Median Xl Sigma Spirit Of Giyua Terrible Game Design

Median XL is a popular Game Mod for Diablo II which makes extensive changes to many features of the game, including the character classes, monsters, and items. Median is popular and technically proficient enough that it was commented on by some of the Diablo 3 designers during an interview at Blizzcon 2009.

The mod can be downloaded here and the official forum can be found here.

Note: Median XL is still in active development, and things can change radically with subsequent updates. Tropes that apply solely to old versions but not the current one go in their own folder.

This game contains examples of:

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Current Version

Ability Required to Proceed:
- One of the five Robot Bosses in Fauztinville, the five Seals in the Black Road and all bosses in the Corrupted Abbey require a teleport skill to access, which is thankfully easy to obtain with the low-level runeword Pax Mystica.
- You cannot kill Assur, the MCS, Atanna Khan, Archbishop Lazarus, the Spirit of Giyua and Uldyssian (and complete these respective uberquests in the process) until you obtain the Purify skill.
- In the Void, you need the Scream of Trag'Oul skill, obtained by transmuting the scrolls dropped by the seven sub-bosses into the Sigil of the 7 Deadly Sins, in order to reach the final boss.
- It is impossible to defeat Valthek in the Yshari Sanctum until you've already assembled the special sets from the five previous bosses in the complex. Likewise, killing Lucion in the Triune requires you to have obtained the Dire Charm skill from the previous boss Durram first.
- Entering Toraja requires you to have obtained the Crystalline Flame Medallion from Judgement Day first, which grants you access to Edyrem minions, which are able to break the invulnerability shield of the Symbol of Time in the Torajan Cemetery, whose destruction will open a portal to Toraja.
Action Bomb: The Necromancer's Night Hawk minions attack by getting close to enemies and blowing themselves up.
Adaptational Badass: On Hell difficulty, Baal is now treated as an endgame (uber) boss, making him much tougher than his vanilla game counterpart.
Adaptation Name Change: The final levels of the Tower Cellar and Durance of Hate are now called Bloodthrone and Seat of Hatred, instead of being simply referred to with a number.
All There in the Manual: With the manual being the official documentation. Reading it is almost mandatory to understand the game.
And Now for Someone Completely Different: Downplayed. When doing the Binding of Baal and Assault on Mount Arreat uberquests, you're morphed into Baal and Diablo (respectively), but the change is mostly cosmetic, you still have your items, and you're still using your own skills instead of Baal's and Diablo's.
Armor-Piercing Attack: Purify is an oskill that deals damage independently of everything, including resistances: it is the only way to damage and kill certain high-level uberbosses. Malic (an unkillable boss in the Bastion of the Triune) has a similar skill, which you'll need to make use of in order to kill the main boss Lucion (specifically by charming Arihan, luring him to Malic and letting the two fight).
Author Avatar: The uberboss Archbishop Lazarus is not the actual Lazarus character in the first Diablo, but is a reference to Brother Laz, the creator of the mod. His minions are called Groupies, the charm he drops is called 'Glorious Book of Median', and he actually used to be called Brother Laz until version 2017 removed all references to real life people. His official description reads as:
Some even believe that the world as we know it was shaped by an individual human on another plane, one 'Archbishop Lazarus' with a calculation engine powered by lightning. According to this cult, when humanity complains too much about the difficult living conditions in Sanctuary and the scarcity of divine weaponry, he may send his avatar to the mortal plane to deal with those who annoy him in person...
* Baleful Polymorph: Xazax can transform you into a defenceless maggot leaving you open to attacks, so be sure to keep your distance from his minions at all times.
Beef Gate: When levelling and progressing through the main game, there is nothing that prevents you from entering uberquest areas as soon as you can... except for the disproportionately strong monsters which can and will kill you in seconds.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: Both versions of the Maggot Lair are full of maggots of unusually large size.
Big Boo's Haunt: Come in three flavours, each filled with a different kind of undead enemies: Kurast 3000 BA (skeletons), Old Bremmtown, Duncraig and the Corrupted Abbey (ghosts) and Ureh (zombies).
Bonus Boss: The mod's main endgame content consists of various optional and extra hard 'uberbosses'. Defeating them on the highest difficulty yields powerful unique charms.
Bonus Dungeon: Rifts are large endgame zones filled with the strongest monsters in the game and designed to be the premier spots to farm for sacred unique, set items and other stuff for high-end characters, with relatively less focus given to the bosses (some, like the High Heavens and Fauztinville, don't even have true bosses at all).
Bonus Level of Heaven: The High Heavens rift complex, where the Ethereal enemies are the physical manifestations of common angels.
Boss Bonanza: You have to fight a total of 10 Edyrem minibosses before you can reach Uldyssian.
Boss-Only Level: Certain uberquests (Dimensional Sanctum, Proving Grounds, Infernal Cave, Butcher's Lair, Chamber of Blood, Cathedral of Light, Vizjerei Temple, Judgement Day, Mbwiru Eikura, Edyrem's Path and Genesis) only consist of fight(s) with the boss(es) and their minions.
Boss Room:
- The Storm Oasis is an area that consists entirely of a small room, whose inhabitant is the Lesser Riftwalker.
- Xazax, the boss of the Maggot Depths, is fought in his own area called the Wretched Sands.
Breakable Power-Up: A Sorceress can only benefit from the Witch Queen passive uberskill if her health is at 100%.
Breath Weapon: The Paladin's Frozen Breath skill causes him to breath ice, dealing damage and freezing enemies.
Cast from Hit Points: Using Bloodhatred drains the Barbarian's own health but replenishes it upon striking.
Color-Coded Item Tiers:
- White (Normal, no magic properties and no sockets)
- Grey (Socketed, no magic properties but can be socketed with gems and runes and are the only eligible candidates for runewords)
- Blue (Magic, one or two magic properties)
- Yellow (Rare, a random mix of magic properties)
- Gold (Unique, preset magical properties with a unique name and appearance)
- Green (Set, high-end sacred items with maximum sockets, preset magical properties and can be used in conjunction with other items in the same set to get additional bonuses)
- Dark Green (Honorific, blank items created from the Cube that receive a double bonus from Mystic Orbs)
- Orange (Crafted, created from shrines, comes with several random rare modifiers and additional preset modifiers based on shrine type, and receive a double bonus from Mystic Orbs)
Cosmetic Award: The I Am Rich gem is crafted from three very rare trophies and gives you a red glowing aura and zero stats. Its point is to prove that you are so rich that you can afford to waste trophies on a useless item.
Damage-Sponge Boss: The Butcher and Lesser Riftwalker, who are designed as the first dungeon bosses to be tackled by players, have no special tricks that need to be paid attention to, and can easily be defeated as long as you have sufficient equipment.
Dead Man's Switch: Some items have the affix 'X% chance to cast Y spell when you die', which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
Death-Activated Superpower: Lord Aldric Jitan and his Rakkis Guardsmen cast Singularity when killed - stay away from the dark vortex!
Defeat Means Friendship: Inverted by the Veil King minion, which will switch sides and become a nasty enemy when killed.
Defog of War: In each act, you can press R to have the map of all areas in the act completely revealed if you so desire.
Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Honorific items are blank items that receive a double bonus from Mystic Orbs. This enables you to create your own custom items from scratch, provided you have some money to spend on the ingredients and the Mystic Orbs.
Dual Boss:
- Defeating Lucion requires you to make him fight Malic, then survive both bosses' attacks as Malic kills Lucion.
- Completing the Void requires you to use the Scream of Trag'Oul skill at the correct place, which summons two bosses: Inarius and Lilith.
Dungeon Bypass: You can create two quest items (specifically the Horadric Staff and Khalim's Will) by combining two Arcane Crystals with a Healing or Mana Potion, allowing you to skip a long part of the second and third acts.
Eldritch Abomination: Samael, the secret Bonus Boss added in version 1.3, is described as 'something that lurks beyond' Sanctuary, the High Heavens and the Burning Hells alike.
Elite Mooks: Enemies come in three flavours: yellow elite monsters, which are stronger, often have special abilities and encountered alongside normal monsters; and orange uberquest monsters, which only appear in Bonus Dungeons or as minions of a Bonus Boss. Umbaru Spirits in Teganze can also spawn as champions, which have improved stats compared to normal ones. You also have access to four: the Necromancer's Iron Golem, Rathma's Chosen and Veil King, and the item-granted Void Archon, which are vastly more powerful than the run-of-the-mill minions and each player can only have one of each at any given time.
Energy Beings: Neon Fiends in Fauztinville are demons that came alive from the city's neon signs.
Flaming Sword: The Way of the Phoenix skill adds fire damage to the Assassin's attacks.
Flunky Boss: The only bosses that are not accompanied by minions are Duriel, Diablo, the Ancients, the Butcher and Quov Tsin.
Fun with Acronyms: The oskill O.H.M.A.N. is short for Orb of Homing Multishot Arrow Novas.
Hard Mode Perks: Most uberquests are only accessible on Hell difficulty, except if there's a challenge involving them in the lower difficulties.
Helpful Mook: Downplayed, in that these enemies are more than capable of killing you, but you are forced to leave them alive or else make use of them because without them it would be very hard or impossible to kill the boss.
- The unkillable Death's Mechanics in the Proving Ground, whose presence drops the Death Projector's resistances down under 100%, allowing you to actually damage and destroy it.
- Followers of Akarat and Ethereals reduce the resistances of nearby enemies when killed, breaking the invulnerable shields of Akarat and the Zakarum's Avatars (respectively) in the process.
- You can only use the skills from the Yshari Sanctum sets (Holybolt, Arcane Blast, Iron Shield) near Valthek's Mystic Aegis minions, which mean while you need to clear the summons, you must leave at least one alive, because you need Holybolt to kill Valthek.
HP to 1: The extremely powerful Punisher ability's damage usually would be enough to kill its target, but being a poison spell, it cannot bring the afflicted under 1 HP.
Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Like the vanilla game, the difficulty levels of the mod are named Normal, Nightmare and Hell.
Invincible Minor Minion:
- Witches in the Desolate Road and World Nexus, the Death's Mechanics in the Proving Ground, the Lightwells in the High Heavens, the Ratfinks summoned by Belial and the Spirit of Giyua, the Holy Nephalems in the Pools of Wisdom and Halls of Valor, the zombie Citizens in Ureh and the Sand Maggot Ghosts in the Wretched Hive are untargetable and cannot be hit or killed by anything. Xazax's Penitents are targetable and not invulnerable, but have so much health that you aren't going to kill them any time soon.
- The Gore Crawlers in Rathma Square won't just stay dead: 10 seconds after their health is depleted, they'll automatically resurrect themselves, and it is impossible to prevent this.
Joke Item:
- The Idiot Ball unique ring reduces your strength, vitality, magic find, damage reduction, and has a chance to summon a hostile Elite Mook when you're hit.
- The QQ sacred unique ring gives 1 HP and nothing more.
- The Until You Realise It Sucks sacred unique bow. Doubled orb effects, 33% chance to create a town portal on attack, 500% faster block, 50% increased block chance, 62 levels of the very powerful oskill OHMAN... except that most of these bonuses end up useless because it only allows the use of melee, summoning and buff/debuff skills, and with a required level of 120 it's impossible to apply Mystic Orbs without making the item unusable. It seems awesome until you realise it sucks, indeed.
Level-Locked Loot: Almost all items in the game require a certain amount of levels, Strength or Dexterity to be useable.
Life Drain: The Blood Flash and Death Coil oskills drain health from the victims and heal the user based on the damage.
A Load of Bull: The Secret Cow Level's only inhabitants are bipedal cattle.
Make Me Wanna Shout: The Assassin's Psionic Scream skill is a primal scream that overwhelms weaker minds with pain and confusion.
Mana Drain: The Mana Coil oskill drains mana from the victims and gives it to the user.
Marathon Level: The Torajan Jungles and Teganze are absolutely huge - expect to take a lot of time slogging through the mobs in order to reach a boss or dungeon entrance, especially if you die and have to walk back all the way from the Kurast Docks.
The Maze: Yshari Sanctum is a gigantic, sprawling maze of a level, where a death can set you back for dozens of minutes as you search for your corpse.
Mecha-Mooks: Vizjun and Fauztinville are both filled with robot enemies.
Mêlée à Trois:
- The two main bosses in the Void, Lilith and Inarius, fight each other as well as you.
- Killing Lucion involves charming him, leading him to Malic, then surviving both bosses' attacks as they fight each other as well as you until Lucion dies.
Metal Slime: Goblins are harmless monsters that will try to open a portal to safely go back to their Treasure Realm upon being spotted. You must be quick in order to put them down and recover all the goods they have stolen before they can escape.
The Minion Master: A Necromancer that spends many skill points on the summoning tree will inevitably become this.
Monster Allies: The Paladin can resurrect dead monsters to fight for him.
Mook Maker: The Infernal Machine has no attacks by itself, and is instead capable of summoning an army of dangerous elite monsters.
Mushroom Man: Glowing Fungi and their elite counterpart, Shrooms, resemble a humanoid with a mushroom cap for a head.
Mutually Exclusive Magic:
- Each character is only allowed to learn one out of three uberskills of their class.
- An Amazon can only learn the level 18 skill of the bow, spear, javelin, blood or storm trees if she has no points in any of the other four skill trees, and vice versa.
- Paladins have to choose between Holy and Unholy skills - one cannot learn both. They may choose either a Light or Shadow influence regardless of devotion.
- Sorceresses are only allowed to learn two of the four elemental skill trees (Fire, Cold, Poison and Lightning).
- A Druid can only learn the level 1 skill of the werebear, trap rat, werewolf or bow trees if he has no points in any of the other four skill trees.
Mythology Gag: The description for the Assassin's Maelstrom Mk.V skill mentions 'the old Maelstrom weapon system' and 'their failed rocketry experiments', a reference to the scrapped Assassin skills Rocketry and the previous versions of Maelstrom.
No Body Left Behind: Cubing an item with an Arcane Crystal and Catalyst of Destruction adds the 'R.I.P.' modifier, causing your kills to stay dead instead of rising up to get in your way.
Non-Standard Skill Learning: The Assassin has two examples. Her Psionic tree is the only skill tree in the game with six skills instead of five, with the final one (Tiefling Form) being unlocked at level 30. Artifice Mastery, the fifth and final skill in the her Trap skill tree, requires level 96 and at least 15 points in all three trap skills, instead of level 24 like normal.
One-Hit Kill: There are too many attacks that can instantly kill you to list.
The Pawns Go First: Just like in the vanilla game, you can only enter the Worldstone Chamber to fight Baal after he watches you defeating five of his minion packs.
Pest Controller: The Sorceress' Hive skill periodically creates poisonous swarms when approached.
Pinball Projectile: The Necromancer's Parasite skill and the Harpylisk's attacks bounce between targets.
Plague Master: The Paladin can become one by taking the Plague skill, which adds poison damage to attacks.
Poisoned Weapons: The Assassin's Way of the Spider skill and the Amazon's Curare uberskill add poison damage to weapon attacks.
Poison Mushroom: The Idiot Ball unique ring reduces your strength, vitality, magic find, damage reduction, and has a chance to summon a hostile Elite Mook when you're hit.
Rare Random Drop:
- Many uberbosses have a 4% chance to drop a trophy fragment on Hell difficulty. Three fragments combine into a complete trophy, which can be cubed with the corresponding ubercharm for a small bonus, or with the Sleep charm for a more powerful bonus.
- The six Emblems, needed to upgrade the Deity's Bow and Glorious Book of Median, have an extremely small chance to be dropped from any monsters in Hell difficulty.
Recursive Ammo: When using Fragmentation Shot, a Necromancer uses his crossbow to fire a potion that explodes, releasing shrapnel in a large area. Arrows fired by the Druid's Spore Shot repeatedly splits on striking enemies.
Rodents of Unusual Size: The elite Quill Bears and Trap Rats are far larger than any rat ought to be.
Rush Boss: If you can't destroy it quickly, then don't expect to destroy the Infernal Machine at all as its army of elite monsters overwhelm you.
The Scourge of God: The description of the Paladin's Plague holy skill:
The black death of Zakarum cleanses the land, consuming the pagan and godless and leaving only the honourable and faithful in its wake.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The Druid's Elvensong minion and the Charm oskill series can convert enemies to fight for you. This is also the gimmick to kill Lucion: obtain the Demonic Charm spell from a previous boss, charm Lucion and move him to Malic, the only thing that can kill him.
Set Bonus: Item sets give you additional bonuses if you wear some or all of them at once.
Shock and Awe: Aside from the Sorceress's lightning tree and several Assassin traps (among other skills), there are also the Paladin's Vessel skills and the Unholy Paladin's Mind Flay skill, which has you doing your best impression of Palpatine.
Situational Sword: The special unique ring Assur's Bane is the only source of the skill Purify (in addition to Neutrality Pact, which is only dropped by a boss that requires Purify at the first place), which is absolutely essential when fighting certain bosses. When farming or fighting bosses that do not require it, then it is usually considered subpar compared to another unique or rare ring that fits the character better.
Skill Point Reset: Drinking Belladonna Elixir resets all of your attribute and skill points.
Spike Shooter: Druids can do this in trap rat form with the Quill Storm skill.
Stuck Items: You are effectively forced to equip the Vizjerei and Horadrim sets for the Valthek fight. While in theory you are free to equip whichever items you like, without the skills granted by these sets you can't scratch neither Valthek nor his Mystic Aegis minions.
Sudden Name Change:
- In version XVc, the boss Chrysaor was renamed to Terul, and his second form to Zorun Tzin. Both were later renamed Zagraal and Spirit of Giyua respectively.
- In the 2017 version, the boss Brachyceran was renamed Xazax, and his charm from Brachyceran's Token to Xazax's Illusion. Everything that had allusions to real people also got renamed, with the real life references removed (except the boss MarcoNecroX, which only got removed).
- In the 2017 1.1 version, after having been visually redesigned, the Unformed Land became Teganze, with the monsters (formerly named Flame, Illusion, Snow, Stone, Storm and Venom) becoming various variants of Umbaru Spirits; the Hidden Fortress (the former final level of the Unformed Land) becomes Mbwiru Eikura; and the boss of the World Nexus becoming Atanna Khan from Startled Witch.
Super Mode: Two of the Paladin's uberskills, Dragonknight and Superbeast, transform him into more powerful forms for 5 minutes.
Tactical Suicide Boss:
- Bartuc, who normally is immune to all damage, can only be damaged after he uses the Wychwind ability, which temporarily reduces his resistances.
- The Soul of Wrath in the Void is immune to all damage, but all of its attacks are Cast from Hit Points. Your job therefore is to provide an outlet for its rage until it kills itself, while also surviving its attacks since it fully heals when killing.
This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The Edyrem summons that you get from the Crystalline Flame Medallion are rather mediocre and unremarkable, with one exception: they are the only thing capable of opening a portal to Toraja and dispelling the immunities of the enemies there.
Time-Limit Boss: The Dark Star Dragon's Dragon Claw upgrade can only be done if it is defeated on Hell difficulty within 3 minutes after entering Old Bremmtown and without dying.
Time Master: The Sorceress' Chronofield skill slows down enemies to a relativistic crawl, making them easy prey.
The Turret Master: One of the Necromancer's trees focuses on summoning totems, stationary minions which attack enemies. The Barbarian and Lord Aldric Jitan's Fortress skill and the oskill Limpet Laser also function as turrets, although they are not actually treated as minions by the game.
Underground Monkey: Like in the vanilla game, most non-boss enemies come in various levels of strength denoted by colour and have otherwise identical sprites as others of its type.
Upgraded Boss:
- The five Act Bosses reappear as mini-bosses in Yshari Sanctum.
- Preceding the Uldyssian fight is a Boss Bonanza where you have to fight 10 Edyrem minibosses, all of which take the forms of bosses that you should have fought in the regular game or in easier endgame quests.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Druid can transform into a Treewarden, Trap Rat or Werewolf.
Weather Manipulation: The Druid can call forth lava from volcanoes with Rain of Fire or freezing winds with Freezing Gale.
When Trees Attack: Come in two flavours: the hostile one being the Ent and Tree of Life enemies, and the friendly ones being the Druid's Treewarden form.
Wholesome Crossdresser: The Creep and Hierodule runewords (the former when wielded by a male character, the latter can only be used by Paladins) morph the wearer into the Sorceress. The Shamanka (when wielded by a female character), Rag Queen and Earth's Burden (both exclusive to the Sorceress) sacred unique items morph the wearer into the Druid.
Wolfpack Boss: The Cathedral of Vanity only has one room, where four bosses (the Crystal Ball, the High Clerics and Inarius) all reside with their minions.
You Nuke 'Em: The Assassin's Beacon uberskill calls a nuclear missile to strike a nearby location.

Old Versions

Ability Required to Proceed: In the final pre-Sigma version, the Dark Portal skill was needed to reach the Vizjerei Temple, Khalimgrad, Realm of Lies, Realm of Sin, Black Road, the Void and the past versions of the Canyon of the Magi and Arreat Summit (and by extension all areas that are accessed from these). In even older versions, several bosses could only be fought by using the Dark Summoning skill to summon them.
Action Bomb: The old Mercenary Bomb is designed to turn your mercenary into one by reducing its wearer's defence to zero and causing a lot of powerful AoE spells to fire when the wearer dies. If wearing this armour, your mercenary will vaporise when hit by practically anything, but most monsters won't survive either.
Barrier Change Boss: The heroic shield mechanic, formerly used by some endgame bosses, randomises the boss' resistances every few seconds. This means that the boss is most of the time invulnerable to damage, but sometimes one of the resistances might drop under 100%, leaving the boss temporarily vulnerable though still highly resistant to this element. For being disliked by the majority of players, this mechanic was removed in the 2017 version.
Cash Gate: One of the trials of the old version of the Black Road challenge consists of having 666666 gold in your inventory.
Degraded Boss: The Minions of Terror that used to accompany Diablo Clone (an old uberboss) are reskinned from Griswold, an Act I boss.
Dragons Are Demonic: You used to be able to fight dragons (known as Baalspawn) in this mod, but in true Diablo fashion, they're just a different type of demon spawned by Baal.
Dual Boss:
- Upgrading the Crystalline Flame Medallion once required you to let Uldyssian summon both the Avatars of Imperius and Malthael, and then kill both of them within 30 seconds of each other. Imperius and Malthael have since been given their own mini-dungeons, and you only need to kill one within 30 seconds of the other to upgrade the charm now.
- Similarly, completing the old Black Road challenge's Trial of Blood required you to lure both Skovos and Lycander to the same place, and then kill them at the same time.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: Prior to the implementation of the MXL Core in 2017, the Cathedral of Vanity was located in the Underground Passage, and the sewers of Kurast actually contained an entrance to the Unformed Land, among other examples of uberlevels being accessible through areas that have nothing to do with them lore-wise. The issue here lies in Diablo II's engine limitations, which do not allow creating new levels, so it is impossible to add an uberquest location without replacing a level in the process - and the only levels that can be replaced are the throwaway side areas that serve no quest-related purpose. The introduction of the MXL Core has since allowed adding new areas so all uberquests can be given their own location.
"Instant Death" Radius: The removed Witches do nothing until you get close enough to one: she'll then laugh, if you do not immediately get out of range, she teleports at you and kills you with an irresistible and unblockable attack that deals 50,000 physical and magic damage.
Minimalist Run: Older versions of the mod used to have the Attribute Challenge, which requires you to defeat an uberboss while keeping a number of attribute points unspent. Shortly after it was removed, the Belladonna Elixir (an item that resets all attribute and skill points) was introduced, meaning that there's little to no point of keeping the challenge in the game.invoked
Permanently Missable Content: The Level Challenges and the Ennead Challenge used to become permanently inaccessible to characters that outlevelled them without having completed them first. This was later changed so that they can still complete them but have to burn Arcane Crystals to do so.
Poison Mushroom: The old version of the Cycles of Lust's only affix is always a malus to light radius. Some Cycles of Greed, Luck and Wealth can also be this, since all of their possible affixes can be either negative, zero or positive.
Smashed Eggs Hatching: Smashing a Dragon's Egg causes an angry Baalspawn dragon to hatch.
Super Empowering: The old version of Rathma's Chosen turned one of your minions temporarily invulnerable and gave it a massive boost to damage.
Time Travel: In old lore, the uberlevels Fauztinville and Bremmtown are set in the future, and you use a time machine to get there.
Wake-Up Call Boss: Volrath the Vile, the Bonus Boss of Level Challenge 0, can only be fought at level 5 (no more, no less), and is designed to be the first real challenge for new characters (before he was removed, that is).