TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Flagship Studios released Zone 3 for the closed beta of Mythos, it's new action-based massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) on March 26. The new content also came with some significant new features and an overhaul of the user interface (UI). If you have read Mythos Beta Journal #1 and Mythos Beta Journal #2, you'll notice some differences here.

The new Mythos content includes three different crafting styles.

Here Comes Crafting
These days, any MMOG worth its salt has some form of crafting. And with crafting comes some form of harvesting. The latest Mythos release contained all this crafting goodness and was so different that Flagship Studios made beta testers uninstall the previous version and just download a new installer. I was able to pick up my first crafting quests in the major city of Zone 1, Stonehill. I found that I could now harvest crafting resources in the wilderness, and the monsters I fought occasionally dropped crafting recipes.

Crafting in Mythos is based on three styles: Terran, Sylvan, and Ethereal. Each of the styles can make different gear. Terran crafting is the heavy blacksmithing, allowing the creation of bladed weapons and heavy armor. Sylvan crafting is for staves, bows, and shields. Ethereal crafting covers rings, pendants, and light armor. Each crafting style has the option of learning elemental enhancements (fire, ice, lightning, and poison). Enhancing a weapon adds elemental damage. Enhancing armor adds a resistance. Crafting wild cards include heraldries that can adorn other crafted items, potions, and grenades. The Flagship Studios design team says players will not be able to buy above tier 2 potions at vendors at launch. So crafters will be able to make potions for tiers 3-5 and sell them in an auction-style market system that is not yet in the game.

Placing a point in a crafting tree (say,) rings allows you to create level one versions of that item. Each additional point raises the level of the items you can make. You can place points into the style (Terran. Sylvan, or Ethereal) to open up new tiers of crafting, like Swords and Axes II. The crafting design looks pretty intricate, but I haven't done any actual crafting yet.

New Race & New Racial Traits
Zone 3 also came with a new race, the Cyclops, and an introduction to racial traits. The Cyclops is a large, beefy creature with a single eye. They come with skin colors ranging from blue to pink to peach. The hair color options included neon green and blue. Cyclops also sport several different styles of horns that can be fine tuned with the Accessories option at character creation.

The racial traits, which are likely subject to change, provide a damage bonus versus a certain type of enemy (e.g. beasts or undead) and a small natural resistance to an element. These traits make the races slightly different without making one race especially desirable for a particular class. It seems Flagship Studios is committed to the notion that you should pick your race based on cosmetic appeal. The traits as they stand certainly support that stance, as they do not make you care which race you pick. The traits are just slight bonuses that you'll enjoy on that character.

The Sylvan crafting style is the way to go if you want to make shields.

Changes to Attributes and Class Skill Trees
Another change worth mentioning is the addition to bonuses derived from placing points into your class skill tree. As I mentioned in Mythos Beta Journal #1, each class has a skill tree with 3 tabs. You can place skill points into individual skills or the tree as a whole, which unlocks new tiers of skills. At that time, any point placed in the tree counted for all three tabs but did nothing else. It seems Flagship Studios has listened to player feedback on the beta forums and incorporated attribute bonuses for spending those points. They did so in an unconventional way, though.

Unlike Titan Quest, which used points spent in a skill tree to further delineate a caster from a melee fighter, Mythos works in the opposite direction. The attribute bonuses for spending points in your class skill tree mostly boost attributes that you don't put points into at level up. For instance, the Bloodletter gets the biggest boost to wisdom. The aim is clearly to allow you to maximize the 5 points you get to spend at level up on strength, dexterity, and vitality. Their may be a few flaws with this current system, though, as many beta players are able to describe build scenarios where the bonuses benefit a single class build very well and others almost not at all. I won't be surprised to see this change a little before launch.

Speaking of getting bonuses to wisdom, players will now enjoy a slight increase to spell damage for each point spent in wisdom. Obviously, this makes min/max caster builds more powerful, but it could also make that wisdom bonus a Bloodletter gets for spending points in the class skill tree more useful.

Keep reading. Up next, I'll discuss the mail system, changes to the way inventory works, and the new-look UI.