Diablo 2

version 1.09

company: Blizzard Entertainment (www.blizzard.com)

homesite: www.blizzard.com/diablo2exp/

Changes in the v1.09 Patch (Lord of Destruction and Standard)(See 
Version 1.08 for more changes.)

* 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 has returned to it's functionality before patch 1.08.

- 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.


Major Bugs
- 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 
  perlevel 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.


Minor Bugs
- 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.


DIABLO II CLASSIC FIXES:
- 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.


DIABLO II CLASSIC IMPROVEMENTS/CHANGES:
- 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.

- Muting CD Keys
Q:	What is "muting" a CD-Key?
A:	Blizzard Entertainment has implemented a change to its sysop 
capabilities on Battle.net that enables authorized Blizzard 
Entertainment personnel to "mute" certain players on Battle.net. The 
muting function will allow us to make silent those players chatting in 
Battle.net who are found to be in violation of our Battle.net Terms of 
Use agreement. Other players will not see what the "muted" person has 
typed. Muted CD-Keys will not, in any way, affect actual gameplay. 
Muted players will be able to chat in-game only.

Q:	Why has Blizzard Entertainment implemented the muting policy?
A:	We have discovered certain players on Battle.net who are 
attempting to utilize the Battle.net channels for purposes that violate 
our Battle.net Terms of Use agreement. Some of these violations include 
attempts to steal account information by impersonating Blizzard 
Entertainment representatives and spamming the channels with 
inappropriate content. The mute function has been created to prohibit 
players from continuing to perform these violations. (Remember: No 
Blizzard Entertainment employee will ever ask for your CD-Key or 
password. Do not give this information out over Battle.net or anywhere 
else.)

Q:	If I see someone trying to steal an account or witness other 
inappropriate behavior, how do I report it?
A:	Please e-mail support@blizzard.com and provide them with screen 
captures of the offense in question. Also, make sure you also include 
your user name and the other character's user name. 

Q:	I was unfairly muted.  What can I do?
A:	If you believe you were unfairly muted, please contact our 
support department at support@blizzard.com. A Blizzard representative 
will inform you of the behavior in question and will also have the 
ability to un-mute accounts when deemed appropriate.

Q:	Does muting chatters on Battle.net violate my First Amendment 
rights?
A:	No. Battle.net is a private forum owned and operated by 
Blizzard Entertainment. Users must agree to our Battle.net Terms of Use 
agreement in order to make use of the chat services offered on 
Battle.net.

Q:	Have you considered banning players in violation of the 
Battle.net Terms Of Use agreement?
A:	Yes. While it is our preference not to ban players from 
Battle.net, we will not hesitate to do so in the event that players 
persistently violate the Battle.net Terms of Use agreement.
