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9-LIGHTS OUT (its bedtime)
Music-Desert
Meanwhile, Chloe's been getting a lot of this desert. MXL adds in a bunch of stuff like these scoprions that can launch tornadoes,
and some normal human people. They honestly look like halflings but I think they're supposed to be bandits. They can also just throw stuff at me as well, but it does raise a question: there are evil humans and humans tend to cause a lot of Sanctuary's problems. ...Why aren't we killing asshole humans?
It's always demons and dead humans and the local wildlife even though we absolutely have regular issues with mortals. They're not all goody goody. Hell, some of them just turn into demons. Yes I know Diablo III introduces cultists to murder but bandits are a real thing in the Aranoch Desert and we never deal with them. GTA exists in the same space you share. Come on.
Sand Maggot | CR: **
==Lays eggs
==Spits poison
==May burrow into the ground at low health
Normally, these things just drop eggs that take forever to hatch into a bunch of the next monster, and then spit some pretty weak poison. They're also capable of just noping out but it's really just a timewaster.
Sand Maggot Young | CR: **
==Emerges from Sand Maggot Eggs.
Much weaker than the Sand Maggot but they instead rely on swarm strategies to stunlock you. Again, only a concern if you have to get up to them and let them surround you. They're really pathetic otherwise.
But hey, Median XL makes them more fun. The maggots just come with their young and their eggs explode into poison novas. Very damaging poison novas as well! You get a lot of advance notice and the eggs are very sturdy in MXL. Just, don't be near them until they detonate.
The next area of interest, Far Oasis, has a really fun addition in Median XL. Dreamstalkers are slingers that are very proactive with throwing slings and their slings deal cold damage. They also hurt quite a bit as well! They're very dangerous! Since they do not care if we're in melee range and can keep us chilled, we'll need to be careful handling them.
I would like to say Jane doesn't care, but no Jane very much cares. This is mainly because they're good damage and also cold damage so it can be difficult to handle them, or worse, handle them while there's other monsters to deal with.
As for basegame additions,
Swarm | CR: **
==Physical resistant
==Drains stamina on hit
You know, I have to stop and raise my hand and ask, "What is this game's problem with melee characters?" Dung Beetles are a nightmare, every ranged character is a pain for melee, and then you have monsters like this that are just physically resistant. All this while plenty of melee skills can only target 1 monster at a time. All of these problems are solved when you don't go into the faces of monsters.
Our next destination is this hole in the ground: the Maggot Lair. There's also a waypoint here to find.
Music-Maggot Lair
There's something about this dungeon that Median XL fixes. The dungeon is basically just a bunch of tunnels and some rooms inbetween.
There's 3 levels to Maggot Lair, and there's a waypoint midway through. Aside from grinding I don't know why you would want to come back here, but it is there.
Also, try to find the surprise in this picture!
Yes. Scarab Demons show up here as well.
Bottom level our gold chest is guarded by...eew.
Coldworm the Burrower | CR: **
==Superunique
==Doesn't attack
==Spawns Sand Maggots
==Cold Enchanted
==Magic Resistant
==Explodes into a lot of poison on death.
The boss itself is really easy. It doesn't move, it only spawns more Sand Maggots, and it doesn't spawn them particularly fast and they're Sand Maggots. You can easily muscle your way through.
(Click here for the full very gross animation.)
It's what happens when you kill Coldworm that you should care about. One more reason why melee's not loved in this game: don't stand in front of or even near Coldworm when it dies unless you want to eat poison AND cold damage. If you stand in the very wrong spot it can be very lethal.
In MXL there's two gold chests for some reason, but the extra chest just houses the Staff of Kings. Curiously, if your weapon is really bad, you can use the Staff of Kings as a weapon.
MXL even cares to give it some relevant stats. Jane of course can't use it because she is very restricted in what she can use....and neither can Chloe who has to use throwing knives, but if you can use this it's quite good for spellcasting! Just, not here.
Quick, let's open up the dictionary and learn the lore about this staff.
I trust you know how to use a Horadric Cube to unite the shaft with its headpiece.
We are told it's a long rod, but it doesn't have a head? We need to fix this. Back out into the desert we go.
Ah but, before I forget, those familiar with Diablo II may have noticed the tunnels of the Maggot Lair are much wider. You can actually move around them.
Here's how they are normally. There's, no wiggle room, for you or them, so you have to go through monsters single file whether you want to or not. Only if you have piercing or splashing projectiles can you get through Maggot Lair faster than a monster at a time. That and it's a maze and there's a waypoint to find in it. So many people hate going through here and there's been mods to the map that will widen these tunnels and make it not a hassle to go through. MXL has them, so does PD2. The others, do not.
Music-Desert
But yeah there are plenty of reasons why Act 2 can be unfavorable. There's Maggot Lairs, every tomb, the extreme disadvantages melee has, and then there's the desert iself. I can't convey this well in screenshots, but the past couple areas have been split in half by a cliff that we can traverse at one point in the entire region. Sometimes the waypoint's there, sometimes the dungeon is, sometimes both or even neither of them are. Other times the exit to the next area is just a turn to the left or right and the rest is just a massive region where you have to find two spots on it. It gets really grating.
And it's all the same as w-...hey...who turned off the lights?
Uhh, guys, am I not supposed to see the sky?
Find their temple beneath the desert sands and you may find the source of this curse.
The rest of the townsfolk will either point us to Drognan or explain that snakemen just cast a world enchantment, blacking out the sun. We have Claw Vipers to thank for this. Are Claw Vipers some sort of nasty race of demons? ...No. Is it explained why they even want to turn off the sun? ...Also no. All we get is they've done this before and it was really annoying before.
...Do we need the sun? ...I guess. I mean in the first place, guess where the head of the staff is? At their temple.
So as I was saying, Lost City has a bunch of walls everywhere, and most of the time I'm here, that cliff divider is there and the area it divides has absolutely nothing of worth.
I mean just look at this big chunk of map that has nothing important. Fought a superunique there but I think I've hit the point where I stopped keeping track of superuniques that aren't easily in your way. Each region in the Aranoch Desert is HUGE, and is not simple to traverse unlike the Khanduras wilderness of Act I. All this while, depending on your choices, you're about to be turbopunished as the game starts throwing tangible challenges at you, all of which are much easier to deal with from afar.
Also guess what the surprise is on this map? I'll give you a hint: you can already see it on the map.
The way to the temple was just northeast of the waypoint. Yes, I explored the entire Lost City before noticing this.
The Valley of Snakes has...I guess fire towers. That's it though. This is meant to be an intermediate area...
Music-Tombs
Light, guide my way in this accursed place.
for this place. The bad news is it's technically a tomb and of course Greater Mummies are in it. The good news is it's only 2 levels long and one of those is just a single room.
It also has...okay these aren't Claw Vipers but
Claw Viper | CR: ***
==Can charge.
It's hard for me to notice and catch it but they can charge to hit you. The charge, always hits, and knocks back on hit, which is why it always looks like they're stunning you doing so. That's dangerous if you consider that a mob of them can just autohit you doing this. The only reason why they're not harder is because they have to be pretty close to you to do this in the first place. Is a nasty surprise though.
Other than that, it's more of the same. But wait a minute. I hear a commotion coming from down the stairs!
That's because Greg is already there, shooting down this superunique. I was wondering what happened to him and Bob.
Turns out, Eastern Sun hates the desert as well.
So you can go to this newly added hub dungeon in town to skip straight to the Maggot Lair and Claw Viper Temple.
It's pretty challenging but much smaller and much easier to go through than getting lost in the desert.
As for what Greg's been doing, it's fairly complicated. We managed to get some unique throwing knives to drop, and two of the things Barbarians can do is use throwing weapon skills, and dual-wield. This allows me to use the throwing knives in lieu of a shield and still keep the weapon for the class set.
This means I can throw weapons and make use of this skill: Phantom Hatchets.
Why do I do this when I have lightning spells? Because the lightning spells cost mana. So does Phantom Hatchets but they cost way less. Normally you're supposed to chug mana potions on end to fuel lightning barb, but I've chosen a unique approach to solving this problem: mana leech.
You see, while leeching is limited to a portion of your physical damage and any other damage doesn't leech, any skill that does physical damage leeches. I do need to stack a bit of mana leech to get a decent return, but in Eastern Sun, where all the numbers are more gratuitous, this means I find a mob, I throw these hatchets, and I get my mana back, because each projectile thrown out of the fan, when they hit, will return mana back.
There are of course wrinkles to this: anything that's physically resistant or immune means I can't leech off them. They also can just be resistant to the very act of leeching because Diablo II hates fun. The reason why you don't see leech in every character is because there is a pretty sizable list of things you can't leech from. But here, because it's ranged and it gets my mana back most of the time, that means I can safely spam Thunder Wave and just take breaks of throwing Phantom Hatchets inbetween, for most of the game. The rest of the game is what mana potions are for!
I'm not too sure if this is genius or not, but it did feel smoother to play than constantly having to chug potions.
Not much has changed for Bob. He's still using Werewolf Form and Winter Fury to speedrun the game. I'm pretty sure at this point, with max charge on Feral Rage, which grants increasing attack and move speed for each hit, he's moving faster than most people can with Teleport. Of course, faster than Teleport across open areas, but that's still extremely fast, and much faster than the game ever expected.
Fangskin | CR: ****
==Superunique
==Extra Fast
==Lightning Enchanted
==Can charge.
Oh there's a unique here? Well I guess. Fangskin does benefit from coupling the charge attack with really fast movespeed and lightning farts, making them pretty dangerous. But, so long as we, again, not use melee, we'll be fine.
Fun fact: the bonuses uniques like Fangskin got, and the Charge damage monsters did, were considerably stronger in earlier patches, and this directly translated to Fangskin being really devastating when he got in and started hitting you. Actually a number of monster nerfs occurred between 1.00 and the latest version of 1.14d. There's even more in Resurrected I'm blissfully ignorant of.
But wait, we're not done yet.
You see, this is the first area in Median XL that disables warping around, both in the sense of using teleport spells and trying to town portal out. You'll have to pop a portal before the area instead, but thankfully you will be warned when the next map locks your warping.
The first thing about this arena is there's shrines whose purpose in life is to curse you. There's three of them, each of them cast a different curse, and Median XL has them all stack. Couple that with the fact that Salamanders and Claw Vipers know a variety of spells, and this means attacking the boss right away is a bad idea. We'll need to break these first. We need to not catch their projectiles because the curses are making them hit for something like a hundred damage when we just recently broke 4 digits in life.
Wychwind is designed for stationary or controllable targets though. The hard part is getting out of the way of the falling rocks and fireballs.
All the meanwhile Fangskin will be in the center chuckin' his own fireballs at you. None of the curses at display in this mod nerf your damage, they just make the spells hit really hard, so theoretically speaking it may have been better to throw a few rifttearers into the center and blow up Fangskin. Oh well. I didn't have difficulty here.
But, of course, you then have someone like Jane Croft who has zero options for dealing with problems at range. Fangskin is not in the center thankfully...or unthankfully depending on how you feel about this guy being able to keep up with and continue attacking you. Jane still has wumbo damage, but we do need to be careful that we are only dealing with Fangskin or getting the right melee hit to tear through the small mob that spawns here and not eat their projectiles.
Anyway, I'm done with this darkness.
Music-Tainted Sun Altar Destroyed
(Click here for the full animation.)
Who would have thought that such primitive beings could cause so much trouble.
I am trying to ignore this quip but I remember it's 2000 and oh, it's probably meant to be bigoted. 
As with the Staff of Kings, the Amulet of the Viper is considerably better in Median XL, to the point where I'm wondering why I didn't wear it in the meantime. There's no reason not to.
For comparison, here's their stats normally. The staff being really fast is desirable, but the amulet is pretty boring. Sure that's a good amount of poison resist on it but that's all that's going for it. It's okay though, the Horadric Malus was really bad for a "unique" by comparison, which has, one, mod, tied to the weapon type, despite being gold-colored.
This is a quest where every NPC has a quip on finishing it. It's not particularly interesting. (Speaking of that hammer, Tools of the Trade also had you just talk to anyone to finish the quest.)
One last thing to do for this update, and that's to let Cain speak about using the cube again, with the objects.
Yes... You have an uncanny knack for finding rare and valuable artifacts. Of course, you'll have to use a Horadric Cube to combine the headpiece with the shaft.
Next time: So...you're telling me you built your palace on top of an ancient wizard burial ground...and your wine cellar contains a portal to another dimension made by said wizards.