Statement on recent changes made on Crafting, Building, and Resource Gathering

Hello Paxians,

We want to acknowledge the frustration some of you have felt with the recent changes, especially around crafting, gathering, and building. We understand that these adjustments have significantly impacted your gameplay, and we appreciate your feedback and patience as we make improvements. Our team is committed to enhancing these experiences in both challenging and rewarding ways, while respecting the valuable time that you, our dedicated players, invest into Pax Dei.

As we make these adjustments in the upcoming weeks, we also want to provide a clear rationale behind our original changes and what we hope to achieve with them.

In Verse 1 of Proving Grounds, we introduced an XP Bonus system to reflect each recipe’s level and complexity better, allowing players to earn more XP from crafting complex recipes. This bonus is carefully determined by the recipe’s difficulty, the number and difficulty of ingredients required, and the effort needed to gather them. Our goal was to reward players for taking on more complex crafting tasks, providing greater XP compared to simpler recipes at the same difficulty level.

This bonus implied that all XP curves needed to be adjusted as well. We admit that the changes might have been too dramatic, and we’re working on rebalancing it so that the bonus feels like a net positive compared to before Verse 1, in particular thanks to your feedback.

Key Player Concerns

Based on the feedback we’ve received, we’ve identified several significant points of concern that we’re actively reviewing:

• Crafting Complexity and Documentation: Many of you feel that the recent updates to crafting and building have added unnecessary complexity, primarily due to incomplete patch notes. We understand that clarity in these updates is essential, and we’re working on improving communication in future patches.

• Resource Scarcity and Skill Dependencies: High-level skill players have noted that certain crafting and gathering resources, like leather and specific ores, are now more challenging to acquire. These resources often require extensive exploration or are gated behind high-level skill requirements. This scarcity has led to slowdowns in skill progression, particularly in Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring.

• Unintuitive Crafting Dependencies: We recognize that certain items (e.g., axeheads and their handles) now require mismatched skill levels in different professions, which has been confusing and frustrating. We are revisiting these inconsistencies to create a smoother, more logical crafting process.

• Experience (XP) Balance and Progression: Some of you are experiencing stagnation in skills like Blacksmithing and Leatherworking, with current XP requirements outpacing the experience granted by available recipes. We hear your concerns about the “grind” becoming overwhelming, and we’re exploring ways to make XP gains align more meaningfully with resource investments and time spent.

• Skills Interdependencies: Certain skill progressions, like Leatherworking and Blacksmithing, require support from other high-level skills. We value the social and cooperative aspects of Pax Dei, but we want to ensure that reliance on others doesn’t block your solo progression entirely.

• Gathering Limitations and Resource Drops: Gathering-specific limitations, such as the challenge of finding beehives or acquiring lower-level resources like rough hides as skill levels increase, have also been widely discussed. We’re actively reviewing these mechanics to ensure that gathering maintains a balance between rewarding skill progression and granting access to fundamental resources.

• Specific Skill Challenges (Examples):

  • Leatherworking: Bottlenecks occur at higher levels due to reliance on Blacksmithing resources and the scarcity of fine leather.

  • Blacksmithing: Some items are currently uncraftable due to missing materials (e.g., Fine Cotton Cord) and progression stalls as players run out of accessible recipes.

  • Carpentry: The apparent lack of certain materials, like limestone, has impacted the ability to progress at an expected pace.

  • Tailoring and Cooking: High material requirements, especially for items like cloth pins and specific brewing ingredients, create bottlenecks for many players.

Our Commitment to Change

We’re actively working to address these issues and make adjustments that maintain the challenge you expect from Pax Dei, without overwhelming or blocking progression. Our team is re-evaluating crafting XP, resource distribution, and recipe dependencies to help streamline skill leveling while preserving the sense of accomplishment from overcoming complex challenges.

Below are some fixes already in the works that we aim to deploy starting next week, and over the next month. In addition, we will review the XP Multiplier, which is currently balanced around recipes of median complexity at each difficulty level. We’ll shift this balance to center on the least complex recipes. With this change, the simplest leveling recipes will grant XP at the same rate as before Verse 1. More complicated recipes, however, will now reward even more XP relative to their difficulty level than pre-Verse 1, giving players greater incentive and reward for tackling advanced crafting challenges.

Fixes to be deployed soon 

Crafting Skills

• Furnishings placement: The capability to place a furnishing item will be unlocked as soon as you acquire it and will no longer be based on skill level.

• Tool Descriptions and Usability: The Iron Pickaxe will be able to mine Iron nodes.

• Leatherworking Adjustments:

  • Fine Leather, Fine Leather Bands, and Fine Leather Strings will unlock at level 26 and are adjusted to difficulty level 33

  • Drop rates for these fine leather items have been increased, with adjustments to ensure higher-level Skinning skills can yield lower-level hides as needed.

  • We’ll fix the circular dependency of creating tools for the Leatherworking Table, where Linen Cloth was needed. Instead, you’ll need Generic Leather and an Iron Knife Blade instead.

• Recipe Retention: Players who have previously unlocked recipes will retain them and will be able to continue crafting those items until the next wipe (no ETA on the wipe), even if the recipe requirements have changed.

• Mead Base Adjustments: Mead base ingredients (weak and cloudy varieties) will be moved to Fermenter 1, where they can be crafted as intended.

• New Sand Recipes: Gneiss and Limestone can now be turned into Sand using recipes available at the Carpentry bench.

• Basic “Cut” Recipes for Campfires: The most basic carcass “cut” recipes will now be accessible at the campfire, making it easier to get started with fundamental cooking tasks. Roast, Woodsman Roast, Spiced Grilled Meat Chunks, Mountain Roast will now available on the campfire as opposed to only on the spitroast.

• Recipe Placement Fixes: An upcoming update will fix a few recipes placed in the wrong Hearth.

Resources

• Limestone Availability: Limestone is already present in Wetlands and Pale biomes, so we’ll increase its presence in those biomes a bit with a bigger increase of limestones in the wildlands.

• Sand Availability: Sand will now drop from all mineable nodes to improve access.

  • You will also be able to convert gneiss and limestone to sand on the Carpentry Workbenches once you unlock the recipe.

• Potion Resources: Increased spawn rates for potion-related resources by approximately 2x to facilitate alchemy and potion crafting.

• Beehive Drops: Trees now have a 3% chance to drop Beehives, regardless of tree type.

• Wood Yield from Trees: Adjustments are being made to increase the amount of wood you get from large trees. We will test this feature for optimal player experience.

• Increased Resource Drops from Animals:

  • Wool drops from boars and bears will be increased.

  • Bone drops from various animals will be increased.

• Rough Hide Accessibility: Players with high Skinning skill levels will still be able to obtain rough hides as needed. 

• Increased Early Resource Spawns: Early-stage cooking resources will spawn more frequently, supporting smoother progression for beginner cooks.

Thank you for your patience and support as we work to improve your experience. As soon as possible, we will provide a timeframe for when the changes will be live, and we’ll keep you informed.

We appreciate all the feedback you’ve shared with us and look forward to continuing to build an incredible world together.

Pax vobiscum,
The Mainframe Team

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