MXL: Sigma Announced

[Marco]

yup, there's gonna be a bunch of stuff that's not in the docs. it would be stupid to ruin the fun by revealing everything.

While I usually would agree with this statement; everything will be discovered in the alpha anyway.

Regarding Caldeum, it will be in act 3. Yes it's in a desert; but it's closer to act 3. See this map:



I highlighted the acts. And caldeum is near kurast. Needless to say, act 4 is in hell and doesnt appear.
Also that map is post-worldstone destruction. In median's timeline, bastion's keep is actually mount arreat.

[Food]

Glad to be wrong and hear that items are being worked on from the get-go

By the way, when you say sacred uniques should follow a concept what do you mean exactly? I guess you mean that they follow the lore or are a better fit for a certain "themed" build (like, ice or storm etc) but there probably is something more to it

[Marco]

Glad to be wrong and hear that items are being worked on from the get-go

By the way, when you say sacred uniques should follow a concept what do you mean exactly? I guess you mean that they follow the lore or are a better fit for a certain "themed" build (like, ice or storm etc) but there probably is something more to it

More like follow a theme or be unique, lore has nothing to do with it, the idea is to prevent boring items that are just a mash-up of stats or repeated themes. There's actually a topic in the hidden sigma forum by suchbalance, where he even describes the reasons to get rid of certain uniques. It's actually really interesting, and he does a great job, what better way to explain the thoughts behind this rework other than quote sb himself? (I hope he doesn't mind)


Example:

Strength Beyond Strength

Strength Beyond Strength
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (8339 - 9198) to (10115 - 11157)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 120
1% Chance to cast level 36 Pyroblast on Striking
Adds 25-38 Damage
150% Bonus to Attack Rating
+50% Damage to Demons
25% Life stolen per Hit
10% Deadly Strike
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
1% Reanimate as: Random Monster
-5 to Light Radius
Socketed (6)

vs.

Scales of the Serpent

Scales of the Serpent
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (7481 - 8308) to (9074 - 10078)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 105
15% Chance to cast level 40 Arachnomancy on Melee Attack
4% Chance to cast level 12 Time Strike on Striking
(31 to 40)% Hit Recovery
+90% Damage to Undead
Adds 200-300 Poison Damage over 2 seconds
-35% to Enemy Poison Resistance
5% Chance of Crushing Blow
Weapon Physical Damage +(25 to 30)%
+(144 to 171)% Enhanced Defense
+100 to Strength
+50 Life on Melee Attack
Socketed (6)

so both sbs and sots work with range wdm but give you an extra incentive to be melee in terms of a proc. honestly these are both very similar but sots just edges it on concept by virtue of being poison themed, whereas there are many other fire procs on chests and in all fairness aoe attack isn't really the most logical property to grant to an item which is not a melee weapon. finally while the pyroblast proc is powerful it has no synergy among the rest of the stats so it feels out of place thematically

Basically he's gone through all SU's (and TU's) analyzing them conceptually - since this is a heavy creative work, you can thank him for saving like a month time of development and the good part is he's almost done.

[Icegod101]

Glad to be wrong and hear that items are being worked on from the get-go

By the way, when you say sacred uniques should follow a concept what do you mean exactly? I guess you mean that they follow the lore or are a better fit for a certain "themed" build (like, ice or storm etc) but there probably is something more to it

More like follow a theme or be unique, lore has nothing to do with it, the idea is to prevent boring items that are just a mash-up of stats or repeated themes. There's actually a topic in the hidden sigma forum by suchbalance, where he even describes the reasons to get rid of certain uniques. It's actually really interesting, and he does a great job, what better way to explain the thoughts behind this rework other than quote sb himself? (I hope he doesn't mind)


Example:

Strength Beyond Strength

Strength Beyond Strength
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (8339 - 9198) to (10115 - 11157)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 120
1% Chance to cast level 36 Pyroblast on Striking
Adds 25-38 Damage
150% Bonus to Attack Rating
+50% Damage to Demons
25% Life stolen per Hit
10% Deadly Strike
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
1% Reanimate as: Random Monster
-5 to Light Radius
Socketed (6)

vs.

Scales of the Serpent

Scales of the Serpent
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (7481 - 8308) to (9074 - 10078)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 105
15% Chance to cast level 40 Arachnomancy on Melee Attack
4% Chance to cast level 12 Time Strike on Striking
(31 to 40)% Hit Recovery
+90% Damage to Undead
Adds 200-300 Poison Damage over 2 seconds
-35% to Enemy Poison Resistance
5% Chance of Crushing Blow
Weapon Physical Damage +(25 to 30)%
+(144 to 171)% Enhanced Defense
+100 to Strength
+50 Life on Melee Attack
Socketed (6)

so both sbs and sots work with range wdm but give you an extra incentive to be melee in terms of a proc. honestly these are both very similar but sots just edges it on concept by virtue of being poison themed, whereas there are many other fire procs on chests and in all fairness aoe attack isn't really the most logical property to grant to an item which is not a melee weapon. finally while the pyroblast proc is powerful it has no synergy among the rest of the stats so it feels out of place thematically

Basically he's gone through all SU's (and TU's) analyzing them conceptually - since this is a heavy creative work, you can thank him for saving like a month time of development and the good part is he's almost done.

I always thought some SU and TU item stats were a bit pointless at times even when used on the correct type of characters

[FallenAngel]

In addition to this, is there a chance that the Runewords will also be made theme-based? I was wondering if it makes sense to include the original modifiers of the constituent rune(s) themselves in the runeword. A simple example would be a runeword item requiring say runes Tal and Ral - it would give additional modifiers such as say -enemy fire resistance, % bonus to all attributes in addition to the % fire spell damage and flat attribute points that runes Ral and Tal provide respectively. So the original 'theme' of the runes themselves would be retained in the runeword. It will give players more flexibility in terms of creating runewords; for example, a fire-cold sorceress would build a runeword of Ral-Thul, whereas a lightning-cold sorc would build one of ort-thul.

Glad to be wrong and hear that items are being worked on from the get-go

By the way, when you say sacred uniques should follow a concept what do you mean exactly? I guess you mean that they follow the lore or are a better fit for a certain "themed" build (like, ice or storm etc) but there probably is something more to it

More like follow a theme or be unique, lore has nothing to do with it, the idea is to prevent boring items that are just a mash-up of stats or repeated themes. There's actually a topic in the hidden sigma forum by suchbalance, where he even describes the reasons to get rid of certain uniques. It's actually really interesting, and he does a great job, what better way to explain the thoughts behind this rework other than quote sb himself? (I hope he doesn't mind)


Example:

Strength Beyond Strength

Strength Beyond Strength
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (8339 - 9198) to (10115 - 11157)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 120
1% Chance to cast level 36 Pyroblast on Striking
Adds 25-38 Damage
150% Bonus to Attack Rating
+50% Damage to Demons
25% Life stolen per Hit
10% Deadly Strike
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
1% Reanimate as: Random Monster
-5 to Light Radius
Socketed (6)

vs.

Scales of the Serpent

Scales of the Serpent
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (7481 - 8308) to (9074 - 10078)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 105
15% Chance to cast level 40 Arachnomancy on Melee Attack
4% Chance to cast level 12 Time Strike on Striking
(31 to 40)% Hit Recovery
+90% Damage to Undead
Adds 200-300 Poison Damage over 2 seconds
-35% to Enemy Poison Resistance
5% Chance of Crushing Blow
Weapon Physical Damage +(25 to 30)%
+(144 to 171)% Enhanced Defense
+100 to Strength
+50 Life on Melee Attack
Socketed (6)

so both sbs and sots work with range wdm but give you an extra incentive to be melee in terms of a proc. honestly these are both very similar but sots just edges it on concept by virtue of being poison themed, whereas there are many other fire procs on chests and in all fairness aoe attack isn't really the most logical property to grant to an item which is not a melee weapon. finally while the pyroblast proc is powerful it has no synergy among the rest of the stats so it feels out of place thematically

Basically he's gone through all SU's (and TU's) analyzing them conceptually - since this is a heavy creative work, you can thank him for saving like a month time of development and the good part is he's almost done.

[Strigvir]

Runewords don't work this way in Median.

[Rishab]

Also, lets not turn this thread into a suggestion thread, there is a separate thread for it. U can discuss and explore on content thats posted and revealed by marco.

[FallenAngel]

Runewords don't work this way in Median.

The mechanic of runewords remains the same as it was in LoD. One recipe has to be created for each combination of runewords. Also Median XL has runewords consisting of multiple runes (e.g. elemental runewords, XIS runewords etc.). So the suggested recipes are neither impossible to make, nor go against the Median runeword-logic as such.

Also, lets not turn this thread into a suggestion thread, there is a separate thread for it. U can discuss and explore on content thats posted and revealed by marco.

Yes, agreed. Copied and pasted this on the suggestions thread.

[Quirinus]

yup, there's gonna be a bunch of stuff that's not in the docs. it would be stupid to ruin the fun by revealing everything.

While I usually would agree with this statement; everything will be discovered in the alpha anyway.

I didn't say it won't be added after a while or that we won't add anything.

[cowking]

Will sigma have end game areas that don't penalize playing in a party?

The reason why tcows and dcows are the only games able to draw a pub is because people go there for xp, not drops (also no instakill mechanics).

Maybe an uberlevel with 8x one way portals in the end that lead to chests with the main drop of the uber or 4x unique mobs inside the level have to be killed in certain timeframe impossible to do solo that opens a portal somewhere in the level that leads to an area with highest xp bias (or activate the 8x portals). You get the point.

Oh and I realized rejoin kinda ruins the portal thing. Would have to make it rejoin proof.