale test, we’re going on an adventure!

We have revamped and introduced new statistics for all gear and consumables in the game. With hundreds of items to mix and match, you’ll have more flexibility in crafting your own role.

Denizens of the world will now present a real challenge. Don’t wander away from home without a party and the proper equipment. 

We’ve added new spells, combat abilities, and weapon types. Keep an eye on their durability! You don’t want them to break when you need them most.

Divine peace (Pax Dei) doesn’t extend to Lyonesse, our new province. Enter here at your own (mortal) peril if you’re willing to try out our first iteration of PVP. 

We’ve also made multiple changes to the peaceful aspect of the game by adding new recipes, new ingredients, and new crafting stations. We’ve also started work on progression balancing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ipqj276yI

 sat down with us to discuss the recent additions to the game and some of the thinking behind them. Check this video, the first of a series of 4, for a sense of what to expect during the Wilderness Alpha next month. 

We’ll also be sharing some more sneak peeks in the weeks leading up to the Wilderness Alpha. 

The Pax Dei Wilderness Alpha will start on April 23 and last a whole week.

Good news! While we won’t be able to invite everybody who signed up, this Alpha will be much larger than the previous one. We plan to invite 

 and will open multiple copies of the world across two regions, with the goal of filling them out to check our infrastructure. 
We’ll invite all participants in one go, so you can play from day one if you're selected.

To get a chance to participate, make sure to:

Make sure to link your Discord account if you have one, as it increases your chances of receiving an invite.

If you have any issues, don’t hesitate to check 

Capture d-écran 2024-03-19 154835.jpg

, we are pleased to invite you again! Your account will be automatically flagged, and you won’t need to do anything to gain access.

: make sure to link your Discord and Pax Dei accounts by April 15 so we can grant you access properly.

the Wilderness Alpha won’t be confidential

. Every player will be able to share their experiences, screenshots, and videos on our official Discord server and other platforms.

We look forward to seeing how you engage with the new features in the Wilderness Alpha. Your participation and feedback will guide the ongoing development of Pax Dei. 

Thank you for your patience and your continuous support!

Save the Date: The Wilderness Alpha is Coming on April 23

 The first quarter of 2024 is drawing to a close, and an update on our second Alpha test is overdue. We know many of you are eager to dive back into P...

, we wanted to come back to you with the lessons we learned and how they'll affect our priorities moving forward.

But first, a huge thank you to everyone who played, watched, commented on, and encouraged us! We're designing Pax Dei to be a social sandbox, and the game has never felt as alive as it did with thousands of you roaming the world. Thank you for being there for us!

To test and stress our tech to improve and fix issues,

To test the exploring, harvesting, crafting, and building gameplay.

We won’t go super deep into the tech, but the test was extremely helpful! We fixed several performance issues we had been unable to catch before - like the issue with buildings becoming invisible, which was related to chopping down trees! And we validated our world layering system -  the system that creates a new layer of a part of the world when it reaches a certain capacity. 

The main difficulty for us was to be able to replicate your buildings in real-time across layers - i.e. if someone is building in layer 1, people in layer 2 can see the building being raised. The system works pretty smoothly and is very robust (so far ^^).

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We were absolutely blown away by what you all built! We knew the building system had potential, but we did not expect all these castles and villages, along with so much creativity with some of the pieces!

To foster creativity, the Alpha granted the freedom to move plots without constraints on construction. This newfound liberty empowered small teams to build stunning castles and numerous creative buildings.

However, as we progress, we’ll need to refine this freedom. Our upcoming building restrictions serve multifaceted objectives: they safeguard constructions from random destruction through plot permissions and strive to maintain a harmonious and balanced world area.

Additional notes on buildings, in no particular order:

: the snapping mechanism for placing building pieces requires refinement to enhance functionality.

: achieving balance in building recipes poses challenges, especially in creating advantages for group efforts (without making a castle something trivial to erect) while remaining accessible to solo or small group players.

t: plans include introducing new building block content incorporating new progression tiers, block types, and props to diversify the existing structures. However, the next test phase may include the same pieces as the building won’t be its focus! And we don’t want to spoil you! ^^

: this Alpha test revealed and addressed multiple issues concerning building and plot systems, enhancing robustness and overall performance. The networking for buildings still consumes some unnecessary bandwidth, and the performance in larger villages could be better. Our tech wizards have already done a fantastic job, but are confident they can still improve performance.

: resource spawns within plots are being fine-tuned to prevent overlaps with building blocks.

: we’re looking at adding plaques and or signs which you’ll be able to write on, to make signs, label chests, etc. This won’t come soon, though.

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: we're assessing resource quantities and their locations, aiming to add more resources to the Wildlands. Certain resources were either too abundant or scarce, and some had no purpose, prompting changes.

we're reviewing every recipe's difficulty level; some are overly easy, while others are excessively challenging.

 some of the crafting skills demand excessive grinding (who said linen?), and some are missing or still need a lot of work. We are adding a lot of content for the next test, which we hope will give you many more reasons to explore the world. We're also evaluating which recipes should belong to processing versus regular crafters to prevent players from being stationary for extended periods during crafting (you know the main offender!)

: right now, if you fail to craft, you lose all the resources from the recipe. This is not how we intend to have the system work in the long term - we are looking into giving you part of the resources back when failing, based on how badly you failed. And there will eventually be mechanics that reward you for succeeding perfectly, allowing you to create “master-crafted” items. But these systems will take time.

: we probably won’t remove the stamina cost from resource harvesting loops, but the system needs tuning. We want to scale the mechanics with your skill level, so once you’ve raised the skill and are using higher-tier equipment, you won’t be stamina-gated when harvesting. This is one of many avenues we intend to use to provide progression goals for dedicated gatherers.

: we are taking a careful look at inventory management. This is hard, as we don’t want to trivialize needing to keep things organized, but at the same time, we’re very aware that some aspects of inventory management can be very tedious. We’re not making fundamental changes to the inventory system right now, but we will definitely improve these flows in the future.

We can’t wait to show you all the changes and improvements we’re making in

, which should be available before too long, in the 

Alpha - Key takeaways

 Greetings Paxians! After the end of our  , we wanted to come back to you with the lessons we learned and how they'll affect our priorities moving for...

Our Alpha ended last week, and we want to thank you for your support and kind words!
While we wait to delve into the details of what we've learned and our next steps (that will come 'before too long'), here are some numbers from our first 'public' Alpha (en Anglais)!


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Alpha in Numbers

 Greetings Paxians! Our Alpha ended last week, and we want to thank you for your support and kind words!
While we wait to delve into the details of wh...

I changed my setup since I signed up. Should I update my profile?

Please make sure you do! You can easily add and/or remove devices from your profile by visiting our 

. While you are at it, you will want to check that your email address is correct as well!

How do I know I have been selected for the test?

Alpha - FAQ

 Frequently Asked Questions I changed my setup since I signed up. Should I update my profile? Please make sure you do! You can easily add and/or remov...

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