Visionary Realms said in a May 1 announcement that the Public Test Realm for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen would open on Wednesday, May 6, giving players an early look at the studio's upcoming Combat and Progression update ahead of its release on live servers.
The studio was blunt about the state of the build. The team said the server would open in an early testing state, with bugs, combat dynamics that are not fully worked out and unexpected behavior all likely, and said those issues would be addressed through the weekly update schedule rather than before opening.
What opens in week one
Eight classes will be playable to level 10 at the start: Warrior, Paladin, Dire Lord, Cleric, Druid, Shaman, Wizard and Summoner. The mastery system will not be present in the first week, as the team wants base skills tested further first, and crafting and gathering will be switched off entirely at launch.
- Reworked base class skills
- The First-to-Engage tagging mechanic
- Revised combat formulas covering hit chance, avoidance, mitigation, haste and critical hits
- Bind on Equip support for items
- A full mail system for sending and receiving items, including to a player's own characters, friends, guildmates or an entire guild for officers and leaders, though sending to multiple individual recipients is disabled for now
Later weeks will periodically add classes, raise the level cap and apply tuning changes. The team listed the mastery system, spell pushback mechanics, the market system, full crafting and gathering progression, and boats as arriving in future updates without giving dates. Most updated class mechanics are tied to their classes becoming available.
What the studio wants tested
Feedback channels for the test realm will be added to the game's Discord. The team asked testers to focus on solo and small-group difficulty, how class abilities feel across the first ten levels, First-to-Engage in live play, experience progression pacing, the rested experience mechanic, general combat pacing and how much gear matters. It also asked players to use the mail system heavily and try to break it.
No tester support tools will be enabled at the start. The studio said NPCs that let testers boost levels and pick up starting gear would arrive as the cap rises, likely once it passes level 20. It also warned that tuning numbers may feel off in either direction, that character wipes could accompany any weekly update, and that it is collecting data on what players fight and kill, so it asked testers to play normally.
Builds move to the test realm every Wednesday from the studio's internal test server, and only content judged stable there will be promoted. The team named two exceptions: emergency fixes for server crashes, and cases where a Wednesday morning build proves unstable. The test realm will keep running after the Combat and Progression update reaches production servers, though the studio said the cadence may change as it tests large-scale server work over the summer.
The announcement also said an FAQ with connection instructions would follow the week after.
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