Mirny: Lost Hope

The latest event in World of Tanks saw us return to the abandoned research town of Mirny-13. From October 18th to November 2nd, players had the opportunity to team up with 4 other players, to collect Mirium, overpower Magnus and eventually take down the big bad boss!

There's 3 level of difficulties in the mode; Normal, Hard and Nightmare. Each difficulty is unlocked by completing the previous difficulty. The end boss changes on each difficulty but the gameplay is pretty much the same, naturally with tougher enemies as you go through the difficulties.

Each game consists of 4 phases. The first 3 phases are pretty much the same. Kill AI powered enemies to collect Mirium and deliver the Mirium to Magnus. The AI enemies weren't always the same though and would change depending on the difficulty you were playing. For me, the most annoying enemy was The Trapper, which was an enemy that would spawn energy circles that if you got caught in, would deplete your health by quite a lot!

Once you have delivered enough Mirium, you move onto the next phase. The amount you need also increases as you go through the phases (and difficulties). The final phase is you taking down the boss, which is different depending on which difficulty you are playing on:

• Normal mode has you facing The Immortal
• Hard mode has you facing The Corrupted M103
• Nightmare mode has you facing Martin Novak

If a player in your team dies mid phase, then they respawn at the start of the next phase.

In Hard and Nightmare mode, additional AI enemies may spawn in at random times. For example, there was a trio of tanks called The Lost Platoon that would spawn in and do a lot of damage if you ended up near them!

There's 6 tanks to choose from throughout the mode although some of them only become available once you've completed certain missions, these tanks are:

• Hornet
• Cerberus
• Double
• Grenadier
• Malachite
• Legio Ferrata

Personally, I had the most fun (and did the best) when playing the Hornet. It suited my playing style the most. That said, the Grenadier was a close 2nd although that's one of the tanks not available from the beginning.

You can equip each tank with 3 abilities, which range from 3,000 credits to 10,000 credits each, my selection was always:

• Magazine Loading - Instantly reloads the gun
• Group Repairs - Repairs damaged modules, extinguishes fire, and restores some hit points to allied vehicles within the effect radius
• Energy Strike - Causes damage to nearby enemy vehicles

I did play around with some others, but I felt those 3 worked best for me.

Now, it wouldn't be a World of Tanks mode without a progression system! This mode doesn't have your typical numbered progression system that you'd expect to find in Battle Pass, for example. The progression system here is all based off the completion of 15 missions, which each have 2 requirements to complete.

The first requirement was either completing a certain phase on a certain difficulty OR by causing a number of damage on a certain type of enemy. The 2nd requirement was to decrypt a "reel", which would unlock a voice clip, progressing the story further. In order to decrypt a reel, you need to earn Decryption Keys:

The amount you need for each of the 15 missions can vary between 10-30. The missions that rely on you playing Nightmare Difficulty can be skipped, but you need to buy a lot more keys than if you were to actually complete them and then decrypt them. For example, the 15 mission requires you to beat the boss on Nightmare difficulty and then spend 30 keys to decrypt the reel. You have the option of skipping these requirements but instead of it costing 30 keys to decrypt, it costs 130 keys to decrypt. If you did that for all Nightmare missions, it would cost a lot of money so I think it makes more sense to keep playing and hope you get a decent group to defeat the boss.

Decryption keys can be earned by just playing the mode. I think it worked out as 1 key for every phase you complete. There was also a daily mission for each tank for delivering 100 Mirium to Magnus, which would grant you one additional key.

The reward for completing all 15 missions is a Tier VIII Soviet Assault Medium Tank called The Obsidian:

Luckily, I managed to complete all of the missions without needing to skip any. I actually only ever defeated the Nightmare boss twice, so I got pretty lucky 🤣

The mode relies heavily on playing with people that know how the mode works, out of all the games I played, I spotted some re-ocurring player patterns that would eventually cost us the game, in fact, based on how the team performed in Phase #1, you could tell whether you were going to win the mode or not:

• Players would often split up, which doesn't work for this mode. If you've got a player that likes to be a hero and takes on 4-5 tanks solo, they're probably going to die and not be around for the rest of the phase.
• Players would take too long to get to Magnus for the end of the Phase. If there's only 30 seconds left and the team already has enough Mirium, don't bother going after more enemies, just get to Magnus.
• Players would not pick a zone quickly. This causes so much confusion in the team and you end up driving in circles. As soon as the game starts, someone should select a zone to drive to, then the team should follow that direction. Rinse and repeat until complete.
• In the boss phase, players would focus on the boss rather than its minions. This quickly led to the team being too over-whelemed and then eventually getting overrun. If you keep on top of the minions, then you'll survive long enough to actually default the boss.

Luckily, for the majority of my games, I actually did get matched with decent players and we quite easily got to the final phase. Sometimes that last phase was very overwhelming though, especially if we didn't do a good job on keeping up with the minions that the boss spawns.

Overall, I enjoyed the mode! I've never played in Mirny-13 before so I can't actually compare it to previous times. The mode was more engaging than the Halloween Event from last year though! I'm excited to play The Obsidian, I've seen it being played a lot in my games and it looks awesome on the battlefield!