Pax Dei: Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide (Patch 4336 Early Access)

I’ll be adding to this as questions come up on discord. Until then, I’ll be going step by step very slowly as I work through screenshots, and writing up paragraphs. This tends to be a relatively slow process, sorry for any delays.

So you’ve just bought the early access, and have spawned in. Unfortunately, besides spending an hour perfecting your very sexy avatar, I’m sure you have absolutely no idea how to play this game! Well, have no fear! I’m here to help you step by step as best I can.

Let’s begin with the absolute basics. Do you see this majestic monolith ripped straight out of a Stanley Kubrick movie?

That’s called the Petra Dei.

This is your spawn point. This is where you end up when you die and respawn. This is also where you’ll recall to.

Do you also see a bunch of things laying around on the ground like rocks and sticks?

Those are VERY important! Pick them up now! Pick as many up as you can, because you will eventually need them all as time goes on.

Now press “TAB” on your keyboard. From there, click “Craft”, which is the third tab in the center of the bar that will show up.

Proceed to create the following:

Construction Hammer
Gneiss Stone Axe
Pointy Stick
Crude Shield

Now that you’ve outfitted yourself with the absolute bare bones of equipment. You need to find an area that you can call your own. This is important in Pax Dei – not only is this game focused primarily around the creation of your own base, but it’s important to use your plot as a base of operations for storage, crafting and more.

So without further ado. Highlight your Hammer. Then while the hammer is highlighted, right click your mouse to bring up the “Plots” screen.

Choose “Unclaimed Plot” on the plots screen, and then keep looking around until you find a spot that is highlighted as blue. Orange means you can not place it. Usually this is due to the proximity to other people’s plots, or due to a road being nearby. Sometimes other people’s objects can prevent the placement of your plot as well.

Once you’ve got your plot placed down, now you can build things on it! Let’s start by building the basic “Wood Chopping Block”, this is necessary to not only allow you to make important building materials, but to also grind your carpentry later on.

Crafting in Pax Dei is entirely dependent on your skill. The requirement of crafting a Plank for instance is “4 Carpentry” – if you start at level 1 carpentry, this will likely be very hard, and will result in a large amount of failures. Don’t worry though! You will eventually improve, and it will become very easy to create what you need! Persistence is the key in Pax Dei.

Once you’ve got your Chopping Block set up. You’ll then need a Basic Carpenter’s Workbench.

4 Wooden Beams
6 Planks
20 Wooden Pegs

You can use your Wood Chopping Block to make these materials.

Believe it or not, this is all you actually need to begin building your homebase! Just note that you will not have 100% access to all building goods yet, as that requires a higher carpentry level. Still, you can very easily make due with the basic stone foundations and wood hut walls.

Take some time to get creative and make something that you think would be a good starter base. You can always delete it and remake it later, so don’t fret about the little things.

To make a foundation for your home, you will need clay and gneiss (stone) – Clay can be found by shorelines of water in large clusters.

Gneiss can be mined in nodes using a stone pickaxe, or found on the ground.

For the hut, you’ll likely need reed, which can also be found by shorelines – usually right up against the water.

You can easily get sapwood from using your Gneiss Axe to cut down trees, or you can continue to pick up the branches by the Petra Dei (You won’t find as many, or any branches or gneiss rocks laying around outside of the petra dei area, so be aware of that!)

If you have your Carpenter’s Bench created, you can actually take some time to make a Stone Pickaxe, which will allows you to mine Gneiss, Copper and Tin.