Mythos Beta – Day Two

Posted by Stropp on January 12, 2008

I spent a good chunk of today experimenting with Mythos.

One of the goals of today’s play was try out the different classes and modes. So I put Durkin on the backburner and created a Pyromancer.

The Pyromancer is essentially a fire mage. However, there are a lot of different builds available. You can choose these builds by using your skill points to buy different skill sets. Usually there are several skills associated with a primary skill.

For instance the Flamecaster page for the Pyromancer has a skill you can learn called Flaming Dart. This allows the Pyro to fire a flaming dart that passes through multiple enemies doing damage to them all. Flaming dart has six levels that increase damage each time the skill is raised.

Two tiers down, there is another skill called Dancing Flames. This causes the darts to ricochet of walls and other obstructions. The player can invest eight points in this to increase its effect. The final tier skill related to Flaming Dart is Burning Fragments. This causes the darts to split into secondary projectiles to do yet more damage. Six points can be invested here.

The concept of Tiers deserves some explanation. Each skill is assigned to a tier. The first tier in our previous example has the Flaming Dart and Flaming First skills. Tier two has Flame Serpents, Restorative Flames, and Ignite. Tier three has more skills and so forth, all the way to Tier six. In order to get the second tier skills, the player must invest some skill points to unlocking it. Three skill points are necessary for tier two, all the way up to a total of 30 skill points to unlock tier six.

I got the Pyromancer up to level six before I called it a day on that class. I did die a couple of times, lucky I wasn’t hardcore. For the most part, taking down ordinary monsters was pretty easy. Two or three shots dispatched them handily. It was with the bosses I had more trouble. This class seems to be fairly squishy, though I’m certain I wasn’t playing it fully right.

In anycase my day wasn’t done. I wanted a bit more of a challenge. So I created an elite Bloodletter. I called him Darkin and he was a Gremlin too. Oh the Pyro, I can’t remember her name offhand, but she was a Satyr.

Elite mode, as it sounds, is somewhat harder. Darkin had a tougher time dispatching mobs than did Durkin. The damage the mobs did was increased, and they were tougher. The only other thing I noticed was that the loot drops were improved. I received more greens and blue items. I also received a yellow item on the next character, a named spear. This, I believe was a set item. Pity I couldn’t use it.

The Bosses were much harder. I was able to take down all but one, the end boss in the white caves. Durkin had no problems whatsoever, Darkin lost health rapidly and died trying to escape. Also happy I was not in hardcore mode.

Speaking of which. I mentioned in the Mythos Preview: One to Five report that players were able to respec their skill points at a special NPC. This is only applicable to normal mode characters and not elite or hardcore characters.

There’s a long running debate on the beta forums on the whole respec is good/evil theme. One group of players wants the ability to respec, the other doesn’t.

My final task for the day was to make a Gadgeteer. This time I chose to make a Human character, and once again chose the Elite mode. The Gadgeteer relies on ranged weapons much like a hunter, but they are also able to use grenades and other gizmos. My perception after playing it was that the Gadgeteer is tougher than the Pyro but not as tough as the Bloodletter. Makes sense doesn’t it?

So far this is my favorite class. There’s a lot of kiting involved, especially in the case of the bosses. In one dungeon I had to take on three nasty spider queen sisters. There was no way to stand still since they poisoned and burned me down really quickly. The only way to deal with them solo was to kite them back to the entrance room and lead them around the room stopping occasionally to shoot back.

These were the hardest I encountered, and I was able to take them on successfully.

In light of this, I figured I might look again at the Pyromancer. I believe my problem there was in kiting the mobs and bosses. With a bit more practice and a different allocation of skill points (I was still figuring things out at that point) the Pyro might be a fun class to play.

I’m not so sure about the Bloodletter. Since he has to get up close and personal, there’s no way to kite unless he uses a ranged weapon or a minion. Darkin would never have stood a chance against the Spider Queen Sisters.

For those of you interested in finding out more about the skills. A very helpful fellow named Matt Hall has set up a website to allow players to experiment with their skill builds. The site is called Mythos Calc and is worth a look, if just to check out the skills in the game.

Stay tuned for more on the Mythos beta.

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