Diablo II/Changelog/Patch 1.04

-- - 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.