Median XL Hardcore Challenge - Mitsuki

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Drystan1

New member
[highlight]The MedianXL Hardcore Challenge[/highlight]
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Howdy all! Now, I'll be straight up: I haven't played D2 in a while, but I'm looking for a simlar, but very different game. I've played MedianXL a little bit previously, and enjoyed it. Being a HC player, I love the risk. I love the fact that death means GG. For those who have played MedianXL (http://modsbylaz.vn.cz/) by Brother Laz, you know what this means...: Deedz is a 99.99% guarentee. But who cares. I enjoy that risk.

So, why create this thread if it'll just end in deedz? I would like some help and advice. And I want some involvement and encouragement. This thread is to encourage, assist, promote and entertain.
I'm going to progress Mitsuki through MedianXL, Hardcore. Even though deedz is 99.99%, I will still enjoy it, and would like to give Mitsuki all the chances she can have.

This thread is to ask for tips from the Median veterans, advice on equipment and stats, and potential dangers. It's also for some fun. How far can Mitsuki progress? Place your bets! I have a solid HC 1.13d FAM stash available, am an old-school D2 player, and by all means, am willing to part with my items. I've participated in a few giveaways, and have enjoyed my time with D2. Perhaps, if you place your bets right, you might win.

So, please, give welcome to Mitsuki, the MedianXL Hardcore Amazon.

And... Place your bets to where she will deedz. She will have no strict ruleset, and have limited experience in the world of MedianXL. I would like some tips and experience as I progress, but no major spoilers unless I ask for them. I will update and hopefully provide some interesting screenshots to promote this great mod, and will allow her to develop as a character as she progresses. There is no guarentee of frequent updates (initially I expect a few, but they will diminish,) as she will start strong, and slow down as danger increases and re-running/farming becomes important.

But for now, best of luck to Mitsuki!

Mitsuki's Deedz Guesses
Code: 
MYK - N - A2 - Tal Rasha's Tomb
hoop76 - N - A4
pharphis - N - A5 - Middle areas
FredofErik - NM - A3 - Durance
 
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Are there any new areas introduced in Median?
 
The only real 'new' areas are the Uber challenges as far as I'm aware, located in the old dungeon/cave type areas - Mausoleum, Crypt, Cave lvl 2 etc. Mitsuki will not be partaking in these, at this stage... We'll see later on, but they will surely be Mitsuki's deedz - if she makes it that far.
The whole game is different though - different skills, different monsters (although the Elite Quill Rats are significantly different in their visual design from the original D2 than those Frost bats,) different item types and bonus types. (That was a surprise drop!)

As you can see, I'm playing (hopefully) a defensive character. A ranged Amazon who can hopefully keep those insta-deedz away from her. I don't know a lot about the skills of Median, but Mitsuki's bow skills seem promising.
 
Drystan said:
As you can see, I'm playing (hopefully) a defensive character. A ranged Amazon who can hopefully keep those insta-deedz away from her. I don't know a lot about the skills of Median, but Mitsuki's bow skills seem promising.
Click to expand...

lol.

looking forward to the deeds report :smug:
 
Deeds in NM Durance. Called it.

and good luck, looks fun!
 
This seems promosing :) I played a bit quite some time ago. Remembered while browsing the xl forums how incredibly strong you can get if you properly farm the crap out of act 1 and craft stuff out of cube. I think it was an assassin rocking a 6th tier naginata with epic sockets etc.
 
You guys give me too much credit! At least jeffy knows what's about to happen. ^.^
Although pharphis, not a bad guess - last time I gave this a shot while experimenting with Median, one of my Amazons did get to early A5 Normal. I will be farming and taking it slowly, to avoid any major threats.
Slowly accumulating gold (Median is quite slow with gold early on,) and picked up a Hunters Bow. My aim is to deck that thing out with Mystic Orbs that add +10 damage to keep my damage up, so that I can progress to somewhere with more gold.
Once there, some more Mystic Orbs for Magic and Gold find, and hopefully will pick up a unique bow somewhere. I don't recall there being too many dangers early on.

Nothing challenging while killing Blood Raven or rescuing Cain. Barrage (that multishot-type skill,) uses a lot of Mana, but works great. I'll definitely get some pics up next when I recall something dangerous happens.
 
First and foremost: stay out of the uber areas. Don't even look at them!

Last time I did this, The Countess had some sort of Death Beam that couldn't be avoided; so steer well away from the final level in the tower.

As soon as you start into Act 2, you'll want to work your hardest on maxing out your resists, preferably using armor slots other than the chest piece; chesticle armors grant a much higher defense bonus, so you'll want to remain flexible enough to swap out into better ones without totally dumping out your resists.

There's some slightly broken uniques that can make things easier, and there's a lot of little tricky monsters you'll have to learn about (the hard way!), but that's part of the fun of MXL.

Good luck!

Mitsuki's Deeds Guesstimate: [highlight]Normal, Act 2, Tal Rasha's Tomb![/highlight]
Edit: Ack. I see you've played knifey-spooney//MXL before. I'll keep my guess, though. :)
 
Thanks, MYK! Yeah, I have some knowledge of Median previously, but it was a while ago, and not a lot.
The Countess has two very dangerous attacks. It's one that I previously looked into quite a bit, as it took a few of my SC and HC runs early on. One attack is the fire she casts on the doorways, which will basically insta-deedz a character trying to walk through. The other is a dark meteor being cast upon death. The Countess and her minions all have this.

On that note, on the way to the Countess, I ran into: PORKCHOPS! All this attack seems to do is slow you down temporarily. I did enter the Countess' tower, and safely avoided her Dark Meteors. Upon killing the Countess or her minions, a white patch of light smoke spawns under your feet. Move straight up as you're about to be pummelled by a smokey meteor. Just need to take this area cautiously and pick them off one at a time.

[highlight]Mitsuki, still going strong at /players8, Tamoe Highlands[/highlight]
 
I think you will make it to act 4. Good luck.. It would be fun to have a Median HC tournament, and see who can get the farthest.
 
Thanks, Hoop. These Cog things in the Barracks/Jails were pretty dangerous. Fast, hard hitting, and could put you into recovery, or just outright kill you if you got swarmed. Still slowly developing my gold and weapon, and finding Barrage and Ghost arrow pretty good, albeit very mana intensive for Barrage.

No problems getting the Malus, and up to Andariel were simple enough. Spam Barrage, hit and run, hit and run. Avoid getting swarmed. That was the main danger - there were quite a few mobs that could swarm very quickly, and whittle down your health. I also noticed something - you can't buy potions!
Andariel was fun. Got a close-medium range poison swarm, and a massive Meteor Barrage. At least there's plenty of warning to get out of there. The Rogue hireling has developed this awesome mass-arrow weapon that shoots a hundred shots at once - completely burns through their hitpoints. I'll get a screenie of that for next update.

Question
Is there anywhere I can read up on the "Chance to cast XXX skill"? There's a lot of skills that I can't work out what they do. Things like "100% Chance to Cast level 57 Firedance upon levelling up." But it doesn't seem to do anything but put a visual display up.

[highlight]Mitsuki, /players8, Andariel defeated[/highlight]
 
Good luck. I really enjoyed Median back when I played it, but at some point I had to go on hiatus and I just never got back into it. I had too much invested into regular Diablo II, even though in some ways I really liked what Median had to offer (especially for necromancers). I never play hardcore, though. I do remember my first death in Median: the countess killed my Veil King and I did not know what that meant at the time.
 
Drystan..

Gotta say I really like this thread. I have been playing MXL seriously ( well sort of ) over the last three months and have finished three characters fully and done 25 of 29 Destruction ubers. All softcore though..
Hey I should start a HC character and compare.

Will be keeping tabs on this thread. Important question though, do you play classic or ultimative?

Edit: Firedance is a sorceress skill that increases her spell damage for some time. Your character is not caster though, so basically.. It does nothing.
 
Drystan said:
You guys give me too much credit! At least jeffy knows what's about to happen. ^.^
Although pharphis, not a bad guess - last time I gave this a shot while experimenting with Median, one of my Amazons did get to early A5 Normal. I will be farming and taking it slowly, to avoid any major threats.
Slowly accumulating gold (Median is quite slow with gold early on,) and picked up a Hunters Bow. My aim is to deck that thing out with Mystic Orbs that add +10 damage to keep my damage up, so that I can progress to somewhere with more gold.
Once there, some more Mystic Orbs for Magic and Gold find, and hopefully will pick up a unique bow somewhere. I don't recall there being too many dangers early on.

Nothing challenging while killing Blood Raven or rescuing Cain. Barrage (that multishot-type skill,) uses a lot of Mana, but works great. I'll definitely get some pics up next when I recall something dangerous happens.
Click to expand...

Ah, I thought that's why I wanted to say Act 5.
 
Good luck, Dry!

I played a small amount of mxl a year or so ago. Enough to realize that I didn't have the energy to really get into the game.

It's always fun to read about though.
 
@Namtar - Are there any really strong Necro builds? Preferably ranged/caster?

@zaphod - You've given some good Median tips previously. Thanks - do you know if there is a list for those spells? Are they all character spells (Crucible, Doom, Firedance etc?) I'd like to know what the effects are, but couldn't find a list on the main Median site. I've picked up a few basic ones, but not even half.
I play Classic. I've heard Ultimative is just like an expanded/more difficult version, but haven't seen it. It is a very fun and different mod though.

Thanks, 'stegs.

I like dogs. It's a shame Mitsuki doesn't. She kind of... shot dozens of them with arrows. They don't drop items, and are kind of a useless enemy. You just need crowd control, and quite a bit of mana.

Also, I ran into this pretty funny monster description.

Mitsuki has obtained the Staff without much trouble, and is heading into the Palace Cellars next. Nothing interesting yet, although Ghost Arrow can really be abused (at this early stage.) You can kill potential dangers like Radament and Coldworm through all the walls, and don't even need to be able to see them.
 
Drystan said:
You guys give me too much credit! At least jeffy knows what's about to happen. ^.^
Click to expand...


Well, I think you might be able to finish the Normal-NM-Hell, but there's NO WAY that you'll be able to get all the unique charms without dying if you have no previous experience - it's just way too easy to die when you get to that point. I've never been more certain of anything in my entire life, but feel free to prove me wrong :p
 
Necros have four builds ( like most of the characters in the game ). Melee, ranged ( crossbow ), caster ( totems ), summoner. All fairly strong, though I like melee and summoner more.

Ultimative is quite a different ballgame from classic MXL. For a newbie and/or untwinked player the major one would be that the early game of MXL classic is balls hard. Ultimative is easy :)
Most players say that classic is obsolete and everyone should play ultimative. I don't subscribe to that viewpoint myself ( most of my play is in classic ), but I can see the attraction of ultimative for a new/untwinked guy.
There's also Sigma which is slated for release before the end of this year. Sigma is radically different in many ways from both classic and ultimative and it is something I will be looking forward to. I think alpha/beta versions are already out though I haven't played it personally.
(Since you haven't gone very far yet, it is an option to consider restarting )

There isn't exactly a list of those spells, but you might be able to find some descriptions in the docs. Many of them are character skills though.

I was going to give you some tips for Act 2 but since you already got the staff, I guess you know what you're doing, so.. go to it. And good luck.

jeffy said:
Well, I think you might be able to finish the Normal-NM-Hell, but there's NO WAY that you'll be able to get all the unique charms without dying if you have no previous experience - it's just way too easy to die when you get to that point. I've never been more certain of anything in my entire life, but feel free to prove me wrong :p
Click to expand...

As far as I know, no one has actually done all the ubers on one hardcore character, let alone the first time.
Hell even the easiest ubers will allmost certainly kill you the first time round.
Personally I think even finishing normal on hardcore would be a big deal.

@jeffy: Do you post on MXL forums? How much have you played? I'd be interested in some tips myself . Regarding Destruction ubers ( the very hard ones ), not early game.
 
zaphod said:
Most players say that classic is obsolete and everyone should play ultimative.
Click to expand...
I have heard that a number of times when looking for information. Personally, I've started Classic as a challenge, for a different game and for fun. Ultimative may (or may not) be better and more enjoyable, but Classic is already fun and challenging. While Ultimative "may" be better, Classic is pretty damn neat to begin with for my challenge! I'm of the same opinion for 'Sigma' when it gets released - it may be great, and I may give it a go, but there's still nothing against Median XL Classic for this playthrough.

I would like to do the Level Challenges though, but I think that'll be a risk. I've read a bit about them, and am not sure. Are those unique Charms worth the risk? Do those bonus' really make a difference? Is there anything I can do to prepare? I've got until level 50 to work it out, but Median gives good experience and levelling goes reasonably quickly at this stage.

Act 2 seems pretty tame so far. No instadeedz that I can remember, although, Coldworm can hurt unless you abuse Ghost Arrow and kill her before you can even see her. :nod: These umm... Frozen Orb monsters are dangerous though! Yes, that is Mitsuki running for safety!
And there is an interesting stair trap entering the palace - not dangerous (I think merc/minions take damage from you, while you are sort of safe behind them,) but they do trap you in the corner pretty well, and take some pepper to knock down.
 
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