Triune Studios opened the gates to the world of Mithir by launching an open public playtest for its hardcore old-school MMORPG, Eternal Tombs, directly via Steam. The sudden rollout follows a curious bureaucratic hiccup: the team prepared a polished festival demo for Steam Next Fest, but Valve's prolonged review process caused the build to miss the festival showcase entirely. Rather than shelving the release, the studio ported the entire demo package into an open Steam Playtest scheduled to run for the next two weeks. Adventurers can immediately request access and download the client by clicking the Request Access button on the official Eternal Tombs Steam page.
For the community, this playtest serves as a critical progress check. Prior test phases drew heavy criticism for feeling excessively unpolished, plagued by rigid stop-and-start combat delays, persistent ranged weapon freezes, and disorienting rubberbanding. This build introduces Combat System 3.0, specifically engineered to eliminate mechanical clunkiness. Attack delays have been drastically shortened, granting smooth movement during swings and spellcasting. Lingering hangups associated with bows, wands, and staves have been eliminated alongside reworked targeting curves for ranged archetypes like the Bombardier.
Defensive interactions received a comprehensive rebalance. Previously, magic-shielded casters melted against melee brawlers while shielded vanguard classes were easily erased by spells. Triune implemented hybrid mitigation: magic shielding now absorbs a percentage of incoming melee strikes, whereas conventional physical shields deflect a portion of incoming spell damage. Unintended mechanics were also cleaned up, ensuring stealth and sneaking states instantly break upon mounting up.
Engine stability and UI clarity also took center stage. Monster blood de-spawn timers were standardized to 90 seconds to optimize rendering overhead, while packet synchronization overhauls substantially mitigated server-side rubberbanding. On the HUD front, character statistics now clearly delineate base attributes from crafted gear modifiers, corpse looting hotkeys were streamlined for smoother dungeon clearing, and vendor transaction logic was patched to eradicate item quantity purchase bugs.
Content-wise, the playtest centers around The Hallowed Grave, a limited-time Halloween world event designed to stress-test the game's dynamic event architecture. Players can tackle festive questlines, trade with holiday merchants, harvest exclusive seasonal reagents, and battle wandering undead across transformed landscapes. Veteran combatants can also push into the high-level Kilivith Woods, offering an uncompromised look at whether this nine-year passion project can deliver authentic, non-pay-to-win old-school dungeon crawling.
