All versions of Median

Knight_Saber wrote:Median 2008 was a lot of fun, even if there was limited "uber" content and some really broken builds.
I remember playing a proc Sin that you had to weapon switch to stop hade's gate procs 5 times a second (in crowded maps like TA or cows). You could just click once to crucify a target and then go hands off keyboard and drink a beer while you wipe the whole map.
I miss punisher traps and instagibs from "whoops didn't see that pounce witch".
Laz Median is a completely different entity from this (Ultimative), he only edited the .mpq file.

Going back to a Laz Median would require a fresh D2LoD installation right?

@dark-soul: socket tal runes and MO gear with +stats until attribute challenge is completed right? That's how I remember it. Gimp yourself short-term for long-term gain.

Wow... such things as that proc-sin you mentioned is exactly the fun, for which im looking for

Good to know that... due to the limited availability of uniques and RWs, i guess its self explainatory, or where there any crafted/special rares involved? In the docs such things as a list of all affixes isnt included in the early versions, but i saw the mod-file wasnt encrypted jet (a further advantage of the old versions), so with a bit patience its possible to find all possible affixes.

Going back to old versions is as simple as to play MXl or Ultimative. Just have a main install of D2 and D2SE, have all your folders of different versions of medians or other mods. You can everytime, when you want to play, choose via D2SE, which mod or version you play. You can even combine it with the D2MultiRes-patch for higer resolutions. That last thing might be a bit tricky due to a few problems... but if you are experienced in installing D2+mods, its just a matter of time then. As i wrote, you can even run an older mod-version with the newest core, and you will have that respec feature. Im just a noob in all of that, an i made it, its really easy. If that question appears a few times more, i could also write a quick install guide maybe...

Yes, raise stats with gear, Dark Lord is a helpful skill too, but for hammerdin, you need also Weapon dmg. The shapeshifter merc is also a very helpful companion, i maxed him more than myself until mid nightmare or so. Atm i have fun with insta-LV-ups per deathprojector-kill^^ :bounce:

I dont have an account here + the registration is disabled, but thanks to you a bit more of median is save now/will be uploaded when i have enough new stuff

Does anybody know where I can get docs for Ultimative XII?

Hey fellas,

I am very lucky to come across this topic as I searched for the changelog from those times.

Years ago, I'd played one of the earlier versions post-2012 when we had flits, and dragon's eggs challenge(was well before) were a thing. However, years later, when I started to play the mod properly, it was already sigma 1.6, and admittedly, a hefty chunk of the older stuff was removed for better or worse. And only recently, I was thinking if it is worth sinking in playing earlier versions.

I've some questions to make up my mind:

1. What kind of enemies were warlocks?
2. Why 'They Have Windows In Hell' challenge was removed?
3. Why monster tokens were removed?
4. What were 'knowledge mechanics'?
5. Is 'Hardened edition' consist of omega 1-3 versions?
6. Which version should I opt-in to see rather cleverly designed monsters packed together than unavoidables?

I want to experience the earlier versions, particularly those with remarkable features that no longer exist in the mob and challenging designs.

Thanks for the recommendations!

Edit: typo.

1. There is bunch of enemies with warlock in their name, not sure which one you are referring to, or if there was anything special about any of them.
2. Windows in hell was nice easter egg at first, but later it resulted in people remaking games to find it and turned into a chore. I remember myself, once got unlucky took me over 100 games to get it on map, it was pretty rare.
3. Probably same reason as 2. certain veterans took many rerolls, searching for same enemies on every character, was really annoying, and you could quickly outlevel the content, and "farming" for instance worldstone keep to find panther guys felt really bad/annoying. For similar reason you now get class charm every time you kill guy in k3ba, vs before with rng allowing to drop it for other classes, it could take even 30 full clears if you got unlucky. Just unnecessary annoyance.
4. Again, hard to tell what do you mean, there was something called Trial of Knowledge, part of old BRC (collecting brains in fauztinville), but I don't think if that is what you mean.
5. Do you mean "mean mode" project, that was never finished, it was created by Borgin? I don't recall there was specific hard mode version after that.

As for difficulty it is important to really look at it without being nostalgic about old versions. Yes certain things back in the day were harder, because they were mostly set up as final endgame uber. Example is duncraig. They did hit harder, there was no way to walk through the zone, you were meant to teleport and be instantly surrounded. This made is much harder than current duncraig, but also unfair for most build, as characters with access to short cooldown teleport were at advantage, and character with non-cooldown warp strike could easily mitigate problem of getting surrounded (pounce).
But then if you look at real "cancer" bosses, current versions really take the cake I think, You could argue which version of sigma was the hardest, but they have way harder content than old Laz versions of mxl, where there was only handful of bosses. Whole mechanic of not being able to die (lockdown mechanics), and then absolutely needing crazy gear, relics, umo, to have real chance in endgame Lab, this is something that didn't exist back in the day, and makes whole new layer of difficulty, if you are into that kind of game. This also is a reason, in my opinion, why certain uberlevels got easier, to smoother the progression, you need to put certain ubers at corresponding character level so for instance level 120 stuff cannot be too difficult, as when you level and gear, you are supposed to move to next harder tier of content.
You could also argue that old style bosses, back when there was no way to give them enough health/damage mitigation, and heroic shields were a thing, were way more annoying/rng than current ones. You basically were playing the rng for boss to drop correct resistance at correct time, to line up with your attack, it felt really frustrating and bad. New system that allows to just put very tanky monsters in the game, that take damage, just it is as low as designer wants is better. Old system was somewhat clever workaround to a problem without code edits, but it wasn't perfect.

Glad to have your comprehensive response, aerial.

I guess it was a nostalgia hit at some point. From your notes, I understand most of the features making the game harder were design choices with limited mechanics at its time, probably, and I agree.
However, I wish we still had those challenges, not necessarily the same ones, but I believe they were all adding to the charm of the mod regardless. And actually, it was Marco who had implemented the level 0 challenge in ultimative. But I can imagine most of the challenges were removed because many newcomers curled up and cried and felt obliged to complete them to make headway. Nevertheless, dragon’s eggs and other nifty challenges were undeniable interesting approaches, giving you unconventional bits of RPG vibes into your monotonous h&s experience — kind of like to stop and smell the roses moments.
What I’d loved about Laz’s designs were implementations that break your habit of autopiloting. The implementations might have been broken, but some ideas were a fresh breath of air that could have been kept for the better instead of scraping them off totally. I do hope Marco would reconsider adding features to make the game more riveting eventually.

Main issue with level challenges is that it almost requires you to know about them before playing the game, so if there is too many things to keep track, people tend to forget about them and then can't complete them after (to overleveling). It just isn't intuitive, and you don't want too much of it in the game, as it hurts newcomer experience too much.

aerial wrote:5. Do you mean "mean mode" project, that was never finished, it was created by Borgin? I don't recall there was specific hard mode version after that.

There was "hard mode charm", also.
Fun stuff (if you take away many bugs with it and life overflow stuff) =)

I'm very happy to see that this topic is still alive. I have been playing with the idea to set up some filesharing folder that contains all the old Median versions that I can find. A lot of them should be on Moddb still, but the pre-2013 versions are hard to find:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/medianxl/downloads

I remember one version of the mod that by accident allowed you to turn everything in to arcane crystal shards (or was it only ammy's, rings and jewels, no matter the rarity??), and there have been a few versions in the past where Sin was a bit bugged with broadside and it could solo all content up to Laz without much effort.
There was also once a time where a friend of mine, I think he was called Malice, discovered a game breaking but with xbow necro, allowing you to easily blast through all content by exploiting that bug.

Personally I miss the time where you were able to make greater exp pots with perfect emeralds, and I miss the old K3K map layout, I mean, the late-2009 one. I played with a buddy, acc name *MDK, but I eventually lost my account this year so I haven't been able to retrieve any of my old Median friends sadly.

There was also this one legendary guy who always played sin and ended up in the top tiers every season, I think his name started with a P like Pranash or Padan, Padawan or Pidan or something, pretty sure he was Asian. Heck, I even played with Marco before he continued Laz's work.

Kinda crazy huh, how I still suck so bad at playing Median/Sigma. I should be ashamed haha. Well at least they removed the ability to downvote people on the forums, because that shit was definitely toxic as fuck.

On a more positive note, it's really beautiful to see where this mod is going, it's still a surprise each and every new season. I haven't always played, but I always kept visiting just to see what's going on with each new patch.

If there's any need for a huge 'mod repository' I will see if I can free some time to do that. In that case I'll open an e-mail address so that people can send in older versions of the mod if they manage to find them on their old hard drives or backups.

Edit, I found the other versions of MedianXL here:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/median-xl/downloads

These go from 2012 all the way back to 2008!!!

So
For 2013 and up: https://www.moddb.com/mods/medianxl/downloads
For 2012 and down: https://www.moddb.com/mods/median-xl/downloads

Median xl 014 alpha: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ggulspgf ... a.zip/file

Hardened mod (based on Omega 003 iirc): https://www.mediafire.com/file/auewtuiu ... e.zip/file