World Mythic Vaults

Hello! Hope you’re having a good day. I think everyone knows that lootrunning needs a replacement, or at least a more consistent way to get those beautiful purple boxes. In this post I’m trying to make mythics feel more, you know, mythic, so I present…

Mythic Vaults!

These structures are hidden around the world of Wynncraft, being built in the most obscure places possible. I planned to make these things VERY hard to find, as to make the result of a mythic not feel too easy to obtain. They would contain some different challenges for the player that will make it feel rewarding if you get to the vault room.

Part I: Finding a Vault

As I stated before, these structures should be extremely difficult to discover. They are hidden around wherever the mythic comes from. For example, the vault for Weathered would be somewhere in Time Valley or the Pigman Ravines. Also, you shouldn’t be able to just stumble across a vault, walk in, jump around, murder something, and get a mythic. You’d have to complete a series of puzzles and mechanics to actually open the vault once you find it, similar to the ones in the ??? quest. No directions, no wiki (I’ll touch on that later). The only thing that might help you is talking to nearby NPCs, which could give you hints and clues about the location of the vault.
Down in these little spoiler thingies, I’ll include an example story of the player going through a vault.

Spoiler: Finding a Vault

After collecting local rumors and vainly searching for weeks on end, you finally find a secret cave in a far corner of the Roots of Corruption. It contains a small room with netherrack all over. However, at the end of the cave, the netherrack’s placement becomes more unnatural, until you can just barely glimpse a stone wall through the corruption. You look for something to get through it and eventually find a small bomb in the Abandoned Mines. You right click with it, and it blows up the wall, revealing a Vault Entrance.

Part II: Entering the Vault

If you manage to find a vault entrance, it won’t just magically open up right away. You’d have to search around the area and find three special items to place on three special altars. Let’s say you are looking in the Roots of Corruption to acquire the items needed to open the caved-in vault. You have to find a Crooked Bone, a Corrupted Shard, and a Blood Charm to open the vault entrance. Of course, you don’t know what these items are or where to find them. The only clues you get are faded drawings on each altar, and the possibility of an NPC knowing where to look.

Spoiler: Crooked Bone

On the far left altar, you see a drawing of a miner being attacked by what looks like a large dog. You talk to Jorkin, who doesn’t know anything about it. However, he mentions hearing a loud noise, dismissing it as hearing things. After many days, you suddenly hear a deep rumbling. A crack in the wall behind the portal has opened up, and you enter it. You travel through a tunnel for what feels like hours, until you finally reach a larger cavern. However, nothing seems to be here, and you start to turn around, when a deafening roar is heard from behind you. You turn around to see a huge corrupted hound lumbering towards you from a newly-dug hole in the wall. After a struggle, you finally defeat it. It drops one item: a Crooked Bone.

Spoiler: Corrupted Shard

Looking at the far right altar, you see a strange shape resembling a Wynnic “e”. You search for something among the roots, but you can’t seem to find anything at all. You try to remember any corrupted areas that you fought in.
You travel to the corrupted spikes near the edge of of the Nesaak woods, but after searching it thoroughly, you find nothing.
You try the large corrupted rock in the middle of the small village, but to no avail.
You search underneath the monolith in Lutho, recalling the few pieces of corruption you saw down there. Going behind the exit, you find a small hole that you jump down. The room you fall into has a strange corridor that contains scattered blocks. You push them into the shape on the altar, which opens up a gate containing one Corrupted Shard.

Spoiler: Blood Charm

The middle altar depicts a fraction of a map, seemingly centered around the Dernal Jungle. You travel there, and remember a heavily corrupted cave in one of the temples. You enter the cave, fighting many high-level mobs as you run through it. You finally reach the end, which has a gaping black hole blocking the exit. On the side of the room is a worn grappling hook. You turn around quickly and see many mobs charging towards you. You jump off at the last second and use the grappling hook, which launches you towards the ceiling. You can see mobs falling into the pit, instantly evaporating into nothingness. Using the grappling hook once more, you move yourself just far enough to reach the final platform. The grappling hook breaks and falls right as you land, immediately being vaporized like everything else. Looking for the item, you search the platform, but you see nothing. As you start to lose hope, red particles start to float up from the pit, centering around you. They group together and start to form a solid object in the palms of your hands, creating a necklace with a large red jewel at the end. You realize this is the third and final item needed, the Blood Charm.

Part III: In the Vault

I’m imagining the vault as closer to a dungeon than a raid reward room. So, instead of just entering and exiting, you can’t actually get out unless you either die or get through the challenge rooms.

Spoiler: What happens if you die?

If you die here, the items on the altar will be reset and you will lose items as if you are on one soul point, like in hardcore. I know this seems a bit unfair, and probably has some issues I’m overlooking, but I feel like there needs to be a risk involved. I mean, you are searching for a legendary item of unbelievable power. Usually. *cough cough*az*cough cough. Anyway, it shouldn’t be just like, find vault, kill mob, find item, get mythic, leave. There has to be a compelling reason to come, but also a compelling reason NOT to come, some kind of danger. There are probably better ways to execute this but it’s the best I can think of.

The first room would vary depending on where the vault is; in the example below, it is an underground city that will flood when you enter. You have to find a way out before you drown. Some other ideas are timed mazes, puzzles with mobs, etc. I think of the first room as one to make the player panic, mostly using time-based challenges.

Spoiler: The First Room

After placing the items on to their respective altars, the stone gate opens up to a huge, pure-gold city. No corruption in sight, you walk along until a message appears in the chat: You suddenly hear what sounds like water running…
After a few seconds, the room will start to flood, and you have to find an exit quickly. You go back to the entrance, but the stone gate had closed behind you. You wade through the city frantically, remembering stories of adventurers who went into vaults and never came back. Eventually, you find your way to a small hut that has a ladder leading into a hole in the cave ceiling. You climb the ladder and, after your narrow escape, enter the next room.

The second room would be a more active challenge, like parkour, or that one room in Galleon’s Graveyard where the floor opens up behind you. Also, if it is parkour, spells should be disabled, because it would be way too easy if you could just cheese it. In the instance below, there is parkour with ranged mobs shooting at you, and you die if you hit the floor. That sounds amazing, right?

Spoiler: The Second Room

This room has some simple parkour, but all spells are disabled. To make it even worse, there are ranged mobs shooting at you. And a short cutscene is shown of an adventurer who got shot off a platform and was turned into spaghetti.
Anyway, let’s just say you complete the parkour. Dodging the last of the arrows, you jump through the exit and enter the final challenge room.

The third room is a boss fight, and the fight will have “fun” gimmicks that will make you want to ragequit persist and try again :D If you take too long, the floor will start to break, and the boss gets stronger and faster the more you damage it. And don’t forget web, I know that that is everyone’s favorite mob spell.

Spoiler: The Third Room

It is a reasonably large arena, with no obstacles or barriers. The only thing here is a lonely little pressure plate. You step on it, and a huge hole opens in the wall in front of you. A roar echoes in the distance. Footsteps are heard and a huge, one-eyed abomination charges out. Here are its stats:

Spoiler: Stats

The Betrayed
Type: Hostile Mob
Level: 125
Health: 6,000,000
AI Type: Charge AI
Elemental Damages: Thunder, Fire
Elemental Weaknesses: Earth, Air
It has a few custom spells that I don’t have enough creativity to put together, and uses many spells that everyone hates like web and arrow storm.

During the fight, the floor starts to crack beneath your feet. You have to keep moving now, as you can already feel the corruption pulling at your mind.
Suddenly, the aberration screeches loudly and charges at you at a much faster rate. It throws you into a wall with its huge head, but as it is about to devour you, you fire one last arrow that lands in its single eye.

After a long battle, you finally stand victorious. As the ground becomes whole again, the huge beast falls to the ground with a thud. It drops an item called a Gateway Key.
The hole that the monster dug forms into a bigger door, with an iron gate requiring an item to open. You put the Gateway Key into the keyhole, and the gate opens to a long corridor with stairs at the end. You walk through the tunnel, down the stairs, and into the vault room.

Part IV: The Vault Room

The vault room contains what you have been working towards; the mythic item. I was originally thinking that there would be a trap at the end, but honestly, that doesn’t feel fair anymore. Now you can finally take your mythic and leave.

Spoiler: The Vault Room

The room you are standing in is of medium size, with pillars a few blocks from each corner. In the middle of the room is a golden shrine, particles slowly floating around it, and in the center of the shrine is a Cataclysm. As you pick it up, the wall at the end of the room opens up to a small yellow portal. You jump in and exit the vault.

Part V: Final Thoughts and Ideas

There are a few things about this I haven’t worked out, like the Trade Market and lootrunning availability. The wiki is still an issue, as it could just tell you what to do to get the mythic. So, part of this idea is that vaults will update every month or two. And, if a player completes a vault, it is no longer available to others until the next vault update. This could create a fun challenge for players to race each other to the vaults, and possibly solve part of the endgame content issues. I’m really not sure about this part though, so feedback will help this post a lot. Let me know what you think!

Thank you for reading, have a nice day/night!

 

YES BEAUTIFUL WELL THOUGHT OUT DESIGN.

MAYBE REDUCE RISK A BIT BUT I LOVE IT

PLS ADD IT WOULD BRING ME BACK TO WYNN

 

I like the concept, but there are a few major problems:
- The wiki
- Very few people would be able to try them out as a small group of people will just memorize all of the puzzles and layouts of the vaults and speedrun them
- Would probably take a LONG time to develop, especially since the CT are currently working on Fruma
- The CT don't implement suggestions like these. They may take an idea or two, but overall suggestions like these are treated about the same as detailed quest suggestions.

 

1. The wiki/small groups would be useless, as once someone completes the vault, it isn’t open to others until the next update. Which leads me to 2. As you said, the CT probably wouldn’t have any time to keep a steady supply of new dialogue, builds, items, and lore to keep it going, which is probably the main reason this couldn’t work. I appreciate the feedback though, as many people will see more issues than me

 

Oh sweet jesus

 

I think a better thing to do for info sharing about these vaults (i was not here in the relic days of wynncraft, so if someone has experienced it feel free to correct me) would be to just make a rule against sharing info about it (possibly like a warning 1st offense, then like a short ban for 2nd offense).

 

This is what i meant by “others will see more issues than me”

________________________________

this sounds good

 

Feel like this would be hard to moderate, the mods can't monitor people's discord dms or other external platforms. I feel like giving a major reward would also massively increase the odds of people sharing information about the vaults.

 

which makes this useless when there will be a <10 mythics found by tryhards compared to 100+ mythics found in other ways in the meantime

This already happened to ???
Though I don't know how efficient it was + ??? is not so "damaging" when found "illegally"

Deus feedback moment
"don't even bother, won't get implemented either way"

 

Finding 46 places to hide Mythic vaults would be a massive time constraint on the CT, only for a small handful of people to find them all within a couple days and just share the information with everyone else.

The idea of banning communication of this between people to prevent info spread is also terrible. It's damn near impossible to enforce and also there should NEVER be a rule to prevent communication between players. Aside from discouraging community involvement, imagine some rando recording a Youtube vid finds some cool puzzles or oddities and following them to a Mythic vault on camera? Whoops, BANNED, you can't show that on Youtube silly!

The idea of having them only openable once every so often is also a really bad idea. For the fact that once the cooldown is up the people with the knowledge just camp at the sites and create a monopoly on Mythics. Then this idea has completely backfired, as now instead of it being very hard for your average Joe to get a Mythic, it's now 100% impossible!

Lootrunning doesn't need replacements per se... it needs alternatives and a nerf. Like what forgery chest provides buff forgery chest.

 

Banning communication is always detrimental in an MMO; they tried that with the old ??? and it wasn’t the best.

 

for something only 1 person can do, this doesn't seem worth the time sink on our part when we could just like. Make lootrunning enjoyable or forgery better

 

Lootrunning is enjoyable if you want to do it, the problem is people are forced to because there is no comparable option.

 

Ok looking at this more critically: this is honestly a great idea on paper but will go terribly in execution. I really like these ideas of super difficult solo endgame challenges scattered across the map, but making each of them reward a mythic while also relying on an honor system that tig mentioned would be near impossible to execute at the very least effectively sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. However, the base concept of these is really great, and maybe instead of mythics they can reward lore which would be neat (like for cotl it showed the origins of the colossus) or a cool trophy item. These should also probably be released over time so that way the mysteries of what these are will keep on calling new players back. Perhaps minor changes will be made to a few over time with updates.

 

Yeah, i agree. And i think that more emphasis on exploring would be great for Wynncraft, like more secret discovery-like features.

 

maybe the vaults could give out guaranteed mythics to the first few people who complete it, and after that it becomes something like a forgery chest
no wiki is a horrible idea

 

This would be awesome, would be interesting to see what all the different mythic vaults would look like and their puzzles
However the 'drop a ton of items on death' thing is just too much

 

Honestly, let's just get to the root of all our problems and remove mythics.
Jk I like making money

Although it's a very interesting idea, like a lot of other people have pointed out, it would just end up being abused.

Here's an alternative idea I thought up for this mythic vault concept:
Instead of say a vault for each mythic, there would be a vault for each of the elements. They wouldn't necessarily be hidden either,just scattered around the map in areas that fit with the respective element.
Sort of like a quest, you'd have to choose only one of these vaults to do on your class, with there being NPCs guiding you along the way.
The mythic vaults would be a once-per-class, unfairly difficult (but still possible), completely solo challenge that you could do at level 105 or 106 (or whatever Fruma will raise the cap to), taking a large chunk of time and a lot of effort to complete.
After reaching the end of a vault, you would be guaranteed a mythic drop based on the elemental vault you go to, with a much higher chance of weapons (taking class bias into consideration) than armour, cause who wants to struggle that much for a Stardew?
This would let everyone have a guaranteed shot at getting a mythic, even if it was absurdly challenging, without it being as easily abused by a handful of players to essentially print mythics.

After thinking about this a bit more, it could definitely lead to a lot more mythics in the market, but the economy sucks and I just want more pretty purple weapons to play with

 

YES
I don't have the time and energy to lootrun, and thus have acquired no mythics yet. I'm saving up for one on the Trade Market by just grinding TCC, but it isn't very enjoyable or unique. This would give a new interesting concept for players who are poor, and an endgame challenge that doesn't take hours of finding random items to get a chance at one mythic. I like this much better than my original idea, IMO you should make a new suggestion with this

 

At this point, if this were to be implemented, make mythics untradeable items, and make a unique themed one for every mythic.