Version 0.9.6

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.6 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added a passive skill tree planner to the website. You can click your character at the bottom of the website to view its passive skill tree. When you're done planning a build, the site provides a link so that you can share it with other players.
 * Added an improved Quest/Waypoint screen. It shows the layout of all the act's discovered areas on a map and displays their connectivity. You can select a quest to see where it is and how to get there.
 * Added screen-shake on very large attacks or dramatic events such as bosses dying. It can be disabled in the options.
 * Increased the number of sound channels used to 32 and added sound priorities. Crucial combat sounds should now not be lost in busy situations.
 * Improved the behaviour of monsters that have both projectile and melee attacks. Sea Witches and Merveil's second form now have melee attacks and this behaviour. They cast skills at you until they are low on mana, and then close in for melee combat.
 * Changed monster behaviour so that the distance that they become aggressive from varies per monster type. When a monster becomes aggressive, it will alert nearby monsters as well. This means that you won't accidentally pull single monsters one at a time while fighting.
 * Slightly decreased the font size in pre-game menus.
 * Added a sound for critical strikes.
 * The light radius reduction that occurs when on low life indoors has been changed so that it is more appropriate for players who care about the "when on low life" abilities.
 * The next waypoint is now automatically granted after completing areas containing Brutus, Merveil or the end of act two.
 * Vsync is now on by default.
 * Your minions can now trigger enemies to emerge.
 * Added a new mouse cursor.

Content

 * Added a variety of Utility Flask base types that do effects other than healing your life or mana.
 * Added a new Strength skill - : Infuses your melee weapon with electrical energies as you swing. In addition to converting some of your physical damage to lightning damage, the stored energy is released from the weapon as a projectile as you strike, flying out behind your target to hit further-away enemies.
 * Added a new Strength skill - : Summons fiery elemental shields providing additional armour for a short duration. If cumulative damage prevented by your blocking or armour reaches a threshold, the shields explode outwards, dealing fire damage to surrounding enemies.
 * Added a new Intelligence skill - : Enchants your shield with the power of storms, which lashes out to deal lightning damage to attackers when you block their attacks.
 * Added a new Intelligence skill - : Fires your wand at a target, dealing increased damage and granting a power charge if the attack kills the target.
 * Added new keystone passive - Pain Attunement: 25% more spell damage when on low life.
 * Added new keystone passive - Elemental Equilibrium: When you hit enemies with an element, they get +30% resistance to that element and -20% resistance to other elements. Thanks to Konfeta for the inspiration.
 * Added new keystone passive - Iron Grip: The increase to physical damage from Strength also applies to ranged weapons. Thanks to Konfeta for the inspiration.
 * Added new keystone passive - Point Blank Archer: Ranged attacks deal up to 50% more damage to very close targets, but deal less damage to further away targets. Thanks to Malice for the inspiration.
 * Added two variations of the new snake-like monster type to many areas.
 * Added 28 new unique items.
 * Added a new monster aura: Enemies are slowed.
 * Added a new monster aura: Other allies can't die until the boss is killed.
 * Added a new monster mod: Immunity to curses.
 * Added a new monster mod: Grants Frenzy charges to all nearby allies on death.
 * Added new monster mods: Chance to gain Endurance, Frenzy or Power charges when hitting.
 * Added a new monster mod: Gains a Frenzy charge when reduced below 75%, 50% or 25% life.
 * Added belt mods that can affect your usage of flasks.
 * Added a new side area to the Ship Graveyard. The Fairgraves quest objective has been moved to this area.
 * Added Chamber of Sins Level 3 and moved the Chamber of Sins waypoint to Level 2.
 * Moved the waypoints in Alira's Camp, Broken Bridge and Pools and Streams areas to be near the bandit camps.
 * Moved the waypoint from Waterfall Caves Level 1 to 2.
 * Revamped the Crossroads and Old Fields.
 * The Hideous Abomination now uses Lightning Strike.
 * Vulatas has been reborn as Hailrake, is now cold-themed and casts Ice Spear.
 * Merveil now uses Ice Spear rather than Fireball. Cold resistance is an effective plan against her.
 * Added the Great White Beast to the Dread Thicket.
 * Blood Chieftains can now mass-frenzy all nearby monsters. This works in your favour if you raise them as spectres.
 * Shock Nova has been reimplemented so that it doesn't scale its damage with distance and doesn't hit monsters that are close to you.
 * Made some Zombies and Sand Spitters emerge when encountered.
 * Created 100+ named passives that have larger effects than average. Some of these came from the consolidation of other passives, so the overall tree has not grown by 100+ nodes.
 * Added "Reflects X Damage to Attacker" mods for some armour pieces.
 * Set up new gem level-up visual effects.
 * Changed Eramir's bandit quest so that you need to either kill a bandit or help one of the townsfolk before he'll tell you about the quest.

Balance Changes

 * When in multiplayer instances where the life of monsters is scaled up, the pre-scaling life values now are used for calculations related to stun and elemental status effect durations. This means that players that rely on stun, chilling, freezing, etc are not at a disadvantage when partying up.
 * Made all Maelstrom of Chaos areas level 60. Increased their difficulty substantially.
 * Changed the Chaos Inoculation keystone so that your "real" life value is still used for checks related to stun and elemental status ailments. This will mean that you don't receive giant stuns/chills due to being reduced to 1 life.
 * Reduced the Minion Instability keystone passive to deal 100% of the minion's life rather than 200%.
 * Reduced the number of magic and rare monsters in higher difficulties (especially the Maelstrom of Chaos).
 * Reduced the life of normal monsters, but kept magic, rare and unique monsters the same.
 * Reduced all cold damage by 10% on monsters, player skills and items.
 * Increased the damage of Ice Nova, Fireball and the Added Lightning Damage support gem.
 * Changed Spark to cast four sparks by default, but it is affected less by additional damage from support gems.
 * Changed Firestorm to be affected less by additional damage from support gems.
 * Slightly increased the mana cost multiplier of several support gems: Multiple Projectiles, Added Chaos, Pierce, Increased Duration, Weapon Elemental Damage
 * Reduced the size of the Perpetual flask mods.
 * Changed the effect of quality on curse gems to skill-specific effects rather than duration.
 * Changed the amount of Alchemy Shards gained from selling certain items with certain mods to address exploitative behaviour.
 * Rebalanced the way that quality spawns on items so that it's rarer and that gems with quality have slightly higher average quality than before. It's now harder to collect 40% quality sets for the vendor recipes.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where Merveil was using normal-difficulty spells in the higher difficulties.
 * Monsters that emerge when encountered (such as Water Elementals and Moss Monsters) are now immune to damage until they start to emerge. This prevents them playing the wrong animation and appearing in an un-emerged state early.
 * Fixed a bug where looped sounds would not play at the correct volume
 * Fixed a bug where your minions and enemies would occasionally both freeze at the same time, targeting each other but unable to do actions.
 * Made Portal scrolls the right colour on the ground.
 * Fixed a crash that can occur running the game when sound is disabled.
 * Fixed a bug where melee knockback would apply to other non-melee attacks also.
 * Flickerstrike targeting a specific enemy will no longer execute if that enemy is out of range.
 * Fixed some cases where the options screen might not apply changes.
 * Fixed a case where players could trap Merveil's second form against a wall and kill her safely.
 * Fixed a bug where Firestorm could hit monsters through walls.
 * Fixed a bug where certain squares of ground wouldn't draw (often appearing blue).
 * Fixed a bug that would cause some dungeon rooms to not spawn any monsters or chests.
 * Fixed Dual Strike alternating weapon base durations when it should have been using an average.