So here’s the tricky thing about MMORPGs: Their greatest strength lies in their massively multiplayer nature, and yet sometimes we just don’t want to deal with other humans… kinda like in real life. Which means that an MMO without a viable solo path for at least some of its content is going to suffer for players here in 2024.
Mainframe Industries clearly knows this because it’s been working on soloability for Pax Dei and now has released a blog post specifically about how players can make their own way alone through the MMO sandbox.
“In an article describing our vision for the game, we said that Pax Dei is not a single-player game and that we designed it to encourage group play,” Mainframe says. “This often gets misinterpreted as ‘it is not possible to play Pax Dei solo.’ It is not exactly what we meant. Single-player games are intended to be played alone, but playing solo does not mean playing alone.”
“Because of the building system and the size of the map, the persistence and the players’ imprint in Pax Dei are particularly strong—and here, we don’t even talk about what will happen once the economy is unleashed and the feudal system kicks in – and the solo players are part of this persistence. It’s a fact that many players like to venture solo in MMOs, and Pax Dei is not an exception. If some players said that the game is, according to them, not playable solo, many have said the opposite and are enjoying their experience. So what’s the truth here? Again, you can twist it the way you want, but Pax Dei is an MMO. And the difficulty can’t be indexed on solo players. Because of that, it will never be possible to enjoy every single aspect of the game playing entirely solo. However, there is a lot you can do.”
And what would that be? The devs recommend finding out-of-the-way locations with few environmental hazards or guilds to contend with, avoiding overbuilding on your first plot so that you have flexibility to move later, gathering everything you can (especially clay and stones, something our own Chris just found out the hard way), optimize your crafting time to be working on more than one thing at a time, get yourself arrows and armor to take on soloable Inquisition camps, and interact with others for mutual survival even if you never join a clan.
— Pax Dei (@PlayPaxDei) August 16, 2024
