Diablo II & LoD Version History

Patch 1.09D (PC Only)

       Fixes

• Fixed a bug with certain Creative Lab DVD drives and copy protection.
• Fixed another bug where a connection problem ("Unable to connect to Battle.net") would instead result in a downloading patch dialog that stayed at 0% indefinitely.
• Fixed a lockup that occurred on Dual CPU/Dual Video card systems when hitting the quit button in chat.

Patch 1.09D (Mac Only)

       Fixes

• Fixed a bug that would kick the Mac out of Battle.net chat at random (usually short) intervals.

Patch 1.09C

       Major Bug

• Fixed a trading bug that could be exploited to allow one user to crash out another user.

       Minor Bug

• Fixes issues with High Point Technology's RAID controller drivers.

       *****Modifications (North American versions only)*****

Please note that included with this patch is a .dll file that relays back to Blizzard the hardware configuration of the system on which the patch is installed. This file will be effective in North America only.

In keeping with our policy of protecting user privacy, we will not be collecting any personal information, nor will we be able to associate any hardware information with any particular user. We will only be recording CPU, RAM, operating system, video card, and sound card information.

The reason we are doing this is to help our development teams optimize our upcoming game, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, for various hardware configurations. The information we receive will help us tailor the game to meet the system requirements of our customers and help us to enhance their overall gameplay experience. If you have any questions or concerns about this procedure, please email us at support@blizzard.com.

Patch 1.09B

       Fixes

• Fixed a bug where a connection problem (ie "Unable to connect to Battle.net") would instead result in a downloading patch dialog that stayed at 0% indefinitely.

Patch 1.09 (Lord of Destruction and Standard)

• Note: certain item changes will not apply retroactively to already existing items.

       Skill Balance Changes

• Decrepify no longer reduces the damage Resistance of immune monsters.
• Reduced damage of additional levels of Firewall starting from level 9.
• Changed Telekinesis to only work on scrolls, potions, keys, gold, arrows and bolts.

       Modifications-Lord of Destruction

• The mouse-over functionality of hireling portraits has been changed. You now must keep your mouse cursor over your hireling for three seconds before the portrait highlights and the text "Drop potion on hireling portrait, right-click to open inventory" appears.
• Gold sharing among party members has been removed.
• Players can no longer give or take items from a hireling if they are not within range (this fixes a bug where the game would crash if a player gave or removed an item from a hireling when the Hireling was out of range).
• Changed enhanced defense per level and enhanced damage per level to display the exact amount of enhancement.
• Changed 'Hit Blinds Target' to a level-based formula.
• Changed 'Freezes Target' item modifier to a level-based formula (improved for melee characters).
• Changed display of enhanced damage vs. demons and enhanced damage vs. undead to be +x% instead of x%.
• Added potential for sockets to Bone Visage Elite Bone Helm, Troll's Nest and Blade Barrier Elite Shields.
• Improved drops for placed (super) Unique monsters such as Bishibosh, Rakanishu, et. al.
• Improved drops for certain quest monsters such as Blood Raven, The Countess, The Cow King, et. al.
• Duriel now always drops a Town Portal scroll in addition to his regular drop.
• Enabled certain Horadric Cube recipes that were disabled in v1.08.
• Enabled "add socket" Horadric Cube recipe.
• Made "add socket" Horadric Cube recipe not work on socketed items.
• Added several very low-level magic affixes.
• Restricted some affixes from generating on certain item types.
• Rare items will now always spawn with three or more affixes if possible.
• Increased chances for 'of blocking' and 'of deflecting' suffix.
• Added increased block rate to 'of blocking' and 'of deflecting' suffixes.
• Personalized item names are now printed in the color of base type.
• Added base item type to highlight info for rune word items.
• Non-weapon items that add damage now do so with regards to bow damage.
• Adjusted strength & dexterity damage bonus for certain items.
• Changed the 'Ethereal' property to modify base stats.
• Changed the 'Reduce Magic Damage' property to spread across frames for multi-frame attacks (such as firewall).
• Altered stats of many Unique items*.
• Altered stats of a few Set items*.
• Altered stats of a few rune word items.
• The Shae, Po, and Jo runes have been renamed. They are now the Shael, Io, and Jah runes respectively
• Reduced chances of elemental damage affixes spawning on Charms.
• Increased bonuses for affixes that increase stack size on Throwing items*.
• Increase chances of Self-repair affixes.
• Increase chances and potency of Replenish quantity affixes*.
• Increased stack sizes of most Throwing weapons.
• Enabled normal Orbs and Circlets.
• Increased maximum number of sockets for some items.
• Rare Jewels are now capped at a maximum of four affixes.
• Adjusted weapon and armor levels and level requirements.
• Stacked items with poison damage now average their poison duration.
• Rejuvenation potions now automatically go into the belt if picked up from the ground.
• Rejuvenation potions can now be shift-clicked from the inventory into an equipped belt.
• Adjusted the Hireling experience system.
• Altered Act 2 Hireling Auras.
• Changed Hireling damage to 50% against bosses in normal, 40% in nightmare, and 25% in hell difficulties.
• Raised maximum price vendors will pay for an item to 30,000 gold pieces in nightmare difficulty, and 35,000 gold pieces in hell difficulty.
• Added health Regeneration to all hireling types.
• Iron Maiden and Thorns effects now treat Hirelings as players with respect to damage.
• Hirelings now gain experience from monsters killed by Minions and other party members.
• Using a potion from the belt (either by hotkey or right-clicking) while holding down the shift key will give the potion to the player's hireling if he/she has one.
• Lowered maximum duration for which Hirelings could be stunned.
• Iron Golems are now saved with the player.
• Color coded monsters' elemental/physical immunity info display. (For example, Fire Immune is printed in red).
• Changed monster stats back to what they were before v1.08.
• Reduced the Resistance bonus for Magic Resistant Uniques (It was 75%; it is now 40%).
• The monsters in Act 4 that eat corpses will no longer eat corpses that have already been used.
• The Resistance penalty at higher difficulty levels no longer applies to Magic Resistance.
• Crush Beasts no longer give only 1 exp when they are killed.
• Changed PvP penalty for players or Hirelings attacking other players to 1/4.
• Implemented PvP penalty of 1/2 for Hirelings attacking other Hirelings.
• Town portal use has been restricted to party members only.
• Reduced damage multiplier for act-end boss attacks vs. minions.
• Broken Ethereal items now sell for 1 gold.
• Added Thawing Potions to vendor inventories in Act IV and Act V.
• It is now possible (albeit very rare) to get Set and Unique items from gambling.
• Increased the chances of getting a Rare item from gambling.
• Keys may now be purchased in bulk (shift + right-click).
• Swapped properties for Jah and Cham runes in weapons.
• Added rune words for Single Player/Other Multi Player which previously only showed up on Realm games.
• Adjusted hover text box sizes.
• Updated the pop-up text to reflect adjusted monster attack and defense.
• Adjusted memory management code.
• Typing "players X", where X is a number between the current number of players and the maximum (8), in the message box will now set the effective number of players in the game (in single player, open Battle.net and TCP/IP games only).
• Removed global Physical Resistance from Nightmare difficulty games.
• Fixed a bug where Tyrael would sometimes create an inaccessible portal.
• Fixed a bug where a player who was disconnected from Battle.net while in the Imbue screen would crash.

• Fixed bonus to Undead damage modifier to work with ranged weapons.
• Fixed bonus to Demon damage modifier to work with ranged weapons.
• Fixed 'Reduces Target Defense' modifier to work with ranged weapons.
• Fixed a bug where item-specific partial Set bonuses didn't get applied.
• Fixed a bug where the enhanced defense for items that gained it on a per level basis was improperly calculated (such as Blackoak shield).
• Fixed a bug where the enhanced damage for items that gained it on a per level basis was improperly calculated (such as Hellslayer).
• Fixed a bug where certain two-handed and missile weapons did not get the displayed damage bonus (such as Magewrath).*
• Fixed Piercing weapons to work correctly with Amazon skills (such as Doomslinger).
• Fixed a bug where items could give characters skills that are exclusive to another Character class.
• Fixed a bug with weapon swapping which allowed some character classes to dual wield items. When a player that is illegally wielding two items enters a game, one of the items will be deleted.
• Fixed bug which allowed certain Horadric Cube recipes that were meant to be disabled to continue to function.
• Fixed a bug where trying to display the highlight info for an item with too many modifiers would crash the game.
• Fixed a bug in using an item that gives Werewolf/Werebear skills when no skill points were originally assigned to those skills caused an assertion.
• Fixed various bugs with the second quest of Act 5.
• (Macintosh Only) Fixed a bug where a user running Diablo II Expansion in 800x600 received an assertion when entering Diablo II standard games.

• Fixed a bug where Elemental damage did not display correctly for Throwing Weapons.
• Fixed a bug in the determination of magic affix levels.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Ethereal throwing items to be stacked with non-Ethereal ones.
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to repair and/or recharge Charged Ethereal items.
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to repair Throwing Potions.
• Fixed a bug where Throwing Weapons brought from standard Diablo II could not be Imbued in Diablo II Expansion Set.
• Fixed a bug where certain Paladin shields were not able to be personalized.
• Fixed a bug where it sometimes did not verify replacing a dead hireling with a new one.
• Fixed a bug that allowed the same Unique to be spawned more than once in a game.
• Fixed various Horadric Cube recipes that create magic items.
• Fixed a bug that caused a rune word item to lose its rune word bonuses when transferred off of the character who created it.
• Fixed a bug which caused the variable attributes of a rune word item to reset inappropriately.
• Fixed a bug where using the Taunt skill would sometimes cause the game to crash.
• Fixed a bug where the Firewall animation display without doing any damage.
• Fixed a bug where Sanctuary allows the Paladin to ignore an Undead monster's damage resistance.
• Fixed a bug where left-hand throw was throwing using too many missiles per throw.
• Fixed a bug where certain Charged items would use multiple charges per casting.
• Fixed a bug that caused Cold Mastery to think other players were immune when they were not.
• Fixed a bug where you could select Baal's dead tentacles.
• Fixed a bug where in a Realm game, Nihlathak would remain in town even after another player killed him.
• Fixed a bug where Anya would not always give a class-specific item for her quest reward.
• Fixed a bug where the invisible monster in the Worldstone Keep could be affected by Monster Shrines.
• Fixed a bug where Monster Shrines could affect Druid Vines.
• Fixed bug where Regurgitators would eat Hirelings and destroy them.
• Fixed Act 1 hirelings to be able to use bows with special arrows (such as Witherstring).
• Fixed a bug where hirelings' items would not update if they could no longer meet the requirements to wear them.
• Fixed Immolation Arrow to do initial weapon damage; no base physical damage is included in the radius.
• Fixed Freezing Arrow to do initial weapon damage; no base physical damage is included in the radius.
• Fixed Poison Javelin to do initial weapon damage.
• Fixed Plague Javelin to do initial weapon damage.
• Fixed Lightning Fury to do initial weapon damage.
• Fixed a Fend bug that would abort the Fend prematurely on the server. (This applies to Zeal and various other skills as well.)
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash when a character clicked on his/her own feet.
• Fixed invalid line Automap options from v1.08.
• Fixed drawing problem for charges/ammo counts on skill icons where the number of charges would extend off the icon.
• Fixed some spelling errors in the text.
• Fixed some errors in translations.
• Fixed a variety of crash bugs.
• Fixed a bug where hireling health regeneration was dependent on the number of players in game.
• Fixed a bug that allowed hirelings to be converted.
• Fixed a bug where items that add to skills had no effect on Hirelings.
• (Macintosh Only) Fixed a bug that made it possible to have the character walk endlessly toward the lower left corner of the screen without input from the player.
• Fixed a bug that caused garbage characters to appear at the top of the screen at the start of a realm game.

• Fixed a bug in Diablo II where uniques and champions could drop throwing items as their "magic" item drop.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Diablo II players to put a socket in rare items with the Horadric cube recipe.
• Fixed a bug in Diablo II that allowed hirelings to be brought into other acts.

• Changed the Diablo II Standard blocking method back to the old method.
• Adjusted damage and attack rating of monsters in Diablo II Standard.
• Removed global Physical Resistance for monsters in Hell difficulty in Diablo II Standard.

Patch 1.08

       Skill Balance Changes

       Barbarian

• Whirlwind now alternates between two weapons when using two-weapon style.

       Paladin

• Increased Holy Shock's melee damage bonus.
• Decreased the power of Conviction.
• Added a casting delay for Fist of Heavens and increased its damage.
• Increased the blocking bonus that Holy Shield gives.
• Conviction does not affect immunities.

       Necromancer

• Increased Fire Golem's melee damage.
• The hitpoints for a Revived monster no longer increase with more players in a game.
• Amplify Damage and Lower Resist do not affect immunities.

       Sorceress

• Increased Fire Wall's damage.
• Increased Blizzard's duration.
• Decreased Meteor's casting delay.
• Decreased casting time for Chain Lightning and Lightning.
• Increased Frozen Orb's damage.
• Thunderstorm now hits a target every time.
• Cold Mastery will not affect cold immune monsters.
• The damage inflicted by Ice Blast, Fire Ball, Lightning, Nova, and Glacial Spike, per level has been increased.

       Amazon

• Increased Freezing Arrow damage.
• Increased Ice Arrow damage.
• Increased Immolation Arrow damage, added a casting delay and decreased the fire duration.
• Added a casting delay to Plague Javelin and increased its damage.

       Modifications

• Creatures can be summoned in town, as long as the summoning does not require a corpse.
• Adjusted affix level for wands and staves. (Higher levels of these items have better magic attributes.)
• Increased the chance of enhanced damage affixes on weapons.
• Increased the chance of enhanced attack rating affixes on weapons.
• Increased the chance of enhanced armor affixes on armor.
• Increased the chance of elemental damage suffixes on weapons.
• Increased the level and the damage for certain high level elemental damage affixes.
• Increased chances of extra quantity affixes on throwing items.
• Increased chances of regenerate quantity affixes on throwing items.
• Changed Izual to be able to drop treasure.
• Changed Charsi's imbue quest to always give a plus to individual skills on items that can have them.
• Items sold to stores are priced as if they were fully repaired.
• Lowered prices for items with +2 or +3 to single skills.
• Removed throwing potions from stores.
• Unique monsters with the "teleport" attribute now heal a fixed amount.
• Crushing blow is at 1/2 effectiveness on bows.
• Crushing blow is affected by physical resistance.
• Increased chances of finding unique and set items.
• Slightly increased the item drop rate for extra players in a game that are not in your party.
• Lowered gambling prices that scale with your level.
• Changed prices on rejuvenation and full rejuvenation potions.
• Increased blocking for grim shield.
• Increased AC for Bone visage helm.
• Changed increased rate items, (fast, faster, fastest) to display as a percentage faster.
• When used in melee throwing weapon durability decreases at one third the thrown rate.
• +2 to all skills affixes can now spawn on rare amulets.
• Changed items with pierce to use their pierce value as a percentage instead of as a level in the skill.
• Added sound to shift-click of potions in grid.
• Keys now stack to 12 instead of 6.
• Right mouse click works the same as left mouse click if assigned an attack skill.
• Act II hirelings have been improved with additional skills including auras.
• When using two-handed attacks the speed of both weapons are averaged.

       Major bugs

• Addressed certain duping issues when entering and leaving games.
• Fixed a bug which could allow you to have a defense rating after using Berserk.

       Minor bugs

• Added missing "crimson" affix with adds +5-10 fire resistance.
• Fixed a bug were expert's/veteran's/master's prefixes were swapped with sounding/resonant/echoing prefixes.
• Fixed a bug which allowed spells cast while wearing items of piercing to have piercing.
• Fixed a bug where single skill bonuses did not stack properly.
• Fixed a bug where variable costs for armor types was not being calculated properly.
• Fixed a bug where you were allowed to multi-buy rejuv potions in stores.
• Fixed the bug that added javelin damage to Lightning Fury, and made the graphics simpler for the lightning.

How will the Diablo® II 1.08 patch alter my gameplay experience?
The Diablo II 1.08 patch will adjust the balance of several skills, modify certain aspects of gameplay and address bugs previously found in the game. For a comprehensive list of modifications, please read the patch text file provided with the patch.

Why did Blizzard Entertainment decide to make gameplay changes to Diablo II?
In order to maintain Blizzard Entertainment's high standards of quality, we continue fine-tuning gameplay, when appropriate, by providing patches. Patch 1.08 was designed specifically to enhance the classic gameplay found in Diablo II by creating improvements to the balance and item generation found in the game. These improvements were also incorporated to prolong the life of the product for our players without requiring the purchase of Diablo® II: Lord of Destruction TM.

Why can't I cast some spells as frequently as before?
We have introduced the concept of Casting Delays for certain spells. A Casting Delay is a period of time after a player has cast a spell during which the player cannot re-cast that spell. For example, after casting the Blizzard spell you must wait a few seconds before you're able to cast another one. These casting delays will provide the player with an increase in frame rate. Further, the spells modified by casting delays have been enhanced to make them much more powerful in order to compensate for the new delay between castings.

What spells have been made more powerful by the implementation of casting delays?
All of the spells associated with Casting Delays have been made more powerful to provide counterbalance. The Casting Delays vary from skill to skill. Most skills will continue to not have a Casting Delay. For a complete list of spells that now utilize casting delays, please see the URL below. Each of the spells, which are listed in this link, will include details as to how they were each modified.

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/castingdelays.shtml

Why have Set and Unique Items been removed from the Gamble option?
Set and Unique Items have been removed from the Gambling option in order to increase their rarity. By limiting their availability, we make Set and Unique Items more rare and in turn, increase their value and power. As always, Set and Unique items can be found as treasure through exploration of the world or by trading with another player.

Were any changes made to the random properties on Magic Items?
Yes. Modifications were made to some of the properties that will appear on individual item types and also to the timing in which these properties and items appear in the game. This revised method of generating items means that both high and low level characters will find items more appropriate for their level of experience throughout the game.

What changes have been made to Unique Items?
Newly dropped Unique Items will now have level requirements. Certain Unique Items have also been given upgrades to their Defense and Damage. These changes were implemented to better balance these items and to prevent low-level characters from utilizing extremely powerful Unique Items.

How will Unique Items that I already own be affected by these new enhancements?
Unique Items that players currently own will receive the upgrades to Defense and Damage, but will not be given level requirements. However, when players convert their Characters for use in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, these items will be given level requirements.

What is Blizzard's policy on item duping?
We believe that item duping undermines the basic rules of fair play and detracts from the spirit of true competition. Furthermore, we have discouraged item duping by blocking all known duping exploitations and have removed duped items from our servers. We shall continue to monitor and stop any attempts at item duplication

What changes have been made to dual leech jewelry items (Life & Mana Stealing) and how will this affect game play?
Dual leech items no longer spawn in games. We felt that they were too powerful and imbalanced the game. Existing items will not be modified, and characters will retain their previously acquired dual leech items.

What changes have been made to Battle.net since the release of Diablo II?
Blizzard Entertainment continues to make several enhancements to the Battle.net infrastructure by increasing the number of servers and providing additional bandwidth. Beginning June 2000 and continuing through June 2001, we have increased the number of game servers in our Asia gateway to 300, increased the number of servers in the US gateways to 160 and raised the number of servers to 48 in the Europe gateway. We have also added two new Asian Realms to our Diablo II world as well as increased the size of all Realms. The Battle.net team is extremely committed to providing our users with the best possible game play experience. In order to provide this experience, we have also expanded the number of personnel dedicated to Battle.net. These changes were put into place in order to make your gaming experience enjoyable while maintaining our dedication to keeping Battle.net a complimentary service.

       Skill Balance Changes

       Paladin

• In non-expansion games, the Blessed Hammer/Concentration combination remains the same.
• Zeal is now limited to 5 swings and gives an increased percentage to Attack Rating.
• Fixed display for Vengeance's damage to reflect its actual damage.
• Increased damage for Fist of the Heavens.
• Decreased the length of time that Converted monsters fight for you.
• Increased the Smite damage for Holy Shield.
• Increased resistance bonus for Resist Fire, Resist Cold, Resist Lightning, and Salvation.
• Increased the Mana regeneration rate for Meditation.
• Added melee lightning damage to Holy Shock.
• Added melee damage to undead to Sanctuary.
• Allowed Conviction to reduce an enemy's resistance to a negative value.
• Increased the player's resistance penalty for Conviction.
• Added a damage bonus to Fanaticism.

       Barbarian

• In expansion games, Whirlwind is now properly modified by weapon speed.
• In non-expansion games, Whirlwind remains the same.
• Frenzy, Double-Swing, and Double-Throw are now properly modified by weapon speed.
• Added damage bonuses to Concentrate and Frenzy.
• Frenzy now increases in attack speed as more monsters are hit.
• Increased the damage bonus on Berserk.
• Changed Battle Orders bonus to increase by 3% per level at all levels.
• Increased the damage of War Cry.

       Amazon

• Strafe has a greater range.
• Impale and Jab are now properly modified by weapon speed.
• Impale increases damage with level and decreases the chance to lose durability.
• Fend is now uninterruptible and does more damage.

       Sorceress

• Increased the damage of Hydra.
• Lightning Mastery now affects electrical damage rather than decreasing the Mana cost of those skills.
• Added a casting delay to Fire Wall, Meteor, Blizzard, Frozen Orb, and Hydra and commensurately increased their damage to prevent a drop in framerate, while maintaining the same overall balance.
• Decreased the Mana cost for Enchant and increased its bonus to fire damage.
• Most skills received a damage increase when the skill level is above 8.

       Necromancer

• Enhanced the damage and decreased duration for Poison Dagger, Poison Explosion and Poison Nova.
• Increased duration and adjusted radius for Decrepify.
• Fixed Iron Maiden+Blood Golem bug and increased the Blood Golem's Life stealing.

       Major Bugs

• Fixed a bug with Paladin skills and party/hostility on the borders of town.
• Fixed a bug that allowed a Necromancer to summon more than one Golem at a time.
• Player can no longer steal Life/Mana from inanimate objects.
• Fire Mastery now correctly increases damage to the Hydra skill.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented Hirelings from dying along with the player.
• Fixed the double-draw bug in some skill effects, including Blizzard, to improve framerate.
• Fixed the updating of the summonables' health bar on their icons.
• Fixed a bug with left-hand swinging on the right-hand spell selection side.
• Fixed the pop-up description for Fist of the Heavens.
• Fixed the overlapping of the character name and level name in the party screen.
• Fixed bug with Barbarian Masteries.

       Modifications

• Gambling prices are now based on the character level.
• Sets and Uniques can no longer be gambled for.
• Boss monsters now do 30% less damage to Hirelings and minions than before.
• Monsters now display if they are Undead or Demon, when highlighted. If nothing is listed, they are an "Animal" type.
• General levels for monsters in Nightmare and Hell difficulty have been adjusted.
• Maximum monster level is now level 70 in Nightmare and level 90 in Hell.
• Monsters in Nightmare/Hell difficulty, have higher Resistances, Hit Points, and lower attack ratings than before.
• Poison Damage attacks from Monsters, do more damage than before.
• Mana and Life stealing effects are reduced by half in Nightmare and Hell.
• Retrieving your corpse where it died in Nightmare and Hell restores 50% of any experience lost at death.
• Adjusted the stocking of vendor inventories based on difficulty level.
• Adjusted how Hirelings react to missiles.
• Adjusted Hireling resistances.
• Increased the amount of Gold a character can hold in the Stash.
• Increased the power of all Gems/Skulls and added level requirements.
• Increased the power of all throwing potions and added level requirements.
• Increased the resistance penalty in Nightmare difficulty to -40 and Hell difficulty to -100.
• Sounds for Gems in inventory have changed.
• Looting corpses is available only in Hardcore games.
• In multi-player, you may only go hostile once per minute with each other player in your game.
• New Party Experience Bonus to players in a Party in multiplayer.
• Crystal Swords have an increased durability.
• Scepter class items have increased damage.

       Improvements

• Holding down SHIFT and RIGHT-Clicking, when buying health potions, auto-fills any empty slots in the belt. This applies to buying scrolls of Town Portal and Identify scrolls too.
• Holding down SHIFT and LEFT-Clicking on health potions in inventory, will auto-move them to the appropriate column in your belt.
• Added a new 'Repair All' button for equipped items at the armorers in each Act.
• New Auto-Map functionality. Players can adjust the size of the Auto-Map in the "Auto-Map Options" menu, switching to the new "Mini-Map".
• Up to 8 "Hotkeys" are available to assign skills to now.
• Improved the displays for character status screens.
  • Total blocking % is now shown and is a related to a player's level and dexterity.
  • Chance to Hit and Defense against last monster fought is now shown.
  • Maximum Resistances are now shown in Gold color.
  • Elemental damage only items, display colors for elemental type damage.
• Wells now heal hirelings.
• Removed collisions for players with pets.
• Pets health will scale up accordingly in Nightmare and Hell difficulty.

       Attention

• Players can no longer steal Life/Mana from certain monster types.
• Names of pre-existing Rare Items have changed. However, the item properties have not.
• The maximum damage of Enhanced Damage items may change 1-3 points.
• The damage of many items has been increased.
• Items with one or two sockets may gain an additional socket.
• After patching, newly-discovered Set and Unique items will have additional level requirements.
• Level requirements have not changed for Classic Set items (those discovered in the original Diablo II).

Patch 1.06

      Improvements

• Updated Battle.net's Terms of Service agreement. It can now be accessed without having to create a new account.
• Further optimized client to server communication.
• Fixed copy-protection for various CD, DVD and CD-R drives.
• Duplicate items on the Realms eliminated; scanning system for dupes implemented.
  
• Q&A on this issue:
  

  Q: Why have some of my items of a certain type vanished?
  A: Character files were scanned for duplicated items. All duplicate items but one were deleted.
  
  Q: What items were selected for deletion?
  A: All rare and unique items were scanned for duplicates.
  
  Q: Why did Blizzard Entertainment only delete some of the dupes, and not every dupe?
  A: Blizzard Entertainment wants to maintain an enjoyable and balanced play experience for every user. To that end, we removed all but one duplicate item. We're making an effort to protect those players that legitimately traded for those items.
  
  Q: Are all methods of duping stopped?
  A: All known methods of duping have been fixed. We will continue to monitor the Diablo II realms for duplication exploits and fix them as needed.
  
  Q: Where can I report hacks or exploits?
  A: You can send your reports to hacks@blizzard.com.

Patch 1.05B

      Major bugs

• Fixed a video driver crash encountered when displaying graphics in the Battle.net chat room.
• Fixed copy-protection for various CD, DVD and CD-R drives.
• Fixed a problem where character avatars were left in the list after that character had left a channel.
• Fixed several visual glitches with the character select screen.

Patch 1.05

      Major bugs

• Fixed copy-protection for various CD, DVD, and CD-R drives.
• Barbarians wielding two potions are no longer prevented from entering games.
• Socketed items were mistakenly and irreversibly de-randomized in 1.04. Now their gem effect values are taken from the upper end of their original (pre-1.04) random ranges.
• Fixed all spell ranges. They were mistakenly reduced in v1.04.
• Fixed a bug that prevented deleting some Characters.
• Fixed numerous foreign language display problems.

      Minor bugs

• Fixed a bug in the trade screen when the Horadric Cube was open.
• Duplicate ladder entries should no longer occur.
• The Ladders scroll properly now when there are less than 999 entries.
• Realm characters should no longer appear as robed.
• Fixed a bug allowing users to appear in a channel twice.
• If the user cannot connect to a default realm, a "Realm down" message is displayed.
• Fixed the "packet sniffing" exploit used when gambling.
• High-durability items no longer lose durability when you join a game after exiting or dying.
• The Conversion skill no longer causes a monster counting error in the Den of Evil.

      Improvements

• A prompt now appears informing the user to delete characters when they have greater than eight characters in a Realm.
• Player profiles now have a link to their ladder records, if they are in the top 999.
• A "connecting to realm" message was added.

      Balance changes

• The Paladin's Concentration skill now enhances the damage of Blessed Hammer just as it did in 1.03. The damage displayed on the Character screen is correct, too.
• The Amazon's Strafe skill now correctly enhances base bow damage rather than total bow damage.
• The Amazon's Guided Arrow skill now enhances base bow damage rather than total bow damage.

Patch 1.04B (PC Only)

• Fixed problems with accessing the Play CD at startup on some CD and DVD drives.
• Fixed a crash problem with the Video Tester in Windows NT and Windows 2000.
  

• Only download the version 1.04C patch if you have CD problems after installing the 1.04B patch.
• Fixed problems with accessing the Play CD at startup on some CD and DVD drives.

Patch 1.04

      Major bugs

• The Prismatic amulet, Coral ring, and other Horadric Cube recipe items no longer change into other items upon starting a new game.
• Lances, Holy Water Sprinklers, Grim Helms, War Clubs, and Stilettos can now be dropped by monsters and chests.
• Using the Paladin Charge skill as a monster dies cannot generate a "zero hit-point" monster.
• Fixed an assertion when a high-level character kills a monster.
• Barbarian's Whirlwind and Leap Attack and Paladin's Charge no longer keep all inventory items red and unusable after attack ends.
• A "dead, but alive" bug has been fixed.
• Equipping a barbarian with a two-handed sword or with a shield while holding two two-handed swords will no longer cause disconnection from the Realm.
• Fixed an assertion that could happen when unequipping one item while wearing another gemmed item that enhances a character stat.
• Fixed a bug that prevented damage-enhancing magic properties from working properly on bows.
• Closed a loophole that could allow a player to declare hostility on anyone regardless of where the declarer is.
• Closed a loophole that could allow a player to run around too fast.
• Closed a loophole that allowed a player to equip and use an item that was beyond the character's ability.
• Improved compatibility with Delta CD-ROM drives.
• When loading a saved character holding bad items, all the bad items are deleted, allowing the character to be played.

      Minor bugs

• Charged Bolts are no longer invisible for a radius (based on the caster's light radius).
• "Bonefarming" eliminated in Single Player and Open games.
• Fixed the "Moon-walking" bug that occasionally appeared when knocked back by a monster.
• French and German Create Queue status messages no longer overlap.
• Fixed attack speed bonuses and descriptions to be accurate for Griswold's Edge, Goreshovel, The Diggler, Witherstring, and Twitchtroe.
• Fixed cast rate descriptions for the unique and set items: Arcanna's Tricks, Maelstromwrath, Ume's Lament, The Iron Jang Bong, Wall of the Eyeless, and Magefist.
• Long emotes in chat combined with a 15 character-long name no longer assert.
• The inventory sounds of the Sallet, Heavy Bracers, Battle Gauntlets, War Gauntlets, Mesh Boots, Battle Boots, War Boots, and Demonhide Sash are now the same as the unexceptional versions of these items.
• Removed "invisible islands" from the River of Flame, Tal Rasha's Tomb, Spider Forest, and Tower Cellar, preventing Barbarians/Sorceresses from leaping/teleporting onto them.
• Changed the Amazon's Jab skill description to multiple attacks.
• Fixed a number of typos ("ordinateur" (in French version), "Eats and Spits Corpses", "Stiletto", "Explore Tal Rasha's Chamber") and capitalization mistakes ("extra gold from monsters", "better chance of getting magic item", "Hit Causes Monster To Flee", "bonus to Attack Rating", "Slows target by", and "Hit blinds target").
• When a Realm character tries to join a game at a higher difficulty level than earned, the correct error message is used.
• The difficulty setting of the last Realm game created or joined will no longer carry over to the next Single Player game.
• Fixed an error displaying the Chance to be Hit by a monster when having activated a second Armor Shrine before the first one wears off. The chance actually never goes below 5%.
• Fixed a bug where an open quest log was not updated to reflect the saving of Cain.
• Fixed a bug that gave the wrong name to a Waypoint highlighted by a player standing in a different "room" in the game environment.
• Two-handed items are now equipped properly (doing proper damage) at the beginning of a game.
• Clicking on one's corpse (while equipped with nothing) properly re-equips all the items from the corpse.
• Closing the Waypoint list by pressing Ctrl+Alt no longer disables pop-up text on NPC's and inventory items.
• Attempting to trade a Tome or Scroll to a player without enough room to accept them, no longer causes a phantom Spell to appear in that player's spellbook.
• The gauntlet cursor can no longer be erroneously turned into a trade/repair arrow/hammer.
• Fixed a bug with the mini-experience bar above level 75.
• Fixed a bug in the display of the Chance to be Hit.
• Fixed a bug in the count of the number of Scrolls remaining in Tomes of Town Portal and Identify.
• The ranges of the Scythe and Grim Scythe have been increased to the intended values.
• A miscalculation of the distance ranges of some skills has been fixed.
• The Iron Maiden skill now heals a Blood Golem based on the amount of damage done to it rather than the maximum life of the monster attacking it.
• Fixed a bug with experience accumulation and its display in the Realm Ladders above level 93.
• Guided Arrow skill properly increases damage with additional skill points.

      Improvements

• The Realms handle character data more quickly now.
• Added a Battle.net gateway selection to the main menu.
• Added a Change Password feature.
• Battle.net messaging has been upgraded to use character names, not just account names. The new message addressing formats are: /msg CharacterName, /msg CharacterName@RealmName (where RealmName is USWest, USEast, Asia, or Europe), and /msg *accountname. The old addressing format was: /msg accountname.
• Duriel's graphics are pre-loaded before entering his lair. This minimizes the chance of getting killed by him before loading is complete.
• Added a CONTRAST video option to allow users who preferred the original Glide settings to the 1.03 version to change the setting back or somewhere in between.
• Slightly increased the effectiveness of Corpse Explosion by making every point (not every other one) add to the radius of the damage.
• Health and mana reductions are no longer smoothed. Now, if you take a big hit, you immediately see a big drop.
• Grim Shield base blocking was changed from 0 to 10.
• Added low quantity warning for Balanced Axe and Hurlbat.
• Added chances for Blades and Stiletto to be generated as treasure.
• An equipped belt can now be traded, if it is empty of all items.
• If player 1 has a chat window open and player 2 clicks on player 1, nothing will happen now. This prevents trading requests from interrupting someone who is trying to chat.
• Messages sent by a player in trade are only sent to the other person with whom the player is currently trading. Also, messages from players outside the trade are squelched and will not appear in the message log.
• Color codes sent by other users in chat are filtered out, preventing malicious masquerading.
• Chat colors have been adjusted to help players identify the source of the text. The new chat colors are Name = Gold, Whisper = Green, Alert = Red, Message = White, Emote = Gray, Enter/Exit = Gray, and Blizzard Representative = Blue.
• Removed the chat cheats "scrollhack1" and "scrollhack2".
• Added some new error messages to Battle.net and clarified a few others.
• Changed the Battle.net chat history scroll bar to Windows-style "page up/down" instead of "scroll to this spot".
• Changed the "i" and "l" (lower-case "L") in the Battle.net chat font to look different. The small "5" and "6" in the Character screen are now more distinguishable, too.
• Maximum number of characters increased to 8 Battle.net characters/realm.
  

      ******Game Hint/Spoiler******

• Quest items will no longer be destroyed when transmuting quest items in the Horadric Cube already containing another complete recipe.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented the Golden Bird and Gidbinn quests from giving their rewards.
• Cain no longer gives out extra Mephisto Soulstones.
• Removed the pesky "thief" ability from Lord De Seis. (That oughta fix him!)
• Fixed a bug that erroneously gave credit for the Act 4 Soulstone quest to a party member who was not in Act 4.
• The resistances of certain Super-unique monsters have been reduced. Now, Andariel correctly takes extra damage from fire, while the Smith and Hephasto take extra damage from poison.

• ATI's most recent driver update has solved incompatibilies with Rage 128 video cards and RAVE/OpenGL. To use RAVE or OpenGL with a Rage 128 card, you will need to download and install the new drivers, and then choose "Rescan Monitors" from the video configuration screen. If you can already select RAVE or OpenGL mode, you do not need to download this update. The drivers can be downloaded from: http://blizzard.com/support/diablo2/problems/macsoft.shtml


• Minor changes for Japanese and Korean support

• Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when playing in RAVE or OpenGL. (Mac only)
• Fixed a rare bug that could cause the game to lock up in low memory situations. (Mac only)

      Major bugs

• Fixed a rare bug that would mark a character as "Unable to join, Bad item." A typical cause of this bug was high lag conditions while two characters simultaneously attempted to use the same item lying on the ground for example, a Necromancer casting Iron Golem on a sword while another tried to pick it up.
• Fixed a bug where Diablo II would crash when using 64MB video cards.

      Minor bugs

• Fixed a loophole that allowed either the Necromancer wearing the complete set of Infernal Tools or the Paladin with the Milabrega set to temporarily boost his skills to very high levels.
• Fixed a bug that caused Amazons wielding a javelin in the right side inventory box and a shield in the left to do no damage with javelin-throwing skills assigned to the right mouse button.
• Fixed a bug in Open games that dropped players with slower machines from the game when they talked to Act III NPCs.
• Fixed 3 rare lock-up bugs with Lord De Seis: 1) killing him as any character, 2) leaping away from him as a Barbarian, and 3) being killed by him while simultaneously drinking a potion.
• If a player tries to create a game when a Realm server is fully occupied, the player is prompted to join a game instead. It no longer reports "Server Down" in this case.
• The "Toggle Belt" hotkey is no longer active when the in-game chat overlay is displayed.

      Improvements

• Game creation queue added. Client now informed of game creation position.
• Reduced the average bandwidth required for each player/client. Effects: reduction in lag and a slight modification to the updating of the Life Orb. There may be a period of adjustment for some players and we encourage you to pay closer attention to your Life Orb until you are used to this change.
• Added support for future server performance improvements. Effect: Future reduction in lag and future increase in the number of games per server.
• When a server goes down, the clients will no longer be left in "limbo" for up to 20 seconds, but will exit immediately to Battle.net chat.
• Messages from Battle.net are now yellow.
• In 3dfx/Glide mode, colors are not as washed out and cinematics look better.

      Balance Changes

• Players that have not completed the last quest in Act III can no longer use the Portal to Act IV until they have properly completed that quest.
• Corpse Explosion (Necromancer) Reduced the extra radius gained per level of the skill from 1 to 1/2. Reduced the explosion damage so that it is not scaled up for each additional player in the game.
• Revive (Necromancer) Removed the hit point boost for extra levels gained in this skill.
• Conversion (Paladin) Lowered the formula calculating the chance to convert for extra levels gained in this skill.
• Whirlwind (Barbarian) Decreased the number of attack attempts made when using this skill.
• Pierce (Amazon) Magical arrow effects such as Immolation will apply to every target hit.

Patch 1.02

      Major bugs

• Fixed a bug that deleted your single player or open character if you deleted a Realm character with the same name.
• Fixed several bugs to improve memory usage--those bugs could cause the game to slow down after playing for a while.
• Fixed a bug associated with ejecting the Play CD.

      Minor Bugs

• More consistent closing of dialog boxes and pop-up screens when hitting Esc key.
• Fixed a bug to allow faster drawing of the auto-map.

      Improvements

• Will auto-close some NPC menus when necessary.
• The automap can be toggled when a waypoint is active.
• Game log file names follow the format D2YearMonthDay.txt.

      ******Game Hint/Spoiler******

• Fixed a bug that caused the portal to the Valley of the Magi to disappear if a player had completed the Arcane Sanctuary quest (by killing the Summoner) but exited the game without taking the portal and establishing the waypoint in the Valley of the Magi. (Act II).

Patch 1.01

      Major bugs

• Fixed a bug that prevented you from getting credit for killing a quest boss, if you died before it did - perhaps, by killing it with a poisoned weapon.
• Fixed a bug that could crash the game during the countdown after completing the final quest in Act IV, if the player used Waypoints to return to the earlier Acts.
• Fixed a hang bug that could occur if picking up gold while fleeing from a Gargantuan Beast (Act I).
• Fixed a crash bug that very rarely occurred when a Sorceress cast the Meteor spell.
• Fixed the "black screen" crash that could occur if one pressed 'Alt-tab' during a cinematic.
• A Multiplayer Install running DirectDraw will no longer crash when one cancels the Cinematic selection menu.
• Fixed a bug that prevented two quest rewards from scaling up properly for Nightmare and Hell difficulty.
• Sand Leaper corpses no longer prevent players from moving through a tight pass in the Act II desert.
• Wounded Act II spiders no longer greatly reduce the frame rate.
• Lower-titled characters may now join Open games created by higher-titled characters (those who have completed the game in Normal, Nightmare, or Hell difficulty).
• Fixed a bug that prevented some complete Item Sets from having their full bonus.
• Fixed a bug in Open battle.net games that allowed a second player to create another game with the same name as an already existing game. No one could join the second one.
• Fixed a bug in TCP/IP games when a Town Portal was smothered in piles of gold, it could cause a player entering from the other end of the Portal to be disconnected from the Host.
• Fixed a bug that prevented interacting with the Stash, NPCs, or Waypoints if the player clicked on the Stash, then pressed 'H' before arriving at the Stash, and finally pressed 'H' again after arriving at the Stash.

      Minor bugs

• Removed an unused gossip from Ormus (Act III).
• Fixed a bug where if the 'Space bar' were assigned to another function, it would erroneously continue to close the Message Log, Quest Log, and Waypoint menu.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally allowed some monsters to enter the Act II town of Lut Gholein.

      Improvements

• Improved the stability of the servers and the behavior of clients when a server malfunctions.
• Changed the amount of gold dropped by a player who is killed by another player (PKed) to equal the amount that would normally be lost "to the void" as a death penalty when killed by a monster.
• Updated the ReadMe.htm to document the PK gold-drop penalty.
• Changed the text color for Blizzard Representatives in Diablo II chat rooms to yellow.
• Australian users connect to the USWest Realm instead of the Asia Realm.

      ******Game Hints/Spoilers******

• Fixed a crash bug that occurred upon entering the red Portal to the Canyon of the Magi, if a player had completed the Arcane Sanctuary quest, then saved and started a new game, before completing the Seven Tombs quest (Act II).
• Fixed a multiplayer bug that prevented a character from completing the final quest in Act II (and advancing to Act III), when joining a game started by a character who had already defeated the final boss, but who had not yet visited Meshif for the reward.
• Fixed the following 3 bugs that could occasionally crash the game:
• Killing Lord De Seis (Act IV).
• In Perspective mode Glide entering a Tomb in the Canyon of the Magi (Act II).
• A multiplayer party fighting in the Kurast Bazaar (Act III).
• Fixed a bug that caused a quest item being held in the cursor to disappear when pressing the Horadric Cube's transmute button.