Median XL [1.A9c]

[Luke]

MEDIAN XL 1.A9c
By BrotherLaz
http://modsbylaz.hugelaser.com/






Overview
Median XL is the most popular mod, or unofficial modification, for Diablo II Lord of Destruction. It modifies the game by replacing character skills, improving items and monsters, and adding new uberquests.
So is this a cheat?
Mods are not cheats. A cheat makes the game easier. Median XL turns it into an entirely new game...


Features
o New skill trees with 30 brand new skills per class.
Bored with Blessed Hammer? Median XL offers brand new skill trees. Each class has 25 main skills, 3 uberskills and 2 challenge reward skills. If you ever wanted a crossbow necromancer or summoner amazon, here is your chance!
o Improved monsters.
When was the last time a frog killed you? The monsters are much more aggressive and dangerous, and many have learned various new tricks. From quill rats with homing spikes to invisible templars, the monsters will pose a much tougher challenge.
o Elite and heroic monsters.
If the normal monsters are tricky, the elites will have you run for your life. Featuring their own unique attacks and improved statistics, elite and heroic monsters are a match for the strongest heroes.
o 22 new uberquests for high level characters.
Forget Battle.net and 'Uber Tristram', Median XL has 13 more uberbosses and 7 special uberlevels for high level characters. Defeating them on the highest difficulty yields powerful unique charms.
o New base items. Six quality tiers.
Median XL features many new class-specific items. Additionally, item stats have been rebalanced and there are now six tiers of item quality, each with better stats than the last. Rumours persist of even stronger Sacred items...
o New and improved gems and runes.
More gems, more runes and the existing gems and runes have been improved. Plentiful random sockets on items offer a powerful way to customise your items.
o Enhanced magic and rare items.
Between the improved affix pool and the addition of powerful new affixes including percentage based attribute bonuses, rares are a much improved game option.
o An assortment of new uniques and sets.
Median XL features 471 new uniques and 28 new sets. Many of the uniques and all of the sets can only drop in special difficult areas.
o An assortment of new runewords.
There are exactly 235 brand new runewords, each requiring only a single rune. You can fill the other sockets with jewels for your convenience.
o New and improved cube recipes.
Median XL offers many powerful new cube recipes including a revolutionary crafting system.
o Honorific items.
Create blank items and enchant them yourself. Ever wanted to make your very own uniques? Now you can.
o Special challenges for expert players.
Beating the game is only half the fun! Reach certain milestones in the game to obtain a special reward.
o Rebalanced drop rates to make good items more common.
You may actually see a Zod now.
o And much more...

ChangeLog:

Read ChangeLog Here!


Download:

BrotherLaz Website

[jedimaster86]

I tested some during alpha, but college work/life took me away from it around v022. Now I can return to it a bit more, so it's pretty cool.

What kinds of characters are people playing around with? Also, what kinds of things are you enjoying about MXL that Laz improved about your D2 gameplay experience? I started up a bowazon, since I played it during alpha. I'll probably end up going with Trinity/Curare, and perhaps Phalanx to spread the slew of elements around nicely. At some point I'm sure I'll start up another holy caster, and maybe even a thrower barb for old times sake. I'll have to make sure to try some fun things in classes I havn't had much experience with.

Oh, and please do not talk about hacked characters or drop mods in this thread. Let's keep at least one thread pure. If your character is hacked, please don't discuss him/her here. Cheers!

[Mathalamus]

the best character is still the necro. because of the summons.

[PyroShizZz]

Newest release can be downloaded here:

Mirror 1.
MedianXL_v186b.zip - FileFront.com

Mirror 2.
Subscribe to FilePlanet


Changes:

1.86 -> 1.86b

Characters

Amazon

- Prowl: doubled damage per second, added 40% duration synergy from Pounce.

Necromancer

- Angel of Death: doubled damage per second, added 40% duration synergy from Soulshatter.

1.80 -> 1.86

Characters

- Corrected damage display of most summoning skills.
- Reduced base block rate by 2%.

Amazon

- Blood Elementals: slightly increased base life.
- Bloodstorm: mana cost reduced by 33%.
- Death Ray: added synergy.
- Fairy Ring: added +damage per level; duration fixed at 6 seconds; removed double hit to reduce lag.
- Ghost Arrow: added +damage per level.
- Leader of the Sun: renamed to Leadership, duration increased, effect reduced.
- Lioness: reduced ED% from 25% per level to 20% to avoid damage overflow.
- Magic Missiles: reduced cost, increased missiles, increased accuracy, added synergy.
- Prowl: removed 3/2 modifier and reduced Poison duration to avoid damage overflow.
- Ricochet: added +damage per level.
- Spirit of Vengeance: greatly increased aura radius, improved aggressiveness.
- Star Streak: added +damage per level.
- Triumphant Strike: added duration synergy from Lightswarm.
- Wraith Arrow: added +damage per level.

Assassin

- Crucify: magic damage conversion fixed at 25%.
- Hades Gate: reduced mana cost by 1/3, range is now correct (bigger).
- Maelstrom: added +damage per level.
- Premeditation: slightly reduced high end bonus to avoid silly low timers when supermaxed.
- Seal of Fire: activation radius now increases linearly.
- Singularity: added area effect damage that decreases with distance from the black hole.
- Way of the Phoenix: reduced Fire damage by 15%.
- New skill: Way of the Raven: cold damage to attack and increases cold spell damage.

Barbarian

- Bear Stance: now always adds 150% enhanced damage in addition to its other bonuses.
- Guard Tower: mana cost fixed at 15.
- Rebound: added +damage per level; damage conversion fixed at 50%.
- Shower of Rocks: fudged a fix, now does more or less the correct damage.
- Snake Stance: increased Poison damage.
- Titan Strike: corrected description.

Druid

- Blindside: removed 3/2 modifier to avoid damage overflow, added pierce.
- Elemental: fires 2 elementals instead of 1.
- Elfin Arrows: increased damage bonus from 10% to 25% per level.
- Poison Flash: added 14% Poison damage synergy from Gamma Field; reduced duration synergy to 10% to prevent display overflow; removed NextDelay (stacking the initial hit at close range).
- Spore Shot: increased damage to 1/2.

Necromancer

- Death's Fury Totem: corrected description.
- Soulshatter: reduced stun length.
- Summon Darklings: added damage reduction equal to clvl/4 + clvl^3/2500.
- Summon Lamia: slightly reduced number; reduced Doom duration.

Paladin

- Mind Flay: narrowed damage variance to avoid maximum damage overflow.
- Plague: very slightly reduced damage to compensate for the Retaliate boost.
- Retaliate: added flat +damage per skill level.
- Searing Orb: reduced mana cost.
- Shadowfiends: no longer erroneously has negative physical resist, increased speed.
- New icons for Shadowfiends, Divine Apparition and Scourge.

Sorceress

- Narrowed damage variance on Lightning skills to avoid maximum damage overflow.
- Abyss: area of effect now corresponds with graphics.
- Arcane Fury: changed all parameters, graphics and icon.
- Forked Lightning: increased synergy to 4%; increased minimum damage.
- Ice Elementals: corrected description.
- Lightning Wall: increased synergy to 6%.
- Shatter the Flesh: increased range by 2.6 yards.
- Static Orb: increased synergy to 4%.
- New skill: Disintegrate: heavy physical and magic damage on a timer.

Others

- Lolsummons: increased life, increased elemental damage per level.

Items

Specials

- Fixed Documentation pearl. Only one person noticed?
- Fixed Mystic Orb pearl. Only one person noticed?
- Signets give +1 point at all times, and decay to 0 at 1000 points.
- Fixed display of Demon Core orb.
- Fixed display of Monsterball orb.
- Enabled Signets of Gold and Experience to drop.

Magic and rare items

- Fixed bug where most magic/rare oskills were unavailable.

Uniques

- Added 2 unique amulets, 2 unique rings.
- The Gauntlet: corrected multihit bug on newly spawned versions.
- Renamed the second Wedding Dress to Cloak of the Vasan Queen.

Runewords

- Astarte: added Spiral Dance oskill.
- Shaula: replaced Serafiends with Moon Knights.

Levels

- Bremmtown: reduced monster density to avoid crash.

Monsters

- Added 4 new monster types: giants, savages, ents and runepriests.
- Added 1 additional new monster type that only spawns as reanimate: crystal witches.
- Removed some imba or bugged monsters from the 'Reanimate as' pool.
- Non-boss monsters with Gamma Field use a version with less lag.
- Fixed idiotic hardcoded maggots not triggering Retaliate.
- Removed sound effect from Frog Prince deaths.
- Reduced Serafiend damage.
- Reduced Mind Flay damage of Sinwar's pack.

Heroic

- Added heroic uberboss: Bull Prince Rodeo, in the Cow Level. Has a UMO bias on Dest.
- Astrogha: reduced life by 75%, reduced Spider Statue summons, is now male.
- Quov Tsin: reduced chance to appear so he won't block Fauztinville as often.

Uberquests

- Azmodan: fixed bug that often caused no monsters to spawn.

Hirelings

- Act 1: Doubled life.
- Act 3: Doubled life.

PS. All credits go to Brother Laz

DS. Would apreciate a sticky.

[Mathalamus]

the new version is 1.94. one of the chages is that he made the mod unhackable. it get corrupt if you try to hack it. nice job.

1.90 -> 1.94

Characters

Amazon
- Barrage: corrected description (does 3/4 damage).
- Fairy Ring: range no longer increases, meaning it will not shoot at walls.

Assassin
- Way of the Phoenix/Gryphon: description now reflects damage done in 1.90.

Barbarian
- Earthquake: corrected description (does 3/2 damage).
- Snake Stance: increased high-end (level 40+) damage ramp.

Specials
- Item-triggered Broadside reduced in damage and attack rate.

Monsters
- Reduced attack rating of uberquest monsters on Destruction difficulty.
- Reanimated Fellpit Fiends are no longer invisible.
- Fixed Lionskull the Bent giving out x2 experience.

Uberquests
- Duncraig: increased experience rewards from Lost Souls, reduced poison damage, increased Assur's life on all difficulties.

Heroic levels
- Quov Tsin: reduced spawn chance from 2% to 1%; reduced beam damage.

[jedimaster86]

Median XL 1.A9 has been released July 18. The changelog can be found here. This will probably be the final content patch, source below.

Due to the complaints that 1.A9 invalidates many existing items and builds and the requests for a stable version, it doesn't seem worth it to make more patches for very minor changes.
(Also, the 'it keeps getting easier/more like M2008/less like M2008' undercurrent among veterans doesn't help)

Median XL is good now, it can stay that way.

There might be a patch to update Median to 1.13 if necessary, but it will be a purely technical patch with no content changes.

Borgin will further develop the spin-off mod Mean Mode, but it is incompatible with Median XL anyway and aimed at expert players.

Thanks for playing!

-Laz

(source: ModsbyLaz :: View topic - Probably the last content patch)

You can download it off Laz's page here. Have fun!