Welcome to the Pax Dei Building FAQ focused on the building feature in Pax Dei. Everything we’ll detail below is part of our vision, our plans regarding how building will work in Pax Dei. However, please keep in mind that, as for every project in development, nothing is set in stone, and some changes might happen depending on test results and feedback from the community.
In Pax Dei, you will be able to build your hut/house/village, alone or with your friends. To build a structure, you’ll first need to find a good place to place your plot, as you can only build on a plot.
Pax Dei Building FAQ
General
Can I build anywhere on the map?
No. Building happens in the Heartland valleys and is disallowed outside of them. Additionally, some areas in the Heartlands that would break gameplay are restricted. For example, the Heartlands feature a pre-made road network and you cannot build on top of roads. You cannot build underground either. However, we do allow building on water, and indeed, waterfront buildings look amazing. In some cases, this does allow for building a bridge.
Can I set up my plot on a dungeon entrance?
No. We want to guarantee that PvE areas that should be accessible to all, are accessible to all. And it is unlikely that you will find a dungeon’s entrance in the Heartlands.
Can I build in PvP areas and, if yes, in a permanent way?
We don’t want to go into any details on PvP right now, sorry! This should be covered in a FAQ dedicated to PvP. Please be patient
Do I absolutely need a plot to build a house?
Building only happens on plots, but the plots have a permission system that allows them to be shared between players. So yes, you will need a plot to build, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it is your plot. If you have a group of friends and form a clan together, you can have multiple shared houses in multiple locations and work on those together.
Can I take resources from abandoned structures?
Yes, if a player tears down a plot, the items left behind become available to other players.
If yes, does this mean that I could potentially claim larger, more complex buildings with my plot? And if so, are they/can they be larger than you’d normally be allowed to build in your single plot size?
You can’t claim the pre-made buildings, but you will be able to build extremely large buildings using the plot permission sharing inside clans.
What could be some reasons to visit other players’ settlements? Could we get access to rare materials or recipes? Could we get access to their books or other discoveries?
We don’t want to go into specifics on this right now, but let’s just say trading will be a large part of Pax Dei. There might also be additional reasons you want to visit other people, like politics.
Buildings
Is there a mechanic that limits the number of structures that I can build?
The amount of land available is the only constraint. Each player will get one plot of land you can build on as part of a paid account, and we intend to add mechanisms that allow players to acquire additional plots.
As a side note, we’ve noticed during playtests that clans often appoint a player to be the master builder, so if you’re really into building, try to find a guild that wants to make you this person.
Are the houses premade, or can I build whatever I want?
You can build almost whatever you want from the building pieces in the game – see the next answer!
Can I go crazy in terms of structure, or do I need to respect some architectural rules?
The building system features a physics system that forces structural integrity on the buildings, so your buildings will have to make sense from a structural perspective. As an example, while houses can be pretty big, you cannot build a house that’s infinitely high.
In the long term, will all buildings look more or less the same?
We have multiple building piece sets and are looking to add more customization options to the houses. We’d love to eventually have a system that allows you to make a very diverse set of houses that can all look unique. We definitely won’t have all these features done by the time the game goes to general availability, and plan to keep adding features in the updates.
When we go to build on our plots, how forgiving is the building system if we want to change our minds and start over completely, or if we mess up? Can we recoup supplies equally, or are they lost once placed?
We’re still debating exactly how much you’ll recoup when tearing down the houses. But we do want the system to be fairly forgiving.
Plot decay, Plot moving
If I link my plot to the plots of my clan and we build a huge castle, what happens if someone decides to leave? Is a part of the castle lost?
We’re well aware of this and we want to develop mechanisms that allow you to retain that plot of land for the clan.
Can I decide to move my plot at any point? In that case: what happens to the building/props already on it?
Right now, you can move the plot at any time but would need to move all the things on the plot by carrying them from one place to another. We intend to offer tools to make this a bit easier but don’t have an ETA for this.
What if someone claims a plot in the area we started to populate with my clan – to block us – and doesn’t want to move? Is there any way we can push them out or prevent this from happening?
There is no game mechanism at this point to force someone to move; you’d have to talk to the person and convince them to move. Note that the game very much favors cooperation, so there’s very little in the game itself that would motivate someone to do this – someone who dedicates their plot to blocking a clan instead of working with them will have a hard time playing the game.
How long does a player have to stay idle to lose their buildings, or what has to happen?
We want the game shards to always feel alive, and to ensure this, it doesn’t make sense to keep inactive plots forever. Once a player stops playing the game, we’d therefore want to free the plot (or plots) of land the player has been maintaining, so that other players can occupy the space. We’re thinking about setting up a grace period to make sure people don’t lose their house by accident, along with ways to allow a returning player to easily rebuild a plot so they don’t have to start from scratch. We haven’t made final decisions around this yet, and are looking forward to experimenting on this during the Alpha test.
Can I take resources from abandoned players’ structures?
Yes, if they are truly abandoned.
Housing and decorations
Can I craft furniture and decorative items?
Yes! There are a number of items you can build in addition to just buildings, crafters, and chests. For example, you can craft rugs, chairs, tables, etc. The selection of items in the game right now is not extensive as we haven’t gone into full production on this content set, and we’re looking to add more.
Do they have value in the gameplay, or are those just for decorating purposes?
Some are usable and we do want to support full RP gameplay where you can nicely decorate your house also with usable furniture. Lights are especially helpful, with the dark nights you’ll experience in the game. We don’t currently know how extensive this prop set will be by the time you get to play the game, but we will be continuing to develop the game for a very long time, including adding more content over time.
Can I design my own ones, or are those pre-set?
They will be provided by the game.
Can I customize them to the colors of my clan?
The systems have many features to customize the items you can craft and we have the tech in place to enable features such as the type of wood used to craft an item changes the look of items made of the wood. We additionally have a system for clans to create their own heraldic symbol, which appears on some of the gear worn by the clan, and we are planning to support this in some items you can craft on your plot. We don’t currently know the extent to which we’ll support all of these features by the time the game comes out, so we’ll share more details on this later.
Observations (speculation)
- FPS: over the course of the video we can see the hardware monitor, watching this we can calculate the average fps. During this video the player’s FPS ranged from 90-120 with no noticeable drops or hitches.
- Chat: In the bottom Left corner we noticed you could open Chat with Enter, how this chat works we currently don’t know.
- Reply and Tell: Also in the bottom left corner we can see the Reply and Tell sections, both of which we assume are used for the private messaging system.
- Setting and Notifications: In the top left corner we noticed Settings and notification tabs currently on F4 and N, unsure if these can be rebound as of now.
- Help, Feedback and HUD: In the top right corner we see some more of the UI, mainly a help and feed back button but also a hide keys button probably used to disable the tool tips telling players which keys they need to press to preform certain actions within the UI.
- Hotbar: In the bottom left we can see a fairly basic hotbar allowing up to 8 slots, all of which can be used with a hot key.
- Inventory: Inventory seems to be on tab but there is also a button that appear to refresh the inventory on C, Looking at the backpack symbol during the video depending on the weight the player is carrying it fills up. Indicating a weight limit to what a player can carry.
- Health and stamina: Players seem to have a 100 health and stamina.
- Food slots: Above the health and stamina bar you can see three food slots and 1 potion slot, giving the impression your only allowed 3 food buffs and 1 potion buff at the same time.
- Building hammer: The player character has a hammer in their 8th slot, due to its common place in other games as a building tool we assume it’l serve the same purpose here. EDIT: The hammer is confirmed used as a building tool.
- Private chests: During the video the player quickly brushes up against a chest, this chest is named after a character and looks to be fully private. The only option to interact with it is the press F to examine.
- Examine: Pressing F to examine, Players seem to be able to examine nearly everything in the game world. Including players.
- Player names: Once we are introduced to Builder Caytlin (who is an amazing builder by the way!) we see that player names do hover over their characters, direct line of sight isn’t required the name tag shows up after getting in a certain range.
- Furnace: Within the first second of the video we get a partial description of what we assume is a Small Furnace, pressing E to craft items.
- Building Tiers: Although unconfirmed we can see a few presumed tiers of building materials, Including: Thatch,Wood,Stone,Brick and Clay. None of these terms are confirmed they are just the most accurate description we could find to name certain building types.
- Paid account?: “Each player will get one plot of land you can build on as part of a paid account” An confusing statement for sure, sadly no developer could lend a hand on clearing this one up as monetization is still up for internal debate. With a statement like this only ruling out skin only cash shop free to play as a monetization model.
- Video title: “Pax Dei – Building short clip 1/2 – Daytime” The title suggests we have a part 2 coming and the mention of Daytime suggests we might have a Nighttime feature to look forward to.
- Charcuterie Workbench: During the video we noticed the description for a Charcuterie Workbench Tier 5 pop up and disappear within seconds again, “Sage advice is never given over the results of such work. But friendships are born.” We assume this is a butchery station of some kind.
- Station Tiers: The above mentioned Charcuterie Workbench is Tier 5 of its kind, we assume this means there is at least 5 tiers of workbenches and stations to unlock and build. How this progression works is currently still up in the air.
Developer comments
Even though the Pax Dei Building FAQ’s answers cover most topics extensively the development team over at Mainframe Industries has decided to comment on a few of the further questions by the community in order to clear up some of the miss conceptions people could have. Down below we list a few.
No building outside the heartlands
Players suggested that we had previously had hints at building outside of the heartlands so the answer came as quite the shock, Developers later mentioned that this answer represents the current state of the game and might not represent it in the long term. As it stands right now building outside of the heartlands (save zones) is currently still a subject of discussion and further development. This coincides with the further development of certain PvP systems which will be talked about in a future FAQ.
Plot size
In the short Video that was released together with this FAQ content drop we saw a decent sized group of buildings so players got curious about the plot sizes and how many plots where required to place all these buildings. Developers first recalled using 2 plots in total but later came back and clarified it was actually a collection of 3 plots being used inefficiently due to the geographic restrictions of the location they chose.
Blurry character
After watching the video some players had questions about the character’s rendering, to clarify this developers mentioned having Depth Of Field and other render options on during the recording of the video. There was also mention of certain effects not working as intended causing certain unintended visual artifacts including the blurry effect over the players character.
Building over pre-existing structures
As a precaution to avoid certain locations being blocked by player structures players will not be able to claim plots over pre placed game generated road systems. This is mainly to avoid griefing and to preserve the games atmosphere.
Source
All of this great information regarding the Pax Dei Building FAQ can be found on the Official Pax Dei Discord, Further more we have chosen to supplement this article with some of the developers answers regarding some of the phrasing and choices made within the design of Pax Dei. All of these answers can also be found on the same discord. Some of the stuff included in this article is speculation by our great editorial staff here at MMO-WIKI and will be marked as such.
Building FAQ Part 2
Part 2 has no also been released by the great staff over at Mainframe Industries. Make sure to check it out HERE.
