This article will serve as a guide to getting started in Pax Dei, from choosing the right server to selecting a character’s preset, editing the preset character, creating a character name, and choosing where to spawn in different provinces/maps in the game, and what you should do after spawning.
Choosing Your Region and World
Before you start your adventure in the world of Pax Dei, the first thing you will need to do is select your region and world. A simple case of understanding where you are in Real Life and clicking the correct Region, for example, EU Central for European players. If you decide to pick a different region for whatever reason, this can affect your gameplay, because your ping will be higher than normal.
Next is the World to choose. This is essentially the server you play on. Picking a highly populated one can always be good due to the number of players that will be seen around the world, but it can also be bad for finding resources or a nice place to build your home.
However, our team would recommend a highly populated server due to having the interaction and the future updates coming, which include trading and VOIP, which will make engagement a lot more fun for all players.
Click F to Continue after choosing the region and world.
Character Creation in Pax Dei
Choosing Preset Character
After you’ve picked your region and world, you will then need to choose one of the preset characters that shows on your screen. There are many different preset characters you can choose from. Make sure to click “More Preset” to flick through the other preset characters, until you find one that you are satisfied with.
Preset Character: Customize Appearance
Still not satisfied with your chosen preset character? Do not worry, as we click “Continue” in the lower right button. You can edit the preset character to your liking. This offers a change in the character’s hair, beard, base face, etc. Feel free to venture and customize your characters to your liking.
Please Note – You can not change your appearance once its been made
Character’s Name
In this selection, you will need to create a name for the character that you’ve created. Your character name needs to follow a few conditions. The name ranges from 2 to 13 letters. There is no space, symbol or number. Only the first letter can be the upper case.
If you manage to meet these requirements, and you can see the green check under your name, you can now click continue.
Choosing/Selecting Starting Location
The starting location is essential for the players to gather materials for the game. There is four provinces in the game. The provinces are Kerys, Inis Gallia, Ancien, and Merrie. In these provinces, if you hover your mouse, you will see a starting waypoint/shrine.
Each province has six waypoints. This also acts as a resurrection waypoint where, when you die, you will resurrect at the nearest shrine to your location.
What to Do After Spawning
After choosing provinces and selecting which area on the map you want to spawn, the first thing you do is to gather some resources.
The resources you will be needing are Sapwood (branches on the floor or cut from trees) and Gneiss (which is stones picked up from the floor or mined from rocks. These resources can easily be found on the floor, if you explore the area.
After collecting, it’s time to craft the basics: a Construction Hammer, Gneiss Stone Axe and a Pointy Stick.
Crafting the Basics
Once you have acquired the total of 6 Sapwood and 2 Gneiss rocks, it’s time to start crafting. Click the tab key on your keyboard, and you will see the craft section at the top of the screen.
Select the Pointy Stick, Gneiss Stone Axe and Construction Hammer and click craft on each of them.
The pointy stick will help fend off some basic animals for now, the Stone axe will allow you to harvest small trees and the Construction Hammer is required to place down your plot of land and place objects.
Finding The Right Base Location
Once you have crafted the basics, it’s time to explore the world and find a location that suits you, for the perfect place to build your home. There is a few factors you should take into account in order to find the correct location for yourself.
As you will need plenty of resources in order to build your home, you will want to make sure you place your home close to certain things such as Clay, Stone Nodes and Trees. These can be found all across the map. But having easy access to these will allow you to farm more efficiently.
The next thing you can take into account is the Home shrine teleportation. This is extremely useful. Building close to this will allow you to explore anywhere in the map, gather resources and teleport back to the main shrine that you picked as a starting location.
You can use this by holding “T” Key and clicking Home Shrine. This will cause your character to do an animation and teleport you. If you wish to change your home shrine, then you will simply need to go to another zone’s major shrine and interact with it.
Claiming a Plot in Pax dei
Now it’s time for you to place and claim your plot down! Depending on what founder’s pack you purchased, will determine the specific number of plots you can claim in the game.
- Journeyman Pack gives 1 plot
- Artisan Pack gives 2 plots
- Master Pack gives 4 plots
Once you’re happy with your location, to place your plot. Equip the construction hammer from your inventory, click the right mouse button, and you will click on the “Plots” tab at the top of the screen, then unclaimed plot. This will then show you a highlighted area. Go ahead and find a suitable location and click the left mouse button to place it down.
Do not panic, you can delete your plot and replace it down if you wish.
After you have placed your plot, if you right-click again using the construction hammer, you can see on the right side of the screen where you can choose the building rights of your plot.
Either you can share this with your Clan, the Public, or you can keep your plot Private.
Plots can snap in place with another plot too, which is super useful for a clan or a group of friends, so you can build next to one another or even build a huge structure together.
Once the plot has been placed, equip your construction hammer again and right click, you will notice other tabs at the top, and click each one of the tabs.
- The Construction tab is where you will find recipes such as foundations, fences and walls.
- The Crafting tab is where you will find building recipes such as wood chopping block, furnance and campfires.
- The Props tab is where you will find all your furniture recipes such as your chairs, chandeliers and rugs.
The construction hammer is always needed if you wish to put anything down on your plot, from placing a foundation to even a simple storage chest.
What To Do Next?
Now that you have managed to find a good location and placed your plot, it will be time to build the basic essentials. These will include:
- Storage Box / Storage Chest
- Basic Carpenters Workbench
- Wood chopping block
- Furnace
- Pickaxe
- Charcoal Kiln
Wood Chopping Block
As you have already created your stone axe, you will now need to cut small trees and gather wood, it will cost a total of 10 Sapwood for a Wood Chopping Block, but of course gather more as it will always be needed.
Once you have got your wood, return to your plot and equip your hammer, then press the Right Click on your mouse and go to the crafting tab. Select the Wood Chopping Block and place it down.
The Wood Chopping Block will be the first station you craft and put down. Interact with this, which will allow you to create many other recipes, such as Planks, Beams and Pegs. These are essential for crafting other work stations such as the workbench.
It is basically a snowball system with crafting. Every new item you find or craft, you will have an extremely high chance to unlock more recipes.
For example, picking up iron ore will unlock the recipe for iron ingots. Making an iron ingot will unlock other recipes such as iron belts, iron screws, then using these will unlock perhaps iron armor recipes.
Crafting a Workbench
Interact with the Wood Chopping Block and you will want to craft Wooden beams, Planks and Wooden Pegs. These will be needed for a storage box, pickaxe and your workbench.
As seen in the photo below, you will see it says something along the lines like “trivial” or “Easy” or “Impossible”. This will change depending on your level of this skill. The more you craft, the easier it gets.
Craft enough of these materials, then it’s time to equip your hammer again and go to the Crafting tab. Select the Basic Carpenters Workbench and place it down.
Now interact with the Workbench and you will discover many more recipes that can be crafted within the Workbench.
Crafting a Storage Box / Storage Chest
As you have now placed the workbench down, interact with this, and you will see the “Storage Box” recipe. You should have spare Wooden Pegs and Planks, if not, go back to your Wood Chopping Block and craft more.
Now click Craft and if successful, it will appear in your inventory.
You may wonder why you can’t place it directly from your inventory…
In order to place the storage box down, equip your hammer and go to the “Props” tab. You should see the storage box, click that, and now you can place it down where you wish.
Once you have placed it, you can now interact with it, to click and drag your items into the box. As seen in the photo below, if you are playing with friends or want to perhaps let anyone take them from the box, you can select Clan or Public or Private.
Now its time to craft your next tool, the pickaxe.
A tip to remember
If you wish to move the box or any item you place down, equip your hammer and press the middle mouse button, this will demolish it but the resources/storage box will go back into your inventory, ready for you to place it down again.
Crafting the Pickaxe and Finding Ore
Head to the Workbench again and you will see the “Stone Pickaxe”. To craft this you will need to make some Long Wood Stock from the Wood Chopping Block and gather some stones from the ground.
Craft the Pickaxe and you will now be ready to venture into the world and look for Impure Iron Nodes.
(The higher tier pickaxe, that you craft, the higher tier mining nodes you will be able to break.)
Put your unused items in your storage that you do not wish to carry, and let’s go find some Impure Iron Ore. While you are out, you will also want to find Clay. This will be needed later for a furnace (to smelt the ore).
Open your Map by pressing the M key on your keyboard, and you will notice the yellow colored terrain. This is usually where you will find mining nodes such as Impure Iron, Limestone, Stone and Granite.
As seen in the photo below, this is what clay looks like. There is no exact location for clay, but it spawns all across the map, especially near rivers.
If you have headed to the correct area, you will locate rocks that look like this. These are Impure Iron Deposits. Equip your pickaxe and mine this. You will always need clay and lots of impure iron ore, so try to bring back as much as you can.
Now time to head back to your plot and lets get this smelted.
A huge tip is that you can add markers to your map. This will help you keep track of item locations, such as Clay or Impure Ore. To do this, simply, hold the CTRL key and Right Click with your mouse, it will bring up a menu where you can select a marker that you think is suitable for the item.
Smelting Your Ore
In order to smelt your ore, you will need to place two crucial work stations, a Furnace and a Charcoal Kiln. You can see this in the “Crafting” tab when you equip your construction hammer. In order to craft both, it will require a grand total of;
- 85 Clay
- 10 Sapwood
- 8 Gneiss Rock
- 12 Short Wood Stock (from Wood Chopping Block)
Place these down using your construction hammer and interact with them. You will notice to create 20 Iron ingots, it requires 40 Impure Iron Ore and 80 Charcoal.
In order to get the Charcoal, interact with the Charcoal Kiln and fill it with Sapwood, as you can see, it requires 50 Sapwood for 25 Charcoal. So que up enough charcoal and you will need to wait. It takes 20 minutes per craft.
Once this is done, you can add the charcoal to the furnace and craft iron ingots. This will unlock many more recipes.
If you wish to create other work stations that you see in the Crafting Tab with your Construction Hammer, such as the Tanning Rack, Fletching Table and Leatherworking Table. Head to your workbench and it will show you the desired tools. This will now lead you into the pathway to giving you tasks on what to do.
We strongly recommend creating many storage boxes and just explore the open world. Gather all the different resources that you discover too, such as hide from animals and Flint from near the water edge.
Repairing Your Items
During your time in Pax Dei, you will notice that your weapons, tools and armor all have “Durability” and a “Lifetime” when you hover over them in your inventory.
As time goes on, using your tools or getting hit by enemies, the durability will start to drop and eventually become unusable.
In order to fix this, head to the Workbench where you crafted the item and click the Tab “Repair”, you will now be given the chance to repair all the items.
By clicking “Repair Items”, will lower the lifetime of the item. So it is strongly advised to repair it when it has extremely low durability. This will allow you to get the maximum use out of the item, before having to craft another one.
How to Build on your Plot
In order to be able to build on your plot and create the perfect home, it will require many items that you should have obtained or crafted from reading this Pax Dei: Getting Started Guide.
Most importantly, you will need 3 core resources; Clay, Gneiss Rocks and Sapwood. Most players will not start to build a house yet because it can cost a lot of resources, depending on how well you want it to look. So having a better axe or pickaxe later on, you are able to gather these resources faster.
Once you think you are ready for the task, grab your clay gneiss rocks and sapwood and put them in your inventory. Equip the construction hammer and go to the Construction tab.
Under the Construction tab, you will notice all different foundations and walls and pillars. Yours may look a lot less than mine, but that is because i have managed to craft or find more resources, which has unlocked the recipe.
Gather the resources needed to make Stone Foundation first, then left mouse click it.
It will now give you the option on where to place this within your plot.
On the right side, you will notice many things that you can do with the item, such as rotation with the mouse scroll or even offsetting it up or down, as seen in the photos below.
Place it down where you think is suitable, and you will notice the next foundation piece will allow you to snap to it. So you can start creating the floor for your home.
Pressing the Middle mouse button will destroy the item and will give you the resources back.
Once you are happy with it, it’s time to place your walls, so press the right mouse button, and it will bring you back to the menu. Select the walls, we will use the Cottage Walls, as they look better but they do cost a lot more resources.
You will notice the walls require Wooden Beams and Wooden Pegs, as you have done before, you can craft these in the Wood Chopping Block by using Sapwood.
Select these and place them down the same way as you did the foundations. If you decide to build higher, you will notice the color change from Green to Yellow or to Orange or even Red.
This is to do with your structure support. If it goes Red, eventually the piece will break and the resources will be returned to you.
In order to fix this, you will need to give it support, which can easily be done by pillars or beams or other walls next to it. Which will allow the wall to be strengthened and be more supported.
As seen in the images below, we have selected the Long Wood Pole and placed them by the side of the wall, which will turn the wall a green color instead of orange.
Continue to build your home by using foundations, walls and a doorway and if you discover “Reeds”, you can add a nice shingled roof to your home.
After you are satisfied, you may be wondering why there is no door in the crafting tab to complete your fabulous home.
As Pax Dei is a very in-depth sandbox MMO, you will need play the game a bit more until you have crafted or obtained Iron Nails and Iron Hinges to see the Wooden Door recipe.
Once these have been found, you craft yourself the final piece for your house.
If you want to go that extra mile and make your house feel more homely and decorative, look at the carpenters’ table, and you will notice items such as the Round Flower Pot.
Successfully crafting this will now allow you to equip your hammer and go to the Props tab, and it will now appear. Click the prop and place it down wherever you desire.
Skills in Pax Dei
The final core to Pax Dei is your skills. If you do anything within the game, from cutting trees to crafting armor or even blocking the enemy attacks, you will gain XP (Experience Points).
The final core to Pax Dei is your skills. If you do anything in the game, from cutting trees to crafting armor or even blocking enemy attacks, you will gain XP (Experience Points).
For example – If you decide to cut trees, you will notice the skill bar going up, and you will only get Sapwood. Once you hit level 15-20 you will start having the chance to acquire the next tier, wood – Heartwood.
In order to see your stats for your skills, press the Tab key and click the skills tab at the top. This screen shows your character’s progression in each skill in the game and helps you focus on what skill you wish to level up.
Crafting Skills
The skills tab is divided into two parts. The first section is “Crafting”. Crafting Skills can be leveled up by doing essentially anything that involves crafting or mining/woodcutting.
Below is the list all the different crafting skills.
- Winemaking and Brewing
- Jewelry Making
- Baking
- Cooking
- Tailoring
- Alchemy
- Charcuterie
- Fletching
- Leatherworking
- Carpentry
- Armor Smithing
- Blacksmithing
- Weapon Smithing
- Herbalism
- Mining
- Woodcutting
When it comes to leveling your crafting skills, you will need to go to the designated workbench of that skill and every time you craft a recipe, you will gain XP. Once you have gained enough XP, you will gain the next level of that skill.
If you fail the craft, you will also gain a small portion of XP too, with some resources back.
Acquiring higher levels in the skills will give you a higher chance to successfully craft the recipes, but you will also unlock even more recipes too.
Combat Skills
The second tab in the “Skills” section is combat skills. This is focused on different types of equipment you use when hunting animals or fighting mobs or even players in the PvP zone.
In order to level these skills up, equip the weapon that you wish to level up and use it as your primary weapon. When venturing around in the open world, caves and dungeons, make sure to always use that weapon.
I always use a one-hand spear with a shield. This gives me the ability to be able to block with the shield to gain XP in this skill, but I also use the Spear to gain skill in this at the same time.
As seen in the images below, you can see my default. This spear offers a 4 block rating and 8 piercing damage. But because my spear level is now 29, my stats on my spear have increased to a 5 block rating and 14 piercing.
Crafting Chance in Pax Dei
Another key factor in Pax dei is the crafting chance. You will notice when crafting a recipe, on the right side it shows one of the words below. Mastered has a 0% chance of failing compared to Impossible being a 100% chance of failing.
- Mastered
- Very Easy
- Easy
- Trivial
- Medium
- Hard
- Very Hard
- Impossible
This gives players the chance to either gamble their luck on crafting a recipe if they wish, or go for the safer option and always being able to craft it.
As leveling your skills takes a long time, some players may choose to go for a risk and just attempt to craft a recipe with “hard” or even “very hard”. If successful, they will gain a huge amount of XP compared to an “Easy” chance but also obtain an item that gives them a massive boost.
If you are unsuccessful with your craft, you will still receive a small amount of resources back and a minor portion of XP.
This Pax Dei: Getting Started Guide should cover all topics on how to play Pax Dei. It is now strongly recommended to take your time and just have fun and enjoy the game. There is no rush for anything, so explore and communicate with other players. Pax Dei offers an extremely in-depth and long crafting and building system, so it can feel very overwhelming, but you got this!
We wish you good luck and stay safe out there in the wilderness as you are now ready to explore and learn more about the world of Pax Dei.
