Disclaimer: this topic is a teaser and everything is subject to change. The full patch notes are released 2 days prior to new season.
Quest Overhaul
New and improved rewards for completing the original quests
Throughout Median XL's existence many of the original quests have been ignored by most players, rightfully so, as their rewards were outdated and not worth the trouble. Fast-forward 15 years and new engine changes have allowed us to add new rewards and improve many of the existing ones, to make the early progression smoother and more rewarding. We also used this opportunity to reward many of the essential items to the characters, in a more natural and fail-proof way. The new changes will make all quests worth doing and will be a nice addition for players of all skill levels.
Some of the changes include:
- Catalysts: now drop from un-skippable bosses, one for each player, and will find their way in your inventory if you miss them
- Arcane Crystals will be rewarded to all players for completing the long act 2 and 3 quests, on all difficulties!
- Hellforge: the most useless MXL quest now has a chance to drop any normal or great rune as well as essences
- The Countess: unlike the forge, her chest can't drop great runes - but you may be lucky enough to find a xis-enhanced rune
- Griswold's Heart: this convenient chest piece will be granted to all players after the rescue of the infamous Deckard Cain
Trophies
Six new trophies, trophy fragments & new restitution uniques
Last season players have expressed their dislike for bad RNG streaks when trophy farming, due to their low drop chance. To address this trophies are now composed of three identical fragments, which have a 7% chance to drop. The chance of getting nothing in 50 runs will be exponentially smaller and trophy hunters will have much more consistent results. But there are many more trophy-related changes, such as:
- 6 new trophies: Belial, Valthek, Xazax, Baal, Void & Bremmtown, for a total of 20 trophies
- The 3 free trophies (Akarat, Jitan and Primus) have been removed as they were already in the way of repeatable content
- The Sleep: rebalanced all awakening recipes to be competitive. Can be trophied a second time withThe Sleep
Required Level: 90
Cube with Trophy to Awaken
Disenchant to open a portal to the World Nexus
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Maximum Fire Resist +(0 to 1)%
Maximum Lightning Resist +(0 to 1)%
Maximum Cold Resist +(0 to 1)%
Maximum Poison Resist +(0 to 1)%The AwakeningThe Awakening
Full Plate Mail (Sacred)
Defense: 11673 to 14304
Required Level: 130
Required Strength: 690
Item Level: 130
Ethereal
When Cubed with The Sleep, Enables an Additional Awakening
(The Armor will be Disenchanted by the Recipe)
5% Chance to cast level 50 Banish on Death Blow
+(1 to 4) to All Skills
50% Combat Speeds
-(31 to 35)% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+200% Enhanced Defense
+25 Maximum Stamina
Magic Resist +5%
Socketed (6) - All trophies now have unique custom art (credits to Inertia)
- Restitution: new affix included in several new uniques such as Endless PrideorEndless Pride
Cap (Sacred)
Defense: 1187 to 1201
Required Level: 120
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 130
Restitution
(Based on Restore Percentage)
+2 to All Skills
+50% Bonus to Defense
Maximum Elemental Resists +3%
Cube with Trophy Fragment: Restore +20%
+4 to Life (Based on Character Level)
+2 to Mana (Based on Character Level)
Elemental Resists +10%
(1 to 50)% Magic Find
Socketed (4)Arrogance. These fragmented items need to be restored with trophy fragments. The special stats increase proportionally to the restoration percentage, until they are fully repairedArrogance
Gothic Plate (Sacred)
Defense: (8308 - 9198) to (10078 - 11157)
Required Level: 120
Required Strength: 1350
Item Level: 130
Restitution
(Based on Restore Percentage)
+50% Combat Speeds
Physical Resist +15%
Maximum Life +7%
Cube with Trophy Fragment: Restore +4%
25% Movement Speed
Adds 15-25 Damage
+(18 to 32) to Stormlord
5% Deadly Strike
+(171 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
+(40 to 50) to all Attributes
Requirements +100%
Socketed (6)
Build Improvements
Balance changes and revamped multiple builds
As usual, there are multiple changes to many character builds. In this first segment of the character balance changes, we will showcase the most significantly altered trees:
Warlock Paladin
- Mind Flay is now the level 1 skill and Tainted Blood is the level 24 skill
- Mind Flay:
- now starts at 1 beam, down from 2
- damage increased by 100%
- additional beams now shotgun targets in range
- will now shock the primary target(s) for 1.5 seconds, reducing their lightning resist by 30%, magic resist by 20% and movement speed by 30%
- Tainted Blood:
- putting points in this skill now disables Grim Presence
- now also grants +10 Energy Factor per Base Level and 25% of damage taken goes to Mana
- Slayer:
- next delay removed, damage increased by 20%
- now have a 10% chance to cast Chain Lightning on Death Blow
- This chain lightning deals 100% of your Mind Flay damage, hits 10 targets and inherits your lightning pierce
- Symphony of Destruction:
- is now correctly considered a ranged skill
- now deals magic damage and attacks in a small area rather than a single target
Totem Necromancer
- Totems:
- no longer require a corpse to be summoned
- now have 50% absorb to their own element
- can be used on left mouse button
- Fireheart Totem:
- increased target seek range
- tripled damage and changed casting frequency to 1/3 to reduce clutter
- Stormeye Totem:
- now casts a piercing nova, making it the first true aoe totem
- increased damage
- Soulbond: increased healing effect and effect range
Werebear Druid
- Werebear Morph:
- Treewarden form replaced, which can now be obtained as an oSkill or item stat
- the new bear attack animation scales similarly to werewolf - attack speed on weapon becomes the primary stat
- best possible endgame fpa now increased
- Wildfire: increased damage by 25% and reduced mana cost
- Idol of Scosglen: improved visuals and halved ND
- Circle of Life:
- is now a Druid Devotion Skill, and excludes the other 2 morph passives and Elfin Weapons
- now gains faster hit recovery and block rate per hard point to adapt to new bear speeds
- allows bear druid to gain attack rating from vitality in addition to dexterity
Elemental Damage
Improvements to elemental builds
The second part of the character balance changes focuses on improving the core three elements: fire, cold and lightning. The goal is to make midgame caster/elemental itemization better and more interesting. One way to accomplish this is by making elemental pierce more accessible at this stage.
The following Runes have been modified:
- No: now gives -3% to enemy Poison Resist
- Yul: now gives -3% to enemy Lightning Resist
- Thai: now gives -3% to enemy Cold Resist
- Rha: now gives -3% to enemy Fire Resist
- Xar: now gives -2% to enemy Fire, Cold and Lightning Resists
- The popular stats replaced in these runes have been moved to other runes
New Elemental Weapon Bases
- Four reworked base items (One-Handed Melee, Two-Handed Melee, Bow, Class Specific) which have no base physical damage but spawn with elemental instead
- Tiered variants spawn with flat elemental damage, growing exponentially with each tier
- Sacred variants have 20% more elemental damage as a base than Tier 4 and also scale elemental damage based on the weapon's primary attribute
- This scaling depends on three factors: Melee > Range, Two-Handed > One-Handed and Strength > Dexterity. E.g. Two-Handed strength melee weapons scale the most
- Magic / Rare Affix Pool:
- Affixes which are irrelevant (e.g. Enhanced Damage, Life Leech) do not spawn on these bases
- Added several new affixes exclusive to these bases (e.g. crushing blow, life on striking, new procs)
- Affixes which are irrelevant (e.g. Enhanced Damage, Life Leech) do not spawn on these bases
- Existing set, tiered and sacred unique variants have had their stats altered to work with the base change
- Luck recipe has a chance of granting 20% attack speed instead of 20% enhanced damage on these bases
- New proc exclusive to elemental bases: Life Spark - restores 3% of your maximum life. Spawns on attack and on striking
Dimensional Plane
A new endgame boss. Defeat Deimoss the Fleshweaver
Found at the end of the Dimensional Labyrinth, this boss will now reward you with the Dimensional Key charm.
It features a new gameplay mechanic, where the players can decide for themselves how difficult they want the fight to be. Based on this decision and a successful kill, your charm will have a different amount of stats. The harder the encounter you defeat, the better your rewards will be.
Note that the Star Chart and Dream Fragments, dropping from the mini bosses throughout the Labyrinth, will still be able to upgrade this charm.
Quality of Life
New container shortcuts, glide fixes and other
We spend a lot of time researching new quality of life features, which usually takes more than a single season. If we find ways to make the playing experience more convenient, we will work on implementing them. In the upcoming patch we have a few features which fit the bill:
- Shrine Vessels and Arcane Clusters can now be right-clicked to collect all corresponding items in the inventory, stash and cube
- The scrolling symbols, seen when launching the game with Glide, are now fixed (thanks to Aquila)
- Mouse cursor teleportation when using Glide and moving the cursor to any side of the window is now fixed (also Aquila)
- The main cube reagents now have their description displayed in a dialogue window, instead of on the item tooltip. To see more information about an item right-click it. Additionally, extra information has been added to some descriptions such as: jewelcrafting rune bonus and lucky upgrade effects
And more!
More unannounced features and changes...
This topic illustrates the main features of the upcoming patch, but there's a lot more to come. A demon named Zagraal has invaded the jungles of Teganze. You will need to defeat this new boss to obtain the treasure. Additionally, all of the 130+ dungeons have received notable changes, making the endgame more fair to all classes. There are huge improvements to 110+ leveling (this time for real), several new Sacred Uniques such as the
Hand of Rathma
, revamped Diablo fight and much more! This is all possible thanks to your support, so we want to take this opportunity to thank you once again for playing and being part of this community.Hand of Rathma
Wand (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 35 to 36
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 166
Item Level: 125
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Dexterity)%
+1% Maximum Elemental Resists per Totem of that Element
+1.5% Physical Resist per Resurgence Base Level
Orb Effects Applied to this Item are Doubled
+50% Damage to Undead
-33% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+(76 to 100)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+5000 Defense
Socketed (2)
Wand (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 35 to 36
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 166
Item Level: 125
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Dexterity)%
+1% Maximum Elemental Resists per Totem of that Element
+1.5% Physical Resist per Resurgence Base Level
Orb Effects Applied to this Item are Doubled
+50% Damage to Undead
-33% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+(76 to 100)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+5000 Defense
Socketed (2)