2.8 Bugs & Feedback

I finally reached 150 and completed the paragon soulstone. Unfortunately, the reward for 150 was an item that I absolutely couldn't use, because it belonged to a different class.

Please consider filtering the SSSU to be either generic or class specific. As nice as it was to get a void infused maple bow, Paladins can't use that. I went through Hell and countless numbers of tier 10 lab runs to get this - and don't get me wrong, the fact that it's fully complete is a bonus, but... Again, it doesn't fit for paladins.

MajorCooke wrote:I finally reached 150 and completed the paragon soulstone. Unfortunately, the reward for 150 was an item that I absolutely couldn't use, because it belonged to a different class.

Please consider filtering the SSSU to be either generic or class specific. As nice as it was to get a void infused maple bow, Paladins can't use that. I went through Hell and countless numbers of tier 10 lab runs to get this - and don't get me wrong, the fact that it's fully complete is a bonus, but... Again, it doesn't fit for paladins.

no

Zsombi wrote:Request:
(1) allow the Assassin to wield both a wrist blade type weapon and a throwing knife at the same time, one in each hand.
(2.1) people seem to like the Crossbow Necromancer's Widowmaker as it is (mechanic wise), but I would like a faster single target version much better. Therefore, I would like to request a passive Upgrade option to be added for it, which would turn it into a single target projectile skill. Its major downside would obviously be, that it could hit only 1 target per use, but it could be used faster and would concentrate the standard version's effects all into 1 target.
(2.2) Add some synergies/bonuses to other options too (not necessarily in the Crossbow tree) if this target singling upgrade is taken.

also no to these too

split throw/claw dual wield will break things as sin doesn't have animations for that, and widowmaker is already a very good single target skill

v2.8.1 In Scoseglen, Sapphire Knight moves through some textures, as well as through water.

ooooo wrote:v2.8.1 In Scoseglen, Sapphire Knight moves through some textures, as well as through water.

i remember them doing that before as well

The drop rate of riftstones extreme low

Got to the end of The Void as a lvl 124...ring requires 130 still lol

This season had quite a few good ideas so I wanted to review it after playing. Everything is purely my opinion and experience

1-90 leveling is an improvement from before. The mobs are harsher but because we gain much more xp, the overlevel compared to before balance out the mobs stats, so leveling take about the same time as before but is more engaging. Having mobs randomly taken from a larger pool fit perfectly well acts, works well there and gives some variety.
The 90-110 part of the game is also better in 2.8 than before. The most important change there is the removal of dungeon level requirement and the incentive to rush baal ; It make progression through hell and early ubers more logical than the previous "do sunless until 110 then progress" I did before. Also sometimes skipping butcher and/or infernal for a bit until 105 is achieved, which didn't feel good. Heck, there's also Bul-Kathos that I pretty much skipped until around 115 most of the time just because there wasn't much need to go there. The route now is clear and simple, you get to baal and do things in the way and all works well.

Level requirement works well for 120+ dungeon and rifts as they represent big milestones, I wouldn't want them being unlocked forever because it would favour too much builds that can cheese them underleveled. But 105, 110 and 115 dungeons feel much better like this. Definitely a point to keep.

Talking with 2.8 experience gains for 1-147 and 2.8.1 for 147-150, but 110-115 and 135-140 were the biggest slugs (135-140 was easily corrected with labs though). Every other parts felt perfectly fine to me and didn't especially need an xp boost. 110-115 mostly is pain because of the need to search for writs leg, and because the jungle is not a very good place rather than experience gain though.

Dungeons changes that should stay :

I was very sceptical at first about KoS, but porkshop there actually fit well. The place was too easy since the map changed, and instead of stupid narrow corridors, the difficulty from porkshop is easy to counter and fair.
Laz like this isn't especially harder than before, but definitely more fast paced. The result is that it's harder to challenge with no gear preparation, as you can't just take it slowly with multiple rounds. Again, with gear it's not especially harder than before but feel pretty nice to attempt
Again baal as a 110-115 difficulty style is nice for progression. Would keep

Dungeons changes that are baddie bad :

Bremmtown teleport restriction. Without frequent teleport the zone is rollback and desync hell, especially with high ms, and attempting the trophy isn't challenging it's stupid. I had the trophy from level 130 and just never applied it, purely because it's just painful to rollback endlessly because high ms + no tp just bring pain, simple d2 maths.

Startled Witches in sleep fight doesn't bring anything of value. It's not bad in itself but there's nothing to say there
Still not sure what to think of 6 worms sam, it reduce a bit the number of builds that can go in as regen become very important, but the fight is as fun as always. I think the ideal would be that sam start as 4 worms but become 6 when the player die/the buff for upgrading the charm stop or something, but I don't know how doable is that. The +life he got for sure is nice and should be permanant.

Rift changes :

Sunless sea, Cows, Kurast and Teganze are really good like this and could easily stay like this forever. They maintain their identity and main mobs while adding some new ones that fit well and are similar in difficulty. I never felt the need to reroll any of them, and all seemed always nice and fair. As one would expect, adding more mobs than one static, ranged tanky mob type in teganze made the place 3 time funnier.
TA, dunc, fauzt, scos, triune are nice for the theme of the season. It was fun to have some differences to the usual, but simply put their mob pool is too big, and that create too much randomness. Also I beg never put in the game again the fauzt mob that does a big BOOM sound, theses make my game freeze like crazy so I reroll them everytime. Quite a few mobs there that does it a bit, it's to the point I'm happy to see erinys while I farmed fauzt because I was sure they weren't adding anything weird.
I want two special mentions, one for Library of Fate, this place is the most random of the game, the mob that are immune to anything but magic until you kill their boss spawn in big packs and are a pure pain, electrogeists hurt like hell, and every other mobs are super easy, sometime there's even 0 density. It has the problems of the above rifts but is the most exaggerated. The other for torjan jungles, not sure how it is in 2.8.1 but in .8 this place was horrible, between the knockbacks, stuns and charges attacks it was very stupid. The place also is pretty unrewarding unless the group of trees spawn, then it become way too good compared to what it is without them... A mess really.

Labs :
I played with an op build and leeched through any random mob damage so I can't judge their tuning. They were fun to cut through though, and are nice visually. I had a few freezes sometime but I accuse dragon seed screaming eagle proc, can just be that. Unsurprisingly, removing the most obnoxious mob of the game, sinew shaper, made everything 2 times more satisfying and nice.
I'm not sure about t9 being alvl 140 though, the xp there is a bit too much I think, and now you're technically able to get to 150 without ever entering a 10, which I find just weird... To be honest, I'd rather have t9 alvl back to what it was but make t10 more frequent, either by randomly dropping in t10 or on a chance on killing deimoss, or whatever really.
I have a few general complain about labs that was already valid before but will just throw there because I encountered them this season : Assur and laz in pillar are stupid, not to mention laz changed and is now technically much easier in a big cleared map. I'm very sick of hearing gharbad, I know from my bosskill stats that he doesn't spawn more than other corrupted heroes but I feel like I''m seeing him everywhere all around, and I started to hate him. He has a life pool just decent enough to be obnixious, isn't dangerous and just very annoying and not engaging to fight. Anomaly and corrupted sin life are too high, after getting their chart they're a garenteed skip from me. Amazon and nec could do more damage.

Some general comments :

I wasn't sure about the class restriction on relic before the season started, but actually playing it it felt pretty bad. The overall number of relic I ended with for my class was about the same as in a normal season, so I can't complain numerically, but it just feel bad to drop a relic with good stats and not even be able to take profit from it... Maybe the skill itself being restricted isn't so bad, I can see it create some incentive for rerolls, trades etc. But with the stats locked too it just doesn't feel like a reward to drop a relic.
Playing through scosglen with almost only druids made me realise that a rift with mostly only minibosses clearly could be something to explore
I still don't like goblins and would rather have something more engaging to kill spawning that some running away dude
Rune downgrade recipe is amazing and finally lower the barrier of "I play a build that must drop a rune between um and cham to be comfortable in hell but I'm not dropping it until 115+ tehe" that some builds have. Please keep it forever.
Playing with goblin glee feels so nice, with the higher density it's also easier to get runes and things in general, that I liked. The extra ac and easier tenet from scos was good too, and labs being 100% ac sustainable by itself due to glee is nice. And even with all that I was often low on ac, really show how bad the grind is in a normal season

► Show Spoiler

I have really been enjoying the new mob density and mob variation changes, as well as goblin's glee proc this season. This is one of the most fun seasons I have had in quite a while! I wanted to provide some constructive feedback in various areas coming from someone who has played median since pre 2008. I just finished my scosglen charm and am about to start labs, but wanted to write up some proposed ideas / changes before getting into lab. All of this feedback is for scosglen except for my first point below.

1. The monster variety / density in a1/a2 normal were extremely punishing, especially for a melee build. Having toxotes spawn in a1 and those ice archers spawn all over the desert in a2 was super hard to deal with as a melee class. I knew personally that I would get through it and my character would get stronger as i unlocked more skills, so i stuck it out. But if i was a new median player just trying out the mod for the first time, i would have quit in act 1. it felt way overtuned

2. I love the density and new mob types. i hope these things stay and continue to get fine tuned and balanced

3. For the druid farming in scosglen, it would be nice if there was a deterministic way to get into a scosglen map that has all of the druids on it. Perhaps when you kill the 11th eye, a portal could be opened to a new scosglen map with only druids. Or maybe an item could be dropped that could be cubed to open a portal. Or introduce a new miniboss on the map that you have to hunt down that has 100% spawn chance (like 11th eye), and when you kill it, it can open a portal to a druid map. Having to remake over and over to find a map layout with druids on it did not feel good and diminished the perceived value of farming the layouts without the druids on them because i felt like i was not progressing toward my dulra aegis.

4. The reality piercer that drops off of 11th eye needs a significant increase in drop chance. i farmed for 2 hours straight to get 1 single reality piercer. runs were 5-7 mins each. i almost lost my mind. if we were on the old system still where we needed to collect 11 eyeballs, i would have farmed 100 eyeballs in that time easily.

5. There were some runs in scosglen where i got almost no enchanted runes. i felt that this was because maybe there were some instances where i didnt get any sapling guards, and i got no other mob type that had the sapling guard loot table. the scosglen mobs and loot tables should be double checked to ensure that it is impossible for a map layout to spawn with no sapling guard/etherborn monster loot tables.

6. It would be great if we could get a cube recipe to get the tenets that we are missing. I farmed over 70 druids and still was missing 1 tenet, and I had a bunch of duplicates. Perhaps we could get a cube recipe that would be something like: 3x tenet + perfect gem = target tenet. the perfect gem could control which target tenet you end up with after transmuting. after farming the druids for 1.5 hours and not getting all of my tenets, i gave up and just traded for my last one.

7. Lastly, THANK YOU for removing Erinys from lab. Lab is now so much more chill/fun/enjoyable without getting sniped from offscreen for half my HP or more by those things. What a huge difference. I have no problem with them appearing in other zones outside of labs

Again, I am loving this season. And overall I had a lot of fun in scosglen this season and felt that the monster variety and density changes were a huge net positive and really enhanced the experience and made it more enjoyable. Appreciate all the hard work on the mod!

I was perfectly content with playing Diablo 4, progressing through the current season, and making my way to the final challenge of the game (Echo of Lilith)

Until a friend that I met through this community asked me if I'd come back to play for this season?
I told him that I would come back and play this season if he was planning on doing so--we hadn't played together in a while, and gaming communities (such as this one) tend to foster positive relationships that can last for many years!

Bottom line: I have never detested a season of MXL as much as I detest this one.
I absolutely HATE this season. The randomization of enemies is so inconsistent, many areas are borderline undoable and there is nothing more frustrating than constantly being killed when you're just trying to farm for more/better ac's and gear. I hate everything about it.

I'm seriously beginning to question the intelligence of our Dev team. I love you guys but I really don't get this one at all. Was the intent behind this season to offer an MXL experience that was more akin to a modern-day Randomizer?
https://ootrandomizer.com/

[Randomizer: you take an old game--say, Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time--and shuffle all the possibly attainable items in the game across the entire game. There is a logic in place to ensure that every game "seed" you create is viable, ensuring a unique gameplay experience every single time.

-You can then set the game up to obey certain constraints, depending on how you want the experience to play out.
-Do you want to start the game as adult Link? Ok! It's nighttime, you're in Kakariko Village, the only accessible place is "Dampe's Grave" wherein we acquire the Hookshot.
-Having the Hookshot opens new and different possibilities throughout the game--we can now make our way over to Saria, and use the Hookshot to enter the Forest Temple.
-We go in the Forest Temple, and--if we've randomized the Golden Skulltulas throughout the game--we can climb up the wall on the right hand side of the entrance to the Forest Temple, use the Hookshot to kill the Golden Skulltula, then use the hookshot again to hook onto the nearby small chest (that would normally contain a small key needed to progress through the dungeon) and it contains the bomb bag!
-Having the bomb bag changes the dynamics of the game significantly! We can now leave the Forest Temple for a moment, Reset the game, and make our way back from Kakariko Village to Kokiri Forest.
-From Kokiri Forest, we go to the Lost Woods-- we can make a right turn, followed by a left turn, and end up in front of a rock just next to the shortcut to Goron City; we can use a bomb from our bag to blow up that rock, enter the grotto underneath it, there will be a chest inside (that would normally contain 20 rupees, or a recovery heart) and now we get our third item--and it happens to be the Ocarina that Saria gives us after finishing the very first dungeon of the game (Inside the Deku Tree)]

Please understand: I've been playing this mod since I was 17 years old. I'm 31 years old now. I've been around since the Brother Laz days, back when Median was Single Player only. I've gone back in time over the last few months, re-playing older iterations of Median in between Seasons--gathering what items I can get, trying out different "concept characters" (I was able to get my hands on a Shared Stash file save that contains all the charms min-maxed, trophied, etc etc etc). I replayed through the original 2012 Median; I played through Ultimative (AKA Marco's baby). In that time, I was able to come up with three insane builds!
-an Apocalypse-based fire sorceress that absolutely wrecks!
-a thunderzon (Stormy Daniels

) using Stormcall to absolutely wreck enemies with a massive AoE (similar to Apocalypse)
-a quad-elemental neutraldin, using the 3 periodic relics, wizardspike knife, and a crafted pally spear with "Pestilence" on swap
taking advantage of the passives available to a neutraldin, this character absolutely wrecked everything he touched--and was a FANTASTIC SCOSGLEN FARMER. Like--completely untouchable and wrecking everything in sight

I bounced ideas back and forth with my buddy on Discord, as well as SP files of various items, constantly theorycrafting MXL builds and bouncing ideas off each other. That person, by the way, is Van. You may remember him as the guy who broke the Psionic Storm assassin a few seasons back (when relics were socketables and there were no limits/stacks) and got her damage up to ~500k?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry1EL_bZsMs

Gave Samael a run for his money, that's for sure! What's amazing is that Van is Russian, and I am an Egyptian living in America (California, to be more specific). In spite of our differences, he and I have gotten along quite well--and, as it turns out, we tend to agree on a lot of the same things. I personally try to avoid political conversations--I'd much rather the US stay out of the Russia/Ukraine situation, let them work out their differences on their terms--and, maybe, we can find something we can agree on! Because the more things we agree on, the more difficult it is for people who are otherwise diametrically opposed can find common ground--and we can focus on working together!

Bottom line: I have never detested a season of MXL as much as I detest this one.