Taking a good look in the Mirrorworld in Runes of Magic

I've been jumping back into Runes of Magic lately. One, to say hello to my old guildmates and friends. Two, I wanted to play a bit more of the side activities that I never did. Honestly, more reason one than two, but man . . . I kind of fell hard for the Mirrorworld Instances in Runes of Magic.  

Mirrorworld debuted back in March of 2016 in Runes of Magic. It had a different UI and instance cadence back then, but in 2017 everything kind of changed to the way it is now in 2022.

Mirrorworld UI showing its plethora of dungeons

To get started, you just talk to a dude named Hagris Rya. He'll put you on the quest chain. Hagris then kicks you down the line to Aylin.  Once you have those quests from Aylin, you're good to go.

Up in the very left corner of your main screen, you'll find a button that opens up a pop up UI that will then allow you to teleport into a whole slew of daily "level 90" solo instances, but here's the thing, these things are going to be a little tough right at level 90.  That's when I first tried them and nope'd out of them.

I think the real reason most people don't play through these instances is that they overload your backpacks with an amazing amount of "stuff," and you're instantly like . . . "What the heck do I do with all this stuff? This is ridiculous!" That coupled with getting kind of owned right at level 90 probably left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths if they were anything like me.

"Moony" the wolf boss in Mirrorworld

Runes of Magic feels predatory ALREADY with the amount of stuff they cram into your rented inventory space, so getting a metric ton of drops from an instance feels . . . bad. You just know it was done on purpose this way, and that nagging feeling is a turn off. So, now that I've torn away the band-aid on every Runes of Magic player's boo boos, let's talk about why these instances are pretty cool.

Reason one: At level 100, these instances are kind of a cakewalk. As a returning level 100 player that needed to get his bearings for which buttons to click again, it was a perfect combat primer.

Reason two: The main yummy treat you get from doing these instances are called Mirror Shards. Look, you could delete all the other stuff these instances give you and be just fine because there's a vendor in Varanas named Forkas Garry who will trade you item shop potions for those Mirror Shards. One of the main things I used to buy in Runes of Magic was a potion called the "Big Angel's Sigh." Big Angel's Sigh is your 24 hour insurance policy against accruing XP/TP debt when you die.  Playing the game without a Big Angel's Sigh running is nerve wracking, and at high levels, that debt can be scary to work off. Forkas Garry sells these for 30 mirror shards. Done and DONE. 

For me the Big Angel's Sigh and the Golden Eggs to feed to my pet are reason alone to do these instances. Over just a few days I've already stockpiled 20 of these Big Angel Sigh. Outside of those, there's also luck potions for sale . . . if you're an item farmer, you'll want those.

Reason three: Every Mirrorworld dungeon hosts a boss at the end. Every creature in the dungeon drops a "heart" of the boss in the dungeon. If you get 50 of these hearts, you can "summon" that boss to give you stat bonuses while you play.  You don't actually summon them like a pet, which is unfortunate. It'd be kind of cool to have these dudes follow you around, but there is a whole UI built in the character screen to house your summoned Mirrorworld boss.  

You can summon two of these bosses at once. Each boss features different stats, but the real cool thing is that if you summon the correct two bosses that have synergy with each other, they give you an additional skill.

For me, I'm running Garsit and Tatuin. Garsit provides extra intelligence. Tatuin provides extra physical attack. So, while Tatuin doesn't really help me as a mage, the combination of the two gives me a new skill called Prayer of Destruction. Prayer of Destruction gives me a big boost to magical damage every 10 minutes.  Well, it will eventually give me a big boost to magical damage, but at its early levels, it's just kind of a nice little, um, barely noticeable, extra dps.

The laughable Prayer of Destruction Buff at level one

To improve your stats for your summons and your new skill you need to do two things.

Thing one: Evolve your summoned boss.  You do this by collecting hearts. By the end of this whole evolutionary nonsense, you're going to need about 6,600 hearts from each boss. considering you get anywhere from 10 to 25 hearts per run, it'll be anywhere from 600 to 300 runs to get all the hearts you need to fully evolve a boss. Since you can typically only run a boss 2 to 3 times a week, this could take a few years to complete.

Thing two: Level your summoned boss. Each evolutionary step of a boss allows you to then level your summoned boss by an additional 10 levels. To do this, you'll need a metric ton of 12 items, and THOSE ITEMS are what clog up your bags when you run Mirrorworld over and over: regular, good, and rare quality scrolls, shards, bottles of ink, and cards. 

BUT WAIT, IT GETS WORSE! There are three colors of each of those 12 items: red, green, and blue. Each boss likes one of those three, so if you plan on leveling all the bosses, well, that's 36 items. It's a lot and you'll end up having to dedicate an entire bank tab and a half to just Mirrorworld items if you really want to level these guys. 

Is it worth it?  Man, I don't know!  I'm only a week into this and my level 10 Garsit is really only giving me an additional 300 intelligence.  Unfortunately NO ONE has filled in how much intelligence you'd get for a max evolved and leveled Garsit on the wiki, so it's a bit of a mystery for me.

Really it sounds like there are a few ways to play this.

Gather 'em all up, and melt them down

Playstyle one: Collect all the things! Level all the things! Evolve all the things! Keep all the things!

Playstyle two: Collect only the things I need for the bosses I want . . . chuck the rest except for the mirrorshards.

Playstyle three: Trash it all. I ain't doing that.  Just keep the Mirrorshards.

Playstyle four: I'm not getting caught up in ANY of that. 

So there you go, that's basically the gist of Mirrorworld. Every day they give you 3-5 free tickets. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot. The Wiki has a lot more detailed information on this game feature, and if this post has whetted your appetite, go give it a read.

Happy Dueling