The official Mythos website has been updated today with new information of a new monster type called the Stagkin, and a description of Stonehill, the first town you’ll ever visit in the vast world of Uld!
Here’s the history of the Stagkin. Be sure to read the rest for more information.
The Stagkin and Ramalo races, distant cousins, inhabit the Umbral Tundra. Their mother Sheer Twoprong the Bitter is seeking the heart of her brother Belgesh, in the hope of adding his essence to her own. With great difficulty she is marshaling the Stagkin and Ramalo, although they are naturally suspicious of one another.
She drives them to seek out Belgesh’s heart, but their superstition of the Wights of the Arcled prevents them from nearing their goal. Driven to rage by their stubbornness and slow-witted responses, she has punished many with dire tortures, driving them mad with fear and pain.
Zone 3 is now available for download! First, uninstall your current installation of Mythos - it will not patch. Log in to the official Mythos website, and use the Download button to get the new Mythos client.
The Mythos Forums are coming down now for maintenance and will return with the new web page tomorrow. The new website will be coming up tomorrow barring no major catastrophes. The Zone 3 update will be following shortly after. Don’t forget to use your remaining invites because once the website goes down the invite system is gone forever! See you on the other side!
We’ve been quiet for a while over here, but that’s about to change. As you all know, we’re applying the polishing touches on our huge Zone 3 update. But we’re also going to be making some website changes. Big ones. Our website has been long neglected, but our crack team has put together a killer new site that will be unveiled very soon! Probably even this week. Right now we’re tentatively scheduled to bring down this site on Thursday morning, and we’ll be down for several hours while we make sure everything is hooked up right. When we come back up, a sparkling new Mythos site will be revealed.
There are a couple of things you need to be aware of. When the new site comes up, there will be no more beta sign ups. Also, the invitations granted to your account will no longer work, so send them out now if you’ve got ‘em! This is because we’ll soon be transitioning into an Open Beta Test, where anyone can download and play Mythos! There’s a lot to be excited about, and the action is going to be fast and furious from here on out. Buckle your seat belts!!!
Online Welten, a German gaming website, has posted up an interview they conducted with Travis Baldree who is one of the main guys behind Mythos. The interview has been kindly translated by Online Welten into english, so head over to their site to read the whole thing. Here is a snippet from it:
OnlineWelten: Everbody who sees Mythos the first time, starts yelling “Diablo”. But how close to Diablo is Mythos really?
Travis Baldree: The core gameplay and feel is very, very similar to Diablo - but the structure of the world, and the instanced gameplay are much more akin to Guild Wars. In the end, with the random map system and the focus on speed, packs of monsters, and constant expansion of content, it’s starting to become its own beast.
OnlineWelten: Escpecially in Germany they are many sceptics concerning ingame-content bought by reallife money. How would you argue against those people? Better said: How would you convince them to pay?
Travis Baldree: We’re trying to refrain from just selling `powerful items` ingame - instead we’re charging for features like pets, respecs, cosmetic items, fireworks, and bonus items that might increase your luck or a similar attribute. We still want you playing the game. And with a dual currency system, players can legitimately trade for anything - even purchased items or services - without ever spending any real money.
OnlineWelten: If you have to describe Mythos in just three words…
Looks like there was some unscheduled maintenance where our servers are hosted. We are sorry for any inconveniences it may cause you. We’re hoping to have the servers back up as soon as possible!
This outage is affecting both Hellgate and Mythos servers, according to Tiggs:
Update: Service for Mythos and Hellgate will be spotty for the next 4 hours as maintenance is performed.
So bear with them while they get the servers back up — hopefully it won’t be too much longer.
Marsh had a lot to share on the upcoming Crafting system that’s going to be released with the upcoming Zone 3 that’s getting released very soon. Here are some very juicy details:
1) There is a crafting Tree. Three panes. Each Pane holding 6 skill lines and 6 floating skills.
a. Out of the 18 Crafting trees, 15 of them encompass creating equipable or useable items; for instance “Boots and Gloves” , “Sword And Axes” and even “Potions, Grenades and Bandages”
a. Each Tree has a few properties which when invested in will allow you to adjust the items’ properties( Damages, Defenses, Attack Speed, and more ). I’ll talk about this more later.
b. The other three trees will create Weapon, Armor and Trinket Heraldries.(I’ll Talk about later )
c. The 6 floaters will allow for you to add random effects to items you create, Elemental Defenses, Elemental Damages, random affixes and even modify your weapons damage range.
2) There are over 800 recipes currently. Unfortunately with that many, most have not been hand tweaked yet. However the recipes have been generated with some pretty good logic.
a. There are 6 categories of advanced ingredients. For instance, Iron + Coal will give you Steel. Each of these 6 categories have 10 additional ingredients.
b. There is an ingredient bag, which you can get to by pressing “I”. This of course brings up your inventory, but you’ll now see a couple of tabs at the top (Backpack, Ingredients )
c. You can break down items for ingredients – if you complete the first guild quest.
d. Ingredients drop from specific monsters and useable nodes in the levels.
4) There will be 99 pts you can invest in the crafting tree. However at release there will be only 72.
a. One point per level up
b. There will be 50 quests given to you by the crafting guild. Completing each one, gives you a crafting point. On release there will only be 23 quests to complete. We’ll be adding the other 27 very soon.
Heraldries:
Heraldries are like super powerful gems. They have multiple properties, such as:
150% Damage increase for all damage types.
150% Damage Increase for all pets
25% Chance to cause bleed
25% Chance to cause ignite
25% Chance to cause poison
HOWEVER, Heraldries don’t last forever. Most are time based( 25% Damage Bonus for 3 hours 23 minutes ). Some are hit based( 300% Damage Bonus for 100 hits ). Some are damage based ( 100% chance for Fire Nova, 100 times on hit ).
There are 3 different types of Heraldries - Weapon, Armor and Trinket. Each Heraldry is socketable only in those types of items.
That’s about 30% of the Crafting details. The full notes can be read in this thread.
The Dutch website, Tweakers.Net has run an article about Mythos. There’s nothing particularly new in the article, and it’s entirely in Dutch, but hey…All press is good press.
I ran the article through Babelfish to get a rough translation, then worked with Fellow Guruer and Living Dutchman, RTB. Here’s a fairly loose (and quite readable) translation of the article:
Flagship Studios, the maker of Hellgate: London is working on the MMO, Mythos, w hich will be free to download and play. The game is defined as Diablo in MMO form.
Flagship Studios hopes to make hardcore and casual gamers comfortable with Mythos. Flagship tries to reach this target grroup by offering their game for no charge. Of course, Flagship hopes to earn money off the game through the sale of virtual items with which players can improve their play experience. This system of microtransactions is currently in use on the Asian MMO Market, but rather new in the US and Europe, according to Flagship Director Max Schaefer on C&VG. Paying players do not obtain exclusive items. All items that can be bought, are also obtainable while playing though, although it will take more effort for the player to get the better items.
Flagship is making the game based on its Hellgate engine, the engine for their first game, Hellgate: London. Mythos is being made by the new studio Flagship has opened in Seattle. Flagship is trying to match the gameplay to Diablo, the RPG from Blizzard Entertainment in 1996. Flagship was started by a group of people in 2003 who had left Blizzard. The founders of Flagship were the core team who had made Diablo for Blizzard.
Mythos takes place in the world of Uld, that exists in the aftermath of a long war. There are three races the player can choose from. Human, Satyrs, and Gremlins. The classes that can be chosen also fall into three groups. The Bloodletter is a physical class, with swords, axes, and the like. The Gadgeteer uses technical appliances that he himself makes. The Pyromancer uses spells to try and attack its enemy from afar. The three classes have several subcategories. Just like in Diablo, the game takes place mainly in underground dungeons. Those dungeons will be randomly generated by the game’s engine.
The game will not only be made up of the usual quests which can be done solo or with other players. Also, PvP will be possible, and it will take place in a separate part of the game world. The losing player in a fight will lose a random piece of equipment that the winner can take. To prevent griefing, Flagship integrated a karma system. If a player kills a lower-level player, his or her karma decreases. A lower karma means that more equipment will be lost as soon as he loses a fight. Karma can only be repaired by killing players of equal or higher level.
Meanwhile, the Beta test for Mythos, which is still accepting new players, continues to run.
The little tugboat keeps on chuggin’, buildin’ up steam. Enjoy.
CVG has interviewed Max Schaefer about Mythos and talked to him about the business model, the game’s features and the payment model behind the game.
They also talked to Max a bit about the computer market in general.
Is it tough dealing with the stigma that’s attached to free MMOs that feature real-money transactions? Often it’s the case that those willing to pay are the ones to access the best items in a game…
Schaefer: Only if you SELL the best items in a game! We intend to have all players find their items by adventuring and killing monsters, or by crafting them. The ‘pay’ players may have an easier time doing it, but the same items are available to all players. There is a stigma with ‘free’ MMOs, but there’s also a much smaller barrier to entry, so we hope that we can convert the sceptics with direct evidence.
Mythos Guru was founded early in 2007 as the first fansite and forum ever dedicated to Flagship Studios' online game, Mythos. It caters to an international base of players and guilds. Following in the footsteps of its predecessor Hellgate Guru, Mythos Guru shares a proud tradition of sponsoring and organizing community backed projects and events, and a powerful skill calculator. More
