--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Diablo II Version History

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Patch 1.09d
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Minor Bug

- 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 1.09c
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.
- Fixed a bug that caused garbage characters to appear at the top of
the screen at the start of a realm game.

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Patch 1.08 (See version 1.07 for more changes.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skill Balance Changes

- When using two-handed attacks the speed of both weapons are averaged.

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 hit points for a Revived monster no longer increase with more players
in a game.
- Lower Resist and Amplify Damage 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.
- In expansion games, Static Field is no longer affected by Conviction
and Lower Resist. It will not take a monster below 33% health in
Nightmare difficulty or 50% in Hell difficulty.
- In non-expansion games Static Field remains the same.
- 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.

Assassin
- Dragon Tail now has an attack bonus.
- Increased Fist of Fire damage.
- Increased Claws of Thunder damage.
- Increased Phoenix Strike damage.
- Fixed various bugs with skills that use two claws.
- Dragon Tail does not cost mana or knockback when it misses.

Druid
- Turned down the mastery bonuses for the wolves and bears.
- Increased Feral Rage's life stealing.
- Increased Hunger's life stealing, but increased its damage penalty.
- Increased the delay between the times that Hurricane does damage.
- Increased the radius for Armageddon's damage and increased the delay
between missiles.
- Werebear skill modified to give +50% to hit points. (It was +100%.)
- Maul now gives +20% damage per charge per level. (It was +25%.) Its
stun length is shorter and attack bonus is 3% plus, 3% per level.
(it was +20%, 10% per level.)
- Increased damage of Fire Claws slightly (+8 per level up to level 9).
- The damage bonus of Fury changed to +50% damage, 5% per level.
(It was 100%, 17% per level.)

Modifications

- Creatures can be summoned in town, as long as the summoning does not

require a corpse.
- Crafted items cannot generate with affixes meant for magic items
only.
- The durability for all claw class weapons is now doubled. (This
will not affect existing items.)
- Adjusted attribute requirements for all claw class weapons.
- Adjusted damages for all Elite weapons.
- Adjusted affix level for wands, staves and orbs. (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.
- Decreased values on +maximum damage and +minimum damage charms.
(This will not affect existing items.)
- Increased values for percentage chance to find gold affixes on charms
and jewels. (This will not affect existing items.)
- Increased attributes of many affixes for jewels. (This will not affect
existing items).
- Increased chances of extra quantity affixes on throwing items.
- Increased chances of regenerate quantity affixes on throwing items.
- Increased jewel drop rates.
- The necromancer spell "Iron Maiden" no longer appears on charged items.
- Increased resistance bonus for Tal, Ral, Ort, and Thul runes when
socketed into shields by 5%.
- Increased resistance bonus for Um rune when socketed into shields by
2% and when socketed into helms and armor by 5%.
- Changed bonus for runes with + to max resists to 5%.
- Repaired rune words. (Most previous rune worded items will no longer
get rune word bonuses.)
- Adjusted rune drop rates.
- Removed several melee modifiers from generating on orbs.
- 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.
- Lowered costs for recharging items.
- Removed throwing potions from stores.
- Increased prices for circlets and coronets.
- Unique monsters with the "teleport" attribute now heal a fixed amount.
- Crushing blow is 50% less effective with bows.
- Crushing blow is affected by physical resistance.
- Lowered hireling resurrection cost.
- Increased chances of finding unique and set items.
- Slightly increased the item drop rate for extra players in a game
who are not in your party.
- Lowered gambling prices that scale with your level.
- Changed prices on rejuvenation and full rejuvenation potions.
- Added potential sockets for Troll nest and Blade barrier shields.
- Enabled sockets on certain items, increase sockets potential on others.
- Increased blocking for grim shield.
- Increased AC for all elite shields.
- Increased AC for Bone visage helm.
- Changed increased rate items, (fast, faster, fastest) to display as a
percentage faster.
- Adjusted armor, blocking, and durability for elite Paladin shields.
- 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.
- Increased range of the Glorious axe.
- Changed items with pierce to use their pierce value as a percentage
instead of as a level in the skill.
- Changed the piercing value for certain uniques with pierce (Kuko
Shakaku, Buriza-Do Kuyanon, Demon Machine, Razor Tail).
- Changed Wizardspike unique bone knife to 75% resist all.
- The set item Naj's Puzzler now has 69 charges of teleport.
- Added sound to shift-click of potions in grid.
- Added elemental damage affixes for charms.
- Adjusted the difficulty of Baal on higher difficulties.
- Cannot get quest completion credit for the ancients' quest unless
the character level is 20 or greater in normal difficulty mode, 40
or greater in nightmare, and 60 or greater in hell difficulty mode.
- 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.
 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 where quests and horadric cube recipes could generate items
with too many sockets.
- 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 to have piercing while wearing
items of 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 shift-click purchase rejuvenation
potions in stores.
- Fixed the bug that added javelin damage to Lightning Fury, and made the
graphics simpler for the lightning.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Version 1.07
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skill Balance Changes

Paladin
- In expansion games, Blessed Hammer/Concentration combination imbalance
has been corrected.
- 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.
- Salvation resistance increased.
- Increased damage for Fist of the Heavens.
- Decreased the length of time that Converted monsters fight for you.
- Increased the damage per level for Sanctuary.
- 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 timer to Fire Wall, Meteor, Blizzard, Frozen Orb, and
Hydra and commensurately increased their damage to prevent a drop
in frame rate, while maintaining the same overall balance.
- Decreased the Mana cost for Enchant and increased its bonus to fire
damage.
- The damage inflicted by most skills over level 8 has been increased.

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 frame rate.
- 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 gain experience.
- 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 blacksmith 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

- Player 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 1.06b
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Major bugs

- Fixed a bug that allowed players to crash other players by spamming them.
- Fixed a bug that was not saving Open Battle.Net characters.
- Fixed issue with Samsung Drives and copy-protection.

Updates

- Battle.net's Terms of Service agreement updated. Everyone please take

note.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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 server-to-client communication.
- Fixed copy-protection for various CD, DVD and CD-R drives.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Major bugs

- 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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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.

----------------------------------------------------------------
- Patch 1.03
----------------------------------------------------------------

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 64 MB 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.
- Magic Mauls with the Enhanced Damage Property have been fixed.
- Unique Boots Treads of Cthon and Tearhaunch now give players the
proper increased walking speed
- Static Field (Sorceress) Fixed Spell Description
- Leap Attack (Barbarian) Fixed Spell Description
- War Gauntlets are now spelled correctly
- Corpse Explosion (Necromancer) Reduced the explosion damage so
that it is not scaled up for each additional player in the game.

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.
- Critical Strike (Amazon) now works on all weapons.
- The "Z" Key will now toggle between views of Minions only, No
Minions or Party Members, and Your Minions and Party Members.
- Items sold by Vendors under the Misc Tab no longer sell out.
- Settings are kept when creating games on Battle.net.
- ATI's recent driver update has solved incompatibilities with Rage
128 video cards and RAVE/OpenGL. To use RAVE or OpenGL with a 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 ATI's web site, for manufacturers contact
information please visit:
http://www.blizzard.com/support/information/vendors.shtml (Mac only)
- 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)

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.
- 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.