Ark's Ark

I only became aware of this title this morning, and thought I might as well take a peek! From the same developers as Warrior Epic, Mytheon is based around the idea of collecting powers to add to a deck, maybe not unlike how Guildwars power system works. When released, it will be free to play, making its money from selling extras in a shop.

So, let us delve into it together.

There are three character classes. Here, I’ve made a composite pic of all three class descriptions. You can click on it to get a version where the text is actually readable.

Mytheon Character Classes

Customisation is limited, but quite well done. There are certainly enough options for most folks to be able to tailor a character to their liking, with a choice of hair and skin colours, hair styles, faces, and accessories.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I create Arkenor the Elementalist, supposedly the advanced class. It’ll make this more entertaining when I get devoured by the first squirrel I meet.

So, into the game I go!

Hello world! .... Hello? World?

I arrive, a tiny little fellow in an empty courtyard. Not very much happens for a while, until I figure out that Mytheon is a click to move game, requiring me to pick where I want to go with the right mouse button. Huzzah, for I have motion!

Nobody seems at all impressed by my new found mobility. The place is deserted. Some sort of welcome, or tutorial pup-up would be kind of handy. Scanning around a little, I see a glowing woman off the screen to the north. Surely she will bring me up to speed with what is going on.

Aha! As I start to head towards her, a tutorial screen pops up. I’d better read all this. While I do, I hear a wooshy noise, and turn to discover another player has just entered the courtyard. They storm off towards the north , clearly having far more of a clue as to how this works than I do.

Turns out she was a lot further away than I first thought.

No ordinary glowing woman this. Clotho is one of the three Fates, who in Mytheon have chosen to instigate a war between mortals and the gods. Technically, according to legend, the three Fates ARE gods, but I choose not to mention this to her. In any case, as you may have guessed from the questionmark above her head, she has a quest for me. My very first quest!

Mytheon's first quest.

I’m warned that once I leave this village via the gate, I won’t be able to get back in, so I’d better have a good rummage about first.

One quick rummage later, it turns out the only other people in town were the ones by Clotho’s fountain, and there isn’t much else to see. So I speak to Gatekeeper Telemon, and he sends me out into the dark of Echidna’s swamp.

Waiting in the swamp is a merchant, and a couple more questgivers. I can’t buy anything yet, but it does remind me to check my inventory, discovering that I have a few potions that I can drag to my hotbar. While I’m about it, I’d better figure out how to use my powerstones.

Oh. This is quite different and interesting. You set a deck with up to 40 powerstones in. At this point, I only have about 15 stones, and they’re all in there. Six of these seem to be randomly selected to go in your powerbar at the bottom of the screen, and when you use one, it is replaced by another powerstone. Pretty much like a hand of cards in a game like Magic the Gathering. Except that you’re doing it realtime, so you don’t have time to be reading the card descriptions, and I have no idea what any of my powers do yet. I certainly can’t recognise them from their icons yet, but I imagine I’d get to know them after a while.

A summoned warrior stabbing up a spider for me.

The powers I have range from creature summonings, direct damage zaps, damage spells which use a ground target, a couple of turrets, and a few that are a bit less useful in combat, like a stealth spell. Not knowing exactly what powers you’ll have access to certainly does make for more dynamic combat. All in all, it’s quite good fun, and I haven’t yet begun to build up a collection of powerstones beyond what I started with.

The swamp was a fairly linear monsterbashing affair, complete with the obligatory destroyable barrels that may contain loot or health. You don’t regenerate naturally, and the elementalist lacks healing spells, so these and the health shrines are quite welcome. The Fates continued to turn up throughout the zone, after I had finished each of their successive quests. It doesn’t seem that you ever need to return to hand quests in, which is handy. You’re basically slaughtering your way through Greek mythology, with Arachne, Orthos, and Echidna all dying in this very first adventure. I hear that when you’ve run out of Greek myths to kill, you start on the poor old Egyptian pantheon!

Like guildwars, combat zones are instanced for you and your group, with other players only turning up in the non-combat hub areas.

It does look like the better powerstones are mostly going to be bought via Mytheon coins, the local RMT currency. You start with 1000 Mytheon coins, for free, and supposedly it is possible to earn more via quests. The price of a random pack of stones is relatively modest at 100 Mytheon coins, though the price may not stay the same once the game launches. I did find one common powerstone as loot, another fireball which I already started with one of, and received another special one as a quest reward. From what I can see, unless things change you certainly don’t need to spend money to get by.

I’ve only played for an hour or so, but I am surprisingly taken by this little game. You can give it a try yourself over at the Mytheon website. It’s due to be released on the 13th of July.