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Diablo II Version History
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- Patch 1.10
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Mysterious World-event
- Players of Hell difficulty Realm games are hereby warned that a new,
challenging world-event has been added to Diablo II version 1.10.
Players of Hardcore characters should be even more wary when
encountering Superunique monsters during an active world event. Be
prepared to execute a hasty Save and Exit, if your situation seems too
dangerous.
Fundamental architecture changes/improvements
- The skill and monster systems are now completely data-driven. Skill
balancing is simpler and quicker. Monster control/populating/creation
is simpler. Although done for our needs, mod-makers should like these
changes, too. A major result is that nearly any skill can be used by any
character class.
- A skill now may have synergy Bonuses (similar to masteries) applied by
putting points into other skills.
- The player stats and inventory system has been completely redone to
run more efficiently, improving server performance and stability.
- The collision detection system has been sped up significantly. Again,
improving server performance.
Specific changes/improvements
- Increased difficulty for high-level players to reduce future
exploitation of the game system.
- Made monsters tougher
- Beefed up monster difficulty in Act V, Nightmare, and Hell
difficulties. This was accomplished by improving monster stats (hp, ac,
etc.) and by boosting their AI/behavior in NM and Hell difficulties
(that is, by making decisions more often and by simply moving faster).
In Nightmare and Hell difficulties monster damages have generally been
increased -- dramatically in some cases.
- Reduced the effectiveness of Experience runs, power-leveling, and
leeching.
- Added randomized (especially ranged-attack) monsters to Nightmare and
Hell Act V - e.g., Burning Dead, Imps, etc.
- Increased the Experience attached to most Act V monsters in Normal,
Nightmare, & Hell difficulties.
- Reduced the HP of (Act V) Barbarian soldiers in Nightmare and Hell
difficulties.
- Increased the rate of occurrence of Unique monsters in Hell
difficulty.
- Reduced the party member Experience sharing to 0 beyond a maximum
distance of about 2 screens from the monster death. This prevents
low-level characters from joining a party and then staying completely
out of harm's way while still getting Experience.
- Increased the Experience penalty for Clvl 70+ as follows: Clvl 1 - 69:
100% Experience Clvl 70 - 99: 85% - 0.8% Experience (approximately
exponential decaying)
- Encouraged players to play in more of the Diablo II
areas/locations/levels.
- Reduced drops from the most-run SuperUnique monsters, ThreshSocket and
Pindleskin.
- Cut Experience and reduced drops in the Cow level.
- Randomized the monster populations more thoroughly throughout Act V in
Nightmare and Hell difficulties, including the addition of 'guest
monsters' from other Acts.
- Increased the number of Unique monsters in each area and difficulty.
Improved various Items
- Improved the attributes for newly-dropped Rare Armor, Helms, and most
Weapons.
- Added over 100 new Unique Items, of which 29 can be found only in
Ladder games.
Revised Skill balance for all Player Character classes
Amazon Javelin and Spear Skills
- Jab - Increased Attack Rating.
- Power Strike - Increased Attack Rating and Damage done to targets.
Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Poison Javelin - Increased the total amount of Poison Damage and
Duration. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Impale - Increased Attack Rating. Increased Damage.
- Lightning Bolt - Increased Lightning Damage. Added skill synergy
bonuses.
- Charged Strike - Increased the number of Charged Bolts released.
Reduced average Lightning Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Plague Javelin - Added an Attack Rating bonus. Increased Poison
Damage. Increased Poison Duration. Lowered Mana cost per level of
skill. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Lightning Strike - Reduced the average Lightning Damage. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
- Lightning Fury - Rebalanced by increasing the average Lightning
Damage. Although it starts lower, it rises rapidly to much higher
damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Amazon - Passive and Magic Skills
- Inner Sight - Increased the reduction in Enemy Defense. Improved
overall.
- Valkyrie - Increased Attack Rating and decreased Mana cost. Added
resistances and skills like Evade, Dodge, etc. Added skill synergy
bonuses.
- Decoy - Extensively revised with added resistances and skills like
Evade, Dodge, etc.
Amazon - Bow and Crossbow Skills
- Magic Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus.
- Fire Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus. Decreased Mana cost. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
- Cold Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus. Increased Cold Damage.
Increased Mana cost. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Exploding Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus. Increased Fire Damage.
Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Ice Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Immolation Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus. Decreased Mana cost.
Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Freezing Arrow - Added Attack Rating bonus. Decreased Mana cost. Added
skill synergy bonuses.
Assassin - Martial Arts Skills
- Dragon Talon - Increased Attack Rating.
- Fists of Fire - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Claws of Thunder - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Blades of Ice - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- All kick skills - Increased Attack Rating bonus.
Assassin - Shadow Disciplines
- Venom - Fixed duration at 0.4 seconds regardless of poison items
equipped.
- Shadow Warrior - Increased the Life and resistances.
Assassin - Traps Skills
- Fire Blast - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Shock Web - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Charged Bolt Sentry - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Wake of Fire - Slight increase to Damage at higher levels. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
- Lightning Sentry - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Wake of Inferno - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Death Sentry - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Barbarian - Warcries
- War Cry - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Shout - Increased duration.
- Battle Orders - Increased duration.
- Battle Command - Increased duration.
Barbarian - Combat Masteries
- Throwing Mastery - Increased the Attack Rating bonus to throwing skills.
Barbarian - Combat Skills
- Bash - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Double Swing - Decreased Mana cost. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Stun - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Double Throw - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Concentrate - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Frenzy - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Druid - Elemental Skills
- Firestorm - Increased Fire damage at higher levels. Increased damage
at higher levels. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Molten Boulder - Added physical damage. Increased damage at higher
levels. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Arctic Blast - Increased Cold damage at higher levels. Increased
damage at higher levels. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Fissure - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Cyclone Armor - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Twister - Increased damage at higher levels. Added skill synergy
bonuses.
- Volcano - Added physical damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Tornado - Increased damage at higher levels. Added skill synergy
bonuses.
- Hurricane - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Armageddon - Increased Fire damage at higher levels. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
Druid - Shape Shifting Skills
- Werewolf - Added skill synergy bonuses. Allowed casting of Armageddon.
- Werebear - Added skill synergy bonuses. Allowed casting of Armageddon.
- Maul - Increased Stun duration.
- Rabies - Increased Poison Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Fire Claws - Slight increase to Fire Damage. Added skill synergy
bonuses.
Druid - Summoning Skills
- Summon Spirit Wolf - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Heart of Wolverine - Increased radius of effect and Life.
- Summon Dire Wolf - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Oak Sage - Increased radius of effect.
- Spirit of Barbs - Increased Life.
- Summon Grizzly - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Necromancer - Summoning Skills
- Skeleton Mastery - Increased Damage of non-Skeletal 'pets'. Increased
Life of Skeletal 'pets'.
- Raise Skeleton - Increased Skeleton Life, Attack Rating, and Defense.
Decreased the maximum number of Skeletons that can be summoned as
follows: the first 3 skill points in Raise Skeleton still yield 1
Skeleton per point (as in 1.09), however, subsequent Skeletons now
require 3 skill points each. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Clay Golem - Added the ability to slow players and monsters on hit.
Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Raise Skeletal Mage - Increased Damage. Decreased the maximum number
of Skeletal Mages that can be summoned as follows: the first 3 skill
points in Raise Skeletal Mage still yield 1 Mage per point (as in 1.09),
however, subsequent Mages now require 3 skill points each. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
- Blood Golem - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Iron Golem - Added Defense bonus. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Fire Golem - Increased Fire Damage. Added Holy Fire Damage. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
Necromancer - Poison and Bone Skills
- Teeth - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Bone Armor - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Poison Dagger - Increased Attack Rating. Increased Duration. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
- Bone Wall - Cut duration in half. Life decreased. Added skill synergy
bonuses.
- Poison Explosion - Increased Duration. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Bone Spear - Increased Magic Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Bone Prison - Cut duration in half. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Poison Nova - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Bone Spirit - Increased Magic Damage at highest levels. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
Paladin - Combat Skills
- Holy Bolt - Increased Magic damage. Ignores resistances of Undead.
Increased Healing to non-monster characters.
- Blessed Hammer - Increased high-level damage. Ignores resistances of
Undead and Demons. Added skill synergy bonuses
- Vengeance - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Sacrifice - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Holy Shield - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Fist of the Heavens - Ignores resistances of Undead and Demons. Added
skill synergy bonuses.
- Zeal - Increased damage above level 4. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Charge - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Paladin - Offensive Auras
- Might - Increased area of effect.
- Holy Fire - Added Fire Damage to attack. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Thorns - Increased area of effect.
- Blessed Aim - Increased area of effect.
- Holy Freeze - Added Cold Damage to attack. Added aura damage.
Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Holy Shock - Rebalanced the area of effect. Increased Lightning Damage
on attack. Improved damage ramp. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Sanctuary - Increased Magic Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Paladin - Defensive Auras
- Prayer - Increased Healing and area of effect.
- Resist Fire - Increased area of effect.
- Defiance - Increased area of effect.
- Resist Cold - Increased area of effect.
- Resist Lightning - Increased area of effect.
- Cleansing - Increased area of effect. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Meditation - Increased area of effect. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Redemption - Increased area of effect.
- Salvation - Increased area of effect.
Sorceress - Cold Spells
- Ice Bolt - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Frozen Armor - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Frost Nova - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Ice Blast - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Shiver Armor - Increased Cold Damage. Increased Cold Duration.
Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Glacial Spike - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Blizzard - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Chilling Armor - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Frozen Orb - Added skill synergy bonus.
Sorceress - Lightning Spells
- Charged Bolt - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Energy Shield - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Nova - Rebalanced Lightning Damage.
- Lightning - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Chain Lightning - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Sorceress - Fire Spells
- Fire Bolt - Increased Fire Damage at higher levels. Added skill
synergy bonuses.
- Inferno - Increased Fire Damage at higher levels. Added skill synergy
bonuses
- Fire Ball - Increased Fire Damage at higher levels. Slightly increased
Mana cost. Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Enchant - Rebalanced Fire Damage. Added Attack Rating bonus. Reduced
Mana cost. Added Skill Synergy Bonus.
- Meteor - Added skill synergy bonuses.
- Hydra - Rebalanced Fire Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Added new Rune Words and Horadric Cube Recipes
- Added 20 new Rune Words.
- Added a Horadric Cube recipe as follows: 3 flawless gems + 1 magic
weapon = socketed, magic weapon.
- Added 46 more Horadric Cube Recipes -- upgrades for the remaining
Runes and item 'rerolls'.
- The highest 19 Rune upgrades are usable only by Ladder characters.
Closed some PvP loopholes/exploits
- Terminated the casting of 'absentee' skills such as the Sorceress'
Meteor, Firewall, Blaze, Hydra; the Assassin's Sentries; the Druid's
Volcano; etc. when the player enters town. This prevents declaring
Hostility and doing immediate damage to the unsuspecting.
- Prevented 3rd-party hacks from treating background objects as a
Waypoint.
- Enforced a 10-second delay between declaring Hostility and using a
Waypoint or Town Portal to leave town.
- Ears and other items dropped on the ground by players (even in town)
are deleted more frequently, and even when on the same screen as
players. Magic, Rare, Set, and Unique items persist longer.
- The attribute "Hit Slows Target" has been limited to no more than 50%
slowing when used in PvP.
- Fixed the bug that prevented a hostile player from targeting a
Whirlwinding Barbarian equipped with a 2-handed sword.
- Throwing an Oil Potion no longer crashes an opponent.
New Battle.net features. Please see
www.battle.net for more
information.
- Introduced a new Lobby. Players now start in the lobby where they may
decide to enter battle.net chat as before or to simply create/join a
game without entering chat.
- Added the ability to recover a forgotten/stolen account password via
email registration.
- Added a new command '/mail account_name' which sends a message
directly to the account's registered email address.
- An 'expiration date' is now shown with Realm Characters on the
selection screen.
- Introduced a new Ladder System for those who prefer to play free from
any characters who may have participated in past item duping or hacking.
To use this new feature, a player places a check in the Ladder box upon
character creation -- in the same way that Expansion and Hardcore
selection is done. Periodically, the Ladder may be reset, adding the old
Ladder characters to the regular population -- who, of course, cannot
play games with the new season's Ladder characters. Thus, every season
each new Ladder character truly starts from scratch, as no 'twinking' is
possible from older characters.
- Once a player defeats Diablo, all Diablo II Battle.net accounts
accessed from that computer may create Hardcore characters.
Battle.net bugs
- Prevented a crash when waiting in the Blizzard Tech Support channel on
Battle.net.
- Realm games created without a Password no longer allow players who
specify a Password to join.
- When a character dies during an 'Alt-F4' disconnection from B.net in
Hardcore, the character icon now properly appears in both chat and the
Character Selection Screen.
- Corrected typos in the Options help.
- Prevented players from changing their chat text color and indentation
to masquerade as official Blizzard accounts.
- Warcraft III players no longer appear as cloaked figures in Diablo II
chat rooms.
- Battle.net stability has been improved when a Diablo II character that
had been designated as the operator of a private channel resigns.
- Players may no longer immediately re-join a chat Channel from which
they have been banned.
- Barbarians dual-wielding with a Javelin now show the Javelin in
battle.net chat, too.
- Removed Age from the Player Profile.
Major Bugs
- Fixed the 'Druid Drop' bug related to equipping items which would
cause players to be dropped from a game when activating Werewolf or
Werebear skills above level 33.
- Super Unique, Unique, and Champion monsters can no longer be created
as nearly invincible, that is, with < 0 hit points.
- Barbarians and Assassins who are dual-wielding potions are no longer
prevented from entering a game.
- A Zod Rune applied to an Ethereal item no longer reduces its
durability to 0.
- Characters with extremely fast attack speeds no longer erroneously
miss their targets.
- Summoned creatures (aka 'pets') now properly inherit the player's
level to determine their monster level.
- A summoned Grizzly now properly pursues and attacks its enemies more
effectively.
- Fury and Phoenix Strike can no longer target the casting player's
hireling or pet.
- Valkyries are no longer treated as monsters and erroneously assigned
additional Life in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
- A Valkyrie affected by a party member's Oak Sage can no longer be
killed with 1 hit.
- Assassins and Barbarians with Mastery points no longer have excessive
Critical Strikes applied to their melee attacks.
- Oak Sage and Heart of Wolverine now function properly above skill
level 20.
- Poison Creeper now properly receives the PvP damage penalty.
- Holy Freeze no longer slows the Lightning skill.
- The curse Attract can no longer be overridden by any other curse.
- Using Battle Command can no longer erroneously retain the skill bonus
granted by an item after un-equipping the item.
- Active level 18+ Thorns no longer makes the player character
invulnerable to monster melee attacks.
- Lightning and Chain Lightning are now properly affected by items with
casting rate magic properties.
- Using Enchant on ranged weapons now boosts the damage a variable
amount.
- Fireballs used against a Lightning Enchanted monster no longer make
its Charged Bolts invisible.
- The 3rd charge of the Assassin's Skill - Blades of Ice, now freezes
the target.
- Lower Resist now correctly updates the resistances displayed on the
target's character screen.
- Crushing Blow now works at the percentage chance stated.
- Items can no longer be created with level requirements higher than 99.
- A throwing item with the magic property Replenishes Quantity now
replenishes if depleted to 0 quantity.
- Newly-discovered Ethereal items with the magic property Increased
Maximum Durability now may have the maximum durability.
- The Rune Word "Melody" now works properly for bows.
- Leaving the vicinity of a Super unique monster and returning after 20
seconds, now properly respawns the Super unique for treasure drops.
- The erroneous action of the Reduce AC modifier. which had shown in the
item pop-up as x% Target AC has been corrected. It now no longer sets
the target's AC equal to the percentage, but properly reduces the
target's AC by the percentage. The display has been corrected to say
"-x% Target AC." The modifier's effect is reduced by one half when
player characters, SuperUniques, hirelings, and Act-end bosses are
targeted.
- Fixed a bug in damage calculation for weapons which computed +min/+max
damage prior to +damage%.
- If Holy Bolt is assigned to the right mouse-button and Charge or Smite
to the left, left-clicking on a party member no longer sticks one in
place.
- A player character standing on a player corpse is no longer immune to
missiles.
- Auto-targeting skills when assigned to the left mouse-button no longer
repeatedly cast, if one is holding the button down to move.
Auto-targeting skills are those that nearby target if one is not
selected, e.g., Fist of the Heavens.
- The Paladin's non-aura skills now attack appropriately, when one
clicks on a foe without enough Mana to use the skill.
- A class of bugs that had reduced the effectiveness of alternating
weapon attacks when equipped with two weapons has been fixed, including
the various dual-claw Assassin attacks.
- Poison length calculations are now correct.
- Poison now works properly when applied to ranged attacks.
- Mindblast and Conversion now remove any auras from their targets upon
casting and also when they wear off.
- Confuse now works properly, that is, without the occasional misfire.
- Holy Shield now boosts the defense of the player, not the shield.
- Blade Fury now uses the proper amount of Mana.
- Skeletons, Skeletal Mages, and Golems are now raised with appropriate
(non-0) Attack Rating and Defense stats.
- Iron Golems are no longer summoned with excessive additional Life in
Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
- Hirelings can no longer equip items without meeting the item
requirements.
- Rogue hirelings can no longer shoot Lightning Bolts by equipping items
that boost Bow and Crossbow skills.
- Isenhart's Case and Horns now work together correctly on Hirelings.
- Monster warping (aka teleporting) in some TCP/IP games has been
reduced.
- Slowed or chilled monsters no longer 'desynch' (or 'lag') as easily.
- Corrupted Rogues no longer pause for long periods of time when
pursuing a foe.
- When a Barbarian throws a weapon with his left hand (right inventory
slot) while equipped with a melee weapon in his right hand (left
inventory slot), the thrown weapon now does proper damage.NPCs no longer
bestow quest rewards (e.g., socketing) upon unidentified items.
- An NPC no longer fails to give a quest reward item to a character with
a full Inventory or Stash.
- The Heaven's Brethren set bonus of "+5 to Light Radius" now works.
- As shown on the Character screen, Assassins receive a damage bonus
from boots.
- The Assassin's Claw Mastery bonuses to Damage and Attack Rating are no
longer erroneously swapped.
- A behavior-changing curse (like Dim Vision) can no longer affect a
monster permanently, when the player portals away.
- The Life of monsters affected by Regeneration or Poison now updates
correctly.
- Enchant cast upon other player characters is now enhanced by the
caster's Fire Mastery.
- Skills and magic effects that change one's maximum Life now change
one's current Life by a corresponding percentage.
- The Attack Rating displayed for the Assassin kick skills is no longer
higher than the actual Attack Rating.
- Macintosh-specific fixes
- Improved compatibility with dual-monitor Macintosh systems.
- Prevented a crash when using the scroll bars and highlighting games in
Battle.net's Join menu.
Minor Bugs
- Summon Spirit Wolf no longer overstates the Damage.
- Spirit of Barbs, Heart of Wolverine, and Oak Sage no longer understate
their radii of effect.
- When the Automap option "Center" is off, the Automap no longer centers
upon opening the Skill Tree or Inventory.
- The extraneous text in the Change Realm dialog box has been removed.
- The health bar of a Flayer knocked from his Flayer Shaman now works.
- Fixed a general monster health bar overflow bug.
- A temporary loss of the Stamina Shrine effect no longer occurs.
- The Skill Tree levels are now displayed properly when a player equips
both a non-melee item that boosts all character class skills along with
a weapon that boosts an individual skill.
- Skills granted by items are now always displayed as such in the Skill
Tree.
- The damage displayed on the character screen is now correct when a
character with high strength has no weapon equipped.
- The damage displayed on the character screen is now correct for
Freezing Arrow and Holy Shock.
- The hover text of the Amazon skill Multiple Shot now correctly
displays that it does 3/4 weapon damage.
- When the Assassin has two Claws equipped and is using the Weapon Block
skill, the Chance to Block percentage properly appears in the hover text
of the Defense stat in the character screen.
- The Golden Bird quest status is shown correctly in the quest log, if
one exits the game before getting the reward.
- The Redemption skill description now correctly states that it affects
only the caster, not the party.
- The Redemption skill graphic effect can no longer appear erroneously
when a player returns from town through a Town Portal.
- The Thunderstorm skill graphic effect now displays properly.
- The damage listed on the character screen for Holy Shock no longer
appears blue.
- Hardcore Assassins and Druids no longer appear as cloaked figures in
the multiplayer character selection screen of DII Classic.
- Message log scrolling is now more responsive.
- Players now see other players kicking barrels.
- Berserker Axe" is now spelled correctly.
- Io, Shael, and Jah Runes now have Korean, Japanese, and Chinese
translations.
- Corrected localization (translation, text box sizes, etc.) for a
number of issues in French, German, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.
Enhancements and other changes
- Implemented a new system to detect and delete 'duped', 'hacked' and
other erroneous items from the inventories of Realm Characters as they
are loaded.
- Increased the damage of nearly all skills above skill level 20.
- Added synergy bonuses to many skills. The bonuses boost the
effectiveness of the higher-level skills based upon the number of points
allocated to the lower-level (synergizing) skills. Players are rewarded
for using skill points earlier rather than hoarding them all for later
'cookie-cutter' distribution to high-level skills.
- Rebalanced the rate of Unique/Set/Rare/Magic items drop.
- Lower Resist and Conviction skills now work properly against immune
monsters.
- Cold Mastery has been changed to a constant amount.
- Elemental Piercing versus immunities has been changed to a constant
amount.
- Improved the existing 7 class-specific Sets by adding and/or boosting
partial and complete Set bonuses. Also added a visual effect to wearers
of these complete Sets.
- Limited the maximum experience gain from The Ancients quest in Act V
to 1 character level.
- One can no longer enter Town Portals cast by other players in areas
beyond the "blocking quests" without having completed those quests:
e.g., Canyon of the Magi/Seven Tombs/Duriel's Lair (The Summoner), The
Harem/Palace Basement/Arcane Sanctuary (The Tainted Sun), Durance of
Hate (The Blackened Temple), The Worldstone Keep (The Ancients), The
Secret Cow Level (Terror's End in DII classic or Eve of Destruction in
DII: LoD). NOTE: A player who kills the High Council (but doesn't use
Khalim's Will to smash the Compelling Orb), may take a Town Portal into
the Durance of Hate.
- NPCs no longer accept lower difficulty quest items to complete quests
in a higher difficulty.
- Atma now heals automatically.
- Quest items are automatically identified when they drop.
- Increased the challenge of Mephisto and the Ancients.
- Increased the damage and defense of Andariel, Mephisto, Diablo, and
Baal.
- Gave Mephisto a more powerful Frost Nova, based on his own (not
player's) stats.
- Added blocking and resistances to Duriel.
- Reduced the levels of all auras used by Unique monsters.
- Added more Unique monsters to the open areas of Acts IV and V.
- Life leeching is now determined by each monster type and reduced below
100% in Nightmare and Hell Difficulties.
- Added resistances and blocking to the Unravelers in Act II in Hell
Difficulty.
- Increased monster hit-points in one player games and reduced the
increase to monster hit-points for each additional player in multiplayer
games.
- Boosted the effects of Health and Mana potions.
- Mana potions are now sold by some shopkeepers.
- The Antidote potion now gives +50 poison resistance and +10 max poison
resist for 30 seconds.
- The Thawing potion now gives +50 cold resistance and +10 max cold
resist for 30 seconds.
- The Stamina potion now gives super stamina recovery for 30 seconds.
- Newly-found (post-1.10) magic bows with the properties "Fires Magic
Arrows" or "Fires Explosive Arrows" have these properties at appropriate
skill levels rather than being fixed at level 1.
- Improved gambling by increasing the chances for Rare, Set, and Unique
items.
- Improved monster drops by boosting the base item types and by
increasing the chance for Rares.
- Increased the chances that dropped items have the magic properties of
Enhanced damage, Life-stealing, Mana-stealing, and + to all Resistances.
Increased hireling Life/attack rating/defense/level. Also removed the
skill cap from Act III hirelings. (Hireling level at hiring is now
different between DII classic and LoD.)
- Increased life regeneration for hirelings.
- Boosted the effect of Health potions upon hirelings.
- Lowered the cost of resurrection of hirelings.
- Increased the leash range of hirelings.
- Summonables except for Revived monsters and pets that don't attack or
defend - e.g., Vines now get Defense and Attack Rating based on their
level.
- Bone Walls are now friendly to the caster's party - that is, not
attackable.
- Improved Blood Raven's behavior.
- Guest monsters (those from earlier Acts and lower difficulty levels)
compute their Treasure Class (for item dropping) appropriately for their
new, higher levels.
- Chilling Armor no longer responds to other Chilling Armor bolts.
- A player may have up to 16 corpses now. Only the first (oldest) corpse
holding items is saved between games.
- In Nightmare and Hell difficulties recovering one's corpse now
restores 75% of the Experience that had been lost at death. This applies
to all of a player's corpses.
- Block lock' has been eliminated. When a player character has just
blocked an attack, the player cannot block again for a short period of
time, the length of which increases as Blocking speed increases.
- Reduced the 'lag' when Lister the Tormentor and his minions are
summoned by Baal.
- The levels of The Forgotten Tower are now larger in Nightmare and Hell
difficulties.
- Increased the likelihood of dropping Elite items.
- Only a very few Unique items and new 'uber' items are now over level
85. That is, the best items now drop more often.
- Jewels and other modifiers can now boost the elemental damage of a
melee weapon if that trait is listed as part of the Jewel description.
- The Buriza's level (not its level requirement) was increased to 59.
- Items that grant skills bestow a lower skill level to those character
classes who natively have the skill in their skill tree. Note that
Charged items receive synergy and mastery bonuses, but don't receive
bonuses by assigning extra points to the skill.
- Boosted the Cham Rune freeze effect on weapons from +1 to +3.
- The Eth Rune's effect is now "-25% to Target AC". Thus, 4 Eth Runes
reduce the target AC to zero.
- The modifier "Ignores Target AC" no longer acts upon SuperUniques,
hirelings, and Act-end bosses. Its lack of effect upon player characters
and unique monsters remains unchanged.
- Changed the Horadric Cube recipe that had used 3 chipped gems to
require 3 standard gems as follows: 3 standard gems + 1 socketed weapon
= socketed, magic weapon.
- Changed the two Horadric Cube recipes for Rejuvenation Potions to
require a chipped gem and a standard gem.
- One may sell items to an NPC without the confirmation dialog by
ctrl-left-clicking on them.
- Increased the size of the message log from 32 to 128 lines.
- Reduced the density of the graphic special effect displaying curses.
- Added optimizations to light map computation and added various levels
of light map fidelity which automatically adjust to keep the frame rate
acceptable.
- Selecting "Show Party - No" in the Automap Options now shows one's
pets.
- In the inventory an unidentified Unique item is now shown as its
generic item type.
- Improved the accuracy of the Mana cost display.
- Added a graphic effect to the Whirlwind skill.
- Improved the second level charge-up graphic effect of the Assassin's
Phoenix Strike.
- Added new color schemes for certain Rare, Set, and Unique items.
- Maces and Staves now display "+50% Damage to Undead", consistent with
other weapon classes.
- The TCP/IP Join Game button remembers the last IP address entered.
- Chat commands (e.g. 'fps') are now preceded by a slash (e.g. '/fps').
- A new chat command '/nopickup' toggles on/off the ability to
automatically pick up items lying on the ground. When off, one must hold
down the Alt key to pick up items.
- Monsters (except for SuperUniques) in non-ladder Realm games are now
at 75% HP (Hell), 85% AC (NM & Hell), and don't increase their AI speed
for higher difficulties.
Macintosh-specific changes
- Support for both "widescreen" and "4:3" mode in Mac OS X 10.2+.
- Improved OpenGL performance for systems with minimum requirements:
MacOSX 10.2, 256MB RAM, and Radeon or GeForce AGP video card.
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