Pax Dei - Early Access testing starts soon

It started at 5am today. Most of the keys went to Europeans or at least all the streams were EU... i applied but no key yet. Supposed to do another wave in a couple days ish.

Next set of codes go out monday but only if you registered before nov 12.

Is this gonna be a pc only game or will it be on console too?

I got into Alpha 2 this week (the "wilderness alpha"), it's been an interesting time.

The game, at least thus far (it's still in alpha, after all) is much more of a hobby-style game than "I'm just looking to kill a few minutes".

There's definitely combat (PVE and PVP), dungeons, crafting and magic, but the focus is on being heavily player-driven for the creation of goods (through resource gathering and crafting).

The game is absolutely beautiful, even in this alpha environment. The building UI needs some work (again, alpha) and combat (at least the extremely limited version I've experienced) isn't all that deep (swing, swing, swing). People resource harvesting and crafting together get more from each endeavor and get it faster (three folks with adjoining plots not far from me created their own guild and in a day have FAR outpaced my meager setup).

Sadly, this alpha lasts only a week but I've been enjoying it immensely thus far.

Saw Asmongold stream his clan's progress. He got 1000 beta keys and gave out to his subscribers and friends and they built an absolutely insane castle and started to kit out their clan members. Seems like it could be a lot of fun for people that have established gaming groups.

There's another streamer with a decent following who is making a city. LINK

I found a good spot with lots of different resources around me (clay, gneiss, iron ore, hogs, trees, flax, reeds, apples, etc) so I've been working on a lot of the more traditional crafting paths (carpentry, clothing, leatherworking, blacksmithing, etc). Over the weekend I started working on armorsmithing and weaponsmithing (chest and legs of basic chain, iron broadsword, iron axe for cutting bigger trees). I even built a house (but am having trouble completing the roof).

I'm enjoying the slower pace of this game, the ability to do everything on my own and the gorgeous graphics.

The game still has some issues.
-Sometimes the big trees will "fall" in such a way that they are stuck above your character's head (meaning you have to move around to try to find a spot where you can "chop" upward, if it's even possible).
-Running it through Steam causes the launcher processes to not close completely out (you have to end-task on it in task manager).
-There's no definitive path for crafting in a specific focus, much less making a specific item. If I want to focus on clothing, I will either need to first focus on things like blacksmithing and carpentry (leatherworking too, I think) in order to build a spindle, a loom, etc. Recipes for making specific things are hidden behind levels walls (in a focus) and/or in the first time you successfully make some item (which may or may not be related to whatever you are focusing on). Many were the times when I got a new recipe I wanted to make (a simple hauberk, for example) but it needed a crafted resource I hadn't unlocked yet (thus, not even knowing what I needed to make in order to unlock it).
-Combat, at least at this level, is just hack/slash.
-If you are swimming and run out of stamina, it begins taking your health (serious WTF there)
-There's as yet no easy way to edit your plot (moving a chair, for example). Currently you have to delete whatever it is then place it again (which means it, or the resources to make it, takes up room in your inventory).
-Putting down foundation stones are ground level does not remove the foliage.
-There's no terrain editing feature for your plot. How can I have a medieval Batcave if I can't make a cave!?!
-Sometimes when you have your construction hammer equipped, the graphics stutter as you move around.
-Fishing should be available early on (if it's available at all, I haven't discovered anything involving it yet and have not seen any fish in the waters).

Sidenote: The world needs to be quite a bit larger or there needs to be some sort of inactivity timer on plots. When I set up my plot a week ago there were only a couple others within sight. Now there is one across the river, one to the left and above me, one behind me, another to the right of that one, etc. While some of those are active or semi-active, some have still not progressed beyond their firepit and carpentry table (everyone gets to claim 2 plots in this alpha, so many of these may have been abandoned after the player moved to some other locale they prefer even more).

All that said, this is still alpha testing. This is far from a finished game so there's absolutely no reason to think any/all of these issues are going to remain once it gets into beta testing (whenever that may be). It's definitely going to be more of a niche appeal than mass appeal style of game. Thus far they haven't discussed how they plan for the game to pay for itself (so that may end up being a deal breaker for some, depending on what they do).

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To be honest not having a clan size limit makes me less interested. People like him just show up and will have 250 people go grind stuff for him while the rest of us peons spend tens of hours to get a fraction of what large guilds acquire in a short time. Then youll have 1000 man chinese guilds who just zerg and kill everything and yell china numba 1 before fricking off to another server to ruin someone elses experience.

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I'm actually fine with that in this instance. This last Alpha lasted a week, in that time the majority of plots around me had an initial burst of activity where people got up to a kiln or furnace, but then completely stopped.

Those who show up to support their streamer are likely to be highly transient players like that, meaning they'll build some massive structures but in a month or two much of them will be abandoned and begin deteriorating once Asmongold moves onto a new game, back to an older one or banging his girlfriend. That deterioration adds character, at least to me.

EA starts sometime this month, I believe (they have said "Spring 2024" and Spring ends in June), but EA is still a development phase so there will be a lot of people who jump in to do just like what happened in A2 and then it will tone back down until full release where we'll see the pattern re-establish (but possibly last longer, depending on how well received the game is).

Most of those will not venture too terribly far from where they spawn in, I'm already looking over the maps to try to pick out a spot far away from initial spawn points so I can weather that storm as quietly as possible.

Theyre going to charge a sub on top of box price.

Let them rot and play soulmask instead.

It's a much better game and looks better. Especially if you add reshade.

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You sound poor and bitter.

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My 11 year olds rig is more expensive than yours.

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looks better


Debateable.

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No. it isn't. I've played both and it isn't even close. Let's not compare trailer still shots because Pax looks nothing like the trailer in game.




Weather transition

1st boss HUD off

Cheaper game, no sub, looks better. More in depth. PvP is an actual fight not a 30 minute papercut fest. oh and they beat their original launch date and launched early, unlike Pax's " Q1 2024" promise.

I may still buy Pax, because I game 8-12 hours a day and I can. But for your average gamer who only has 8-12 hours per week to spend. I'd never recommend it with a better game available that just came out as well.

If you do play, Join an outrageously large guild or you'll spend a year grinding to get to where the zergers will be in a few weeks.

If you just want an MMO, Tarisland launches the same day and is cross platform. It also looks better.

Taris

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I would hope it plays better as Soulmask is now live while Pax Dei is only in a development EA

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Soulmask is also EA.

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There's a preview week going on today through the 11th with a bunch of streamers

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Yea I watched a stream of a " PvP event" tonight and it was painful. hitting each other for 8 damage a swing with a health pool of 150. I can imagine any sort of siege would take literal days to accomplish.

ETA:: my clips are sourced 4k and downgraded to 1080 by medal. if you maximize on anything bigger than 1080 they look blurry. even blurry they look better than any twitch stream of pax right now.

Really interested in this, but I didn't realize they were going to charge a monthly sub as well. That's pretty disappointing. Especially with the new FF14 expansion dropping at the end of the month. I'll probably have to pass for now.