Some changes are coming to Mythos, and here's the post that explains it all!

Mythos is now undergoing a big change – one prompted by your feedback and our observations. We will be relaunching with a contiguous overworld for each zone, starting with Greenreach.

What does this mean to you?

As you’re aware, the ‘outdoors’ in Mythos as it currently stands are randomized, and relatively isolated. As such, there’s not as much of a sense of place as we’d like to see, and a lot of the socialization that is important to MMOs takes place only in towns. In an effort to bring our players together more, and to instill a greater sense of place and exploration, you’ll now be able to run through an overworld that is not randomized, but has real locations and places to explore.

Does this mean that we’re doing away with randomization? Definitely not! All of the dungeons in the game remain randomly generated. Does this mean we want you to spend an inordinate amount of time traveling? Again, definitely not! We’re making every effort to keep the pace of gameplay fast, and immediate, while still providing this critical social component.

For the full list of what's going to be changed, read on!

So, how does this work in practice? I’m glad you asked!

• Greenreach is now one contiguous landmass, with hills, mountains, forests, valleys, rivers, bridges, and lakes. You’ll be able to remember where things are and return to them. Instead of traveling down an ‘alley’ in a random chunk of wilderness to get to a location, you may stumble across unexpected things, or dungeons to explore. The overworld is made by hand, and as such, it is much more purposeful, with settlements, farms, outposts, and much more interesting areas. Stonehill quarry looks like a Quarry. Gussen Farm looks like an actual farm.

• The landmass is OPEN. You are not locked to roads. Walk anywhere, and explore the hidden nooks and crannies.

• Monsters remain within their regions, so there won’t be any trains of wolves across the wilderness

• Guards defend town if monsters creep too near

• We are HOPING to have from 150-200 players in an overworld at a time. That means it is still ‘instanced’ – but with a MUCH higher population than any of our other shared spaces. You’ll run across other players on the road, or on the way to dungeons. Your first moment in the game at Greenreach Priory will be shared with other players. We’ll just see how high we can push this.

• Dungeons are still instanced for you and your party – you’ll receive no interference from anyone else, nor will monsters respawn there.

• Random Maps as they worked before have changed. There are now TWO kinds of random maps, explained below

• Lots of dungeons, caves, mines, cellars, and crypts are scattered around the land. You can simply walk into them and enjoy a quick random adventure on the way from here to there.

• We also now have the concept of Runestones and Runegates, which are basically the new form of ‘purchaseable’ map. Runegates are scattered around the overworld, each with a different color. You can purchase Runestones, which unlock these gates and let you travel to special random dungeons. You can also travel to any opened Runegates that party members may be in. Don’t worry, there will be Epic Runestones We’re excited by this, because these Runegates can drop you right into any kind of dungeon, without having to fit into the context of the Overworld – this provides us with lots of opportunities to experiment with inserting wildly different areas into a zone.

• Questgivers are now no longer only in towns. They may live in farms in the wilderness, or be by the side of the road, or anywhere else. You can now seek out adventure elsewhere

• All of the hubs of Greenreach, apart from Stonehill itself, have been moved directly into the overworld.

• Because there are no more random wildernesses, there are no more cookie-cutter ‘clearings’ with vendors in them.

• Your Recall Charms now take you back to an actual town ( and open a return portal there ). This is not only handy, but provides you with an easy way to get your party members in to play with you right away without any tedious trekking through random woods.

• When entering a dungeon, it remains ‘anchored’ for you. That means that I can walk into a cave, walk back out, wander around, and then come right back to the same cave I was in. You are allowed one ‘anchored’ dungeon at a time, so entering another dungeon will ‘reroll’ the one you were in.

• This has an additional benefit. You can now leave one of your purchased Runestone maps and come back to it without losing it, unlike the problematic random maps which disintegrated upon entry in the current version of Mythos

• There are now Anchorshrines scattered throughout the world. Anchorshrines allow for instantaneous travel to any other Anchorshrine you have activated. We don’t want any needless retreading of ground! You can also bind your Anchorstone to an Anchorshrine, and you will return there upon using it.

• If you log out in the overworld, and then back in, you’ll be exactly where you left off, not at some arbitrary exit.

• Monsters in the overworld are now purposefully placed. They respawn over time, as now you’re sharing the land with other players.

• Stonehill remains apart from the overworld – you’ll travel through a portal in Stonehill Market ( the village at the base of the keep ) to enter Stonehill Proper. There’s a chance we may look at integrating this directly into the world, but we’d like to keep it separate for PVP right now.

• Stonehill has also had a complete visual overhaul.

• Large obstructions like trees can now fade smoothly out if they get in the way of your view

• In the overworld, you can see much farther than before, and your line of sight is greatly extended, and zoomed out.

• We’re trying out some changes with PVP. Stonehill is now a ‘safe’ zone where no aggression can be practiced. Now that we have an overworld, you’ll be in close proximity to other players a lot more, so having towns as hostile areas is no longer required to have enough of a population to be meaningful

• PVP is now separated completely – when you create a Shadowlands character, you’ll remain in the PVP realm at all times, with no switching back and forth.

• Dungeons are no longer shared, nor do they respawn, in the PVP world, for the above reason.

• We CRAVE your feedback on the above PVP changes.

• We have sped up player movement speed.

• You can now see your actual location on the worldmap, along with your facing

• Quests now display as points of interest on your automap and worldmap, that may be moused-over to determine which quest or other point of interest they belong to.

• Harvestable ingredients will now be regional, and purposeful

• An enormous number of optimizations have been put in place to make these things possible, and many of these will filter to the rest of the game to make it run much nicer overall.

• We are cutting off zone 2 and 3 temporarily as we convert their overworlds as well. You should have lots to re-explore while we do this. We hope to get these back out to you as fast as possible while you’re playing through Zone 1.

• Quests no longer have to send you to a dungeon. The types and variety of quests that we can do should expand greatly as a result of this – hunt down a band of Bandits threatening the northern road! Find a rare berry growing in the mountains for an Apothecary! Fend off an attack on Stonehill Market! We’re extremely excited by the quest opportunities this opens up for us.

All of this is in an effort to make Mythos a place that is more enjoyable, and social to be in. We want you to make friends and enemies, and have the sense that this is a place, and not an assembly of disposable random forests. We hope you like it! We sure do.

There are a couple of screenshots available in the forum thread.