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22-Our arrows will blot out the sun.
Music-Baal
So I had to do a cliffhanger because Median XL changes, a lot, about this process. Also because last update was getting long and we're not quite close enough to being done yet. Let's start at the beginning.
I unfortunately have this issue where I seem to have went the entirety of Act V without ever opening up Chloe's skill trees. Luckily I managed to fix this in post. Here's what I've been using.
This skill which I'm just gonna call Maelstrom throws a knife and that knife will make small novas of knives as it travels. On paper, this is a very good skill, because each of those knives will carry weapon damage and added weapon damage. It can however be a bit finicky to use in practice against single targets. Wychwind functions the same way as well, taking whatever weapon damage you have, including added weapon damage, and then having it hit many, many times.
So any of these will get applied to it, making for a clearcut build. There's three FOUR of these (one of them's an ultimate skill) and there's no restrictions on getting all of them. I have no idea how this will work in practice and I need to be good at not getting hit because there isn't a lot of options for padding out defenses going this path.
This is actually a big deal because stuff in Median XL can hit very, very hard. (Which I've come to really appreciate taking a Hell-ready character and sending them back here on Normal, and realizing they can kill me if I turn my brain off.) I really only get one skill that fits this build and provides physical resistance, which is useful, but it's not a whole lot imo. Hopefully later skills can help patch this up, but we'll have to see.
Otherwise, there's skills like this, which is a burst damage cooldown skill, and that's about it for the build. My focus and my main buttons are Maelstrom and Wychwind. The rest is side buffs and nuke options.
As for the Worldstone Keep, it's pretty tough! It's full of fast beefy monsters and several of them have nasty tricks.
For example, these Magistrates are worth mentioning. You may be used to either a monster hits you up close or it tries to shoot you with something. These monsters will fire a lightning bolt that will explode at where it was targeted and damage everything near it, so casually sidestepping doesn't work. They'll also throw out those little vile children things as well pretty quickly and just cause shock novas on your feet.
Overlords meanwhile have a couple fun spells, like a flame wave and summoning an orb that shoots projectiles in a 360 degree circle. There's a few others as well, and most of them do not slouch around. The Median XL version of Blood Lords for example are really good at running up to you, and Overseers can use Corpse Explosion. Also all the spells hurt a lot and I think that's because I slouched on resistances again, or they just hurt period. I'm not too sure.
I also tend to not grind until after I'm done with Act V, not before, so I tend to be behind in levels at this point. Which by the way, Chloe's like 58 right now. About twice the level of everyone else save for her Median XL friend.
One of the monsters here can lock you in Bone Prisons! That's a rock falling on me as well.
I beef it at some point because I do seem to have this issue where if I'm doing things blindly I don't think about what to do to handle encounters. Median XL has a very dangerous suite of monsters here, which makes this place very exciting to go through. It's to die for. Literally.
Baal's still casting Decrepify.
And you may be led to believe that Median XL doesn't change the boss rush too much. Colenzo is still Colenzo. Just has better projectiles and is notably pretty tanky.
But, remember, Chloe has a skill that allows her to just layer many many instances of weapon damage onto someone, so she is actually really good at deleting waves from existence before they can do anything. Good for this boss rush. Bad for this LP.
So let's switch to and talk about Jane for now, who is currently moshing with a bunch of minotaurs.
Jane is literally two buttons: Bladestorm, and Fusilade. One blends everything near you, the other blends everything in a spot that'll find new things to blend if they're close enough. One way to make melee work is to have a skill for hitting monsters at close range to thin them out, distract them, etcetera, and then go in and bap them. Jane has been doing this the entire time.
Oh and our two choices for covens as well. The cold coven is an absolute must, it gives me defense and also the shiny orbs to distract enemies with, but I've been on the fence on taking either the fire or the poison coven. Both are good. The fire one will give me more life and a ring of fire to boost physical damage. The poison one gives me free Physical Resist and has a curious effect in that it might Crushing Blow attackers when they hit me in melee, but I don't have any want for insects. If I recall I stuck with poison though, because physical resist is hard to come by and probably more valuable than more life and damage. Lightning coven is mainly for spellcasters which is why I largely ignored it.
If I had to spend so long weighing my choice of covens between the four you get to as well.
The difference between Chloe and Jane is that, when I get blasted as Jane, I'm still standing because I have more life and better resists. It's still very dangerous, but at least I can get locked up and melee'd and I won't melt faster than they will.
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled boss rush. Firestorm, if I let him live, will summon Scorpions with poison projectiles and, notably, he has Holy Fire. He doesn't demonstrate this against Jane though, because the summoning will be his roundstart move and Jane will just shred him before he ever gets to. After getting some desert spiders in, he'll just run up to you and bap you. The scorpions are definitely the dangerous part of the fight though, because he'll throw out 8 of them and they'll all start spitting poison.
Next up we got Sir Gorash and Navi. Sir Gorash is a very simple monster with a stick, except he's there to make the ghost archer, Navi, invincible until he's dead. Navi meanwhile will shoot ice arrows and also summon ghosts that will constantly make ice novas. Notably, Navi's hoverover text will tell you how to deal with the ghosts: walk over them to dispell. This is important because the novas have very long range.
Ventar's still Ventar. He will however throw out Bone Spirits at range. The Hellish Invaders meanwhile are classic Megademons, and I have noted that they do very heavy damage. I honestly fear the Hellish Invader mob more as a result.
Then there's Lister, who is, not Lister. Spawning in with a band of ladies who will launch fire, Lister is a very dangerous caster boss.
He'll launch magic projectiles, put down a magic nova that lasts a long time and does heavy damage, and put down a nova that has a tell and a charge up but is massive, hits three times in quick succession, and will probably chump your Life if you're in it. All this and he can Teleport, and he doesn't move otherwise, meaning he'll be very hard pressed to move away from Baal, so you can add Decrepify support onto that list.
Lister's hard, yo. Lister can just put one of those novas on him and if you're melee you can't touch him until he moves off for the novas expire.
But you're not done. When you kill him, this thing I teased in the last update opens up. You're going in it.
Because it's the first level challenge!
Level challenges are extra areas that are meant to be done at a certain level. For Tran Athulua, this is 50-59. You just need to be level 50 to enter, but you'll see why you need to be below 60. This isn't something you can skip either.
You may have noticed that I only said "Scroll of Resistance" for the rescue Anya quest reward. In Median XL, this is a scroll you must cube into a charm you don't have yet to apply its resistences. You get the charm here.
As for, where, we are, it's actually the homeland of the Amazon. Which is why there's nothing but archers here. Many, many archers. They do one thing: shoot you. If you have bad defenses you can die before you ever get to them. There's so many of them that dodging all the projectiles is not something I expect people to do.
Tran Athulua is a fixed layout map, with either massive rooms or fairly small hallways littering it. To finish Tran Athulua and get our challenge reward, there are three unique Amazons here, and we need to kill each of them to get a piece of the charm. Once all three are dead, we can cube the pieces to make them charm, cube the scroll to the charm to boost it fruther, and leave for Baal.
Course, the unique Amazons aren't pushovers. (They're also just super saiyans.) They're High Priestesses of the Amazon's religion, and this is where Median XL expands upon and adds in new lore. To paraphrase, Skartara, the Amazon home island located in the Twin Seas, is home to a panthenon of various gods. Median XL expands this by describing a triune of ancient deity cults.
Why are we killing these priestesses and all these Amazons then when it's a good cult? Because this is a video game. I did not know this until I had to go look this up for the LP. Someone had fun writing this. I'm not gonna act like there's a standard to hold up to for fan lore. It's fan lore. Just give me more demons to kill.
As for ingame, the High Priestesses differ in that they'll be themed after an element, fire arrows of that element, absorb that element, and have a spell of that element.
All of them are able to summon firing lines of Amazons that'll typically lock down areas in a hail of arrows. Course, they do have a flaw in that they'll only ever fire one direction no matter how the line is drawn, but it's still effective.
Philios before gets the ability to create fire patches due to being fire themed.
Skovos here is cold themed and can use Blizzard. Just, straight up Blizzard.
And Lycander is lightning themed, making patches of lightning on herself. Hard to see here because I backed her up into a wall.
Anyway, that's the map. Despite my fairly brief description of it, I really cannot convey in words just how many Amazons there are. I don't even think the pictures are doing a good job illustrating either. The very first time I was here, many Median XL versions ago, I died a lot because I was doing something squishy. Jane has enough bulk to run in, dodge arrows, and start swinging, breaking away if need be.
Anyway, with all three shards, we can create the reward. Then it's just a matter of getting back to the entrance, since teleporting out just puts us back in town and the nearest waypoint is three floors away from the Worldstone Chamber.
This is why you need to be at least level 50 but less than 60. Median XL expects you to be at this range at this point in the game. If you are somehow over, you can still make this charm, but will have to pay a hefty cost of Arcane Crystals (they aren't cheap!) per every 10 levels you're over. At 60-69 it's just 2. Instructions are unclear.
Say hello to our free power boost. Gives us a variety of boosts, all of which are good. This also helps with what we're about to do next as well. Since it's on display here, I should point out that +X% Combat Speeds is new in Median XL and is just a shorthand for +X% to attack speed, cast speed, hit recovery, and block recovery. Obviously very useful.
But wait, we still have that scroll.
That's better.
Chloe's adventure in amazonland is full of scenes like this. There's so many amazons that walking and spamming projectiles has a high chance to hit something before it ever comes on screen. Maelstrom is almost perfect for this map. Its coverage is just wide enough to cover the entire hallway, so most monsters are dying before they get a chance to stack up.
Where Jane solves this problem by having meat shields and being bulky, Chloe just shoots better than them. Even in open areas and against the uniques of the map, her two buttons solve all problems. If anything, Chloe has an easier time because she's staying out of melee range.
But now that we have finally powered up, let's finish this.
Baal is going to introduce you to the concept of level lock. Level locks are typically where you will find Median XL's new difficult bosses, of which Baal is one of them, but thankfully is balanced for Normal. It simply means you have this much time to be able to still re-enter the map in case you die or need to flee. (It still counts down even when you're not in the map.) Once that timer expires, you can no longer enter the map, and if you're thrown out and the boss is still alive, you will be forced to exit the game and start a new session. This will be more relevant later. I don't take 20 minutes to kill Baal on Normal.
So, Median XL's Baal. Can move. Fast. Very fast. Gone are the days of sitting around doing nothing and sometimes Teleporting. He will walk up to you and stomp him with his mighty crab legs. Yes. He doesn't have Teleport anymore. Doesn't have the floor tentacles either. Honestly, Baal doesn't need them.
Hoarfrost, Incineration Nova, and Mana Rift are still here, but he now uses Defile: which creates patches of black fire that will explode for magic damage after a duration. Finally, there's no Vile Effigy to worry about. You just have to deal with Baal stompin' on ya if you get into melee range.
This may sound like Baal lost half his toolkit, but I do want you to understand that what he has kept and the addition he has is a very effective kit in blowing you up. Mana Rift and the black fire (Defile) in particular are especially dangerous to get hit by. This is due to the fact that it's HEAVY magic damage, and he's fast with those spells. I can tell you right now I have not found much in the way of magic resist so getting caught in a Mana Rift chumps a lot of my Life.
Also I lied, Baal now sometimes Teleports away on damage, and no longer does it at complete random.
He's scary! Much harder than vanilla Baal! Because his kit has been refined to a particularly deadly challenge!
I do not want to be in Baal's face, and unfortunately he's really good at moving out of Wychwind vortices. Even if he's caught in one, he may just teleport out of it. That makes this fight take a while and also be dangerous the entire time. The only real way I can get him to hold still is if I get into his face and get stamped by his legs, which is also something I don't want. Playing cautious does keep me alive though. So long as Baal's putting Defiles on me I can keep running, and so long as he doesn't choose something like teleport to me or Magic Rift my face I'll be fine.
Well, that just leaves one more hero to best the Lord of Destruction. And we have but one more question to ask.
Will it blend?
Yes it blends.
Baal tries teleporting out. It doesn't save him. It never saved any demon.
Music-Baal Dies
(Click here for the full animation.)
The last of the Three has fallen.
It's finally over. The Prime Evils terrorize Sanctuary no more. Let's go to Arty for the end.
First off, Tyrael decides he's just gonna bust into the Worldstone Chamber. It's actually shown he just straight up tunnels into the mountain, through the keep, just to float on down here.
So, ya here to sing my praises again?
However, we are too late to save the Worldstone. Baal's destructive touch has corrupted it completely.
Given enough time, the Worldstone's energies will drain away and the barriers between the worlds will shatter -- the powers of Hell will flood into this...Sanctuary...and eradicate your people and everything you've labored to build.
Therefore, I must destroy the corrupted Worldstone before the powers of Hell take root. This act will change your world forever -- with consequences even I cannot foresee. However, it is the only way to ensure mankind's survival.
Go now, mortal. I have opened a portal that will lead you to safety.
May the Eternal Light shine upon you and your descendants for what you've done this day. The continued survival of mankind is your legacy! Above all else, you have earned a rest from this endless battle.
...Huh. Guess not. The moral of this story is to never try to fight Frankenstein's Monster by trying to chase it down. It'll always be one step ahead of you, and will always dictate where and when you'll meet.
Baal's death, ultimately, means nothing. Neither does his brothers'. Having successfully hoodwinked Tyrael and all of Sanctuary, Baal has long since touched the Triforce the Worldstone and has wished for a world of destruction. You can definitely say him dying is moot, because he has done the best way to gain control of and transfer to the Worldstone: take his tiny saltlick and just put it back on the giant saltlick. If him dying means the Eternal Conflict ends with Hell gaining Sanctuary's power and finally destroying Heaven, then that's perfect.
Therefore, Tyrael is going to do something stupid again.
(You have to leave this chamber or start a new game to get this dialogue in town. I don't think I ever do the former, not even for the LP.)
I need to explain why this is probably the stupidest thing Tyrael will ever do. The High Heavens have been fighting for this thing for ages. Tyrael just, knows it's there. The High Heavens, provided the lore isn't getting its wires crossed, also knows it's there. It's being left alone because during the ceasefire talks they agreed to just leave it there, lest mortals do something fun like attempt to tap into it again. The Primes are there fucking with it, but because they were thrown there. (And if you believe Izual, on purpose.) The Burning Hells as a whole, for the longest time, didn't even know the Worldstone was there. Heck, even after the Sin War, they may still not really understand what's in Sanctuary.
But most importantly, the High Heavens have no idea that the Primes are in Sanctuary.
Because Tyrael hasn't been telling them a damn thing.
This is actually canon. Tyrael's been doing shit like forming the Horadrim, chipping off pieces of that Worldstone to bind them, and telling mortals to strike down the Primes without letting anyone in the Anigiris Council know. This entire time.
This is what that has gotten us. You could say Tyrael did not want to take a world he saved by his single vote and get his fellow angels to eradicate it instead, but oh boy let me tell you this is not better.
Farewell!
To be clear, I'm not giving Tyrael shit over him destroying the Worldstone. We've already fucked up, and unfortunately, yes, him blowing it up is the best case scenario right now. You wouldn't have had to do that though, if you weren't playing hero this entire time. Blowing this rock up isn't something Tyrael is choosing. Tyrael is forced to do this because he could not persuade his council to take notice of the Prime Evils there and he failed to stop the Primes himself, practically at every step of the way if you believe they engineered this entire stay in Sanctuary. You could argue that they wouldn't listen, even decide fuck it blow up Sanctuary, but I can assure you, Tyrael never tried. Tyrael already concluded Sanctuary's doomed if they find out. Tyrael chose action instead. Action by himself. Action that is culminating into destroying the very thing the High Heavens were seeking this entire time.
And don't get me started on the fact that Tyrael cannot comprehend the consequences of his own actions. Each attempt to do good has had repercussions. This one is going to have repercussions no one's going to be able to fathom, least of all Tyrael.
The moment he breaks that stone, the Anigiris Council will notice just what he's been up to, when they notice A: They can see Sanctuary quite easily now, because B: the Worldstone's gone.
Strange that you say that the Worldstone must be destroyed. The prophecies said nothing about that.
Perhaps all we have fought for will be lost...or perhaps we'll never need fight again!
The moral of this story had to be written in post, because the throwaway nature of this story did not leave room for a life lesson or anything of the sort. If there was anything glossed over, it's that sometimes your best is not enough or something. A better aesop to gloss from this is to not think of yourself as the hero who will save the day above all others who work towards it, because the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, or something like that.
A lot of my analysis is thanks to the Book of Cain (released between Diablo II and III) and the Diablo I manual (which has ancient lore about events before Diablo I) fleshing out the details for the story we don't get in-game. However, the Book of Cain doesn't really say much about how bad of an idea this was either. Whole dang story is completely oblivious to what it's actually writing, honestly. (The long gaps between games and rotating writers don't help either.) Everything I said about points this story made usually isn't on purpose. In those cases, this is me drawing my own conclusions, trying to present this game in the best way possible but failing ultimately. ...Just like the heroes in this game.
That's why I call this game and this series a kids show of heroes and villains. Case in point: one of the most important figureheads of the light played hero instead of anything else, and now the battlefield is going to change. Irrepairably. All because Tyrael is famous for being really stupid.
(WHOOPS forgot Cain's pic.)
I knew in time you would defeat Baal. You have done everything you set out to do, my friend.
Ever since you rescued me from Tristram, I have believed in you. It has been a supreme honor to aid you along the way.
So...The Worldstone was corrupted by Baal. And now Tyrael must destroy it. Worry not. Through whatever lies ahead I have faith that the Light will guide us both.
Go, now, back to the Worldstone chamber, and enter the portal Tyrael has opened for you.
Lilith's nightmare is going to come true as well. The last two Great Evils are going to move in, now that they can plainly see Sanctuary and notice just why it distracted not just many demons, but their fellow brothers and sister. Maybe get a chance to get a hold of that apple pie themselves. In an attempt to save the day to prevent Sanctuary from becoming just another battlefield, the actions taken to stop the Prime Evils, ultimately led to Sanctuary becoming just another battlefield. With mortals unable to grasp the nature of the Eternal Conflict, by design thanks to the High Heavens, and those Heavens unable to understand Sanctuary's value both to them and Hell, the dream Inarius and Lilith once had is probably going to die right here.
...That and everyone in this town is probably going to die.
Because that mountain is going to go, kaboom.
Baal would be impressed.
Anyway, Tyrael superturbo died doing that. An explosion that shatters a mountain tends to do that. Luckily, Tyrael just respawns at the Crystal Arch back in heaven, same as any other angel.
When he does, he is in for a fun dressing down. On the bright side, when I implied all the demons were at Mount Arreat, I wasn't joking. So while the Barbarian homeland and just, their very culture, is going to get destroyed as well, Sanctuary will have a brief stint of peace before the Burning Hells notice Sanctuary is wide open and invade in droves. Just enough time to rebuild and take in the new state of Sanctuary before it starts tearing itself apart again.
But all this, and the future of Sanctuary, is a story for another day.
We have finished Diablo II. Upon completion you get a title, dependant on how you played the game. For a normal expansion character it's Slayer. If you're playing on Hardcore and/or without the expansion it's different. What's Hardcore? That'll be covered in a Mechanics talk. The short of it though is: you only live once.
The manuals will be posted in the OP now that I finally remembered them. Here's a sampling of the credits included with those manuals.
I have gone through this game's many faults that don't hold up to time, but let the fact that I played this 7 times over the past few months speak of its staying power. Diablo II is a fun game to relax and waste time with once you know how to get through it. You're only given every incentive to treat this game like a coffee break game, what with the many different toys you can find. Any of the content we've done, we can just do again. Many people who had free time chose to spend it on here, because you can do some crazy stuff with this and with enough time you only find crazier ways to play the game as efficiently as possible. This is a concept future games will look at and see how they can refine it, but I still believe Diablo II, immortal and patriarch of its subgenre, is still a hard king to overthrow. I still haven't quite yet find a game that can completely supplant it in my heart. Do some things better than it, sure, but not take over for every time I had that hack'n'slash loot itch. Part of it is nostalgia for me, but part of it is also just how playing the game feels.
It's largely because the game is accessible. Normal is not particularly hard, and if it weren't for the bugged monsters and their lethality, you could just chill and relax for the first time around. Course, the way it goes about being accessible wasn't perfect, maybe not even remotely close, but I do feel like you could make plenty of mistakes with character progression and still be able to defeat Baal. That and computer RPGs that didn't demand a lot of inner knowledge weren't common in 2000.
However, having killed Baal, you can put this game away and call it done. You've seen almost all of its content. You can stop now. All that's left is for the more dedicated players who have figured out how to tear through this game and is ready for their skills to be tested.
Which is what we'll be doing next time.