One of the first nights where Pax Dei really clicked with me was a few days after its early access launch last month where I spent a good four or five hours just hunting monsters with guild mates. We had about ten or twelve people on a Discord call as we traversed through caves, up the slopes to storm ruined towers and more, all in the name of loot, letting ring our swordsong as we clashed with wolves, archers, and more.
It was here that I found myself really enjoying Pax Dei the most. At its core, the developers are trying to build a social sandbox MMO, and this expedition into the wilderness was the first fruit of that concept. However, like nearly all of Pax Dei, as it stands right now, it feels like it needed much more time to bake in the oven before bringing it to the masses.
Pax Dei is a medieval-themed social sandbox MMO that has elements from both old-school MMOs, such as EVE Online, to newer game genres, such as the building and crafting elements you might find in a survival game. Launching into early access on June 18th, the MMO's developers at Mainframe Industries are very clear that this is not a "feature complete" game, rather it's still got a ways to go till it's ready for its 1.0 release.
What is on offer, though, is actually quite a bit when you get down to the meat and potatoes of Pax Dei. The foundations of Pax Dei are there, from its building mechanics, which will enable players to build the towns, cities, and eventually kingdoms that, in theory, will come to dominate the MMO. Crafting is also there, with professions such as leatherworking, armorsmithing, and more present right now.
Good Bones
At the start, it's clear that Pax Dei has some good bones to build from. The world itself is beautiful to behold, taking clear advantage of its Unreal Engine 5 roots. Light streams through forest rooftops realistically, while dungeons and caves are suitably dark enough to warrant carrying a few torches around with you while spelunking.
While the world might initially look like generic Medieval fantasy, once I left the confines of my base, it became genuinely interesting to explore. Exploring the ruined towers and seeing the enemies guarding the treasures found within made me wonder what caused them to fall to ruins. Who were the people there, and what were they still guarding?
There isn't a ton of lore in Pax Dei yet, but the world feels ripe for this to start being drip-fed into the MMO over time. What will future enemies drop, and what can we find in the dungeons that compel adventurers to risk their gear to discover?
Will we see manifestations of the magic that weaves through the world outside of the spells we players and some of the enemies themselves can sling? I'm definitely eager to see how the team at Mainframe builds upon this, especially as more biomes open up.
There really is only one biome type on offer right now, based on real-world France, with woodlands, hilly terrain, quarries, and more to explore. It can feel a bit one-note after a while, though the various regions worldwide do have some variations on the theme.
My region, Gael, has more woodlands throughout much of the eastern marches, while the Shire south of us seems to have more hilly, barren terrain to explore (though it's not devoid of the things that would bring the Shire to mind). Dotting the landscape are caves and ruined towers, and I even stumbled upon what looked like a barren, devastated forest that made me feel like I was venturing into the Barrow Downs in The Lord of the Rings at one point.
Complex for Complexity's Sake
All over each of these regions are resources to be gathered, from the Gnesis stone to build foundations to the Iron Ore to power the foundries of industry. A large chunk of the gameplay right now is simply gathering these resources to put to use, whether by your own crafting skill or bringing together the might of your Clan, Pax Dei's version of guilds.
There's a lot to do here as well. Crafting is, well, convoluted, to put it mildly. So many crafting recipes require a ton of small pieces built from those raw resources, such as the wooden beams, planks, and plugs required to build walls or floor foundations, right down to the iron nails and hinges required to craft chests. Some armorsmithing recipes require iron studs to effectively rivet into the armor plate, and all of this requires a mighty store of resources.
As a result, it can be overwhelming at first, especially when you start to do the math of how many iron ingots you might need in order to successfully craft that greatsword, or the amount of boars you'll need to skin and tan the hides of to get that full kit of leather armor.
This crafting loop is the core gameplay of Pax Dei right now, and ensuring it's something that respects the player's time while also ensuring it is balanced and requires time to master is key. Right now, while the base of the loop is solid, I still feel like things are way too convoluted, or in the case of some of the more advanced recipes, require just too many materials to make an item.
Take the Steel Greatsword, a weaponsmithing item that requires enough charcoal to burn down a forest. Over 9000 pieces of charcoal are needed in order to smelt down the ore required to build the weapon. This means you need at least 17K pieces of wood - which I mean, on the one hand, it's not hard to cut down trees, but on the other hand, the task can get mind-numbing by about tree three.
You also run the risk of failing in your crafting job, which wastes resources and time both. While you can recoup some of the lost items, it's not all of the hard-gathered materials you used up. In fairness to Pax Dei's system, it does tell you the difficulty your character will face if you try to craft something beyond your current skill level - though it should be noted the only real way to gain crafting experience fast enough to progress at a suitable clip is to craft beyond your current skill level.
As a result, much of my time early on in Pax Dei was spent hacking at trees, rocks, gathering what little clay I could find (seriously, this is the resource that has eluded me more than any other and it's infuriating at times), each time going farther and farther afield to find them. I would bring them back to my hovel and grind out a few crafting levels, only to speed back out into the world to gather more.
This gameplay loop, on the one hand, has been calming to me for years when I did so in survival MMOs like ARK: Survival Ascended, No Man's Sky, and Conan Exiles, though it should be said that in those games, I felt progression much, much faster, with less convoluted recipes to get to where I wanted to before I would log off for the night.
Some of Pax Dei's crafting benches are passive crafters, meaning they craft your item without you needing to be there, taking up real-world time in the process. Crafting that massive amount of charcoal needed to craft a steel sword can be done overnight, provided you've loaded up enough Kilns with wood to do the job, same with smelting the ingots needed to work over the anvil the next day.
I really like this mix of passive and active crafting, which allows me to accomplish a ton of things at a time if I plan accordingly. Being able to set myself up for success the next time I log in is a huge reason I love industry in games like EVE Online. Spending a session blasting space rocks for minerals and then build ships in station while I'm off cooking dinner for my family does make me feel like I've accomplished something, and Pax Dei gives that same feeling.
Right now, though, the amount of work needed to build seemingly simple items versus the time spent just does not feel balanced, especially if you're in a small group. Pax Dei is, by it's developer's own words, decidedly not a solo game, and its in this loop that is most keenly felt. The way these hefty requirements are mitigated is through teamwork with other players, whether just an impromptu group or your clan.
Inherently Social
At the start of this early access review, I mentioned Pax Dei clicked for me in a real way when I was playing with about 10 or 12 clan members. Since the first day I logged into Pax Dei I've been part of a clan that has sprawled into one of the largest, if not the largest, on our Gael server, Nightshade.
Pax Dei aims to be a social sandbox, bringing the "multiplayer" of MMORPGs to the forefront. Pax Dei is simply better with other people. Whether it's coordinating a massive gathering group to sweep the land for that hard-to-find clay or hunting down enemies to collect the lockets required for some higher-tier crafting recipes, everything in Pax Dei feels huddled around the core concept of doing it with other people.
The overwhelming crafting requirements feel less overwhelming when you have 20-something players all gathering the wood to fire up the kilns or if you have hunting parties bringing back tons of carcasses to your cooks to help level their charcuterie skills.
It does beg the question, though: is it Pax Dei I'm enjoying, or simply the human interaction? I would say both, and that's okay, and plays right into the developer's desires for making Pax Dei into the MMO they want it to eventually become.
Crafting becomes less tedious if you're engaged in a good conversation, exploring the wilderness PvP zones becomes less dangerous when you don't go at it alone, and even those deforestation efforts are easier when you have multiple people devoted to the task.
However, due to the sheer lack of content in Pax Dei right now, I found myself kind of in a social no man's land a bit with finding a role within my group. We had so many people so quickly, all trying to level crafting skills like weaponsmithing, armorsmithing and more that even with us all gathering resources together there were only so many to go around.
As a result, I felt relegated to a simple gatherer, which was not the role I envisioned for myself early on and especially not the way I wanted to play in a sandbox MMO where I could decide my own destiny. This isn't really the fault of my clan, though, as there just is not enough other content to afford more playstyles as of now. And as a result, I can see people getting burnt out easily either on their playgroup and the MMO in its current form.
For the purposes of this review I tried to dabble in a little bit of everything, using resources I gathered myself so as to not take from our clan stash, though I will say I would not have gotten nearly as far as I did if it weren't for the gear and tools our weaponsmiths and armorsmiths made for me.
Seriously, it cannot be overstated just how much easier gathering is when you have good quality tools to hack at an iron deposit or great tree with. And this was only possible early on because we as a clan had a mission to build up a few crafters to the higher tiers as quickly as we could.
What this did mean, though, is we had a ton of items that just sat in chests. One of the features that Pax Dei needs to add ASAP is a recycle mechanic to recoup some of the materials used to craft items that are no longer needed. We have so many wrought iron pickaxes, chainmail and more that we literally set up a row of chests with a giant wooden arrow pointing to it to give out to anyone who passed by our village because otherwise they were wasting space.
Launch Issues Rear Their Heads
What's an MMO launch, early access or otherwise, without some launch issues, right? Over the years I've softened a bit on whether or not issues are acceptable - games are hard to make, and even harder to deploy live services to scale. However, it should be noted that even a few weeks into early access, we're still dealing with some pretty big bugs that can make spending time in Pax Dei feel like a waste to some.
Early on, one major issue was the simple fact that the server could not keep up with the build queue, and it would take literal hours for items to spawn in after you placed them. This ground progress to a halt, and made it hard to actually play, as even gathering items and trying to store them in a chest would meet with this same progression issue.
Now, one of the major bugs that seems to be going around (and something the developers have acknowledged this week) have been reports of building parts and crafting stations just evaporating into thin air. I noticed this myself last week where chunks of my house's foundation, some of its walls and even my personal furnace were just gone without a trace.
In a game where gathering resources, especially with the amount of resources that many of these recipes take, takes a long time, having that time feel wasted is just not something I want as a player.
Bugs are to be expected, of course. This is early access after all - and indeed, everything I'm building right now will be gone with an upcoming wipe. But in the moment, as I'm trying to play now, they can definitely make logging a slog, knowing that part of that building I erected last night might be gone.
Hopefully, these will be handled swiftly, and future bugs will be mitigated with more server uptime under Mainframe's belt. This is, of course, what early access is for, so I hope that when the official launch happens these types of progression-halting issues won't rear their ugly heads again.
Combating Combat
I've mentioned a few times going farther afield to fight enemies, be they wolves, archers, knights and more. Combat is probably the weakest area of Pax Dei, however, due largely to the absence of any real hit detection on enemies and your own avatar.
As of right now, swinging a greatsword in a wide arc feels weightless, with enemies not reacting to getting hit realistically. Blocking feels imprecise as a result of this as well, the only way I could tell I was successfully blocking something was the reduction in the floating damage numbers that would rise from the ether when a hit landed.
There is something to like here, though. I do appreciate that, despite the floaty aspect of combat, weapons feel distinct. Bashing an enemy with the Mace feels inherently different than skewering a boar with a spear. The greatsword, which has become my weapon of choice, sweeps enemies in front of my, dealing AOE damage by comparison, especially when utilizing the sword twirl skill the weapon awards when equipping it.
Indeed, each weapon (other than the bow, from what I can tell) comes with a specialized skill that does more damage, as well as other effects, and this is how you can help define roles within a group when you go hunting. Equipping your heavy armored players with a Mace and Shield affords a shield bas skill that stuns enemies and crunches skulls, while spears can use Thrust, which sends the spear lunging forward, skewering multiple enemies in its path.
Grouping is relatively painless right now, though I will say trying to revive a fallen ally could use some work. Having to position yourself over the corpse at just the right spot and interact with them, only for that player to go into a notifications menu to access the revive is a bit, to use the word of this review, convoluted. There really needs to be a pop up the minute you put your aiming reticle on the body, and a popup should hit the center of the screen of the person who is being revived so it's not missed. But these types of UI issues can be ironed out with feedback and time.
Again, the bones of something good is here, and the developers have openly admitted that this aspect of Pax Dei needs much work. PvP feels just as floaty, and it's admittedly one aspect I haven't really tested due to players generally skirting around each other when in the danger zones. The times I have wanted to fight, I would see myself unnumbered, so I would be the one skirting around - especially since you drop everything when you die. You can summon your corpse when you're close enough after reviving at a nearby stone, but by that time, the other players will have picked your corpse clean of what they could fit in their pockets.
So where do we go from here?
Pax Dei has, as I've mentioned, good bones. The foundation is, I feel, rather solid. There is a lot on offer even today, especially if you like crafting and building loops. But admittedly, after about two weeks, I feel like I've already exhausted much of what other is to do, especially with the knowledge that wipes are coming. How much time do you put into something, fully knowing it'll be gone in a matter of weeks or months?
So much of Pax Dei is being sold right now on the promise of what it will be, and not necessarily what it is today. The devs quickly remind people everywhere, whether it's the Steam store page, the official Discord, or even when you log into the MMO, that it's a very heavy work in progress.
This fact makes it hard to pass a verdict on Pax Dei, especially knowing it could be completely different in just a few months time. However, Pax Dei are charging players for the right to help test the MMO in this early access period, which we know should last until at least June 2025.
With Founder's packs running between $40 and $99, the differences are cosmetic recipes but, most crucially, the number of land plots your account can claim. It requires a verdict.
Indeed, there is also some obfuscation around its monetization model when it finally releases, especially as it comes to the way you can acquire new plots. Since you can actually buy more plots with real money today in the form of the more expensive Founder's packs, there can be the concern that this will continue to be a trend when the full 1.0 game launches.
The fact that Pax Dei has been open about the fact that this will have a subscription fee attached to the MMO is also a point of concern, not because paying a sub is a relic of the MMOs of yesteryear, but the lack of meaningful information as to what this sub covers. Is it just game access, or will you lose your plot and all the work you've done if you need to take an extended absence from the world for one reason or another? Do you have to pay additional sub fees if you own more than one plot? How much will it cost? Can this cost be offset by an in-game item you can purchase with gold, much like PLEX in EVE Online? There are so many questions versus actionable answers right now.
How will Pax Dei keep its players in the social sandbox it's building? Arguably, you can say that Pax Dei requires a large playerbase to keep things interesting. Indeed, even a few weeks after launch, my guild has moved on to other games, our Discord voice chat mostly empty after two weeks of almost constant activity. Part of this is just down to the fact that outside of crafting and building, there just isn't a ton to do, but what are the hooks in the next major part of this early access period that will keep them longer next time?
$40 isn't cheap, let alone $99 - and this is effectively paying for an alpha here. Early access has started to become the main way games launch nowadays, and Mainframe has stated that the funds from its early access sales will directly fuel the development of the MMO. Could one argue that Pax Dei jumped into early access too early? Sure, though the reasoning the studio states does make sense: they need players in order to build out the future of the MMO.
For my part, despite the crafting balance issues (and my ability to properly roof my house), I've thoroughly enjoyed my time in Pax Dei. Despite being burned out on survival games lately (I can only build so many virtual houses, devs), I've found myself logging into Pax Dei to roam the countryside and see what everyone else is building, watch the progress on our riverfront fort, and try to fix my damn roof. The friendships I've now made through this game are ones that I'm very grateful for, and I can't wait to unlock more of Pax Dei with them as updates and wipes happen.
It's that social fabric where the magic of Pax Dei currently lies, though, and while the devs are open about the idea of this being a player-driven, social sandbox MMO, there just isn't enough in-game to facilitate that fully just yet, unless you're lucky and find a good group right away like I was able to (thanks for the recommendation, Fernwytch).
The people of Pax Dei are the glue that ties the game on offer together right now, and indeed, that seems to be the aim even when it launches. The question I have moving forward is whether or not there will be enough there to bring players back during the early access period in large enough numbers to sustain until its 1.0 launch, or will we see it fail to gain the traction it might need before we get to that point? Time will tell, and I daresay that the players will be there, but with so many games coming out nowadays, it's hard to tell what the next thing will be to take our attention away.
That all said, despite the fun I'm having, I'm not sure it's in a place where I would have paid for this access had I not been gifted a review copy. This is the type of MMO I'm all here for - at least the promise of what it will be - and I want to see this succeed. The developers are incredibly communicative and seem to be under no illusion that this is an uphill battle of sorts to see their vision come to fruition. So, while I might not have paid the entry fee now, that's not to say in a wipe or two, I would have held out further - there is something here that I think is worth paying for, even if it's an early access product.
There is a fairly robust roadmap for what is coming down the pipeline, and I'm going to be interested in jumping back in and potentially updating this review as we move forward. I would love a bit more concrete timelines, but that will likely come as the developers finish sorting the bugs and issues that have been plaguing the MMO since launch.
It should be reiterated that despite the issues, I'm having fun. In fact, some of the most fun I've had in many MMOs lately. There is something that draws me back into Pax Dei almost daily, whether it's mindlessly gathering clay (seriously, who is using it all) or seeing if my clanmates are on and eager to venture into the PvP areas for those higher-tiered materials. There is fun to be had here.
As it stands today, it's hard to review based on a promise - and indeed, that's not how it should be done anyway. $40 is a lot of money to spend on what is effectively an alpha test right now, but if everything goes to plan, it could be the entry into one of the more interesting MMOs to come out in recent memory. Right now, Pax Dei is selling a promise, and it's one you have to decide if it's worth trusting with your hard-earned money. Because I do think the bones are good enough to at least give it a look when you're ready to do so.
Full Disclosure: A Master Founder's copy of this game was provided by PR for the purposes of this early access review. Reviewed on PC.
