Author: BrotherLaz

The main attraction of Median 2008 is the brand new skill trees, 30 skills per class, providing a whole new experience. The mod also offers a new base item setup with 6 quality tiers, 430 uniques, 490 runewords, a new affix pool and gem/jewel stats, and many new and powerful crafting recipes.

All this would be for nothing without the monster AI modifications and new attacks and abilities to make them more dangerous, and for advanced players there are 18+1 new uberquests; the attribute challenge, which rewards those who invest only half of their stat points with shiny items; and the level challenge, which requires you to complete difficult tasks at a low character level.

A bullet list of all changes would take up most allowed space in this description, so please consult the official site.


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Skills

The 210 new skills (25+5 per class) give rise to very different build strategies. Ever wanted to build a throwing barbarian, animal charmer druid or bloodwitch amazon?

Mana Sweep (sorceress) - Out of mana? Great! Zaps nearby enemies, stealing mana and inflicting damage based on the difference between current and maximum mana. A great finisher to kill off damaged enemies.
Unholy Prayer (necromancer) - Stand and channel blasphemous energies, rendering yourself and nearby allies and minions invulnerable while rapidly draining your mana.
Hades Gate (assassin) - Target a corpse and teleport into it, blasting nearby enemies backwards and inflicting weapon-based damage!
Legion (amazon) - Say hi to my little friends! Summons a line of archers who stand their ground and pummel nearby enemies with deadly arrows. Screen-wide barrage or focus fire, you decide!
Retaliate (paladin) - At first sight, this seems like an ordinary melee attack, but when an enemy hits you with a physical attack, your next Retaliate attack is a powerful area effect shockwave that knocks back!
Fortress (barbarian) - A circle of eight spirit towers appear around the caster and shoot arrows at enemies, using your weapon damage. You can control their deployment using nearby walls.
War Spirit (amazon) - When activated, your character automatically shoots out spike novas when near enemies, carrying your weapon damage.

Monsters

What would new skills be without new monsters to pulverise? The focus here is on AI and behavioural changes. From hammer-throwing clerics and quill rats with homing spikes to corpse exploding goatman priests, apes that cast shockwaves when damaged and frogs that turn into a prince when killed, the new monsters are more than a match for the new skill set.

Gargoyle Warriors - animated Barbarian statues, they attack with a berserk frenzy and can turn into invulnerable stone form to heal themselves.
Goatman Priests - the leaders of a goat clan, the priests can corpse explode their underlings and throw pain spirits that convert lost life into damage.
Rust Monsters - while fairly harmless on their own, their attack has the touch of rust and melts the target's armor, rendering him or her very vulnerable.

Uberquests

These are special dungeons, levels or summonable bosses (!) that should only be attempted by the skilled and powerful.

There are 12+1 uberbosses and 6 uberlevels, ranging from a necromantic temple below Kurast to the cursed city of Ureh (from the Diablo novel 'Kingdom of Shadow') and an uberquest that reenacts the capture of Baal by Tal Rasha and the Horadrim... with you as Baal. On the highest difficulty, you may find certain legendary and powerful unique charms and special Sacred uniques and sets .

Challenges

Completing difficult tasks and encounters at a low level or without spending all of your attribute points may earn you big rewards... from powerful charms to additional new skills.

Items

While some people play the game to defeat the denizens of Hell (haha), for most others TEH L00T and the bragging rights that come with it are more important. Median 2008 does away with normal, exceptional and elite items, instead providing six 'tiers' of item quality. Baal may drop a cap, but it will be a cap with 600 defense on it.

The magical prefixes and suffixes have been redone from scratch, and runes and gems have new properties that make them actually worth using. There are also plenty of cube recipes to reroll, imbue, enchant and tinker with your items. A huge collection of 430 new uniques and 490 new runewords is a given, of course.


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Have fun!

Character changes

Barbarian

- Ancient Strike: Added skill timer.

Paladin

- Dark King: Slightly reduced self-synergy from 10% to 7%.

Sorceress

- Arcane Fury: Now also gives you +500% mana regeneration.

Cube recipes

- Unique jewelry reroll: No longer produces random items.
- Set sacrifice: Now works properly on rare jewels.

Uniques

- Cornerstone of the World: New jewel, gives a random oskill.

Sets

- Rathma’s Death Gaze: Is now a circlet for graphical reasons; old masks still work.
- Stormshadow: Now properly grants oskill Banish instead of Hades Gate.

Monster changes

- All Frog Prince types: Reduced damage in Terror and Destruction difficulty.
- All Knight types: Reduced Bloodstorm damage in Terror and Destruction difficulty.

- Diablo: Removed resist pierce, reduced fire spell damage.
- Que-Hegan: Reduced holy death damage in Destruction difficulty.

1.55b > 1.55c
(August 30, 2007)
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Character changes

Amazon

- Buckshot: Character now automatically closes to melee range.
- Bloodspeaker’s Mark: Now correctly works with Spear weapons only.

Assassin

- Shadow Refuge: Increased dual claw speed, now always hits twice.
- Seismic Field: Corrected skill description by removing the missing string.

Barbarian

- Fortress: Increased weapon damage component from x1/4 to x1/2.
- Ancient Strike: Now a left click skill; corrected documentation.

Necromancer

- Corrected AR display of minions.

Paladin

- Scourge: The synergy from Radiance now works properly.

Sets

- Fixed several names of excessive length that showed up as a missing string.

Challenges

- Challenge of Contrition no longer requires the Hard Mode Charm.

1.55 > 1.55b
(August 29, 2007)
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Character changes

Amazon

- Buckshot: The maximum skill level formula is now correct.

Necromancer

- Necromantic Trance: Added missing skill text.

Paladin

- Retribute: Corrected incorrect skill description regarding immunities.

1.54 > 1.55
(August 29, 2007)
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Character changes

- One new skill for each character if you complete the second Level Challenge.
-- Amazon: War Spirit
-- Assassin: Vampiric Icon (synergy from Premeditation)
-- Barbarian: Ancient Strike
-- Druid: Faerie Fire
-- Necromancer: Shadow Warp
-- Paladin: Scourge (synergy from Light and Shadow)
-- Sorceress: Unearthly Power

- Attribute Challenge skills now have their own icon.
- Updated skill tree backgrounds.
- Summoned minion resistances are now correct.
- Modified base block speeds for every character.
Note: You may want some faster block rate now.

Amazon

- Bloodspeaker’s Mark: Replaces Winged Strike, a summoning melee skill.
- Buckshot: Replaces Scattershot, fires a blast of short ranged shrapnel.
- Ricochet: Reduced to 3/2 damage from x2 damage to prevent damage overflow.
- Defensive Harmony: Now gains 2% slow per level, down from 3%.
- Death Coil: Now pierces the target, attempting to hit multiple times.
- Bloodstorm: Reduced max targets synergy from +1 per 3 levels to +1 to 5 levels.
- Blades of Light: Now again a point target ability.
-Champions of the Sun: Doubled life at all skill levels.
- Paragon: Reduced power at all skill levels by 33%. Face it, it was insane.

Assassin

- Time Strike: Reduced to 3/2 damage from x2 damage to prevent damage overflow.
- Shadow Refuge: Now requires two claws.
- Black Lotus Strike: Changed deployment pattern for more coverage.
- Death Blossom: Increased maximum damage, boosting average damage by 33%.
- Scorpion Blade: New icon.
- Wychwind: Replaces Dark Embrace, fires a deadly knife but renders you vulnerable.
- Doom: Greatly increased curse radius.
- Rain of Bombs: Increased fire damage synergy from 4% to 6% per point.
- Blade Barrier: Increased weapon damage component from 1/2 to 3/4.
- Seismic Field: Improved animation, increased hit zone.
Warning: The Seismic Field death effect on Lord Aldric Jitan and his group of Guardsmen is likewise improved. Do not use a weapon with range 1, or you may find yourself within range and swallowed up before you can move.

Barbarian

- Summoning spells gain +1 max level synergy per 2 levels in Shamanic Trance.

- Phoenix Stance: Effect changed, now increases all character attributes.
- Bear Claw: Corrected miss bug; reduced damage from x2 to x3/2.
- Stampede: Corrected miss bug; reduced damage from x2 to x3/2.
- Stormwind: Fixed bug, but now only affects melee damage of throwing weapons.
- Hamstring: Corrected slow target stats, now does exactly what it is supposed to do.
- Fortress: Removed Lightning Shield synergy and transferred its effect to Guard Tower.
- Shamanic Trance: No longer resets when cast a second time.
- Runemaster: Reduced power at all skill levels by 20%.

Druid

- Charm spells gain +1 max level synergy per 2 levels in Faerie Fire.

- Blindside: Reduced to 3/2 damage from x2 damage to prevent damage overflow.
- Elemental: Increased fire damage synergy from 6% to 10% per point.
- Fire Fountain: Mine duration fixed at 8 seconds at all skill levels.
- Shadow Avatar: New cast animation.
- Poison Flash: Added new 2% attacker flee synergy while casting from Plague Avatar.
- Tremor: Can now take monsters all the way to 0% in Terror and Destruction difficulty.

Necromancer

- Summoning spells gain +1 max level synergy per 2 levels in Necromantic Trance.

- Summon Rampagor: Now does some basic poison damage without the passive.
- Demon Seed: Corrected description of passive bonus to max totems.
- Nightmare: Increased slow target component and removed 50% slow cap.
- Necromantic Trance: No longer resets when cast a second time.
- Rathma’s Chosen: Reduced timer, now grants immunity to all, increased damage.

Paladin

- Corrected maximum skill level description on some skills.

- Vessel of Judgement: Replaces Judgement, does the same thing but automatically.
- Plague: Replaces Golden Calf, adds wicked poison damage to your weapon.
- Holy Insanity: Now only affects the wicked, sparing the righteous!
- Holy Trap: Increased maximum damage, boosting average damage by 60%.
- Wrath: Corrected damage progression bug resulting in too low physical damage.
- Black Sleep: Removed non-functional damage bonus, now gains reduced timer.
- Blood Thorns: Now correctly shoots 4 times.
- Punisher: Corrected poison length synergy, which ended up at 0% due to a bug.
- Slayer: Icon has come home.
- Dark King: Now offers linear returns, along with a 10% self-synergy.
- Cherub Strike: Now a Holy skill.

Sorceress

- Lightning Wall: Duration no longer increases, but neither does the timer.
- Cold Blood: New cast animation.
- Mana Coil: Now pierces the target, attempting to hit multiple times.
- Circle of Mana: Increased self-synergy from 40% to 75%.
- Summon Ice Elementals: Added damage from Arcane Torrent, life from Mage Armor.

Base items

- Implemented rare and unique quivers.
- Implemented rare and unique jewels.
- Added improved superior item bonuses.

Magical and rare modifiers

- Oskill Shadow Refuge on magical paladin items is now Crucify.

Runewords

- ‘Atlantis’: Now adds +201-300 str/dex instead of +151-300.
- ‘Berserk’: The extra gold modifier no longer goes berserk.
- ‘Brahman’: Now adds +5-11 to Champions instead of a chance to cast.
- ‘Erilaz’: Now adds +10-17 to Lamia instead of a chance to cast.
- ‘Gabriel’: Now adds +3-6 to paladin skill levels instead of +3-4.
- ‘Kronos’: Now adds +4 maximum damage per level instead of +2.
- ‘Nahemah’: Now adds +1-4 to Scourge instead of Vampiric Icon.
- ‘Sagarmatha’: Gold find penalty is no longer out of bounds.
- ‘Strength of One’: Removed oskill Retribute.
- ‘Tartarus’: All modifiers listed now appear on the item.
- ‘Triune’: Now adds +311-350% enhanced damage.
- ‘Viper’: Tainted Blades oskill bonus is no longer out of bounds.
- ‘Wish’: Now adds +4-8 to Scattershot instead of Buckshot.

Jewelwords

- 'Enmerkar': Now grants 'Can Use Lemures/Blood Thorns at Any Time'.
- ‘Kronos’: Increased maximum damage bonus from 1.1875/level to 4/level.
- ‘Thorn’: Removed the third chance to cast Arrow on striking.
-‘Unicorn’: Now has +1-3 to amazon skills instead of +1-2.
- ‘Vexation’: Now adds +1-5 to Blood Flash instead of Vampiric Icon.

Uniques

- Fixed bug that caused Sacred uniques to spawn outside uberquest areas.
- Armor of the Old Religion: Now goes up to +60% spell damage, instead of +40%.
- Harpy’s Strike: Cautious Strike oskill now does the correct amount of damage.
- Helepolis: Added +2.5 maximum damage per character level.
- Helm of Sprits: Now goes up to 32% life steal, instead of 22%.
- Leathdhiabhala: Now has oskill Rampagor instead of a chance to cast.
- Nightscape: Light radius penalty is no longer out of bounds.
- Noblebane: Target defense modifier is no longer out of bounds.
- Rattenfanger: Increased strength bonus from +21-25% to +41-50%.
- Robe of Steel: Reduced skill level bonus on higher tier versions.
- Thunderdome: Now goes up to +60% lightning damage, instead of +40%.
- Witchdance: Now gives +1-6 to Crucify instead of Shadow Refuge.

Sets

- Almost every set has received major improvements.
- All Tier 6 sets are now Sacred sets for the sake of consistency.
Sorry, there is no recipe to convert Tier 6 set pieces into Sacred set pieces, but you can use those old Tier 6 items for other useful purposes.

Cube recipes

- Unique reroll recipe: Now properly works on all unique items.
- Set sacrifice recipe: New recipe, recycles deprecated (old tier 6) set items.

Other items

- Hard Mode Charm: Now also disables knockback and target flee modifiers on items.

Monster changes

- Fixed random physical immunity popping up in Hatred difficulty.
- Rebalanced uberquest/superunique boss damage and life.
- Normalised freeze immunities and random physical resists in uberlevels.
Uberquest bosses are immune to chill and freeze, regular uberquest monsters aren’t. No uberquest monster can have random physical immunity unless it is also a regular monster, eg. the chameleon level monsters.

- All Mana Toad types: Increased Magic Missiles damage.
- All Corpse Spitter types: Increased corpse spit bolt damage.
- All Undead Lawyer types: Increased fire damage, but added AR check.

- Acid Prince: Greatly increased Frog Prince damage.
- Amazon Warrior: Greatly reduced life in Hatred difficulty for Level Challenge purposes.
- Azmodan: Fixed life overflow issue.
- Bane Monster: Increased Flash skill level.
- Death Prince: Now pierces target cold resist.
- Diablo: Now casts Flamestrike; increased damage and skill levels.
- Ghost Zombie: Increased Hunting Banshee death damage.
- Griswold: Now properly triggers Retaliate and Retribute.
- Horadric Mage: Reduced damage, but now has a passive that pierces target resists!
- Ice Prince: Greatly increased Frog Prince damage.
- Lucion: Fixed life overflow issue.
- Nihlathak: Enhanced abilities.
- Soul Spider: Increased Flash skill level.
- The Butcher: Increased movement speed.

Level changes

- Act 1 Den of Evil: Monster count no longer affected by character’s use of Demon Seed.
- Act 2 Harem 1: This level no longer has an area level of 0.
- Act 5 ice caves: Dramatically reduced size of newly spawned ice cave levels.

Challenges

- Added Level Challenge 2, rewarding you with a new skill upon completion.

Misc

- Chance to gamble uniques is now 2.5% per gamble, down from 5%; chance to gamble sets is 5%.
- The cursed modifier ‘-% slower healing rate from potions’ now works properly.
- Chance to cast Arrow on striking now fires from the actual character instead of the monster.
- The Dark Summoning missile no longer moves after casting.
- Upgraded Champion monster stats: now +100% damage, +200% AR, +150% life.
- Upgraded Boss monster stats: now +250% AR, +300% life.

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19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
01.sep.2007 | Median 2008 1.56 released!
For ages 12 and above. Some assembly required. May contain runes.

...u almost always have the skills u plan to max maxed to the max skill lvl of ur lvl -DrizztBaenre