Σ 1.6.2 Patch Notes

As i said earlier, builds that previously worked will continue to work just fine, relics existing in the game or not. If you don't want to grind for months, play on tsw, the choice is yours. And drop rates are already at least 2.5x higher in single player than on tsw.

RequiemLux wrote:
- Download these files: MXL.mpq • .dll and extract them to your Diablo II folder (where "Game.exe" can be found) using a program like 7-Zip. Both files are archives and both files need to be extracted. At the end of the exctraction process you should have obtained 3 new files (MXL.mpq, D2Sigma.dll and Fog.dll). In case it asks you if you want to replace the existing files, select yes.

i only obtain the MXL.mpq, D2Sigma.dll there's no Fog.dll do i miss some download?

Ebyam wrote:Yes, I just made an account here to post that, so? Just because I didn't post in the forums doesn't mean I haven't played.

I think the point being made is if you have truly and honestly been playing for Years at this point and time on a single account then why not post on that Main account? Instead you make a brand new account for??? what reason exactly? Complaints as well as complements can be made from the same account.. in fact it strengthens your arguments around here to be honest as in the longer you have been around on the same account kinda speaks for itself. Just saying.

Futhermore Ladder isnt for everyone.. You either long for the reset and new challenge or you have long term goals which can only be achieved in SP.

Ebyam wrote:
► Show Spoiler
Hey, I've been playing Median once in a while every few years and always thought it was a blast. While I enjoy many of the changes Sigma brought I also very much hate a bunch of them. But the thing I dislike the most, is that it seems to have become one of those games where you are heavily punished for not playing multiplayer, now, when that was never what median was about before. I always played it singleplayer, enjoyed it that way, and I don't plan on switching. There have been so many changes that make singleplayer worse, that it is starting to wear out my desire to play median anymore. Players 8 gone, no more plugy support (muling is a pain in the ass on it's own and kind of mindboggling that it has to be done again in 2020 when its an issue that had been solved a long time ago, and to boot it crashes a lot when you do that), and then you keep being hit with nerfs because one or two people in multiplayer with access to a vast array of gear and resources found a tiny little way of breaking the game and beating one of the top bosses (hey I thought bosses were meant to be beaten... weird).

Nah, you're not punished for not playing multiplayer. SP has higher drop chances than MP and the PlugY situation has been subject of discussion for who knows how many times since its removal. It wasn't something developed by the MXL team and has also its fair share of issues (mostly the tendency to corrupt save files), making its implementation a double edge sword. It has been stated multiple time at this point that an enhancement of the stash is one of many points on the to-do list of tasks for future patches. Nobody is hating on SP. This whole point of view is almost a full fledged meme in current days. If you dislike muling in SP (me too), there's an app in the tool section (Median XL Offline Tools) that could help with that afaik (don't ask me how it works tho 'cause I don't personally use it).

Ebyam wrote:
► Show Spoiler
These games are meant to be broken, the whole fun is in becoming overpowered. And median, to my knowledge, has always been about providing big challenges for which you have to become overpowered to overcome. So why the massive nerfs to everything? I don't want to play mutliplayer, I dont care what Joe Schmoe is top on your ladders or how he got there, don't nerf singleplayer because of multiplayer shenanigans. If the nerfs are because someone beat a boss solo that is meant to be beaten in a party, then the issue is that it wasnt made to be beaten solo to begin with, as that alienates a lot of content (or should I say 'even more') from singleplayers.

Not sure what your point here is, nerfs are not aimed at making bosses impossible, in that context are meant to not trivialize the experience. For example, the stamina/sprint change has been exactly that, the running mechanic with its negligible cost made a big chunk of the game almost pointless while balancing around that big flaw a potential nightmare.
There are still plenty of occasions when you can just steamroll the content but, whenever that gap between hardship and goodhood is on an esponential note in the powercreep path, it's not an inconceivable action that of smoothing out the curve... there isn't a secret objective of making the produced content unachievable following some dumb obscure plan.

Ebyam wrote:
► Show Spoiler
Now the game was completely rebalanced based on these new relics, which are going to be a nightmare to find from what I've been reading (heck, even something that was always reasonably easy to get in single player, like runestones and essences, which arent even that amazing, are now ridiculously time consuming to farm just a few of in singleplayer). So essentially for single players 1.6 is yet another huge nerf, because probably these relics wont drop more than once or twice over several days worth of dedicated farming them, yet everything is balanced around the huge boosts they give. Just... why?

"Now the game was completely rebalanced based on these new relics"... Nope. Not even a bit. No idea why you even got this idea. Relics can get kinda busted in all honesty, and droprate is far from being low to the level you are imagining. Compared to the old cotw they are a buff, and one on steroids, that adds an additional level of overpower and flexibility to the endgame builds. There is a big misunderstanding, the game is not being balanced around Relics, the Relics are being balanced around the game (and with lot of rooms for op stuff this time around).

Ebyam wrote:
► Show Spoiler
Again, just because a few people with access to way too many resources online found some broken combos? So what? I thought games were meant to be fun. What is lost when there is an overpowered build that requires a bunch of hard to get stuff? There are no money tournaments for this, nobody is making a living off playing median. They managed to get all the really rare stuff to pull off their broken build, I say they earned being overpowered, multiplayer or not. Enough with the handholding and if you must do so, then leave singleplayer out of this nonsense, please.

This last statment sounds like it infer that once a broken combo is found then it should be left well alone for the fun of it. Now this might prove right for other types of game, but not MXL. The updates are massive, the content is huge compared to vanilla, and the meta is always shifting, hopefully never stale. Broken combos will always unavoidably be a part of the experience; if that is an important parameter for you, with knowledge you could aim towards them while by playing and experimenting you can happen to find your op build of the season. This project is constantly in the making, enjoyment can be found in riding along instead of closing yourself up to a bunch of options that could easily become outdated. There's a balance to be stroked between freshness and familiarity.

cletyan wrote:i only obtain the MXL.mpq, D2Sigma.dll there's no Fog.dll do i miss some download?

Read carefully, both the file you've downloaded are archives, and both need to be extracted. The .dll(s) are in the 1.6.0.dll.update archive, I've just checked. Maybe try extracting them in a custom folder and then drag and drop the files in the correct location.

RequiemLux wrote:

Read carefully, both the file you've downloaded are archives, and both need to be extracted. The .dll(s) are in the 1.6.0.dll.update archive, I've just checked. Maybe try extracting them in a custom folder and then drag and drop the files in the correct location.

sorry . the 1.6.0.dll.update is not in winrar icon so i though its not zippable and can paste direct to the game.exe folder , thanks anyways appreciate your help. :salut:

Demonlord wrote:
Ebyam wrote:Yes, I just made an account here to post that, so? Just because I didn't post in the forums doesn't mean I haven't played.

I think the point being made is if you have truly and honestly been playing for Years at this point and time on a single account then why not post on that Main account? Instead you make a brand new account for??? what reason exactly? Complaints as well as complements can be made from the same account.. in fact it strengthens your arguments around here to be honest as in the longer you have been around on the same account kinda speaks for itself. Just saying.

Futhermore Ladder isnt for everyone.. You either long for the reset and new challenge or you have long term goals which can only be achieved in SP.

As I said, I played on and off (few months at a time) every few years, for as far back as when Brother Laz was the hardest uber and the only one with an impossible rating. I am not 100% sure, but I don't think I have made a forum account (and if I did, I wasnt able to retrieve it, because I tried my usual usernames and passwords from back then before I made this one and nothing was found). Being a single player game and liking to figure things out myself, I only looked up the occasional thing, or build, I didn't feel a need to talk to anybody in the community about anything and I was happy with the way the mod was going (always hated the purify mechanic even back then, but one bad thing, whatever, wasn't gonna come complain in forums solely because of that).

RequiemLux wrote:Nah, you're not punished for not playing multiplayer. SP has higher drop chances than MP and the PlugY situation has been subject of discussion for who knows how many times since its removal. It wasn't something developed by the MXL team and has also its fair share of issues (mostly the tendency to corrupt save files), making its implementation a double edge sword. It has been stated multiple time at this point that an enhancement of the stash is one of many points on the to-do list of tasks for future patches. Nobody is hating on SP. This whole point of view is almost a full fldged meme in current days. If you dislike muling in SP, there's an app in the tool section (Median XL Offline Tools) that could help with that afaik.

In the current state of affairs, that may be the case, but the drop rate feels terrible compared to what it used to be last time I played (I believe Triune was the newest uber at the time) on /p8. Every Duncraig big room only clears or TA runs with modest MF gave me at least 1-2 SUs, wasnt rare to get even half a dozen, now I'm lucky if I find one in a full clear with fully MO'd MF gear and MF runes/gems in every socket. Runestones and essences dropped back when it was orbs in the kurast sewer map about as often as shrines do now, whereas in 3 Teganze runs I've had just one single Earth Essence drop and nothing more. And yes, PlugY required backup saves every now and again, but the shared stash was probably the best thing ever added to this game and it beat the annoying mule juggling that is necessary now hands down (I tried the offline tools too but for some reason it didnt let me manipulate items or stash, so I thought it was outdated or something, but if it does, then that is a huge help and may mitigate the plugY issue), but again, not an issue that broke the mod for me, just a grievance that at least has a way to be overcome. It is just the adding of all this that is ruining the mod for me. Also I'm not saying the devs are hating on SP, that would be silly. I just think there should be different balance applied to both, and honestly wouldnt even be that much extra work, simply a matter of "Is it a change based on the ability to trade items? If yes, dont apply it to SP".

RequiemLux wrote:Not sure what your point here is, nerfs are not aimed at making bosses impossible, in that context are meant to not trivialize the experience. For example, the stamina/sprint change has been exactly that, the running mechanic with its negligible cost made a big chunk of the game almost pointless while balancing around that big flaw a potential nightmare.
There are still plenty of occasions when you can just steamroll the content but, whenever that gap between hardship and goodhood is on an esponential note in the powercreep path, it's not an inconceivable action that of smoothing out the curve... there isn't a secret objective of making the produced content unachievable following some dumb obscure plan.

I certainly hope so, I just saw a bunch of people say bosses get buffed or builds get nerfed when someone makes a guide that a certain build manages to kill one of the really really hard bosses and that is quite disheartening. I'm not against balance. If a build is super easy to make and clears everything easily, it certainly needs to be toned down. But if its a build that requires a lot of fancy rare things, then it should be left alone. Nothing specific in mind, just based on some of the replies I saw here, and in past updates. And yes, I may have been rash in assuming they were correct, perhaps the devs don't do that on purpose and it is just a coincidence. It just seemed to fit with the current shift in Median from singleplayer to multiplayer, so making bosses that are supposed to only be beaten in multiplayer seems to me like something that is not outside the realm of possibility.

As for the sprint change, no complaints here, this is actually one of the changes in sigma I really liked, so kudos for that.

RequiemLux wrote:"Now the game was completely rebalanced based on these new relics"... Nope. Not even a bit. No idea why you even got this idea. Relics can get kinda busted in all honesty, and droprate is far from being low to the level you are imagining. Compared to the old cotw they are a buff, and one on steroids, that adds an additional level of overpower and flexibility to the endgame builds. There is a big misunderstanding, the game is not being balanced around Relics, the Relics are being balanced around the game.

The change about orange text no longer stacking, a bunch of relics having orange text and many changes that seemed to reduce skills/builds related to relics that now boost said skills/builds was my reasoning behind that assumption. I certainly hope the drop rate isn't bad, but as I already said, based on all the other drop rates on things that aren't even meant to be that powerful and that were a lot more single player friendly in the past, I remain skeptical.

RequiemLux wrote:This last statment sounds like it infer that once a broken combo is found than it should be left well alone for the fun of it. Now this might prove right for other types of game, but not MXL. The updates are massive, the content is huge compared to vanilla, and the meta is always shifting, hopefully never stale. Broken combos will always unavoidably be a part of the experience; if that is an important parameter for you, with knowledge you could aim towards them while by playing and experimenting you can happen to find your op build of the season. This project is constantly in the making, enjoyment can be found in riding along instead of closing yourself up to a bunch of options that could easily become outdated. There's a balance to be stroked between freshness and familiarity.

Again, if the combo is easy to attain, then yes, but if it is difficult, then it seems unnecessarily punishing. I fully agree with stale meta being an interest killer, but on the other hand rewarding ingenuity and/or time commitment for exotic builds is also very important. Else it risks becoming stale all the same.

Edit: I think I figured out how the OfflineTools shared stash works now, so I take it back about the lack of PlugY, this is a decent replacement and thank you for letting me know it is possible. When I saw it say PlugY shared stash I thought it was an older application that needed PlugY for that feature to work, but glad thats not the case.

Edit Edit: Yeah, offline tools is actually really finnicky, and doesnt seem to actually save the shared stash after I close it, even if I save, so guess its no use after all.

Hi, im playing a new character on single player mode, after the update my armor gears required level tripled, making it unwearable, just sayin not a problem

Is it correct that the dimesional key's cubing is working properly?
I killed deimos with a single play.
But the key is not upgraded while the aura is running.

And there seems to be a bug where the amulet of mercenary is not equipped.

I also have the bug where merc's can't equip amulets, tried a rare and a unique which the level requirement was definitely low enough to be worn

Full Duncraig, Fauztinville and Bremmtown clears, 341% MF. Only two SU drops (and no great runes, of course, but that was always par for the course).

Farming vanilla LoD was more satisfying than this.