User:Vinifera7/patch notes closed beta

=Version 0.9.13m=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13m released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added encryption to the game protocol.
 * There are now multiple redundant patching servers and login servers for each gateway in preparation for Open Beta.
 * Fixed a bug where toggling trade chat would sometimes not work correctly.
 * Fixed a bug where you couldn't join a town if vast numbers of other players were joining at the same time.

=Version 0.9.13l=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13l released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added trade chat, which is like global chat but has the symbol $. It's hidden by default but it can be unhidden with the tickbox at the top of the chat window or the options screen. Please use trade chat for linking items for trade or for discussing trades. Moderators should encourage users to use trade chat and will mute people who ignore warnings and try to trade in global chat.
 * You now can't link more than three items in global chat. You have to use trade chat, whispers, local chat or party chat.
 * Removed the UI option for "Filter White Items". We have solved most of the item spam issues that led to this being introduced and we feel it's very bad for the game. Players who are using it are missing out on valuable white items. The setting is still in the config file if you want to use it.

=Version 0.9.13k=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13k released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Global chat is now segregated in a different way than before. While each league is still completely separate, global chat is no longer segregated by difficulty in some leagues. Now, the server will automatically allocate players to separate global chats and create new chats as more players log in. This is necessary to support the additional players that Open Beta will bring.

=Version 0.9.13j=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13j released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Ladders for race events now persist forever after the event has ended.
 * Your ladder standings in race events now update every 30 seconds (rather than every 3 minutes).
 * Deaths of players in the top 25 ladder ranks of hardcore leagues are announced globally (this value used to be top 15).
 * Fixed a full realm crash that would happen every few days.

=Version 0.9.13i=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13i released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * As part of the leadup to Open Beta, we've substantially changed how characters are stored and saved.
 * Due to the above change, we've reset all your passive skills. Please take care reallocating your passives so that you can use your equipment and gems.
 * Fixed a bug where "No sound while in background" would start playing sounds again if they looped.

=Version 0.9.13h=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13h released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * You now don't have to reopen the vendor window each time you want to buy an additional currency item of the same type.
 * We've changed the vendor recipes related to matching rares that have the same name. It's still possible to get Orbs of Alchemy and Regal Orbs, but is more complex and costly.
 * Added an option for "No sound while in background".
 * Added an option that allows you to prevent items from auto-equipping as they are picked up. This was requested by players using the Facebreaker unique item.
 * Screenshots (taken with the F8 key) are now saved in the My Games folder in your Documents folder, rather than in Path of Exile's installation directory.
 * When buying items from a vendor, currency items are now only taken from your first eight stash tabs.

Balance

 * Hybrid armours have been improved by 10% relative to other armour types.
 * Quality now no longer affects the block chance of shields.
 * Rebalanced PvP damage scaling so that players generally have more survivability.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a server crash related to skill hotkeys.
 * Fixed a bug where Flasks could be traded without losing their charges. Thanks [BSM]neovile and [BSM]Sayt.
 * Fixed a bug with the graphical effect of Power Siphon.
 * Fixed a bug with the graphical effects of projectiles augmented by the Chain support gem.
 * Fixed a bug that would occur after cancelling the Queue window (when logging into the server if it was over capacity, which it isn't).
 * Fixed some problems related to having too many stash tabs.
 * Fixed a graphical problem that would occur if you cancelled the loading of the character selection screen at the wrong time.
 * Fixed various rare bugs with whispering other players.
 * Fixed a bug where Energy Shield's stun avoidance wouldn't differ between successive hits from the same monster, under some conditions.

=Version 0.9.13g=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13g released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * You can not use currency items on items that are in trade any more.
 * There's now a message in chat to indicate when a trade is cancelled or accepted.
 * The other person's trade window will now highlight red for a few seconds if they remove an item.
 * When an item is swapped in trade under the other person's mouse cursor, they now have to move it out of the way and back onto the item to confirm they've seen the new one.
 * Fixed a bug where you could get stuck if you change area while trade is open.
 * Fixed a bug where you could enter trade with an item on your cursor.

=Version 0.9.13f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added a trade screen for players in the same instance. Trade between areas or between the game and the website will be added in later patches.
 * To trade with someone, right click on them (in town) or their party portrait (out of town) and select "Trade".
 * Before trade can be accepted, you must view each item in the other person's window to confirm that it is correct.
 * Improved the layout and appearance of the vendor, trade, quest reward and map receptacle windows.
 * When you have an item on the cursor, the equipable inventories that it can go in will highlight.
 * Fixed a bug where Spectres would lose the implicit mods of their monster type.

=Version 0.9.13e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * You now have to be level 15, 25 or 35 to enter Cruel, Ruthless or Merciless difficulties respectively. If you currently have a lower level character stuck in one of those towns, it will be able to join the town in order to waypoint out.
 * Players now receive the same amount of experience from nearby monster kills regardless of how many members are in their party. Because experience is awarded to nearby party members equally and is not divided up between them any more, monsters are no longer scaled up in experience if you're playing in a party.
 * This means that larger parties who stick together will get slightly more experience than before, and that idling characters elsewhere in the level no longer increases your experience gains. Solo players receive exactly the same experience that they did previously.
 * Experience is still scaled down if the player is too high or too low level, or if there's a much higher level party member nearby. These equations have not changed.
 * Fixed a bug where the Move-only skill could not be removed from the skill bar.
 * Fixed a crash that could occur if an Arc Remote Mine targeted itself.
 * Fixed a server crash related to using Rain of Arrows on Traps and Remote Mines.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when spawning a player on some levels.

=Version 0.9.13d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug where the Merciless PvP arena did not have the correct player resistance penalty applied.
 * Fixed a bug where the Merveil illusions would not work properly.
 * Fixed a bug where you could get around mods like "Cannot be Frozen" in PvP by using Elemental Proliferation.
 * Fixed a bug where it was difficult to scroll the passive skill screen downwards.
 * Added a buff icon for the Blinded ailment.
 * Fixed a bug that could cause special chests to spawn far too often in some areas.
 * Fixed a rare client crash that could occur when hovering over an item.
 * Portals are now greyed out in your inventory during arena PvP matches.
 * Chat and party health bars now don't draw over the top of vendor windows.
 * Fixed a bug where options would not ask for confirmation if you closed the panel by pressing O.

=Version 0.9.13c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug where Flasks of Warding could remove Map curses.
 * Fixed a problem where end-game Maps could fail to start.
 * Fixed a bug where pressing Enter would close the vendor.
 * Fixed Necromantic Aegis applying to totems.
 * If a skill with a cooldown is supported by the Trap support, the support gem's cooldown is now used.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur in PvP when using Blood Rage.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur in PvP.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur with Minion Instability when leaving town.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when killing Brutus or Merveil.

=Version 0.9.13b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added another Unique item.
 * Finally added the ability to bind "Move only" to a skill slot.
 * Diamond, Granite, Ruby, Sapphire and Topaz flasks now display an effect on your character when being used.
 * Added a new flask mod - "of Warding" which cancels all curses currently on you and prevents you being cursed while that flask's recovery is in effect. This also puts a visual effect on your character.
 * Spiders that use Flicker Strike now look different than ones that use Viper Strike.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when using Phase Run.
 * The Vulnerability curse's additional chance to be stunned now works correctly.

=Version 0.9.13=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.13 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Content

 * Added a new Intelligence skill - Arc: An arc of lightning stretches from the caster to a targeted nearby enemy and chains on to additional targets.
 * Added a new Strength skill - Devouring Totem: Summons a totem that can consume nearby corpses. If you are hurt, it will destroy a corpse to leech life to you.
 * Added a new Intelligence skill - Conductivity: Curses all targets in an area, making them less resistant to lightning damage and giving lightning damage a chance to shock.
 * Added a new Intelligence/Strength skill - Flammability: Curses all targets in an area, making them less resistant to fire damage and giving fire damage a chance to burn.
 * Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity skill - Frostbite: Curses all targets in an area, making them less resistant to cold damage and giving cold damage a chance to freeze.
 * Added a new Dexterity Support Gem - Chain: Projectiles chain to nearby enemies as they hit their targets.
 * Added a new Dexterity Support Gem - Fork: Projectiles fork into two new projectiles as they hit their targets.
 * Added a new Strength Support Gem - Fire Penetration: The attached skill ignores some portion of the target's fire resistance.
 * Added a new Dexterity Support Gem - Cold Penetration: The attached skill ignores some portion of the target's cold resistance.
 * Added a new Intelligence Support Gem - Lightning Penetration: The attached skill ignores some portion of the target's lightning resistance.
 * Removed special chests from the Den in the Old Fields and from the Weaver's Chambers. All dungeon areas now have a chance of spawning a special chest. There is also now a guaranteed one in the Dread Thicket.
 * Utility Flasks now have new art. This only affects flasks found after this patch.
 * Added seven new Unique items, five of which have been designed by our Diamond supporters.
 * Further improved the randomness of the Western Forest area.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

Player vs. Player Arenas

 * We've added support for PvP arenas.
 * Initially there are both 1 vs. 1 and 3 vs. 3 matches available.
 * You can either play Level 28 Capped PvP in Normal difficulty or Open PvP in Merciless difficulty (with resistance penalties).
 * Level 28 Capped PvP requires that you haven't entered Cruel difficulty and are not higher than level 28.
 * To enter PvP, talk to Greust and click "Join PvP". If you're in a party, then your whole party will be placed in a queue. If any member of your party cancels then the whole party is removed from the queue.
 * Once there are enough players to form teams of the right sizes, you'll be transported to a random arena. 3v3 arenas are generally larger.
 * During the match, up to nine rounds are played. The first team to win five rounds will be declared the match winner.
 * In 1v1 matches, a round is declared a draw after 90 seconds.
 * In 3v3 matches, the time limit is 120 seconds, but draws are only awarded if the teams have equal numbers of players alive.
 * Because of the best-of-nine effect, every two draws will reduce the number of wins a team needs by one.
 * Teams are coloured Red and Blue and are given a coloured aura effect.
 * There are dead monster corpses in the arenas that can be raised as minions.
 * Traps, mines, totems, auras, buffs and minions are destroyed between rounds.
 * Like any other spell, casting your auras is part of the PvP fight and can't be done beforehand.
 * Flasks are replenished by a few charges between PvP rounds. It's important to manage flasks properly - if you use them all too fast then you'll be at a big disadvantage in later rounds.
 * Hardcore deaths in PvP arenas are currently not permanent. We'll be adding permadeath hardcore PvP options soon.
 * Different login gateways have different PvP queues, for latency reasons. For example, if you're on the American gateway and want to play PvP with your European friends, you'll have to change over to the other gateway and join the queue there. This will of course be at a higher latency as you'll be playing on European servers.
 * If you're dead in a 3v3 match, your view will spectate another team member.

Other Features

 * Revamped the appearance of the hint box that appears when you kill the first zombie.
 * The Merveil, Brutus and Vaal Oversoul fights now lock the door behind you for the duration of the fight, so that players aren't able to retreat to the linked area. Portals are still allowed.
 * Bandits now emerge from tents properly rather than just appearing.
 * Updated the character selection screen so that it matches other parts of the UI. Leagues are now also shown with icons.
 * Spawn can now emerge from the ground in certain cave areas.
 * You can now use arrow keys in the vendor window to change between tabs of items to buy.
 * Killing Brutus or Merveil will now grant the next waypoint.
 * Characters will now occasionally comment on the deaths of rare monsters.

General Balance

 * Resolute Technique's "Always Hit" now only works for accuracy/evasion rolls. The Acrobatics keystone can avoid it.
 * Minion Instability is now scaled correctly by stats such as minion damage. This large functional change required its explosion to be reduced to 33% of the minion's life rather than 100%.
 * Packs of goatmen in non-Map areas now only have a maximum of one Goat Shaman in them at most.

Active Skill Balance

 * Ground Slam now attacks at the speed of your weapon.
 * Flattened progression of the Blind support gem - lower levels of the gem were improved, higher levels reduced.
 * Reduced the life of raised zombies and summoned totems by around 10%.
 * Reduced Flame Totem's damage by 14% and life by an additional 30%.
 * Doubled the mana cost of curses.
 * Reduced the effect of the Temporal Chains curse, due to being overpowered in both PvE and PvP. This also affects the version that Maps inflict on you.
 * Rescaled Poison Arrow. It now starts off around 85% stronger at level 1 and is about 1% weaker at level 15.
 * Reduced the effect of higher levels of the Clarity aura.
 * Viper Strike is now 38% better at level 1 and 3% better at level 15.
 * Puncture is now scaled to start much stronger with a flatter progression to match other melee skills that scale weapon damage.

Passive Skill Tree Changes

 * The Chance to Dodge passives between Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics are now 3%/3%/2%/2% rather than all being 1%.
 * Reduced the opening Marauder life passive from 15% to 13%.
 * Split out 10 Strength from Heart of the Gladiator to a new node.
 * Increased Perfect Aim to being 15% Projectile Damage/+20 Dexterity (from +15%/+10).
 * Changed Templar life node connections to increase traversal speed.
 * Increased Templar life regeneration node to 1% from .8%.
 * Changed Templar Spell Damage nodes to Elemental Damage nodes.
 * Increased second Duelist Attack Speed node on right side to 4%.
 * Increased the early Duelist one handed and two handed attack speed nodes to 4%.
 * Moved life as an early option into Duelist choices.
 * Added a 1% life regeneration node to the Duelist area.
 * Moved the Shadow Trap nodes much further out.
 * In the Shadow area, added an early life cluster where the Trap cluster was. This life cluster includes flat life.
 * Moved Iron Reflexes closer to the Ranger area and further from the Marauder.
 * Added a cluster of "Critical Strike Chance/Multiplier while wielding a Staff" passives.

Bug Fixes

 * Improved client memory usage - this will reduce problems for users with 32 bit versions of Windows.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters would not curse a player if they were already cursed by the Map.
 * Fixed a bug where Remote Mines that fire projectiles would not target enemies properly.
 * Fixed a bug where it was possible to pick up two items at once by accident.
 * Flasks can't be used in town now.
 * Modified screen shake so that it'll cause less headaches.
 * Flasks which heal minions no longer apply to totems, traps and mines.
 * Fixed a bug where you couldn't lift items to the cursor while Alt was held.
 * Fixed problems where players could walk through the edges of Sarcophagi.
 * Fixed a bug where an enemy would retain the green ally highlighting after a conversion trap expires.
 * The chat window now doesn't overlap the instance management screen.
 * Fixed a bug where the game could not display "ffi" in the smallcaps version of the font.
 * Fixed a bug where a monster could continue walking up to you after triggering a Conversion Trap.
 * Fixed a bug where the mod that reduces flask charges used would not apply to the flask UI correctly.
 * Fixed a bug where a subtle quest notification box would fade out each time you join the game for the first time.
 * Fixed a bug where you could highlight objects that are off the screen by moving the mouse out of the client's window.
 * Fixed some problems with firing projectiles past corners.
 * Fixed a bug where disabled items are linked as disabled.
 * Alira's Martyrs are no longer afraid of fire.
 * Fixed a bug where critical strike damage multiplier could be reduced below 100%.
 * Fixed a bug where /squelch and /unsquelch didn't work as true synonyms for /ignore and /unignore.

=Version 0.9.12x=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12x released by Grinding Gear Games.


 * Changed the Map mods that add more magic and rare packs so that they're multiplicative and raised their percentage values. They were additive before due to a mistake, which caused too many magic and rare monsters to spawn when the mods were present.
 * Fixed a bug where typing '#' or other special chat mode symbols at the start of a whisper message did not correctly change to the desired messaging mode.

=Version 0.9.12w=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12w released by Grinding Gear Games.


 * Changed the bonus multiplicative item quantity bonus that occur for parties, so that it's just +50% per additional player. Previously, it was +60% for magic monsters, +80% for rare monsters and +100% for unique monsters. We intended to fix this when we made the party bonus multiplicative a few patches ago, but forgot to, so party item drops were way too high in the meantime.
 * Fixed a bug where Flame Totem was not affected by the damage penalties that the Multiple Projectiles gems conferred.
 * Fixed a bug where Shockwave Totem could not be affected by Increased Area of Effect
 * Fixed a bug in dungeon generation that caused special rooms to replace inaccessible rooms, causing Ambrosia/Amarissa to often be absent.
 * Moved the Prisoner's Gate waypoint closer to the Prison again.

=Version 0.9.12v=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12v released by Grinding Gear Games.


 * The hardcore death notification message is now in orange.
 * Upgraded an evasion passive skill to a notable passive.
 * Fixed a bug where raising the Vaal Oversoul's corpse after he dies would prevent you leaving the area.
 * Fixed a recent bug where users with the left and right mouse buttons swapped were unable to hold the mouse button down to move.

=Version 0.9.12u=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12u released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug where players would get the "Cannot use skill" audio occasionally when moving around in town.
 * Fixed a bug where the Determination aura was broken by the last patch.
 * The level 68 Oversoul Map boss now uses skills of an appropriate level.
 * Changed the cost of normal and magic rings, amulets and belts from vendors. They're now generally quite a lot cheaper.

=Version 0.9.12t=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12t released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a problem with players accessing the Western Forest from the The Blackwood.
 * Increased the values of all quality bonuses on gems by around +50%, with the exceptions of: critical strike chance (+33%), knockback (+0%), chill and freeze duration (+0%), leech speed (+0%), Firestorm delay reduction (+0%) and increases to area of effect (+0%).
 * Oak now only resists fire and at a lower rate than before. His overall resistances now only come from endurance charges.
 * The Determination aura now provides a multiplicative increase to armour starting at 32% at level 1, rather than an additive increase of 20%.
 * Fixed a crash that would occur if a player or monster tried to use Shield Charge while caught in a Bear Trap.
 * Fixed a crash that would occur if a client had a corrupt config file.

=Version 0.9.12s=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12s released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * In Hardcore leagues, deaths of the top 15 ladder characters are now announced to the whole league.
 * Ethereal Knives: Damage increased by 10%.
 * Fireball: Damage progression increased. By skill level 15, it's doing 16% more damage than before.
 * Shock Nova: Damage progression increased. By skill level 15, it's doing 14% more damage than before.
 * Discharge: Damage progression increased. By skill level 15, it's doing 29% more damage than before.
 * Fixed a bug where party members could stop moving on your client.

=Version 0.9.12r=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12r released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a client crash that could occur when fighting Brutus.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters would not wander around properly and minions would not follow you.

=Version 0.9.12qq=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12qq released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features/Content

 * Added a hook attack to Brutus.
 * Updated all the music in the game to the newly remastered versions from the soundtrack.
 * You can now re-use the Map Device after all its portals are consumed.
 * You can now repeat a message that contains an item link without it saying "Stale Link". It'll only say that now if the item has been removed.
 * Increased the size of the Deep Dweller's room and removed the large chest from it.
 * Further improved the randomness of the The Blackwood area.

Balance

 * Resistance flasks now last 3.5 seconds rather than 2.0 seconds by default.
 * The following skills have had their damage modifiers factored into Damage Effectiveness rather than being listed as separate stats (this does not change their damage): Leap Slam, Sweep, Ground Slam, Cleave, Dual Strike, Whirling Blades, Split Arrow, Glacial Hammer and Power Siphon.
 * Heavy Strike's 50% damage bonus now affects support gems and elemental damage. It is now represented as Damage Effectiveness.
 * Reduced Flicker Strike's damage bonus from +40% to +25%. This is now also represented as Damage Effectiveness.

Gem Quality Changes

 * Shield Charge: From 1% damage per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Phase Run: From 1% damage per quality point to 0.5%.
 * Cleave: From 1% attack speed per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Double Strike: From 1% attack speed per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Whirling Blades: From 1% attack speed per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Frenzy: From 0.35% attack speed per charge per quality point to 0.2%.
 * Split Arrow: From 1% attack speed per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Viper Strike: From 0.5% attack speed per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Bear Trap: From 1% physical damage per quality point to 0.5%.
 * Ethereal Knives: From 1% projectile damage per quality point to 0.5%.
 * Increased Critical Strike Chance (Support): From 0.5% critical strike chance per quality point to 1%.
 * Melee Physical Damage (Support): From 0.2% per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Critical Strike Multiplier (Support): From 1% critical strike multiplier per quality point to 2%.
 * Added Chaos Damage (Support): From 0.5% chaos damage per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Stun (Support): From 2% stun duration per quality point to 1%.
 * Cold to Fire (Support): From 0.7% cold and fire damage per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Weapon Elemental Damage (Support): From 0.5% weapon elemental damage per quality point to 0.35%.
 * Melee Damage on Full Life (Support): From 0.5% multiplicative melee damage per quality point to 0.35% additive melee damage.

Passive Skill Tree Changes

 * Pathing in various areas has been made easier.
 * There are now several more resistance options for all classes.
 * The Templar's opening passives have been buffed.
 * Early and middle Shadow passives have been buffed.
 * Added options for hybrid classes to commit deeply to hybrid defences.
 * All Energy Shield Delay passives have been reduced from 15% to 10%.
 * Changed damage/attack speed axe passives to so that they have more damage and less attack speed.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where totems would sometimes not target nearby monsters correctly.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters and minions were unable to have above 5% chance to get critical strikes.
 * Fixed several graphical crashes.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when using a Raise Spectre Totem and certain monsters.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur related to minions receiving chance-to-block from the Necromantic Aegis keystone passive skill.
 * Fixed a crash that could occur when fighting the necromancer boss Sawbones.
 * Fixed a bug where minions of monsters in Turbo Leagues or Map areas would not have the correct speed bonus.
 * Fixed problems with the skill hotbar incorrectly displaying disabled skills under various circumstances.
 * Fixed various problems with players disconnecting during the Fairgraves quest. It should not be possible to get into bad states any more.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters in high level areas would not do the correct Firestorm damage.
 * Fixed a bug where Frenzy's damage appeared late with ranged weapons.
 * Fixed a bug where an incorrect number of charges could be displayed around a character.

=Version 0.9.12p=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12p released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * The new Brutus ability that was planned for this patch has been pushed into the next patch because we want to fix some last minute problems.
 * Added support for a new optional league mode - Turbo: Monsters move, attack and cast 60% faster. It's best used in combination with hardcore mode and is really fun because it's so hard to get through areas in early act one that are usually easy. We expect to run some Turbo Hardcore test events in the near future. We're not running a permanent Turbo league at this stage.
 * Fixed a bug where skill hotkeys would grey out incorrectly.
 * Fixed a bug where skills would appear disabled if you have Blood Magic.
 * Fixed a bug where the low-mana audio warning would occur frequently when you have Blood Magic.
 * Fixed a rare client crash.
 * The Digital Soundtrack is now available for download from your profile page if you have a $15 Supporter pack or higher.

=Version 0.9.12o=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12o released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Increased the drop rate of Maps.
 * Made it slightly easier to find higher level Maps.
 * Removed Fire Resist from Hillock.
 * Fixed a bug where Monkeys would not have shadows.
 * Fixed a bug where the The Riverways waypoint could spawn twice.
 * Fixed a bug where some torches in Map areas would not have particles.

=Version 0.9.12n=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12n released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added Ranged Attack Totem to quest rewards.
 * Players are now unable to exit the Vaal Pyramid (after slaying the Oversoul) until it has completed its ascent into Sarn.
 * Fixed a bug where quest-triggered character voice snippets could play incorrectly if you have swapped between characters with different quest states.
 * Fixed a bug where right clicking on players in town would trigger the "can't use skill here" voice snippet.
 * Fixed a bug where you could walk through some trees in the The Riverways area.

=Version 0.9.12m=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12m released by Grinding Gear Games.

Content/Features

 * Added voice acting for almost all of the NPC speech.
 * Voice acted character speech snippets have been added for various events such as the completion of certain quests, failing to equip an item, etc.
 * The NPC user interface has been revamped and now indicates which topics you've already talked to them about.
 * The Act Two NPC Silk does not yet have voiced text. Some other NPCs are missing a few voiced sections. These are coming.
 * There's now a separate volume slider for dialogue in the options.
 * Added a new Strength/Dexterity Support Gem - Ranged Attack Totem: Allows you to create totems that use bow or wand skills. It uses your currently equipped bow or wand for the damage. Note that this currently doesn't work with Rain of Arrows or Poison Arrow.
 * Added a new music track for the Merveil fight.
 * Traps and Mines should now work with bow and wand skills in a similar way to Ranged Attack Totem.
 * Added two new Unique items, one of which was designed by a Diamond supporter.
 * Improved the randomness of the Broken Bridge, The Riverways and The Blackwood areas.
 * The The Riverways area now has a waypoint.
 * The The Blackwood waypoint has been moved away from the start of the area.
 * Added water lillies to river edges.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound. This patch merges in all of these changes from our development version.

Balance

 * Explosive Arrow explosion damage is now classified as projectile damage and is hence scaled down by Lesser and Greater Multiple Projectiles support gems.
 * Raised the resistances of monsters on higher difficulties. These are still capped at 75%, but many monsters on Merciless are far enough above the cap that the Elemental Weakness curse is less effective than before.
 * Spell Totems now cost more mana to cast.
 * Reduced the damage of Ground Slam by 20%. The damage penalty is now factored into the Damage Effectiveness of the skill, rather than as a negative stat.
 * Vendors now value "Increased Life" mods when you sell items to them.
 * The Blackguard party in the Western Forest are now considerably stronger.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where Totems, Traps and Mines would attempt to taunt.
 * Fixed a bug where having both Vaal Pact and Ghost Reaver would provide duplicate leech (one occurring instantly and one over time).
 * Fixed a bug where Flicker Strike would not work properly if you click on a monster outside of range. Now it'll run into range and perform the skill.
 * Fixed a bug where players who cast their auras and then return to town to select the Blood Magic keystone passive will have free auras until they log out.
 * Fixed a bug where resistances would not display on monsters correctly.
 * Fixed a bug where Maps could get both "50% less recovery" and "no regeneration" mods at the same time.
 * Fixed two client crashes related to charges and skill cooldowns.

=Version 0.9.12l=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12l released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed the problem introduced yesterday where players would get errors when loading certain areas.
 * Fixed a bug where Flame Totem would not correctly list what it does.
 * Reduced the number of Ice Spears fired by Hailrake and Merveil in merciless difficulty.
 * Added short cooldowns to the casting of Auras.

=Version 0.9.12k=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12k released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added support for player resistance penalties, which will be tested in upcoming separate leagues for a while.
 * Added a new unique item, which offers easy access to resistances for players willing to pay the opportunity cost.
 * Reduced the damage that the Vaal Oversoul's laser attack does.
 * Changed the Vaal Oversoul's slam attack to be half physical damage (it was entirely fire damage before). Reduced its overall damage by around 10%.
 * Reduced the size of packs of Water Elementals and changed them to not spam Cold Snap as much.
 * Reduced the effect of the Elemental Weakness curse that monsters cast.
 * Added more resistance passives to the passive skill tree and increased the size of the existing ones.
 * Added a connection to the passive skill tree so that you can get Totem Duration without having to get Totem Range.
 * Tempest Shield can no longer move between areas with you. It was broken when it did so.

=Version 0.9.12j=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12j released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added a new Strength/Intelligence skill - Flame Totem: Summons a totem that fires a stream of flame at nearby enemies.
 * The key combination for linking items in chat is now Ctrl+Alt+Click. This can once again be performed at any time, even when chat is not open.
 * Auras now move with you between areas. They are not displayed in town.
 * Removing a gem containing an aura will now disable the aura. It's no longer possible to have auras active when their gems are on your inactive weapon set.
 * Players getting BSODs due to using a Creative soundcard should now try adding—softwareaudio to the command-line of the game.
 * The in-game and website ladders now indicate whether a player is currently online.
 * Increased Alira's wand attack damage.
 * Increased Alira's Detonate Dead damage.
 * Increased the speed of zombies that emerge from Alira's cauldron.
 * The Totem support gem has been renamed to Spell Totem.
 * Fixed a bug where firing a Split Arrow when you are out of mana would not correctly fall back to a normal attack.
 * Fixed the display of weapon DPS on the website's "Item Data" section. It now has one decimal point of precision.

=Version 0.9.12i=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12i released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Doubled the drop rate of Cartographer's Chisels, again.
 * Fixed a crash that could occur when you swap weapon sets between a bow and melee weapon while fighting.
 * Fixed a crash that could occur for players who have no sound.
 * Reduced the size of the icons for Corroded Blades (level 3 sword) and Gnarled Branches (level 4 staff).

=Version 0.9.12h=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12h released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a problem where there would be audible clicking sounds occasionally.
 * Changed stereo sound separation to be more similar to how it was before 0.9.12g.
 * Fixed a bug where players could gain experience by killing skeletons summoned by enemy totems.
 * Alt-clicking an item now only links the item in chat if the chat window is open. This is because people hold alt to display sockets.
 * Fixed a bug where players could avoid unleashing the oversoul's darkness in higher difficulty levels.
 * Fixed Ice Shot so that its damage is now correctly treated as Area of Effect damage.
 * Fixed a problem where the Vaal Oversoul would use the wrong arms for its attacks.
 * Fixed the ability for popup notifications to obscure the mana reservation text above the mana orb.
 * Fixed a bug where Lightning Strike's projectiles would always miss when you use it for the first time in a while.

=Version 0.9.12g=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12g released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Revamped the music system so that it fades between tracks, plays music properly on loading screens, and can resume music at the right place after reentering areas.
 * Added some new music for the Vaal Oversoul boss fight.
 * The passive skill screen now highlights the first nodes you can pick, if you don't have any points allocated. This is based on feedback from the Public Stress Test Weekend.
 * Added some Energy Shield nodes to the Shadow part of the passive skill tree.
 * The Ledge waypoint now always points towards the Climb.
 * Fixed some bugs with how Blood Monkeys appear when climbing down trees.

=Version 0.9.12f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added three new Unique Items.
 * Added new icons for many Notable Passive Skills.
 * Fixed a newly introduced bug where Dual Strike could not hit.
 * Fixed a newly introduced bug where Sweep, Rain of Arrows, Whirling Blades, Cleave, Ground Slam and Leap Slam would always get critical strikes.
 * Fixed a client crash with Explosive Arrow.
 * Fixed a crash that could occur for players with a lot of friends, when one of their friends logs in.
 * Fixed some problems with Oak's sound effects.
 * Fixed the Witch Shield Charge animation.

=Version 0.9.12e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug that could cause the hit/miss prediction to become incorrect.
 * Fixed a problem that could occur with Fairgraves' minions where they would not appear for some players.
 * Fixed a realm crash.
 * Fixed a client and server crash related to Power Siphon.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when the minion of a converted monster gets a kill.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur when using a Duelist and Heavy Strike with certain weapon combinations.

=Version 0.9.12d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Increased the drop rate of Maps.
 * Doubled the drop rate of Cartographer's Chisels.
 * Restored the old (slightly larger) font size used on item and skill hovers.
 * Leap Slam has been slowed down a little. It is still a lot faster than it was in 0.9.11.
 * Fixed a bug in the rendering of links between sockets on ground items.
 * Changed the colouring of sockets on ground items and made them render without distortion.
 * The Shore Encampment has now been renamed to Lioneye's Watch.
 * Fixed a bug where the player icon could appear multiple times on the the World screen.
 * Fixed a bug where a Map area would fail to generate if it had the increased size mod.
 * Fixed a client crash with the minion user interface.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur with Viper Strike.

=Version 0.9.12c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12c released by Grinding Gear Games.

End-Game Map Changes

 * The player's "Increased Item Quantity" stat does not affect the drop rate of Map items any more. It does still increase the drop rate of everything else inside Maps.
 * Maps now drop 24% more often.
 * The mods on Maps that increase the quantity of items (and Maps) dropped within that Map are now around 50% higher.
 * It's now slightly easier to find higher level Maps.

Damage Reflection Changes

 * Removed the damage reflection cap. There is now no limit to the amount of damage that can be reflected by one attack.
 * Reduced the damage reflected by monster auras and Map mods by 20%.
 * Reduced the radius of monster damage reflection auras by 20%.

Other

 * Reduced the brightness and width of the band of colour on item sockets. We'd like to get feedback from colourblind players about whether they're still able to distinguish the different socket colours now that they're darker.
 * Changed the passive tree slightly to allow faster access to the outside for the Templar and Marauder. Any characters that have allocated the passives that were removed here will have their passive skill points refunded by this patch.
 * Fixed some quest reward skill gems that were set to the wrong level.
 * Fixed a bug where your highlighted quests on the World screen could be changed after going to a new area.
 * Fixed a bug where Fairgraves would appear next to his illusion form rather than on top of it.
 * Fixed a bug where Belcer, the Pirate Lord would be invisible and would not attack you.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when using Summoned Skeletons and Auras on different weapon sets.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur when whispering another player.
 * Fixed a patcher crash that could occur when installing the game. If you are stuck unable to run the game after installing it, please delete the zero byte Content.ggpk file in the Path of Exile directory. This state should not occur from fresh installs any more.

=Version 0.9.12b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * There's now an "Always show sockets" UI setting.
 * Flasks hovers now display how many charges they currently have.
 * The map representation of the blockage at the Prisoner's Gate now updates correctly when you complete the "The Way Forward" quest.
 * The Golden Hand quest is now only given to you after you've rescued Helena. You still have to kill the Great White Beast first.
 * Fixed a problem with chat where the overlay map, inventory and passive skill tree would appear on top of it. For now, this means that chat will go over the top of vendor windows again until we fix that later.
 * Approximately 25 base item types have been made visually smaller, to conserve inventory space.
 * Reduced the frequency of voice acted yells that occur when the characters cast spells.
 * Restored the stat description on the Cold to Fire support gem.
 * Fixed a crash with Ice Shot.
 * Fixed a crash with Lightning Strike that would occur with specific two-handed mauls.

=Version 0.9.12=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.12 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Content

 * Added a new Dexterity Skill - Ice Shot: Fires an arrow that chills its target and creates a patch of ground ice.
 * Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity Skill - Arctic Breath: Fires a frozen projectile that leaves a trail of ground ice behind it. It explodes on impact, creating more ground ice and damaging targets within an area.
 * Added a new Keystone Passive Skill - Vaal Pact: Life Leech applies instantly. Life Flasks and Life Regeneration have no effect.
 * Added a new Keystone Passive Skill - Ghost Reaver: Leech Energy Shield instead of Life.
 * Added four new Unique items, two of which have been designed by our diamond supporters.
 * The quest in the Chamber of Sins now involves rescuing Helena, a new NPC.
 * Added a bridging quest to send people towards Act Two after they leave the prison. In return for unblocking the passage between the two acts, you are rewarded with a Passive Skill point.
 * Added a new type of enemy - Blackguard soldiers, near the forest side of the blockage between the acts.
 * The Great White Beast has been moved to the Cave in the Old Fields. A quest has been added to slay this beast.
 * There's now a quest to kill the Vaal Oversoul.
 * The Monkey Twins were moved to the Dread Thicket.
 * Improved the diversity of random layouts for all outdoors Act One areas.
 * Improved the walls in the caves in Act One so that it's easier to see monsters.
 * Added new voice acted character combat sounds that have more personality.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.
 * Renamed the Combined Amulet to the Apex.
 * Renamed the Wicked Spear to Maligaro's Spike.

Features

 * When you're creating a character, you now hear a voice acted introduction to the selected class.
 * Improved minion AI. They'll now attack monsters in a radius around the player, or around the player's current action location if applicable. Minions that do not follow players (such as skeletons) find targets around themselves rather than around their parent.
 * Added minion user interface that shows how many minions of each type you have. If you have only one, it shows a life bar for that minion.
 * Zombies and Spectres now move between areas with you. They don't appear in town, but will reappear when you enter another area. They are lost if you log off or are disconnected. If you get a minion from a higher level area, it will scale down to the level of any area that you enter. Minions are never scaled up beyond the level they initially came from.
 * The item hover information has been improved to represent information about the items in a clearer way.
 * Changed item sockets to be smaller and hopefully easier for colourblind users to read.
 * Skill and Support Gems now have tags that show what types of things affect them. For example, gems affected by "+1 to Level of Fire Gems in this item" would now say "Fire" on them.
 * Important plot NPCs in the wilderness that talk to you now have their text listed in the chat window, in green. This is used sparingly.
 * Unidentified and white items are now prefixed with "Superior" if they have increased quality. This makes them easier to notice on the ground.
 * Arrows are now real projectiles rather than faked long-range melee attacks. This means that they can now miss if the target runs out of the way before they arrive. This also applies to wands.
 * Projectiles now have a minimum and maximum spread when multiple ones are fired at once. This prevents them firing in overly tight clusters or too spread out so that they go behind you.
 * We've added large icons to the Passive Skill Screen, to make it easier to identify the theme of each cluster of skills.
 * The item comparisons that appear when you press alt are now shown to the right if you're looking at items on the left side of the screen.
 * Leech now also triggers if you do damage to energy shield. Previously it only triggered if you caused damage to life.
 * Damage conversion effects from the same damage type are now scaled if they would convert more than 100% of that damage. All damage conversion which does not come from skills is scaled down such that the total damage conversion (including the conversion from skills) is 100%.
 * Sockets now only appear on inventory/stash items if you press alt. They don't show permanently if you have Z (or equivalent) toggled.
 * Zombie and skeleton skills now display correct life values, including your modifiers.
 * Item allocation now displays a progress bar rather than a numeric timer.
 * "Critical Strike Damage Multiplier" is now known as "Critical Strike Multiplier".
 * Portals are now shown on the minimap.
 * Explosive Arrows now have their own arrow effect. If they miss and stick into terrain, they'll explode as normal after a short time.
 * Dead players are no longer shown on the minimap. This was a problem in hectic PvP situations.
 * You now cannot receive the Baleful Gem until Fidelitas is dead.
 * Quest items now have flavour text.
 * Added a new death animation for monster totems.
 * The Labyrinthine prefix now has a consistent effect on different types of Map areas.
 * Renamed many dexterity item mods to avoid duplicates and to make names more appropriate.
 * Added a display of Cast Time to skill gem hovers.
 * If an item mod affects your entire character (where it would normally only affect that one item), it now has the word "Global" in it, to resolve ambiguity.
 * Changed skill popups and the chat interface to have single pixel borders rather than gold frames.
 * The item names of Quest items are now green. Gems are now teal.
 * Improved the variety of prefixes/suffixes in the random names of most rare items in the game.
 * We renamed some base item types to avoid conflicts with new rare item names.
 * Minions now always teleport to you when you get too far away from them.
 * Players are now notified properly when they receive passive skill points, refund points or bandit stat rewards.
 * The tops of most trees now look better when close to the camera.
 * It's now much easier to click on portals that have minions behind them.

Balance

 * Phase Run is now available from the Medicine Chest quest for every class.
 * Slower weapon base types now do more damage. The slowest weapons have the highest overall damage per second but are most interruptable.
 * The bandit quest reward for siding with Alira has been increased from 30 to 40 mana.
 * The Weapon Elemental Damage support gem and passive skills now no longer affect unarmed attacks. No other stats that include the word "Weapon" affect unarmed damage now.
 * Increased the size of elemental damage mods on weapons by 16%.
 * Changed bows so that they're not skewed towards cold damage and now have a slightly higher overall rate of elemental damage mods occuring.
 * Increased the chance of elemental damage mods occuring on sceptres.
 * Doubled the effect of damage reflection that comes from Map mods.
 * Quadrupled the effect of damage reflection on monster auras.
 * Monsters now have to be 50% closer before they can cast Cold Snap.
 * The Map mod that affects monster pack size has been reduced to +20-50%.
 * The Map mod that affects the size of the level has been reduced to +20-50% and works more accurately now.
 * Increased the amount of life leech available implicitly on claw weapons.
 * Rebalanced the properties on level 60+ items so that the requirements and damage/defense are higher.
 * Increased Item Rarity and Item Quantity mods can now only spawn on gloves, boots, helmets, rings and amulets.
 * Reduced the duration of Oak's Immortal Call substantially.

Skill Changes

 * Raise Zombie: The skill gem now allows three zombies to be raised, regardless of level. The passive tree allows up to five additional zombies. Their life has been reduced by 30% and they now have armour. The damage bonus for zombies now only applies for skill level 15 and up (level 54 zombies).
 * Raise Spectre: Monsters now have a large multiplicative movement speed bonus when raised as spectres (capped at the same speed as a raised zombie). The passive tree now only has one additional spectre passive. The penalty to spectre life and damage has been substantially reduced at all levels of the gem.
 * Summon Skeletons: Life increased by 50%. Skeletons are now summoned in pairs, regardless of the level of the gem. The maximum number of raisable skeletons now starts at 4 and goes up to 6 at maximum level. An additional six can be obtained from the passive skill tree.
 * Poison Arrow: Rebalanced its mana cost progression to reflect the fact that it does damage in a comparable way to spells.
 * Leap Slam: Reduced cast speed from 1.9 seconds to 1.2 seconds.
 * Minion Life Support Gem: Mana cost reduced from 150% to 140%. Increased life now starts at 30% (rather than 40%). Quality on this gem now provides half the bonus it did before.
 * Shock Nova: Damage increased by 14%.
 * Dominating Blow: Now works with unarmed attacks and has no limit to the number of minions it can create.
 * Infernal Blow: Now works with unarmed attacks.
 * Explosive Arrow: Now does not explode each time it pierces through monsters.
 * Temporal Chains: The quality bonuses have been corrected to not include movement speed, as it is already part of the core effect.
 * Trap Support Gem: Now starts with a 12 second cooldown, but this decreases as it levels up.
 * Reduced Mana Cost Support Gem: Renamed to "Reduced Mana", as it also reduces reserved amounts as well as costs.

Passive Skill Tree Changes

 * Reduced the amount of nodes in the attribute highways, especially in outer areas of the tree.
 * Added many notable passives to external areas of the tree.
 * Reworked the Templar opening area.
 * Reworked the non-bow portions of the Ranger opening area.
 * Made several other pathing changes to improve hybrid classes, level 18-35 choices and other elements of the passive tree.
 * Added Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact keystone passives (described above).
 * The Golem's Blood notable passive has been reduced to 1.5% life regeneration.
 * 0.5% life regeneration passives have been reduced to 0.4%.
 * Reduced several block passives.
 * Increased the number of life passives available, especially in the dexterity portion of the tree.
 * Additional minion passives are now notable passives and now either provide +1 spectre, or a benefit to both zombies and skeletons.
 * Additional minion life and damage passives have been grouped together so that each cluster provides a specific advantage, rather than all groups providing a similar set of mixed passives.
 * More accuracy passives have been added to the dexterity section of the Shadow part of the tree.
 * The 2% life leech passive is now a notable passive.
 * All life and mana cost reduction passives are now red, accuracy passives are green and additional mana passives are blue.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where players could bypass minion limits by using multiple skill gems of the same type.
 * Fixed a bug where shattered Shield Crabs would drop no items.
 * Diamond Kiwi pets now have shadows.
 * Fixed a bug where swapping weapon tabs while being stunned could cause your character to freeze.
 * Fixed a bug where items on your alternate weapon set might not have their requirements checked correctly.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur whenever entities are deleted if they still had effects in the world.
 * Elemental Proliferation is now affected by increases to Area of Effect.
 * Fixed some vendor recipes that could generate items with quality greater than zero.
 * Whirling Blades now checks evasion properly, rather than always hitting.
 * Fixed a bug where the result of piercing was different on the client compared to the server.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur when gems become ready to level up.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters that cast curses would attempt to curse your totem (which can't be cursed) repeatedly.
 * Fixed a bug where you could get two power charges from one monster with Power Siphon if your attack speed was fast enough.
 * Fixed a bug where very full stashes could cause a disconnection when being opened.
 * Fixed a bug where the font on popups could be wrong after the game window was resized.
 * Monster Auras that affect players (because the monster is converted) can now be influenced by game mechanics that affect your auras.
 * Fixed a bug where using the arrow keys to adjust stack sizes in the stash would also change which stash tab was active.
 * Whispering now works properly even when you don't type in the correct case for a character name.
 * Pressing Alt while the key is not bound to anything will now not freeze the game client.
 * Fixed a bug where killing the map boss "Belcer, the Pirate Lord" would count as completing the Fairgraves quest.
 * Fixed a bug where the life bars of party members were displayed behind ground items.
 * Fixed a bug where resetting keys to their defaults would not be detected as a change to the setting and so the save button wouldn't enable.
 * Fixed a rare crash when hovering items linked in chat.
 * Fixed some bugs where damage modifiers described as "Melee" could apply to some projectiles.
 * Prevented the passives that add both Armour and Evasion from having a double effect if you have the Iron Reflexes keystone.
 * Fixed a bug where players would be unable to right click on other players in town to access the dropdown menu if they had a totem bound to their right mouse button.
 * Fixed a bug where items on the ground sometimes display as unequippable if your attributes have changed since you first saw the item.
 * Fixed a bug where you would sometimes queue two attacks if you press the shift key while holding down the mouse button.
 * The chat box now ignores Alt, Shift, and Ctrl so if those keys are bound as the highlight keys, they'll now work when the chat box is open.
 * Fixed a bug where changes to the "Filter White Items" setting would not apply until Alt or Z was pressed.
 * Fixed the possibility for a player to be rewarded for their own death, if they killed themselves.
 * Fixed stats that shouldn't be visible on website items when unidentified.
 * Fixed a bug where scrolling up and down on the Friends List while having the Chat box focused would scroll both.
 * Fixed a bug where the UI could get stuck if you deleted an item while changing area.
 * Fixed the ability to bind certain keys such as ` and ~, among others.
 * Fixed a bug where you could hover your mouse cursor over monsters that were outside the game's window, in windowed mode.
 * Fixed bugs related to who was assigned credit from kills by converted monsters, or by minions of converted monsters.
 * Fixed some display problems when whispering item links.
 * Fixed a bug that would occur if the user presses escape while holding down the mouse to move.
 * Fixed problems where the chat window would occlude vendor and NPC chat windows.
 * Fixed a bug where holding the mouse on the Stash or Waypoint nameplate would cause UI panels to flicker.
 * Fire Trap now deals area damage properly.
 * Fixed a bug with the display of nameplates on small chests.
 * Fixed a bug where some magic monsters would have an implicit mod listed in their title by mistake.
 * Fixed a bug where portals in one Map area would be at the wrong height.
 * Flicker Strike and Frost Wall can't be used through walls anymore.
 * Fixed a bug where you could get gem popups to show along with comparison popups.
 * Fixed a bug where the "Allies cannot die" aura prevented exploding monsters from detonating.

=Version 0.9.11m=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11m released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added a Texture Quality setting in the graphical options. This defaults to Medium on 32 bit systems. If you get "Out of Memory" or "Unable to Map File" errors while playing, please set it to Medium to conserve memory.
 * We've improved the responsiveness of moving while holding down the mouse button. It should now be as responsive as moving by clicking.
 * Shadow characters now receive the choice of the Phase Run skill gem as a level 4 quest reward.

=Version 0.9.11l=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11l released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed the ignore/invite behaviour described in the 0.9.11k patch notes so that it now works correctly.
 * Removed the item quantity bonus for the "Labyrinthine" Map mod.
 * Changed the "Massive" Map mod so that it can only spawn on outdoors maps.
 * Exploding Spawns above level 61 now do damage.
 * Increased the damage of Exploding Bandits.
 * Fixed problems with targeting of Lightning Warp.
 * Fixed a bug where the Vulnerability curse would cause extra non-physical damage on a shocked target.
 * Fixed a bug where shocked targets would only receive increased damage from degeneration effects, not normal damage.
 * Visual elemental damage effects now only play if more than 15% of the target's life was removed by damage of that element.

=Version 0.9.11k=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11k released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when offering Maps to the vendor.
 * If you ignore a player (with the /ignore command), they are now unable to spam you with party or friend invitations.
 * Added the ability to run special event leagues where players are not allowed to be in parties.
 * Fixed the calculation of Shockwave Totem's damage.
 * Modified the vendor sell value of some Map mods.
 * Fixed a problem that would happen if a player sold equipped items whose attribute bonuses were needed to meet the requirements of other equipped items that are also being sold.

=Version 0.9.11j=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11j released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added one new hidden vendor recipe.
 * Enabled the vendor recipe that enables you to trade various higher qualities of Maps for Cartographer's Chisels. This is now the same as other types of items.
 * The Wealth mod on magic and rare monsters now causes fewer items to drop but they are of higher rarity. Previously the item explosions from these monsters were too large.
 * "While healing" effects from flask mods can no longer be indefinitely extended by using more flasks.
 * Fixed a bug where if your minion put a damage-over-time effect on a monster and was then deleted, the monster's death would not count towards your experience.
 * Fixed Puncture's quality bonus so that it now works.
 * Fixed bugs with Lightning Warp's ability to target certain locations.
 * Fixed a bug where items linked in chat by developers or moderators would not appear correctly.
 * Fixed a bug where developers and moderators would occasionally not have the correct designation in game.
 * Fixed a bug where some players' status messages could get corrupted (and would have random foreign letters after them). If you have this problem, changing your status message will get rid of the corruption forever.

=Version 0.9.11i=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11i released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Forum moderators can now mute disruptive players in-game for up to 12 hours. They have (Mod) next to their name in chat.
 * Cooldown times are now shown on gem popups, if applicable.
 * Fixed a bug where players could control-click quest items to send them to their stash. The ability to control-click items to move them to their remove-only stash tabs was fixed in a server hotfix last week.
 * Fixed a damage calculation bug where interactions such as Glacial Hammer and the Cold to Fire support gem could result in incorrect damage.
 * Fixed a bug where flat mana reservation auras could display the wrong mana reserved when mana cost reduction passives were present.
 * The Temporal Chains map mod now works more correctly.
 * Fixed Infernal Blow so that it benefits from increased area of effect.
 * Players' minions are no longer affected by the map mod that adds Frenzy charges to monsters periodically.
 * Fixed the randomness of Spark, Ethereal Knives and Firestorm when they were used with Traps.
 * Fixed a bug where increased cast speed and trap laying speed would make creating Traps, Mines and Totems slower rather than faster.

=Version 0.9.11h=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11h released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Control-click now transfers items between your inventory and stash, if it is open.
 * For consistency, the shortcut for sending items to the vendor is now also control-click. This used to be shift-click.
 * The shortcut for linking an item in chat has changed from control-click to alt-click.

=Version 0.9.11g=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11g released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added 13 new Unique items, including four designed by our diamond supporters. Note that the "Extra Gore" mod used on two of them does not have the final visual effect yet.
 * Stratified the drop rates of Unique items so that some of them are more common (especially build-enabling ones), and powerful ones are still extremely rare.
 * The drop rates of Unique items are no longer proportional to their item type. A common Unique ring is now as likely to drop as a common Unique weapon.
 * Added a coloured border around the hovers of Map items when they're on the ground so that the are easier to notice.
 * Fixed a bug where Elemental Proliferation would not work with Freeze Mine.
 * The Arrow Dodging keystone passive now works against many monsters it should have worked against before.
 * Fixed a problem where players would get the Phase Acrobatics keystone passive bonus early (when they allocated the Acrobatics keystone passive).
 * Fixed a bug where the Strand map would always fail to generate with the Increased size mod (the map item itself wasn't consumed).
 * Prevented Phase Run from being used on a Totem.

=Version 0.9.11f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11f released by Grinding Gear Games.

General Changes

 * Increased the damage of Firestorm and made its cluster tighter.
 * Improved event prize awarding so that the rewards stack.

Cut-throat League Changes

 * In cut-throat leagues, experience rewards for killing other players are now shared with your nearby party members.
 * Fixed a bug in cut-throat leagues where experience death penalties awarded to players were not calculated correctly.
 * Fixed a client crash and realm crash that could occur in cut-throat leagues when attempting to list the instances in an area that has more than 255 instances.
 * Fixed a bug where clients timing out in cut-throat leagues would cause unnecessary server load.

=Version 0.9.11e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11e released by Grinding Gear Games.

General Changes

 * Non-spell critical strikes can now be evaded.
 * Adjusted some critical strike multiplier Passive Skills.
 * Rebalanced some Map mods to compensate for their difficulty.

Cut-throat League Changes

 * Disabled instance join and leave notifications in cut-throat leagues.
 * Portals in cut-throat leagues now cannot be used until they have been open for five seconds.
 * The death penalty in cut-throat leagues has been increased by an additional 20% of the player's current level.

=Version 0.9.11d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a problem where Large Chests would only drop half the intended number of items.
 * Fixed a bug where Map mods would persist in the user interface once you have left the Map area.

=Version 0.9.11c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Level 60 Maps can now drop from monsters in all areas of Merciless Act Two. This also means that Ancient Pyramid runs now yield more Maps than before.
 * Enabled the Sewers and Crematorium Maps.
 * Added three new Unique items.
 * Removed some redundant skill gem rewards from the Brutus quest.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when swapping weapon slots.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur when fighting the Act Two boss.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur with certain public party names.

=Version 0.9.11b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug introduced today where totems that cast auras would repeatedly cast the aura forever.
 * Fixed a bug where players could stack multiple copies of the same curse on a monster.
 * Fixed a bug where curses from Maps could be overwritten by other curses.
 * Fixed a bug where players were unable to whisper each other by clicking names in chat.
 * Connected some passive skills that were accidentally isolated.
 * Added correct descriptions to some monster totems and a monster aura.
 * Fixed the floating carpets.
 * Fixed a crash in the patching server.

=Version 0.9.11=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.11 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features/Content

 * Substantially revamped the Passive Skill tree. Details are in the Passive Skill Tree Balance section below.
 * Added the Act Two boss and associated world darkness event.
 * You can now swap between two weapon sets by pressing X or clicking the tabs above the slots on the inventory screen. Gems in the swapped-out set continue to gain experience as normal, but their skills cannot be used unless swapped back in.
 * Added two new new Unique items designed by our Diamond supporters.
 * Removed the Maelstrom of Chaos. It has been replaced by our Maps end-game. For more information about Maps, please read the development diary entry on our site.
 * Added 45 Map areas, each with its own boss.
 * Added a new currency item - Cartographer's Chisel: Upgrades the quality of a map.
 * Added three new tilesets from Act Three, which are currently only featured in Map areas.
 * Added a new Dexterity support gem - Blind: Associated skills have a chance to blind their targets for 4 seconds. Blinded monsters have 75% less chance to hit (multiplicatively).
 * Added new combat sounds for the Templar.
 * Renamed Alira's Camp to the Western Forest.
 * You can now use the arrow keys to move between stash tabs.
 * Whisper messages now have an arrow to indicate whether they were sent or received.
 * Added some new Totem types for end-game Map areas.
 * Changed the behaviour of the shift key so that if you press it while running, you will stop and force-attack.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

General Balance

 * Quest rewards have been rebalanced and now include some rare item rewards in higher difficulties. These rare items cannot get mods higher than the level of your character.
 * The attack speed bonus for dual wielding is now multiplicative rather than additive with other speed bonuses.
 * Small chests now drop fewer items and large chests now drop more.
 * Increased item quantity prefixes have been removed from the game. Items that already have them are unaffected.
 * Made it slightly easier for players and monsters to be stunned.
 * Confirmed that the increased item rarity bonus for Large Chests was working correctly. Then we doubled it.

Monster Balance

 * The Ship Graveyard Cave is now level 14 in Normal difficulty.
 * Experience yield for several monsters has been adjusted to reflect their challenge.
 * Reduced the damage of Rhoas slightly.
 * Increased level progression towards end of Merciless Act 2.
 * Difficulty of monsters at level 60 areas has been reduced, with progression now extended to level 70 (in Map areas).
 * Monster resistances have been increased in all difficulties.
 * Reduced the experience that necromancers yield when killed.
 * Increased the experience that Brutus yields when killed.
 * Vaal Fallen are now stronger.
 * Reduced Oak's life and improved his skills in higher difficulties.

Active Skill Balance

 * Lightning Strike: The damage penalty on its projectiles is now 30% rather than 20%.
 * Stun Support Gem: Mana cost reduced.
 * Flicker strike: Now has a cooldown which can be bypassed by spending a Frenzy Charge. Corrected some mistakes in its damage progression.
 * Cold Snap: Increased its damage. Now has a cooldown which can by bypassed by spending a Power Charge.
 * Enduring Cry: Now has a cooldown.
 * Molten Shell: Reduced the damage required to set it off in the first four levels.

Passive Skill Tree Balance

 * Weapon Elemental damage passives reduced.
 * Water Dancing notable changed to include Dexterity.
 * Values of Block recovery nodes improved and consolidated.
 * Shield Armour passive changed to be general defences.
 * Increased physical weapon damage nodes.
 * Redesigned the tree with the following features:
 * Fewer choices at the very beginning of class start areas.
 * Class identities strengthened with increased opportunity costs to building heavily off-class
 * Most builds requiring a few specialised notables and Keystones should be easier
 * Builds requiring many cross-tree notables and keystones made more costly
 * Defensive nodes around the tree made more even

Item Balance

 * Improved life gain and leech implicit mods on all Claw weapons.
 * Slightly increased the implicit fire damage and physical damage on quivers.
 * Decreased the magnitudes of elemental damage mods on items and physical damage mods on non-weapon items.
 * Prevented high level elemental and non-weapon physical damage mods from appearing on some item types.
 * Reduced how often elemental damage mods appear on non-weapons.
 * Glinting mods changed to have the same values, regardless of what type of item they appear on.
 * Improved implicit block rate on staves.

Bug Fixes

 * If a character has no valid skill on its left mouse button, it is no longer unable to move.
 * Items shown to you as results of sell-vendor recipes do not display sockets any more. This is to prevent players essentially getting free rerolls of sockets by trying different combinations of items.
 * Reduced the vertical selectable height of Portals so that it's harder to miss-click and accidentally consume a portal you just created.
 * You no longer gain experience while dead.
 * Fire trap can now be supported by area of effect support gems.
 * Fixed some rare item names that could not spawn before.
 * Fixed Unique monsters so that they now have a +2 bonus to item level in the same way that Rare monsters do.
 * Fixed a bug that would cause a resource to be loaded from the hard drive each time an arrow was fired.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters that were meant to not repeat actions consecutively would in fact repeat them.
 * Fixed a bug where the wrong environment could be picked when entering a multi-level area area via a portal.
 * Fog no longer interacts with the shimmer post-processing effect incorrectly.
 * Skill icons on the character screen now have their backgrounds back.
 * Fixed a bug that would cause small monsters to drop too many items in multiplayer instances and large monsters too few.
 * Fixed a bug where Conversion Trap could permanently convert a monster.
 * Totems with Blood Magic (from either a Support Gem or the player's passives) now do not spend their own life to cast spells.
 * Clicking on the noticeboard in town will now change to the public party tab if the social panel is visible.
 * Fixed a bad interaction between on-drink flask effects and the Puncture skill.
 * Fixed a bug that could allow you to detonate mine when you had none out.
 * The damage prediction of armour values on the character screen is now more accurate for players over level 30.
 * Fixed level-up sounds so that you hear them in stereo and other players hear them placed in the 3d world correctly.
 * The Dripping Dead in the Mud Flats are now the correct level.
 * Vendor offer prices have been fixed on increased item rarity prefixes.
 * Global notifications during special leagues now appear even when Hide Global Chat is on.
 * Settings are no longer saved if you're disconnected while changing them.
 * The Righteous Fire skill gem can now drop from monsters and chests.

=Version 0.9.10f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.10f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug where the "Hide Global Chat" option wasn't being saved sometimes.
 * Closing the options screen with Space or Escape will now save your changes.
 * Fixed the Orb of Chance currency item so that it can generate Rare and Unique items at the correct rate (approximately 32 times more often).

=Version 0.9.10e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.10e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * We've added support for "Borderless Fullscreen Windowed Mode" in the graphics options.
 * The options screen has been rearranged to make it more intuitive.
 * The Chaos Inoculation keystone passive skill now grants +50% Energy Shield rather than +80%.

=Version 0.9.10d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.10d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Scavengers should now no longer throw torches twice.
 * Fixed the effects that play on the glyph wall in the Mud Flats.
 * Fixed the social screen flickering when you hold down the mouse cursor on the noticeboard.
 * Fixed a problem where Fire Trap displayed the wrong damage.
 * Items on the ground are now always shown while they are temporarily allocate to you.
 * Fixed some problems with the unstack UI. You can now use the keyboard to adjust the slider.
 * Some monsters could occasionally receive armour, evasion or energy shield mods when they were not aligned with the respective attributes. This has been fixed.

=Version 0.9.10c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.10c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Substantially increased the sharpness of item icons. When fixing the blurriness introduced in 0.9.10, we found a way to make them sharper than they had been before.
 * Fixed a problem where some low level quivers could be purchased for free.
 * Fixed the vendor recipe that creates hybrid flasks so that it works with the new flask series.
 * Disabled the "Energy shield cooldown recovery" mod from spawning on non-unique items.
 * Fixed a crash that would occur when a goatman shaman stunned itself with a spark if it was converted to a different team while the spark was in the air.
 * Fixed the extra stash tabs dropdown display on non-standard aspect ratios.
 * The social panel will now close automatically if it was opened automatically.

=Version 0.9.10b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.10b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * The game should now work with all Creative sound cards properly. Please let us know if there are still problems.
 * Fixed a bug where Lightning Strike's melee attack would always hit.
 * Lightning Strike's projectiles now always hit if the melee attack hits, otherwise they perform an accuracy roll.
 * Increased the size of packs of Spawn in the Submerged Passage areas to address pacing and difficulty.
 * Fixed problems with the spikes that block travel between the Prisoner's Gate and Alira's Camp areas.
 * Rare/magic Necromancer monsters are now less likely to receive mods that give them more life or regen.
 * Replaced "Reduced mana percentage reserved" passive skills with "Reduced mana reservation" passives that apply to all mana reservation skills, not just percentage reservation ones. Flat reservation costs are affected by these and are no longer affected by "Reduced mana cost" passives.
 * Fixed a bug with the interaction between the "Always show items" and "Filter white items" UI options.
 * Fixed an Elemental Damage passive that was described as Trap Trigger Radius by mistake.

=Version 0.9.10=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.10 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * In multiplayer instances, certain items (magic, rare, unique, currency and gems) are now allocated to a random nearby player for a short duration, during which time only that player may pick them up. This duration is increased by the time it would take the player to run to the item. Note that the allocation time is short enough that players must still pay close attention to what items drop in combat and to pick them up immediately if they want them.
 * You can now make your party public by giving it a name on the party screen. Players can browse public parties associated with a town by clicking the new Noticeboard in town or by using the social screen. For example, if you need help with Merveil, you might name your party "Help with Merveil". Players then see it on the list and join it to help you out. You can make it private again or rename it if your situation changes.
 * When hovering over an item, your equipped item in that slot is now shown for comparison alongside it while you hold the Alt key.
 * Increased stereo separation of sound effects.
 * Sand Spitters that deal elemental damage now fire projectiles with the appropriate elemental effects. This may also result in your effects sound settings being a little too loud - adjust them on the options screen if needed. Our new default setting is 50% volume for sound effects.
 * Added /squelch and /unsquelch commands as synonyms for /ignore and /unignore.
 * Path of Exile has now been tested and found to work on Windows 8. If you have any problems with the game in this operating system, please let us know.
 * Updated the icon of the client to a more readable one.

Content

 * Added five new player-designed Unique items.
 * Added a new item progression for Life, Mana and Hybrid flasks.
 * Fire Hellions in the Rocky Climb and Prisoner's Gate now drop a patch of ground fire when they die.
 * Zombies in the Coves now drop a patch of tar when they die. Running through it slows you down.
 * Some Scavengers now have fire torches that they can throw at you once for increased damage.
 * Improved the 3d art for many of the boots in the game.
 * Updated the blood and critical strike effects on most monsters.
 * Made the Fetid Pool somewhat more fetid.
 * Ghosts that wield wands or bows now have ghostly weapons.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

General Balance Changes

 * The challenge of later game areas (both monster life and damage) has been increased, and the first difficulty reduced slightly.
 * Decreased the rate of encountering rare monster packs in the first act of the first difficulty.
 * Monster pack sizes have been re-evaluated, with packs in the second act receiving a lot of changes.
 * Monster pack sizes now increase as the player progresses through difficulty levels again.
 * Rare/magic monsters with a lot of life (like Moss Monsters and Beasts) now have far less chance to receive mods that make them nearly impossible to kill.
 * Quivers can now be purchased from NPCs.
 * Elemental damage mods have been reduced by 20%.
 * Damage of two-handed melee weapons has been increased by 10%.
 * Reduced the life of player Totems.
 * Fire Trap: Added a 5% critical strike chance. Increased its mana cost. Increased its damage progression over levels.
 * Bear Trap: Added a 5% critical strike chance. Increased its mana cost. Increased the effect that support gems have on this skill. Reduced damage at lower levels but increased it at higher levels.
 * Decoy Totem: Increased mana cost.
 * Shockwave Totem: Removed its critical strike chance. Reduced its radius of effect, damage, cast speed and frequency of pulses. Increased its mana cost.
 * Sweep: Removed knockback distance increase. Changed quality bonus to attack speed.
 * Knockback support gem: Changed quality bonus to additional knockback chance.
 * Shield Charge: removed increase to knockback distance based on charge distance.
 * There's now a limit of 3 traps, 5 mines and 1 totem by default, regardless of which skill it is. Previously the skills varied in maximum, which caused unexpected results.
 * Moved defensive passives around to allow an evasion-only path through the tree, for Acrobatics characters.
 * Passive skills for increasing your maximum number of totems have been added.
 * Improved passive skills that increase the area of effect of auras.
 * Increased the damage of Shield Crabs and the Sea Witch wave attack.

Specific Monster Balance Changes

 * Reduced damage of Flicker Strike when used by monsters.
 * Reduced damage of Spark when used by Goat Shamans and Amarissa, Daughter of Merveil.
 * Reduced damage of Cold Snap when used by monsters.
 * Reduced Chatters' chill duration and damage a little.
 * Merveil's Attendants now inflict the Temporal Chains curse when they hit.
 * Life leech on monsters has been reduced significantly.
 * Increased the damage of small apes.
 * Increased the damage of minor bandit bosses.
 * Reduced the damage of skeleton bosses.
 * Increased the movement speed of Fidelitas, the Mourning.
 * The Burning Menace now deals more damage and has more life. He now drops ground fire on death.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where the client would display an infinite loading screen if you joined an instance where a player on your friends list was currently located, if you had just been in a party with them.
 * Fixed a bug where a portal would not update its description when the owner recast it from another area.
 * Fixed two problems that prevented Whirling Blades from hitting its targets correctly.
 * Items now always hit the ground when dropped by player death in Cut-throat leagues, rather than being occasionally deleted due to lack of room. The same is now also true for items dropped from chests.
 * The limits on minions, traps and totems now come from the player's limits. This means you can't violate your maximum number of these by summoning them through traps.
 * Fixed the ability for traps to trigger on friendly NPCs.
 * Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Lightning Strike while standing on a patch of fire.
 * Fixed a bug with the diminishing returns calculation of Increased Item Quantity and Increased Item Rarity so that they are now additive with the player bonus rather than the monster bonus.
 * The damage reduction estimation for level 60 onwards is now done using Maelstrom of Chaos monsters rather than the normal progression.
 * Finally fixed the exploding Spawns that could generate as magic or rare.
 * Fixed some problems with shields having the wrong graphics.
 * Fixed a bug with the damage dealt by Ice Nova while in trap form.
 * Fixed a server crash that could occur if a monster used Lightning Strike on a target that had damage reflection such as Tempest Shield.
 * Fixed a rare bug that would cause you to take damage from Puncture indefinitely until you left the instance.
 * Changed how the minimap works so that less memory fragmentation problems occur.
 * Prevented some stuttering when items were seen for the first time in a session.
 * Fixed a bug where the game has trouble running from a directory that contains non-English characters.
 * Fixed a bug that could cause the patcher to misreport the size of the data to download.
 * Fixed all bugs where summoned monsters could yield experience.
 * Fixed a bug where being punctured multiple times would cause incorrect behaviour.
 * Totems using percentage reserve skills with blood magic now correctly base the cost as a percentage of their life rather than yours.
 * When a player dies in a hardcore league, they no longer have an invalid portal open.
 * Removed sunbeams from the church ruin, now that it's raining there.

=Version 0.9.9e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.9e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Enabled the Shadow character class.
 * Changed chat segregation settings for the Public Weekend. The Default league is segregated into 7 chats: Twilight Strand, Shore Encampment, the rest of Act One, all of Act Two, and then one chat per higher difficulty level.
 * Skill gems now show that they getting close to a new level at 25% from the level, rather than 33%. They are now drawn under the map rather than where item hovers can be displayed.

=Version 0.9.9d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.9d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Revamped the user interface for levelling gems up. Now, when they're close to the end of a level, they will appear on the right side of the play area, indicating their progress. Once they can be levelled up to the next level, a button will appear. If you want to leave the gem at its current level, you can dismiss this permanently by right clicking on the button. Equipped gems can still be levelled up from the inventory screen.
 * The page up/down keys now control the zoom level as well. These can be rebound. You can now disable mousewheel zoom in the UI options.
 * has been rebalanced so that the starting level is now level 1 and it is available as the Shadow's initial gem received in the Twilight Strand. It is now pure dexterity.
 * Increased the monster density in the Twilight Strand.
 * now do not affect themselves.
 * Exploding Spawn can now no longer be magic/rare.
 * Fixed some problems with the chat box. It now replaces the channel symbol if you start to type a /command.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters using would cause the camera to act wrong if zoomed in.
 * Fixed a bug where 's spell damage increase didn't work.
 * Fixed a recently introduced bug where you'd get the waypoint for an area by merely entering it.
 * Fixed a bug where Oozeback Bloom would crash the instance when he dies.
 * Neutered an experimental skill gem that accidentally made its way into 0.9.9. Oops.

=Version 0.9.9c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.9c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * The first zombie on the Twilight Strand now drops a skill gem appropriate for your class.
 * The chat window now defaults to the last type of chat used in this session. This does not include whispers. Global chat is now the default chat when you join game.
 * Added the ability to zoom the view in using the mouse wheel. Sometimes the camera will go through a wall when zoomed in quite far. We don't need bug reports of this, thanks.
 * The passive skill screen now always shows how many respec points you have, so that new players understand that they exist.
 * Improved the environment of the Fellshrine Ruins.

Balance

 * Changed early quest rewards so that there are more options for some classes.
 * Increased the rarity of drops from magic, rare, unique and act boss monsters.
 * Reduced the chill duration of Merveil's Ice Spear.
 * Reduced the damage of Ice Nova for Merveil and Water Elementals.
 * Reduced chill and freeze duration of Cold Snap for Merveil and Water Elementals.
 * Reduced the distance that Merveil and Water Elementals can Cold Snap you from.
 * Reduced the distance that Snakes can spit at you from.
 * Slightly reduced the distance that Skeletal Archers can attack you from.
 * Swapped Mental Acuity and Spell Power on the passive tree.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where Merveil would not drop her act boss item rewards properly.
 * Fixed clicking on minions so that the clicks will go through them. This means that you're able to target monsters near minions more easily.
 * Blood Magic now no longer prevents traps from working.
 * Fixed a bug where Totems would not attack monsters outside of your range with some skills.
 * Fixed a server crash that would occur if you left an area while something was caught in your Bear Trap.
 * Undead revived by a necromancer can now grant flask charges.
 * Fixed the starting weapons so that they can't spawn in the water.
 * Fixed the information on the website about 0.9.9 Gloves and Shields.
 * Double Strike is now counted as a Melee gem for the purpose of the mods that increase the levels of certain types of gems.
 * Fixed some overlapping passive skills in the tree.
 * Fixed a duplicate quest reward in Merciless difficulty.
 * Fixed up quests around Brutus so that it's clear what to do after finding him in the Prison.

=Version 0.9.9b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.9b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a server crash that would occur when killing Shield Crabs in the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Fixed a bug where the Totem support gem had Strength/Dexterity requirements instead of Strength/Intelligence requirements.
 * Fixed a problem with the World Map screen displayed the Maelstrom of Chaos as Act Three.
 * Fixed a problem with Ethereal Knives where the character would not run into range of an enemy before using the skill.
 * Restored the "Ignore" user interface button when right clicking on text in chat.
 * Fixed a problem where some abyss spiders would not ambush you.

=Version 0.9.9=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.9 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * We've added a corner map. You can turn it on in the UI Options.
 * You can now rearrange the order of your stash tabs by dragging them around.
 * Added support for Totems. These are entities that you summon which either grant auras or cast spells. There are a variety of new totem skills and a related support gem. All totems count towards the same limit.
 * Added support for Traps. These are entities that you can throw into combat which will deal their payload when enemies move near them. There's a very short arming period before they activate. Enemy players and monsters cannot see your traps. Traps can be destroyed by area-of-effect damage and will expire after a while.
 * Added support for Remote Mines. These are entities that can be placed on the battlefield at specific locations. When you have active Mines, a Detonate skill is available which will cause all of your mines to detonate at once. Like traps, Mines are also invisible to enemies and can be destroyed with area-of-effect damage.
 * We've dramatically improved the behaviour of monsters with a new AI system. They'll now use skills in appropriate situations. Much more detail is listed in the Monster Changes section below.
 * Added support for cooldowns and multi-cooldowns on skills. Currently the only skills with cooldowns are traps. Cooldowns reset when socketing gems or changing areas.
 * Quest items spawned from chests now spawn for new players entering the instance up to five minutes after the chest was opened.
 * You can now scroll left and right through stash tabs if you have too many to fit on one page.
 * Added sounds for quest status change and quest completion.
 * Added support for colour manipulation in the post-processing step. This can currently be seen in the Fetid Pool area but will eventually be used in many more areas.
 * Added support for ground fire and other environmental hazards.
 * The world now fades out and in again when you use an internal area transition in a level.
 * Changed how monster packs are spawned so that their sizes can vary more.
 * Added support for monsters to switch between run and walk stances.
 * Changed the passive skill screen so that it defaults to looking at an area slightly to the side of your character's start position, to better indicate the direction to allocate initial points.
 * The social screen will now automatically show the party screen when opened if you have a new party invitation.

Content

 * Added the Shadow, the Dexterity/Intelligence Hybrid character class. It's currently disabled for a few days but will be turned on this weekend.
 * Added a new Intelligence skill - Righteous Fire: Ignites you with magical fire that rapidly burns you and nearby enemies. Your spell damage is substantially increased while under this effect. The effect ends when you have 1 life remaining. Resistances do affect this damage. This effect can also be cancelled with a Flask of Dousing.
 * Added a new Strength skill - Decoy Totem: Summons a totem that taunts nearby monsters to attack it.
 * Added a new Strength skill - Rejuvenation Totem: Summons a totem that has an aura which regenerates life for you and your nearby allies.
 * Added a new Strength skill - Shockwave Totem: Summons a totem that shakes the earth around it, knocking back and damaging nearby enemies
 * Added a new Dexterity skill - Whirling Blades: Dive through enemies, dealing weapon damage. Only works with daggers, claws and one handed swords.
 * Added a new Dexterity skill - Ethereal Knives: Fires an arc of knives in front of the caster which deal physical damage.
 * Added a new Dexterity skill - Bear Trap: Throws a trap that damages and immobilises a single enemy.
 * Added a new Dexterity skill - Fire Trap: Throws a trap that explodes when triggered, leaving an area of burning ground that damages enemies who walk through it.
 * Added a new Intelligence skill - Conversion Trap: Throws a trap that, when triggered by an enemy, converts that enemy to your side for a short duration.
 * Added a new Dexterity skill - Freeze Mine: Lays a remote mine that you can detonate to freeze all enemies in the area.
 * Added a new Dexterity support gem - Trap: Attached skills can be thrown as traps that use the skill when monsters move near them.
 * Added a new Intelligence support gem - Remote Mine: Lays a Remote Mine that can be detonated to use the attached skill.
 * Added a new Strength support gem - Totem: Summons a totem that can cast the attached skill.
 * Added a new Dexterity support gem - Chance to Flee: Monsters affected by the attached skill have a chance to run in terror.
 * Added a new monster type - the Necromancer, which raises nearby slain undead. These can be found in the Prison and some areas of Act Two. They currently cannot raise magic or boss monsters.
 * Added a new quest in the Fetid Pool. Full-clearing this area will reward you with two more Passive Skill Respec Points.
 * The areas that Brutus and Merveil occupy have been incorporated into the previous areas (with an internal teleporter to access them) so that players aren't able to abusively farm them with instance management. The large chests have been removed from these areas.
 * Rethought the progression of armour pieces so that the names and art are correct for the long term. The new base items have new levels.
 * Renamed the Cathedral of Bones to the Vaal Ruins.
 * Revamped character icons that are displayed in the user interface.
 * Increased the size of many game areas to improve pacing and level progression.
 * Updated the character selection screen with new text about the characters.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

Monster Changes

 * Rhoas have had their Charge attack restored. There are now skeletal Rhoas in the Fetid Pool.
 * Brutus now moves faster and signals his ground slam in advance. Avoid being hit by it!
 * Many snakes now change between their melee and ranged stances at will. They are substantially more defensive in their melee stance. Other snakes are melee-only or ranged-only.
 * In addition to using a variety of curses, Merveil's Daughters can now summon Spawn to attack you. These Spawn don't yield experience or drop items. Some Merveil's Daughters summon Exploding Spawn which run into you and detonate themselves.
 * Zombies in the Mud Flats now emerge from the ground when encountered.
 * Scavengers have improved behaviour so that they'll chose to use melee attacks or to throw rocks depending on the distance. If you run close to them, they'll stop throwing and start using melee attacks.
 * Sand Spitters now have behaviour that makes them prefer to clump together when shooting at you. This will make them a little easier to attack with area-of-effect attacks. Various types of Sand Spitters now perform elemental attacks. Keep your resistances up!
 * Water Elementals (which now deal mostly cold damage) have been added to the Tidal Island. Water Elementals in other areas have a variety of skills available such as Cold Snap, Ice Nova and some Curses, which they use in correct situations.
 * The unique Rhoa in the Mud Flats, Oozeback Bloom, now has a life degeneration aura and can charge at you again.
 * A unique Necromancer boss, Kadavrus the Defiler, has been added to the Fetid Pool. He raises the zombies and skeletal Rhoas to interfere with your quest to cleanse the area.
 * The Scavengers who live in camps on the Ledge now worship an angry god.
 * Environmental totems can use auras (such as Slow Player, Haste, Allies Cannot Die, Vitality, Monster Damage), or active skills.
 * Hellions on the Rocky Climb, Skeleton Archers in the Prison, Ghost Archers in the Cavern of Woe, some Melee Bandits in Act Two and Snakes in the Ancient Pyramid can now use the Puncture skill. Don't run away after they've hit you with this.
 * Skeletal Archers in the Rocky Climb and Bandit Archers in the Crossroads can now fire Burning Arrows.
 * Goatmen are now more likely to Leap Slam from above. If you stay on high ground, they're less likely to use this skill. The same applies to Ironpoint the Forsaken's Rain of Arrows attack.
 * Added a unique Skeleton Boss to the Lower Prison called Chatters. He uses Glacial Hammer and the Hatred aura.
 * Skeletal Archers in the Lower Prison and Chamber of Sins can now fire Lightning Arrows.
 * Sawbones, a Necromancer boss in the Upper Prison, can summon skeletons in addition to raising undead.
 * Necromancers cast a variety of curses such as Enfeeble, Critical Weakness and Elemental Weakness.
 * The Burning Menace now deals entirely fire damage and ignites with every hit.
 * Goatmen in the Prisoner's gate deal lightning damage. Their shamans cast Spark and Shock Nova.
 * Stranglecharm is a new Water Elemental Boss in the Ship Graveyard Cave. She has a Slow Player aura in addition to her Ice Nova.
 * Ghosts in the Ship Graveyard Cave and some Spiders in the Weaver's Chambers use Flicker Strike to get close to you. Be careful if you're taking a group of them on. Note that running away from them could cause them to Flicker Strike to catch up to you!
 * Shield Crabs in the Coves and some Beasts in the Waterfall Cave now inflict the Vulnerability Curse every time they hit you.
 * Scavengers in the Coves and Monkeys in the Dread Thicket gain Frenzy charges when other monsters of their kind are killed nearby.
 * Merveil has two daughters, Ambrosia and Amarissa, who inhabit her caves. They are fire and lightning themed, respectively.
 * The Merveil fight has been made harder. She now uses her skills more intelligently and deals a lot of cold damage.
 * A pair of boss Monkey twins live in the Old Fields Cave. Their two auras go together to make it a challenging fight.
 * Most of the spiders in Act Two (and several bosses such as Plague Retch in the Chamber of Sins) use Viper Strike and prioritise targets that are already poisoned. If you get hit by one Viper Strike, the spiders may break away from their current targets to try to stack more copies of poison on you.
 * Skeletal Archers in the Chamber of Sins can fire Poison Arrows.
 * The Hideous Abomination is now known as "Fidelitas, the Mourning", and uses Lighting Strike on every hit.
 * Skeletal Casters in the Chamber of Sins can cast Spark.
 * Skeletal Archers in the Church Dungeon can fire Split Arrows or use Frenzy.
 * Archbishop Geofri the Abashed is a Skeleton Boss in the Church Dungeon who casts a variety of curses and is immune to curses himself.
 * Bandit Archers in the Broken Bridge area can use Explosive Arrow.
 * Beasts in the Broken Bridge or Pools and Streams areas can cast Enduring Cry to gain Endurance charges.
 * Kraityn now uses Phase Run and Flicker Strike in deadly combination to get in and out of combat with you.
 * Alira's Guards either deal chaos damage, fire Poison Arrows or run up to you and detonate themselves.
 * Skeletal Knights in the Vaal Ruins can inflict random elemental status ailments on hit.
 * Oak now uses Enduring Cry and Immortal Call much more intelligently. He can Leap Slam to close distance with the player and will Sweep when there are multiple targets nearby.
 * Maul bandits in the Pools and Streams area cast Warlord's Mark on the player so that they can leech back life when they hit them.
 * Some beasts in the Waterfall Cave have a degeneration aura that makes enemies lose life over time.
 * Spawn in the Waterfall Cave use either Phase Run or Viper Strike.
 * Wand wielding Ghosts in the Waterfall Cave use an attack that grants them a Power charge on hit.
 * Various Skeletal Casters and Chaos Fragments in the Ancient Pyramid fire multiple projectiles and are protected by environmental Totems.

General Balance Changes

 * Magic items now drop less frequently. Rare and unique items drop the same as before.
 * Increased the sell value of unidentified magic and rare items and of the mods on identified items.
 * Diminishing returns now applies to the rate that Increased Item Rarity affects magic, rare and unique items (it affects the less common ones more).
 * Increased Item Quantity stats now also have diminishing returns. This allows us to have higher initial values and lets us balance the extreme cases so that their rate of item gain is high but not abusive.
 * Bonuses to item rarity and quantity from bosses or from additional players in the game now stack multiplicatively with the player's bonuses (rather than additively). Diminishing returns only apply to the player's bonuses.
 * The experience formula for multiplayer games has changed. There is now a 30% experience bonus for being in an area with a party member, and additional players in an area beyond the first add 50% more experience rather than 75%. This is a little better for two-person parties and a little worse for six-person parties.
 * Reduced the level of resistance rings to 10 so that Sapphire Rings are available before Merveil. You may need them.
 * Reduced the level requirements of the first resistance mods.
 * Increased the amount of life that monsters leech at high levels.
 * Increased the number of charges needed for a Diamond Flask to refill.
 * The Shocked state is now no longer removed on death so that it interacts with the Elemental Proliferation support gem in a more sensible way.
 * Dexterity/Intelligence shields now reflect damage to attackers.
 * Added damage reflection mods to the pool for items.
 * Added a set of Increased Item Rarity and Increased Item Quantity prefix mods.
 * Biased elemental damage mods towards the appropriate types of weapons and made their values substantially more impactful at higher levels.
 * Added new gems as quest rewards. Adjusted many higher level quest rewards to be less repetitive.
 * Halved the life lost by use of a Caustic Flask.

Active/Support Skill Changes

 * Shock Nova: Increased cast speed.
 * Discharge: Slight buff to damage.
 * Sweep: Reduced mana cost.
 * Clarity Aura: Increased progression at higher levels.
 * Chance to Ignite: Increased mana cost multiplier from 100% to 110%.
 * Burning Arrow: Increased mana cost at higher levels.
 * Hatred Aura: Increased damage.
 * Lightning Strike: Reduced damage penalty on projectiles from -50% to -20%.
 * Elemental Proliferation: Increased mana cost multiplier from 140% to 180%.
 * Freezing Pulse: Increased cast speed, reduced mana cost, slightly reduced damage.

Passive Skill Changes

 * Pain Attunement: Increased damage bonus from 25% to 30%.
 * Avatar of Fire: Removed. It will return in a later patch in a form that doesn't cause problems for so many other game systems.
 * Elemental Equilibrium: Now provides -25% resistance (was -20%) to the element not used and 25% resistance (was 30%) to the element used.
 * Substantially rearranged passives in the Dexterity/Intelligence part of the tree.
 * Added Totem and Trap passive skills.
 * Removed Item Quantity and Item Rarity passives.
 * Burn damage passives have been reduced in effectiveness.
 * Elemental weapon passives have been increased in effectiveness.
 * Added additional elemental weapon passives on the Ranger side of the tree.
 * Corrected various small balance values.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug that would cause monsters or players to slide around occasionally.
 * Fixed a bug where monsters would stop performing actions entirely.
 * Fixed a bug where the Shock status spread by the Elemental Proliferation support gem would ignore the Shock limit.
 * The size of the Poison Arrow clouds now scale with their area of effect radius properly.
 * Culling Strike is now correctly affected by the Increased Item Rarity and Increased Item Quantity support gems.
 * Added the missing town icon to the map legend.
 * The character panel now displays mana and life per kill.
 * Fixed a bug where the Baleful gem could not be obtained under some situations.
 * Fixed a display bug with the quiver slot.
 * Fixed the skill icons on the character screen and pop-up skill selector to properly display the letters that show what support gems affect them.
 * Sand Spitter projectiles are no longer erroneously subject to melee damage reflection.
 * Fixed a bug in the damage calculation of skills augmented with the Multiple Projectiles support gems.
 * Portals now open visually when cast rather than starting open.
 * Fixed a problem where "Increased Melee Damage on Full Life" stat checked the wrong weapon if you were dual wielding.
 * Blood Chieftains will now only summon monkeys from trees if there are trees with monkeys in them nearby.
 * Fixed a bug where rare monsters would receive epithets on their names every time rather than occasionally.
 * Fixed a bug where Power Siphon could not break barrels.
 * Fixed a bug where the damage from Firestorm would not display on the client at the right time.

=Version 0.9.8f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.8f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Non-partied players are now only shown on the map if they're nearby.
 * Fixed a bug where you were unable to click through other players (to access things like the Stash) in town.
 * In Cut-throat mode, gems and quest items are now not dropped by players on death.
 * Fixed a bug in Cut-throat mode where players would be vulnerable for five seconds on the loading screen when changing areas.

=Version 0.9.8e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.8e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * In cut-throat leagues, there is now a timer that delays you quitting the game for five seconds when out of town.
 * Increased the safety period when entering an area from five to ten seconds.
 * Fixed a server crash related to the Discipline aura and Eldritch Battery.

=Version 0.9.8d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.8d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Global chat in the Default league is now segregated so that there is a separate chat per difficulty level. The Maelstrom of Chaos is included in Merciless difficulty.
 * Fixed a problem where Kiwi Pets could not be summoned or dismissed outside of town. They are now visible in the microtransaction stash anywhere.
 * Fixed several problems with the display and storage of Account Status messages.

=Version 0.9.8c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.8c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added five types of purchasable exclusive Kiwi Pets.
 * Added a Microtransaction Stash (the dollar sign near the mana orb) which you can use to enable/disable your pets.
 * Fixed a bug with chest spawns in the Ancient Pyramid.
 * Enabled chests in the Dread Thicket.
 * Fixed Anger, Wrath and Hatred to count as Fire, Lightning and Cold gems respectively.
 * Fixed the display of "Chance to cause status ailments" on the character screen.
 * Fixed a client crash that can occur if you change areas while typing.
 * Improved the Quest Screen Map hovers to add icons for waypoints and towns.
 * Towns are now clearly marked on the Quest Screen Map.
 * Long names now display nicely in the character panel.
 * Popups for skills which have no stats now don't display an empty stats information frame.
 * Fixed a bug where you'd get on-kill effects for replacing your minions.
 * Acrobatics no longer removes the physical damage reduction granted by Endurance Charges.
 * Fixed some display bugs with the social notifications.

=Version 0.9.8b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.8b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Made the "Message of the Day" on the login screen more readable. Make sure to check it for status updates throughout the public weekend!
 * Added the ability for moderators to mute players who harass others in game.
 * Fixed a crash related to the friends list.
 * Corrected the names of some of the new weapons.
 * Improved some visual effects related to curses and shimmer.
 * Fixed a bug where instances would close early (closing any Portals they had open).

=Version 0.9.8=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.8 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * We've added a Friends List to the Social panel. When you add someone to your friends list, it also sends them an invitation offering to add you to theirs.
 * You can now set your Account Status at the top of the Social panel. This status is broadcast to people who have you on their friends list.
 * Added a new player aura - Clarity: An aura that grants mana regeneration to you and your allies.
 * Added a new support gem - Culling Strike: Skills supported by this gem kill enemies reduced to 10% or less life.
 * Added a new support gem - Point Blank: Ranged attack skills supported by this gem deal more damage to very close targets and less damage to farther away targets.
 * Added a new support gem - Iron Grip: Ranged attack skills supported by this gem have the strength melee damage bonus applied to them.
 * Added a new support gem - Iron Will: Spells supported by this gem have the strength melee damage bonus applied to them.
 * Added a new support gem - Melee Damage on Full Life: While you're on full life, melee skills supported by this gem deal increased physical damage.
 * Added support for queues at the login server if there are too many players online.
 * Empty game instances now close earlier if they have no side areas that would cause you to return to them. The values are roughly 8 minutes for areas that don't have side areas and 15 minutes for areas that do.
 * Your starting weapon now spawns again in the first area if you're disconnected before picking it up.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

Balance

 * All weapons have been revamped into new sequences that have better level progression and balance. These weapons are spread over three tiers that correspond to the three difficulty levels that will be available when the third act is released. Weapons in the third tier are balanced to not be strictly better than each other.
 * Rebalanced many item mods. Some will have changed levels, rendering certain items unusable if you don't meet the new level requirements.
 * Returned the defensive properties off armour pieces (that add Armour, Evasion or Energy Shield) to 0.9.6 values. We consider the 0.9.7 armour changes a failed experiment. Monster damage has been rebalanced slightly to accomodate this.
 * Most Unique weapons have had new levels and base types assigned to them. Mods have been rebalanced on many of them to take into account their new levels. Existing Unique items will not have had their stats or base types changed.
 * The default critical strike changes on weapons have less variance now. The high end ones are slightly lower than they were before.
 * The vendor recipe that used to yield 10 Jeweler's Orbs now only yields 7.
 * Items for sale in the vendors can now go up to one level above the player's level.
 * Reduced monster density in the Submerged Passage levels.
 * Increased the damage of Hailrake's Ice Spears on higher difficulties.
 * Reduced values of Item Quantity and Item Rarity mods and support gems.
 * Reduced the mana cost of Explosive Arrow.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where Goatmen using Leap Slam would slide at the end of their jump.
 * Fixed a bug where hovers of items were displaced if the game had been resized.
 * Fixed a bug where the melee damage bonus from strength didn't affect certain physical damage mods properly.
 * The Faster Casting support gem doesn't speed up the Haste aura any more.
 * Hidden monsters can no longer be targeted, attacked or damaged until they un-hide.
 * Fixed character creation errors so that they're not hard to read any more.
 * Fixed a problem where screenshots taken with the F8 key would look wrong.
 * Fixed a bug that could cause area transitions to fail rarely.

=Version 0.9.7d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.7d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * We've wiped all the passive skills again. Please take care reallocating your passives so that you can use your equipment and gems.
 * Adjusted the attack speeds and damage of monsters throughout the game so that larger monsters have shorter pauses between attacks (and less damage, reducing the chance of being killed in one hit). Pack monsters such as Bandits or Spawns still have the old behaviour. All bosses or monsters in the Maelstrom of Chaos have the new faster behaviour. Overall monster damage per second is not modified, just the timing of it. This should help address concerns with damage spikes.
 * The artwork (and names) of some weapons have changed as we work towards final weapon progressions. Large overhauls to their levels and properties are coming in the future.
 * Added Unnatural Calm notable passive in Witch area of the passive skill tree, improving Energy Shield.
 * Added a second Fitness notable passive in the Witch area of the passive skill tree.
 * Added several new life passives around the passive skill tree.
 * All Armour, Evasion, and Energy Shield passives were improved.
 * Added two increased duration passives for each Charge type.
 * Added a Life Regeneration per Endurance Charge passive.
 * Added an increased Evasion Rating per Frenzy Charge passive.
 * Added an increased Spell Damage per Power Charge passive.
 * Slightly reduced the Armour and Evasion values on armours above level 30.
 * Reduced the largest of the defensive mods available on high end items.
 * Reduced the values of the Area of Effect support gem at higher levels so that it wasn't far more effective than other support gems.
 * Adjusted the Goat Shaman's Molten Shell.
 * Fixed the interaction between Chaos Inoculation and Blood Magic so that there's no crazy bugged death state any more. If you try to reserve life or mana when you have both of these keystones, you will now die properly.
 * Updated a lot of miscellaneous audio.
 * Power Siphon now works on shattered enemies correctly.
 * Fixed calculations related to increased attack speed and critical strike multiplier on weapons.
 * Updated some aura effects.

=Version 0.9.7c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.7c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a problem where players could not visit the Maelstrom of Chaos unless they already had access.
 * Attack speed, accuracy (percentage), critical strike damage and multipliers that occur on weapons are now calculated multiplicatively with other instances of the same stat off-weapon. These values have been lowered slightly to offset this.
 * The Upper Prison has been been renamed to the Warden's Quarters. The Prison (level 2) has been renamed to the Upper Prison.
 * Fixed the sound effects of Summon Skeletons so that it isn't too loud when multiple skeletons are summoned.
 * Fixed a bug where Quivers could let you block.
 * Fixed some problems with the Currency item data page on the website.
 * Updated the random names of rare weapons.
 * Reduced Hillock's damage on normal difficulty.
 * Fixed a bug with level 19 and 20 Molten Shell had the wrong values.
 * Added taunts back to goatmen.
 * Fixed a quest reward where the same gem was offered twice.

=Version 0.9.7b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.7b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Balance

 * Elemental skeletons and caster skeletons now resist their appropriate elements.
 * Lightning arrow now explodes when hitting terrain as well as monsters.
 * Cleave now averages the attack speed of your two weapons if you are dual wielding.
 * Removed the 1% pierce chance from Puncture.
 * Reduced the mana cost of level 1 Cleave.
 * Increased the damage of level 1 Freezing Pulse.
 * Increased the damage of Fireball at higher levels.

Bug Fixes

 * Enhanced blocking on shields will now modify the shield's value properly (and make it blue).
 * Fixed the Fairgraves quest so that you don't have to fetch the Allflame again if you've already given it to him.
 * Set Maelstrom of Chaos areas to have the correct levels again (all 60).
 * Increased projectile speed now affects arrows properly.
 * Tempest Shield's mana reservation now works properly.
 * Fixed a client crash related to the Blood Magic support gem.
 * Fixed a bug where Necromantic Aegis was not working properly in 0.9.7a.

=Version 0.9.7=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.7 released by Grinding Gear Games.

New Content

 * Added a new monster type, the Goatman Shaman, which uses Fireball and Molten Shell.
 * Added a new skill - Puncture: Punctures the target, causing them to bleed. While bleeding, they take damage over time based on how much damage was dealt in the initial hit. The bleeding deals more damage while they move. Puncture works with bows, daggers, claws or swords.
 * Added a new skill - Lightning Arrow: Fires a charged arrow at the target, causing them to be struck by a bolt of lightning which damages nearby enemies.
 * Added a new skill - Summon Skeletons: Summons a group of slow moving skeletal minions. They last 20 seconds before expiring and do not require a corpse when casting.
 * Added a new skill - Burning Arrow: Fires an arrow that deals fire damage to its target and has an increased chance of setting it on fire.
 * Added nine player aura skills: Anger (Fire Damage), Hatred (Cold Damage), Wrath (Lightning Damage), Discipline (Energy Shield), Grace (Evasion), Determination (Armour), Purity (Elemental Resistances), Haste (Attack Speed and Cast Speed) and Vitality (Life Regeneration).
 * Added a new support gem - Elemental Proliferation: Elemental status effects (for example, freezing or burning) caused by this skill also affect nearby enemies.
 * Added a new support gem - Blood Magic: This skill is cast using life rather than mana.
 * Converted the old Multiple Projectiles support gem to Greater Multiple Projectiles and added a new Lesser Multiple Projectiles support gem. These add four and two projectiles respectively (with different penalties) but can be stacked.
 * Added a new keystone passive - Phase Acrobatics: 20% chance to dodge spell damage.
 * Added a new keystone passive - Arrow Dodging: Doubles chance to evade projectiles.
 * Moved the "Monsters can have one additional curse" ability to a new keystone passive - Whispers of Doom.
 * Added 11 new Unique items.

Major Features

 * We've updated the party screen, both cosmetically and functionally. It now uses consistent user interface that will also be used elsewhere to represent characters.
 * There are now popup notifications that appear at the bottom right of the screen when new party events occur.
 * Added support for skills that can be toggled on/off and reserve a portion of your mana while they're on. Examples are Tempest Shield, Righteous Fire and the new player auras. If you have the Blood Magic keystone passive, then life is reserved instead.
 * Substantially less data about external entities is sent now. Players will notice less lag when first approaching other characters.
 * Added taunt animations to many monsters.
 * Added larger custom icons for keystones and notable passives. Improved the visibility of connections between selected passives.
 * Improved the website passive skill tree planner functionality to include a search, minimum distance finder and ability to show similar passives.
 * Revamped chest spawning to include clusters of barrels and similar chests. Overall, chests are now less common than before but drop more items.
 * Experience is now only shared with other players who are near you (roughly two screens). Monsters are still made harder by players elsewhere on the level.

Minor Features

 * Many monsters have new skills - Ghost Pirates cast Flicker Strike, Oak casts Immortal Call, Kraityn's Bandits use Explosive Arrow and Water Elementals use Ice Nova.
 * Improved forum search functionality.
 * Currency items now have blue text that describes what they do in a much clearer way.
 * Small chests (that can be opened with damage) no longer show hover text unless you put the mouse cursor over them.
 * Chests are no longer spawned very close to entrances/exits of areas.
 * The passive tree now starts off slightly zoomed out and its maximum zoom distance is greater.
 * Spiders now have a random delay before they crawl out of the pit.
 * Gems now display their mana cost, mana multiplier or mana reservation amounts.
 * Raised Spectres don't leave corpses any more.
 * Reduced the size of skill popups so that the text isn't too large.
 * Standardised the font sizes and colours used in the UI.
 * Keystone passives now have flavour text.
 * Removed the Weaver's Chambers waypoint.
 * Most locations on the quest screen map now have new hover art.
 * Renamed most placeholder monsters.
 * Brutus now explodes shortly after being slain.
 * Merveil's Lair now has a new exit.
 * Updated several of the audio tracks with extended versions.
 * Small spiders now sometimes leap before they attack.
 * The rewards for most quests have changed to a different set of gems.
 * Improved the effects of many skills including Spark, Shock Nova and Poison Arrow.
 * The layout of the Upper Prison has been changed in preparation for upcoming improvements.
 * Transitions between various world areas have been improved so that they don't have repeated exits.
 * Stash tabs are now loaded when accessed.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

Balance

 * Made higher difficulties substantially harder so that defensive choices are more necessary.
 * You now receive your first support gem once you enter Merveil's caves, rather than in Act Two.
 * You can now purchase Jeweler's Orbs and Orbs of Fusing from Act Two vendors.
 * Changed the armour and evasion calculations to result in those defensive properties yielding around 25% more mitigation than before.
 * Increased the physical damage reduction (armour) cap from 75% to 90%.
 * Most skill gems have changed starting levels.
 * The mods on rare items are now picked and generated differently.
 * Reduced the amount that shields vary between tiers.
 * Defensive properties of armour pieces and many defensive mods on items now ramp up more than before after level 30.
 * Changed damage reflection and the PvP damage multiplier to both be linear.
 * Increased the block values of dexterity shields.
 * Improved the progression of flasks so that higher levels are never downgrades.
 * Rebalanced critical strike multiplier values across the board.
 * Reduced the level that three-socket items start appearing.
 * Increased the chances of finding two linked sockets on items (by reducing how often they appear without links).
 * The damage of the first Wand has been increased.
 * Level 2 gems have become level 1 gems so that they're usable even if you haven't gained a level by the time you arrive at town.
 * Base maximum charges for each class are now 3 of each type rather than 2 of each type.
 * "Life gain per target" mods have been reduced in size and made available on fewer item slots.
 * Made Unique items slightly more common.

Monster Balance

 * Increased the damage and reduced the attack speed of monsters that appear in groups.
 * Bosses now scale up their life, energy shield and item drop bonuses more with additional players. Higher rarity bosses have more scaling.
 * Rebalanced the rate of random boss packs throughout the game.
 * Damage reflection auras now only occur on level 40+ monsters and reflect a flat 25% of damage dealt rather than a sliding scale based on level. This is not more reflection than before.
 * Reduced the maximum attack distance (and substantially increased the damage) of Skeletal Casters.
 * Additionally increased rate of rare bosses in the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Rhoas now have a much lower aggression-trigger-distance but are more dangerous.
 * Reduced the likelihood of Auras spawning on rare monsters.
 * Shadow Fragments now deal half physical, half chaos damage with their attacks.
 * The Maelstrom Hillocks are now tougher.
 * Slightly reduced the deadliness of the "deadly" monster mod.
 * Reduced the amount of items dropped by "of Wealth" boss monsters.

Passive Skill Balance

 * The passive skill tree now has new and more powerful defensive options.
 * Reduced the values of some Life Regeneration per Second nodes on the passive tree.
 * The maximum number of additional charges you can get from the passive tree is now +3.
 * The two "gain power charge under condition" passive skills were removed. These type of effects will come from active skills (more are coming).
 * All passives that gave bonus effects to charges were removed for now. This allows us to balance the charges to be more useful without making them mandatory.

Active Skill Balance

 * Power Siphon now acts like Infernal Blow in that it counts kills that occur a short time after the skill is used (so that it's useful in party situations). It also now has the Culling Strike effect (outright killing targets that reduced to less than 10% life).
 * Normalised the balance of Cleave and Sweep slightly so that there isn't such a large disparity.
 * The multiple projectiles support gems now grant additional projectile damage when they level up, rather than physical damage.
 * Rain of Arrows is now affected by the Point Blank Archer keystone passive.
 * Sweep now hits in a full circle again (rather than a 300 degree arc).
 * Removed Cleave's bonus against the selected target. The damage against non-targeted enemies is now higher.
 * The damage of Fireball and Freezing Pulse have been increased.
 * Discharge's damage has been nerfed.
 * Slightly increased the radius of Detonate Dead's explosion.
 * Spark now fires three sparks by default.
 * Reduced the number of Raised Zombies available at early levels.

Bug Fixes

 * The bug where the top 5% of the screen was blurred under some graphics drivers is now fixed. If you disabled anti-aliasing or post-processing to temporarily fix this issue, we recommend turning at least post-processing back on again. Some old cards will not be able to enable anti-aliasing while post-processing is enabled now.
 * Fixed a client crash related to kicking people from a party that they've already left.
 * Power Siphon now works correctly with the Multiple Projectiles support gem.
 * Fixed a bug where a vendor recipe would allow you to gain information on how many mods an unidentified rare has.
 * Fixed a bug where the rare name matching vendor recipe worked with unidentified items.
 * Restored the limit of 32 players per town instance after fixing problems with joining a town that had too many players.
 * Fixed a bug where decals could cause performance problems.
 * You can no longer sell quest items.
 * Removed distortion from all auras to prevent the effect of players/monsters being doubled up.
 * Monsters now face you when taunting, which fixes the problem where they'd arbitrarily turn away in combat.
 * Fixed a bug where auras would rotate with their owners.
 * Fixed some of the blue areas that would appear in some levels.

=Version 0.9.6h=

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

Changes

 * Once a player has been in an instance for 40 seconds, they are now disconnected if they encounter six seconds of lag. This is to protect them from unnecessary deaths and applies to characters in all leagues, not just hardcore ones.
 * Set up the league rules for this weekend's competition. See Beta Status forum as usual.

=Version 0.9.6g=

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

Changes

 * Reduced the maximum number of players allowed in a single instance of the Merciless Forest Encampment. This should prevent disconnections that some players experience joining that town at peak times. The proper fix to this problem is included in 0.9.7 (at which point the previous town limit will be restored).

=Version 0.9.6f=

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

Changes

 * Fixed a sync issue that could occur when an entity attacks from outside its range.
 * Fixed a crash related to party invites.
 * Added rate-limiting for any actions that involve other players.

=Version 0.9.6e=

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

Changes

 * Fixed a common client crash introduced in 0.9.6d.
 * Fixed a client freeze that could occur if a nearby party member was using Lightning Strike.
 * Fixed some lights in the Upper Prison to prevent problems.

=Version 0.9.6d=

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

Changes

 * Increased the frequency of rare monsters in Merciless difficulty.
 * Increased the frequency of rare monsters in the Maelstrom of Chaos. Higher Maelstrom areas now have slightly higher numbers of magic and rare monsters.
 * Added support for password-protected leagues.
 * Added performance metric logging to the patching client in order to test various CDNs.

=Version 0.9.6c=

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

Changes

 * You can now shift-click items to send them to the vendor screen.
 * Added support for using items on other items while on the vendor screen (for example, identifying things).
 * Improved the passive skill tree on the website, including support for a full-screen mode and speed/quality on some browsers.
 * Corpse targeting no longer makes walking difficult.
 * Fixed a bug where Lightning Strike's damage was displayed wrong.
 * Single line flavour text on unique items is now centered correctly.
 * Fixed a client crash with Tempest Shield.
 * Fixed a client crash with the trade screen.
 * Fixed some user interface problems related to opening the trade screen when the left panel was open.
 * Fixed a bug where the "can't die" stat was sometimes avoidable.
 * Fixed various bugs where panels could stay open while changing areas.

=Version 0.9.6b=

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

Changes

 * Added a legend to the quest screen's map (hover the icon in the top left).
 * Improved the effects for Shield Charge and Detonate Dead.
 * Made the Maelstrom of Chaos levels somewhat harder.
 * Items that have been linked in chat now don't show popups unless chat is actually open.
 * The website passive skill planner now shows the number of skill points used.
 * Fixed a bug where a failed instance transfer for one player could disconnect everyone in that instance.
 * Fixed various client crashes related to Tempest Shield.

=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 - Lightning Strike: 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 - Molten Shell: 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 - Tempest Shield: 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 - Power Siphon: 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.

=Version 0.9.5h=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5h released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a bug where Rain of Arrows would deal damage twice when used by a Templar.
 * Changed the party UI to appear behind other HUD elements such as the vendor screen.
 * Chaos Inoculation now grants a multiplicative increase to Energy Shield.
 * Spiders are now faster.
 * Changed the patcher so that it can't generate a corrupt pack file if it is closed while patching.
 * Fixed the damage prediction that Rain of Arrows uses.
 * Fixed some problems related to corrupt pack files.
 * Fixed a bug where Frenzy didn't get the bonus melee range for hitting fleeing enemies.
 * Fixed a bug where the game wouldn't start if the graphics card in the config file doesn't exist.
 * Fixed instant recovery flasks giving "while healing" effects permanently.
 * Made Eramir give Combined Amulets to anyone who has killed all the Bandit Leaders and delivered the amulets. Some characters were stuck in this invalid state.
 * Made it so that the auto-completion list will only show when the cursor is within the whisper name part of the message.

=Version 0.9.5g=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5g released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Zoomed the view out. Later we'll probably add controls for this.
 * Improved the patcher so that it will use compression when downloading future updates. This should make it approximately 33% faster.
 * Added a new keystone passive - Necromantic Aegis: Applies all properties of your Shield (defences, block, implicit mods and explicit mods) to your minions instead of to you. Thanks to Skivverus for the suggestion that we based it on!

Balance

 * Changed all Maelstrom of Chaos levels to be level 58.
 * Removed the Critical Strike penalty from the Multiple Projectiles support gem.
 * Hex Master now grants "+1 curse on targets" in addition to its existing effects.
 * Avatar of Fire now has "Cannot Resist Cold Damage". Rather than reducing its fire damage, we felt it more appropriate to accentuate the glass-cannon aspects of builds based around this keystone.
 * Rain of Arrows is now affected by increased arrow/projectile speed. This reduces the delay before the arrows land.
 * Made the Faster Projectiles support gem work with Rain of Arrows.
 * Moved the first Marauder life regeneration passive to the second position of their core life chain.
 * Changed the first life passive near the Duelist (on the path between the Marauder and the Duelist) to being life regeneration instead of life.
 * Added a new life regeneration passive to the Templar part of the tree
 * Increased the critical strike chance on Fireball and Shock Nova.
 * Reduced the critical strike chance on Detonate Dead, Discharge and Ice Spear.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where maximum distance of various skills (such as Cold Snap) could be bypassed with shift-casts.
 * Fixed a bug where chaos degeneration would prevent energy shield regeneration even if the chaos damage was completely resisted.
 * Fixed a bug with the calculation of how much life recovery from flasks to apply to minions.
 * Fixed Vulnerability not being affected by the Hex Master keystone passive.
 * Made changing the sound effects volume affect looping sounds from game world entities.
 * Fixed a bug where the Poison Arrow cloud would appear where you clicked even if the arrow was stopped before then by a wall.
 * Fixed Spark not being affected by increased duration.
 * Corrected the sell price for the "Increased Armour and Evasion" mod.
 * Fixed a bug where "+1 to Bow skills socketed into this item" would spawn on the wrong items.

=Version 0.9.5f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Kraityn can now use Flicker Strike.
 * Fixed a server crash that would occur when certain skeletons in the Maelstrom of Chaos attempted to attack.
 * Changed the armour increase mods on hybrid armours so that they increase both of the relevant armour types. For example, a templar armour will now have an equal increase to both Armour and Energy Shield. Old items are unmodified.
 * Fixed a bug where the description of the "of Wealth" mod would show on certain Unique monsters.
 * Further increased the drop rate of monsters with the "of Wealth" mod.
 * Corrected a Two Handed Accuracy passive skill to 12% (instead of 6%).
 * Increased the world level of The Cave (in the Old Fields).
 * Fixed a bug that caused attribute mods to not spawn on the appropriate armour pieces correctly. Strength can now spawn on general strength armour pieces, for example.
 * Added another Rocky Climb topology.
 * Changed the Silverbranch unique bow so that all new instances of it that drop require character level 1 rather than 7.
 * Fixed the entrance to the Tidal Island so that it highlights and shows up on the map.
 * Fixed other minor terrain bugs.
 * Fixed a problem with item mod generation that could cause the wrong mods to be generated.

=Version 0.9.5e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added five new monster mods.
 * Added the new Ancient Pyramid monsters to the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Fixed the Critical Strike damage multiplier granted by the "Dagger Poison on Critical Strike" passive skill so that it only affects daggers.
 * Changed the life regeneration passive rates. The Two Marauder points now total 2.5% per second (from 3.5%) and the outer group now totals 4% (mostly in the final passive).
 * The "Life Regeneration per Endurance Charge" passive skill has been increased to 0.5% of Life regenerated per second per charge.

=Version 0.9.5d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Balance

 * Improved the damage of all spells.
 * Improved the Multiple Projectiles Support Gem by decreasing the penalty to critical strikes for each additional projectile.
 * Improved the "Seething" flask prefix by reducing its penalty.
 * Reduced the drop rate of "Orb of Regret".
 * Reduced the price of flasks at vendors.
 * Improved the sell value of many mods on identified items
 * Doubled the yield of the vendor recipe that gives you Scrolls of Wisdom for low currency.
 * Added the ability to trade one Portal Scroll to receive one Scroll of Wisdom.

Passive Skill Balance

 * Added occasional named notable passives which support core builds. Less popular passive tree areas have been reduced in number, consolidated and improved. Specific changes include:
 * Improved the Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence nodes in the centre of the tree to provide a much larger increase.
 * Added "Master of Wands" - provides a 50% physical damage increase for Wands.
 * The mana section of the Witch section has been modified to make progress quicker. Intelligence rewards above Flask and Energy Shield passives have been improved.
 * Elemental damage increases for the Witch have been reduced in number to allow quicker progress, but "Attunement" passives have been added with more damage and built in resistances to compensate.
 * Slight pathing changes have been made to the casting area of the Witch section and the Intelligence node north of it has been improved.
 * The Templar area has two new passives: "Esoteric Wisdom" with Cast Speed and Mana Regeneration, and "Holy Defence", which provides a significant boost to Intelligence and Strength armour.
 * Life regeneration has been changed to a percentage of life.
 * The All Elemental Resistances passive has been improved.
 * The Fire Damage passives in the Marauder section have been consolidated into a single node.
 * The Dual Wield group between the Duelist and Ranger has a "Dual Wield Mastery" passive added with significant bonuses.
 * Shield Mastery passives have been added to both the Duelist and Ranger sections.
 * The third Projectile Damage passive has been significantly improved to smooth the experience of early level bow rangers.
 * Several other minor changes have also been made to the tree.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug that would allow people to have too much control over the quality and socket links of items generated by the vendors.

=Version 0.9.5c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Slightly reduced monster life on higher difficulties.
 * Increased the amount of mana gain per level from 2 to 4.
 * Increased the natural mana regeneration rate of players by 24%.
 * Increased the value of the early mana regeneration passive skills from 25% to 40%.
 * Reduced the mana cost of Split Arrow so that it increases by 3 per arrow rather than by 6.

=Version 0.9.5b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Increased the drop rate of Scrolls of Wisdom by 50%.
 * Added some more vendor recipes that allow you to get Scrolls of Wisdom for low currency items.
 * Fixed the volume of the Water Elemental emerge sound.
 * Minor fixes to some stat descriptions on the passive tree.
 * Fixed a bug in a vendor recipe that caused items to be included that we didn't intend.

=Version 0.9.5=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.5 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features/Content

 * Added the ability to refund individual skill points on the passive tree by spending "Passive Skill Respec Points". These can be gained from quest rewards or by using a rare currency item.
 * Enabled the "Golden Hand" quest in the Church Dungeon. This currently gives two skill respec points per difficulty as its reward, but this will change in the future.
 * Added two new world areas, currently called the "Ancient Pyramid" and the "Old Fields Cave".
 * More than doubled the number of Unique Items in the game.
 * Added some new monster types which can be found towards the end of Act Two.
 * Added new currency items, improved vendors and the ability to sell items to vendors. See the section below for more information.
 * Added a new unique monster to the Rocky Climb - "Ironpoint the Forsaken".
 * Revamped how stats on items and skills are displayed so that many of the confusing cases are explained more consistently now.
 * Improved the character selection cargohold scene and added the Quartermaster to its background.
 * Added new level topologies to the Submerged Passage, Tidal Island and other areas.
 * Improved the environment of the Twilight Strand.
 * Removed the Submerged Passage Level 2 waypoint. Added a Rocky Climb waypoint. Moved some other waypoints around to random locations within their maps
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.
 * Added dividers between the NPC talk items such as shops and quest information.
 * Added a new Raised Zombie run animation.
 * The new Strength skill, "Lightning Strike", has been moved to a (hopefully soon) future patch because of issues that occured during testing.
 * Disabled the Punishment skill gem from being found until we have it working properly.

Currency/Vendor Changes

 * Added new currency item - "Orb of Regret": Grants one passive skill refund point when used.
 * Added new currency item - "Blessed Orb": Rerolls the value of the implicit (built-in) mod on an item.
 * Fixed up the vendors that sell you items so that they offer a more reasonable selection of items at more appropriate prices. They now have some permanent currency items in their offered goods.
 * Added the ability to sell items to vendors. The vendors have many complex recipes for combinations of items that they accept, so we encourage experimentation.
 * Added "Scroll of Wisdom Fragment", "Transmutation Shard", "Alteration Shard" and "Alchemy Shard" currency items which can only be obtained from vendors. These cannot be used in their shard form, but when they reach their maximum stack size, they automatically transform into the appropriate type of normal currency item.
 * Implemented mod-pricing for selling identified blue/rare items at the vendors. Different types of mods on your items can yield different numbers of shards (many are worth nothing). Some mods offer increased prices if they are at their maximum value.
 * Added new art for most currency items. In some cases, you'll only get the new art if you find new currency items.
 * Renamed some currency items. "Chaos Sphere" became "Chaos Orb". "Orb of Transformation" became "Orb of Alteration". "Gem Quality Upgrade" became "Gemcutter's Prism". "Flask Quality Upgrade" become "Glassblower's Bauble". "Armour Shard" became "Armourer's Scrap". "Whetstone" became "Blacksmith's Whetstone".

Item Drop Changes

 * Reduced the drop rate of Orbs of Scouring, Scrolls of Wisdom and Portal Scrolls (scrolls can easily be obtained from vendors now.)
 * Increased the drop rate of Orb of Chance.
 * We're now biasing towards higher item base types extremely strongly for most item types. This means that it's much easier to stay up to date with the current highest item type for each slot. For example, if a bow drops in the Maelstrom of Chaos, there's a ~40% chance that it's the level 58 bow.
 * Magic/Rare/Unique monsters can drop currency items and skill gems again, at an adjusted fair rate. Their chance of dropping these items is higher than that of normal monsters.
 * Changed how Unique Items are generated so that low level Uniques can still drop in high level areas.

General Balance

 * We've changed how flasks heal your life and mana so that they are slower than before but heal substantially more in total. They also take more monster kills to refill. This change should make your life and mana totals more relevant than just the speed your flasks recover at. There are more (drastic) flask changes scheduled for 0.9.6 but we're interested in feedback on these ones first.
 * Made higher difficulties harder.
 * Removed the 10% damage bonus that monsters get per additional party member.
 * Changed how Stun Threshold Reduction works so that it makes more sense now. A 50% decrease in Stun Threshold now means that you only need to deal 50% of the previous damage to cause a stun.
 * Applied the "currency drop penalty" to Skill Gems and Scrolls also. This penalty applies if you're playing in an area far lower level than you are.
 * Reduced the bonuses granted by Frenzy and Endurance charges.
 * Changed enemy critical strike damage multiplier reduction so it only reduces the part of the multiplier above 100.
 * Nerfed the Divinarius unique dagger. Old versions of this item are unmodified.
 * Most flasks in the vendors don't generate with quality now.
 * Reduced the number of Scrolls of Wisdom you start with to 3.
 * Rebalanced most of the mods on flasks around the new behavioural changes.
 * "Low Life" on Cautious flasks is now defined as 35% rather than 50%, to be consistent with other uses of the term.

Active Skill Balance

 * Modified Firestorm's behaviour so that the explosions have a larger radius and are more likely to fall near the centre of the affected area. Doubled the number of fireballs that fall and rebalanced damage around these changes.
 * Reduced Frenzy damage per charge.
 * Increased damage progression of Freezing Pulse.
 * Raise Spectre now raises better Spectres at higher levels.
 * Made Explosive Arrow more powerful. The damage has been increased and the fuse time is now one second.
 * Split Arrow mana costing increased based on number of arrows.
 * Increased the chance that Warlord's Mark will grant an Endurance Charge.
 * Projectile weakness now increases damage taken from projectiles.
 * Increased the damage bonus granted by the Added Cold, Added Lightning and Added Chaos Damage Support Gems.

Passive Skill Balance

 * Cold, Fire and Lightning damage passives have been increased from +4% to +6%.
 * Chaos Inoculation now grants +80% energy shield rather than +20%
 * Increased the sizes of mana regeneration passives.
 * Reduced area of effect passives.
 * Added additional life passives and increased the size of existing ones so that players are able to gain more life than before if they choose to specialise in it.
 * Removed connections to increase distance between the Witch and the unannounced class.
 * Reduced the size of some cast speed passives.
 * Minor other passive tweaks.

Bug Fixes

 * Opening the passive skill screen no longer closes the overlay map.
 * Fixed a bug that allowed curses to be cast through walls.
 * Cast time/attack time on skill popups now updates when stats change.
 * Fixed a bug where chests opened with damage would not have the currency drop penalty.
 * Fixed a bug where the energy shield of a raised Spectre was not scaled properly.
 * Fixed Poison Arrow and Viper Strike so that damage from their degeneration is scaled properly for PvP.
 * Fixed a bug with bow attacks where they would miss at long ranges.
 * Fixed a bug where multiple conversions of one monster with Dominating Blow would not be applied correctly.
 * Fixed a bug where the stun duration increase stat for staves and two handed weapons were interpreted in a swapped way.
 * Fixed a bug where "Increased Evasion" did not apply to converted evasion for Iron Reflexes.

=Version 0.9.4e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.4e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Minor updates for this weekend's competition league. Please see the Beta Status forum for information on this event.
 * Gems now have no experience penalty applied to them. They get full experience regardless of the player level vs the environment level.
 * Due to the previous change, higher levels of gems now require substantially more experience. This may cause gems above level 15 to drop in level (they still have all their old experience).
 * When you have only one gem to level up, the inventory now does not open when it is levelled.
 * Fixed a bug where experience on gems would be slightly off on the client. This would cause the gems to appear to level up twice occasionally.
 * Fixed a problem where the client would not display stuns that occured when the player has energy shield. This would cause the client to get out of sync.
 * Fixed a bug where "Chance to Ignite" did not scale properly under the Elemental Weakness curse.
 * Fixed a problem with the highest attack speed mod.

=Version 0.9.4d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.4d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Re-enabled the level 60 base armour types from before as something to look for in Chaos. This is merely a temporary set of "end game" items.
 * Restored the ability for bosses to drop currency items (and other non-equipment items). This was done because 0.9.4c reduced the amount of drop-spam from bosses. - We'll fix this tomorrow!
 * Increased the quantity of items dropped by bosses by 50%. This is so that they drop the same amount of equipment as before (because they can now drop scrolls, currency and skill gems too).
 * Doubled the size of "percentage accuracy increase" passive skills.
 * Allowed accuracy mods to spawn on gloves and helmets again.
 * Substantially reduced the mana cost multiplier of most support gems. Many of them do not increase the mana cost at all now.
 * Increased the mana cost multiplier of the Concentrated Effect support gem.
 * Halved the quality effect on the Concentrated Effect support gem.
 * Increased the damage granted by the Chaos Damage support gem.
 * Curses with infinite duration are no longer removed when the cursed entity is far away from you.
 * Fixed a bug related to projectiles fired at oneself.
 * Fixed a crash that can occur when resizing the game window while logging in to a character.

=Version 0.9.4c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.4c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Tripled the drop rate of Orb of Alchemy and Chaos Sphere.
 * Doubled both the drop rate and the drop rarity of Magic monsters. Normal/Rare/Unique monsters are not modified by this patch.
 * Fixed the fix to the Baleful Gem quest. Players who were having trouble with it should try again!
 * Made bows a little more common.
 * Set the default critical strike chances of various skills: Spark (5.5%), Ice Spear (8%), Infernal Blow (7%), Shock Nova (2.6%), Cold Snap (4%), Exploding Arrow (6%), Freezing Pulse (6%)
 * Made Raised Zombies move 3.1x faster and attack twice as fast. This looks a little unrealistic (until we get a new run animation for them) but makes them a lot more useful!
 * Fixed a crash that can occur with Ground Slam.
 * Fixed a tile that blocks the prison.
 * Modified the player light radius calculation for very low life values.
 * Fixed a bug with energy shield and mana not updating when the maximum changes.
 * Added movement passives to the middle of the tree.
 * Added three more life passive skills for rangers.
 * Connected a sword passive skill group to the Strength highway near the Duelist start position.
 * Fixed the symbols on various passives skills in the tree.
 * Fixed various item images on the website.
 * Changed the patcher so that it'll display the patch notes after restarting (before the user clicks Launch).
 * Fixed a crash that only affects Windows XP users.

=Version 0.9.4b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.4b released by Grinding Gear Games.


 * Fixed a server crash with the Minion Instability passive skill.
 * Fixed a server crash that would occur sometimes when levelling up a gem.
 * Fixed a bug with the Baleful Gem quest that would cause some people who had the gem in their inventory to lose the gem and be unable to complete it. Players with that problem should now be able to get the gem again by visiting the Chamber of Sins again.

=Version 0.9.4=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.4 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added the ability to manually level a skill gem up. They don't level up by themselves anymore, but instead notify you when they've gained enough experience. Click on the appropriate + icon in the HUD or inventory screen to level it up. This should allow players greater control over what level their gems are and will prevent the situation where gems automatically levelled to have requirements that prevented you from removing items.
 * Improved the look and feel of the character selection screen.
 * Restored the Quartermaster voice intro that plays when creating a character.
 * Added an outline to the hovered character class in the character creation screen.
 * Improved the Upper Prison and added some monsters to fight before Brutus. They're useful for corpses.
 * Swapped the locations of Oozeback Bloom and Plague Vomit unique monsters.
 * The character screen now shows an estimate for average damage reduction due to armour. Note that smaller hits are reduced more and larger hits are reduced less.
 * Made it clear that Shield Charge cannot be used with wands currently.
 * Made the quest status notifications prettier.
 * Removed the fake aura effect from the Medicine Chest boss.
 * Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.

Passive Skill Tree Changes

 * Reduced the density of attribute nodes on the passive skill tree's "attribute highways". It's now faster to travel around the tree.
 * Added 12 Keystone passives! There's no limit to how many you can take, but they have very large permanent effects on your character, so plan carefully before picking any. The keystones are listed below.
 * Replaced bow accuracy nodes with more damage.
 * Added accuracy to early Marauder and Templar areas of the tree.
 * Changed the structure of the centre of the tree to allow faster travel across the tree and to make the item passives optional.
 * Reduced early Witch mana-on-kill passives.
 * Changed description of the Area of Effect passives to make it clear that they affect skills, not just spells.
 * Added some early "splash" attribute nodes close to the start position of each class.

Keystone Passives

 * Minion Instability: Minions explode when reduced to low life, dealing 200% of their maximum life as fire damage to surrounding enemies.
 * Hex Master: Curses you cast never expire.
 * Conduit: Party members gain endurance/frenzy/power charges whenever you do.
 * Acrobatics: 20% chance to dodge all enemy attacks. Removes all armour. Removes all energy shield.
 * Iron Reflexes: Converts all evasion rating to armour.
 * Resolute Technique: Never get critical strikes. Always hit.
 * Avatar of Fire: Converts all physical damage to fire damage.
 * Unwavering Stance: You cannot be stunned. You cannot evade enemy attacks.
 * Armour Master: Ignore all movement penalties from armour.
 * Chaos Innoculation: 20% increased maximum energy shield. Provides immunity to chaos damage. Maximum life becomes 1.
 * Eldritch Battery: Converts all energy shield to mana.
 * Blood Magic: Removes all mana. Spends life instead of mana for skills.

Balance

 * Changed the attribute requirements system substantially. Weapons now have more meaningful requirements that encourage players to make stronger item/passive skill decisions. The requirements of other item classes are lower than weapons: body armours are at 80% of weapons, shields at 70%, skill gems/helmets at 60%, boots at 50% and gloves/support gems at 40%.
 * Removed the bonus of one free attribute point of each type per level.
 * Increased the base damage progression of weapon types throughout the game. No longer is it mandatory to have a +100% damage weapon in order to be able to kill monsters at a reasonable speed.
 * Scaled monster life and player weapon/spell damage values down in order to prevent numerical inflation caused by the above change. Note that this means that the weapon values are now exactly the same as before, but all the other damage/monster life values are lower. This is not a nerf to spellcasters because the monster life was reduced at the same time as their spell damage.
 * Rebalanced the mana cost of many skills to better reflect their function in combat. Most weapon skills now start at a slightly higher mana cost then before (so that resources are constrained at low levels) but flatten off so that they can be used constantly at higher levels.
 * Reduced the number of armour base types in the game in order to prevent the spam of hundreds of confusingly similar items. Your old armour pieces still exist but many cannot be found any more.
 * Further biased equipment drops in favour of higher level items. You're now substantially more likely to find items close to the level of the area you're playing in. This scaling now applies to Flasks also.
 * Modified the drop rates of bosses (magic and above) so that there is less item spam but so that you still stand a good chance of getting magic, rare and unique items.
 * There's now a limit of one curse per enemy. The most recently cast one overwrites any existing ones. This is necessary because curses are very powerful and their abuse was making most high level play too easy. There will be ways soon to increase this per-monster limit.
 * Changed the way that stuns are calculated so that it's harder to stun a target. The thresholds of damage dealt per hit (associated with various stun probabilities) are now higher than before. This should help melee characters who were frequently being stunlocked. Characters that rely on stunning enemies may have to get additional Stun Threshold Reduction.
 * Reduced the chance of Energy Shield neutralising stun from 90% to 50%.
 * Increased the default run speed of characters but made body armours and shields slow them down depending on their type. Most characters should notice little difference.
 * Widened the "safe zone" in the experience penalty at higher levels, but made the falloff harsher.
 * Removed the bonus accuracy that was built into dexterity weapons. It comes from dexterity now.
 * The knockback from a Flask of Fending now only applies to melee attacks.
 * Raise Spectre can now only raise one Spectre by default at all levels. Minion passives must be sought to raise this limit.
 * Changed the quality stat of Ground Slam to Stun Duration (rather than Reduced Stun Threshold).
 * Increased the damage of Viper Strike, Poison Arrow, Explosive Arrow.
 * Reduced the damage of Discharge.
 * Reduced the duration of Immortal Call granted per Endurance Charge but added a 0.2 second base duration.
 * Reduced the duration of Temporal Chains.
 * Increased the duration of Blood Rage at all levels.
 * Shield Charge now provides no damage bonus if used at minimum range, because it's fast and doesn't miss. It still provides the same damage bonus at longer ranges.

Bug Fixes

 * Increased the run speed of Ghost monsters to match their animation.
 * Fixed a bug where shift-attacks performed on out-of-range enemies were not able to hit in-range enemies.
 * Fixed a bug that caused some quest status messages to appear delayed.
 * Fixed a bug where Frost Wall could damage non-hostile bandit leaders.
 * Fixed discharge not granting charges for hitting/killing enemies.
 * Fixed rain of Arrows being incorrectly treated as a projectile skill.
 * Fixed a bug with using ctrl+enter to reply to whispers where it'd only put the @ symbol and no name.
 * Fixed various errors in NPC text.
 * Fixed a bug where the Tidal Island was unavailable on Cruel difficulty.
 * Fixed a bug where players could skip act two.
 * Fixed a bug where skill gems linked in chat would show with zero experience.
 * Fixed bugs related to life being shown incorrectly after adding/removing items that granted life.
 * Caustic flasks no longer interrupt energy shield recharge.
 * Caustic the wrong mods spawning on some hybrid flasks.
 * Fixed a bug where some quest items would not drop if there was no room.
 * Fixed a bug where you were able to use an item that you didn't meet the requirements for if you swapped into it.

Item Mod Changes

 * We tidied up item mods substantially to help clarify the function of each item slot. None of the following changes modify existing items.
 * Prevented life and life regeneration mods from spawning on weapons.
 * Added a new tier of attack speed mod for gloves.
 * Reduced the maximum attack speed tier that can spawn on rings.
 * Doubled the values of "all attributes" mods that spawn as explicit amulet mods.
 * Prevented cast speed mods spawning on gloves.
 * Rings can only get one tier of cast speed mod now.
 * Amulets can only get 3 tiers of cast speed mods now.
 * Allowed elemental damage increase percentage mods to spawn on sceptres.
 * Prevented elemental damage increase percentage mods from spawning on armour pieces and belts.
 * Reduced the number of tiers of elemental damage mods on rings (two) and amulets (three).
 * Prevented strength mods from spawning on items other than rings, amulets, belts, strength armour pieces and strength weapons.
 * Prevented dexterity mods from spawning on items other than rings, amulets, gloves, quivers, dexterity armour pieces and dexterity weapons.
 * Prevented intelligence mods from spawning on items other than rings, amulets, helmets, intelligence armour pieces and intelligence weapons.
 * Prevented spell damage and spell critical strike chance mods from spawning on non-intelligence weapons.
 * Fixed the chance that spell damage mods will spawn on amulets.
 * The "all resistances" mods now only on shields, rings, and amulets (removed from belt, weapons and other armour pieces)
 * Prevented stun recovery mods from spawning on weapons and gloves.
 * Prevented stun duration mods from spawning on armour pieces.
 * Prevented projectile speed mods from spawning on anything except ranged weapons and quivers.
 * Critical strike chance and multiplier mods now only spawn on weapons, quivers and amulets.
 * Stun threshold reduction mods can now only spawn on belts and strength weapons.
 * Mana and mana regeneration mods can now only spawn on rings, amulets, intelligence armours and intelligence weapons.
 * Prevented mana/life leech mods from spawning on belts. Added to gloves.
 * Prevented mana/life gain on hit/enemy death mods from spawning on belts and armour pieces.
 * Prevented accuracy mods from spawning on armour pieces and belts.
 * Prevented all energy shield regeneration speed mods from spawning.
 * Prevented the whole-character armour type increase mods from spawning on all items except amulets.
 * Prevented the static armour mods from spawning on amulets and rings.
 * Prevented the static evasion mods from spawning on amulets and belts.
 * Dramatically increased the chances of getting elemental damage mods on weapons, rings, amulets and gloves.
 * Prevented elemental damage mods from spawing on belts.

=Version 0.9.3i=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3i released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added additional league options to allow notification of the first person to complete certain quests, full-clear certain areas or reach each player level or world area. This is being used in the special competition league that we're running this weekend. Please see the Beta Status forum for information on this event.

=Version 0.9.3h=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3h released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added a quest reward to the Baleful Gem quest. Old characters can go back and claim it.
 * Added four new unique items that can be found (and one for the upcoming ladder competition - see the Beta Status forum).
 * Made "massive" prefixed monsters actually massive.
 * Reduced the radius of the Damage Reflection, Elemental Damage Reflection and Speed auras by 10%.
 * Made damage reflected by the Damage Reflection auras evadable if it was triggered by an attack. All characters have some Evasion, so this doesn't just benefit the Ranger.
 * Capped the damage reflected per monster to 25% of your total Life+Energy Shield (before resistances/armour are applied). For example, if you have 500 Life and 25% fire resist and deal 500 fire damage to a target, you will receive 94 damage reflected.
 * Fixed a bug where Physical Damage Reflection would still hurt you when you had Immortal Call on.
 * Fixed a bug where the damage and life of Spectres were not being scaled correctly.
 * Fixed a problem with unidentified items displaying on the forum.
 * Fixed a bug that could cause a game instance to close incorrectly when you leave it.
 * Fixed a bug that would enable you to activate the Dark Altar without having a Combined Amulet. This used to prevent people getting bandit quest rewards.

=Version 0.9.3g=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3g released by Grinding Gear Games.


 * Added European servers! They're part of the same realm - just select a gateway when you launch the game and you'll be put on the appropriate servers by default when creating an area. You can still play with anyone in the world.
 * Developers now speak in orange text in game. This should solve impersonation issues.
 * Changed the empty game-instance decay time back to 15 minutes (from 8).
 * Fixed an issue that could prevent the realm starting correctly.
 * Increased the drop rates of Orb of Alchemy by 50%, Orb of Chance by 25% and Chaos Sphere by 100%. They're still quite hard to find.
 * Doubled the damage reflected by the damage reflection auras.
 * Changed Immortal Call to have no up-front invulnerability time (it now requires Endurance Charges to have any effect).
 * Immortal Call now only prevents Physical damage.
 * Changed Detonate Dead, Infernal Blow and Explosive Arrow to not have their damage scaled by mods that affect "Spell Damage".
 * Reduced the freeze duration of Merveil's Cold Snap.
 * Increased the drop rate of belts.
 * Increased the damage of Dual Strike by reducing its damage penalty from -20% to -10%.
 * Fixed Glacial Hammer to scale in damage properly as it levels up.
 * Reduced the Vendor costs of Flasks and hid some invalid high level items.

=Version 0.9.3f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Fixed a known realm crash.
 * Decreased the creation time of game instances.
 * Reduced and substantially flattened the mana cost increases of most weapon based attack skills. Mana is being further rebalanced for 0.9.4, but this change should reduce the mana requirements of high level melee characters and also help prevent situations where it's undesirable for a gem to level up.
 * Increased the drop rate of flasks.
 * Fixed a bug that caused sockets to not show up on the item hovers of linked or ground items.
 * Reduced the Energy Shield monster aura by 30%.
 * The currency item drop penalty now interprets the character level as no higher than 58. This means that high level players will not be penalised for playing in end-game areas.
 * Fixed minion supports working with raise spectre.
 * Fixed some more problems with the beach levels in the Maelstrom of Chaos.

=Version 0.9.3e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added four new unique items.
 * Implemented "Chance to cause monster to flee" and "Always hit" mods for some of the new unique items.
 * Disabled player join/leave messages from showing in towns.

Balance

 * Reduced Spark damage by -10%
 * Increased Explosive Arrow damage by 15%.
 * Increased the damage of Brutus' Ground Slam.
 * Reduced the damage scaling of Fire Fury's Firestorm attack on higher difficulties.
 * Improved the number of magic/rares/unique items dropped from act bosses.
 * Increased the Blood Rage attack speed bonus when on low life by an additional flat 10% speed.
 * Added a new life leech mod for amulets and non-bow weapons that goes up to 5% physical damage leeched as life.
 * Reduced the frequency of rare monsters in the Maelstrom of Chaos by 20%.
 * Slightly increased the difficulty of monsters in the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Increased the drop rate of Regal Orb by 50%.
 * Increased the drop rate of Orb of Scouring by 25%.
 * Increased the drop rate of Orb of Alchemy by 25%.
 * Increased the drop rate of Orb of Transformation by 33%
 * Decreased the drop rate of Whetstones and Armour shards by 8%.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a problem that would prevent the realm coming back up quickly if it crashed.
 * Fixed a crash that could occur related to linking items in chat.
 * Fixed flavour text not being shown on items when linked in game (especially uniques).
 * Fixed a bug where the unique sword Redbeak would not show its "+100% damage when on low life" mod.
 * Fixed levels of fellshrine ruins in higher difficulties.
 * Fixed a problem with beach materials in the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Fixed the passive skill screen and character panel attribute descriptions to say the same thing.

=Version 0.9.3d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Doubled the effect of Strength on physical melee damage to help Marauders, Duelists and melee Templars at higher levels. It's now 1% Physical Melee Damage Increase per 5 Strength.
 * Damage reflection is now affected by armour.
 * Elemental damage reflection is now affected by resistances.
 * Both forms of damage reflection are now scaled based on player level so that high level characters don't instantly kill themselves.
 * Slightly decreased the drop rate of magic and rare items.
 * Increased the drop rate of Scrolls of Wisdom (again) and Skill/Support Gems.
 * Fixed a crash that would occur using a Quiver as a currency item (don't ask).
 * Increased the physical damage reduction and resistances per Endurance Charge from 6 to 7.
 * Increased the bonus Critical Strike chance per Power Charge to +50%. For example, if your base Critical Strike chance is 7.5% and you have two Power Charges, the modified Critical Strike chance is 15%.
 * Rebalanced the flask charge ratios on vials so that they aren't so crazily overpowered.
 * Lightning Warp now lets you travel up and down cliffs or across chasms (like Leap Slam).
 * Fixed a bug that would cause Bestel to show the reward effect multiple times.
 * Fixed the DPS display to fix a calculation error with spell skills.
 * Fixed some problems with quest text.
 * Potentially fixed a crash when changing areas
 * Fixed a bug that would make it easy to get out of sync with Lightning Warp.
 * Fixed usage of the * character in chat.
 * Slowed down edge-scrolling on the passive tree.

=Version 0.9.3c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Restored the potency of mana flasks and set mana-gain-per-level back up to 5, undoing the change from the 0.9.3b patch. We'll investigate mana in more detail this week.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented Blood Rage refreshing when you kill an enemy.
 * Fixed a bug that caused damage bonuses to not appear on many weapon skills such as Split Arrow, Infernal Blow, etc.
 * Created a two level safe zone around your level where no currency item droprate penalty is applied.
 * Increased the damage of Plague Vomit's aura by 60%. It should kill you in 25 seconds now.
 * Improved the drop rate of Scrolls of Wisdom.
 * Slightly decreased the drop rate of currency items.
 * Changed the damage reduction equation to have damage*20 rather than damage*25 in the denominator. This will make armour more effective at damage reduction.
 * Raised the overall damage of Firestorm and its high level damage scaling.
 * Reduced damage of Cold Snap by 10%.
 * Reduced damage of Fireball by 5%.
 * Increased damage of Shock Nova damage by 10% and lowered its high level damage scaling.
 * Increased damage of Ice Spear by 5%.
 * Increased damage of Split Arrow by raising its flat damage penalty from -30% to -20%.
 * Increased damage of Ground Slam by raising its flat damage penalty from -15% to -12%.
 * Increased damage of Infernal Blow by raising its flat damage bonus from 10% to 12%.

=Version 0.9.3b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Changes

 * Added a set of projectile damage passives and changed paths to bow areas to enable bow-based Duelist builds.
 * Fixed experience sharing in parties to work properly again.
 * Temporarily reduced the timeout on game instances to 8 minutes when empty to help reduce server load.
 * Increased the rate that Rain of Arrows gains damage per level, but gave it a -20% damage penalty for being AoE.
 * Increased the drop rate of portal scrolls.
 * Fixed some bad grammar in quest text.
 * Fixed a bug that would cause the "passive skill point gained" effect to play additional times when talking to Tarkleigh again.
 * Changed the Strength attribute bonus to only affect melee damage.
 * Fixed the effects in the Ship Graveyard to reduce graphical lag.
 * Changed Orb of Scouring, Jeweler's Orb, Orb of Fusing to only drop in level 12+ areas because they were too complicated for early players.
 * Increased the Life and damage of various bosses: Brutus, Merveil (both forms), the Deep Dweller (both forms) and the Hideous Abomination
 * Increased Hillock's Life.
 * Increased Kraityn's damage.
 * Added 10% extra monster damage for each additional party member after the first. For example, against a party of 3 players, monsters do +20% damage.
 * Fixed a bug related to the scaling of experience and item drops when playing in parties.
 * Reduced Life per level from 6 to 5.
 * Reduced Mana per level from 4 to 3.
 * Slightly reduced the starting Life and Mana of new characters.
 * Made early flasks use slightly less charges per drink so that it's easier to fill them.
 * Reduced the amount of Mana recovered from Flasks and Vials by 15%.
 * Reduced the size of Life mods on items.

=Version 0.9.3=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.3 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Content

 * Revamped quest rewards. Quests that block your progress now grant you a skill or support gem for completion. Act boss quests do not grant gem rewards. Optional side quests now grant a permanent passive skill point for completion.
 * Performed an overhaul of Act Two quests. Added the new bandit quests and quests in the Weaver's Chambers, Church Dungeon and Chamber of Sins.
 * Added two new world areas in Act One - the Tidal Island and the Fetid Pool. The Tidal Passage has been renamed to the Submerged Passage.
 * Added new skill prototype - Firestorm: Flaming bolts rain down over the targeted area. They explode when landing, dealing damage to nearby enemies.
 * Added new skill prototype - Heavy Strike: Attacks the enemy with a forceful blow, knocking them back. Requires an Axe, Mace or Two-Handed Weapon.
 * Added new skill prototype - Dominating Blow: Attacks the enemy with a melee strike. If an enemy is killed shortly after being hit by Dominating Blow, that enemy is revived as a minion until the skill duration ends.
 * Added new skill prototype - Rain of Arrows: Fires a large number of arrows into the air, to land at the target after a short delay.
 * Added new skill prototype - Discharge: Discharge all the character’s charges to deal elemental damage to all nearby monsters.
 * Added new skill prototype - Immortal Call: Makes the character invulnerable for a short time. Discharges all endurance charges and increases the invulnerability duration proportional to the number of charges expended.
 * Added new skill prototype - Lightning Warp: Casts a delayed teleport to a target destination. When the teleport occurs, lightning damage is dealt to the area around both where the player was and where they teleported to.
 * Added new support gem prototypes: Minion Damage, Minion Life, Minion Run Speed, Increased Duration, Gain Life on Hit, Chance to Ignite, Critical Multiplier, Concentrated Effect (reduces the area of affect of a skill, but increases its damage), Cold to Fire (turns a percentage of your cold damage into fire damage)
 * Added a new item series - the Strength/Intelligence one-handed Sceptres.
 * Added new currency item - Divine Orb: Rerolls all values in mods on an item while leaving the mods intact.
 * Added new currency item - Orb of Fusing: Rerolls socket links on an item.
 * Added new currency item - Chromatic Orb: Rerolls the colours of sockets on an item.
 * Repurposed old currency item - Jeweler's Orb: Now rerolls the number of sockets on an item while keeping socket links/colours intact if they still exist.
 * Changed the layout of The The Coast to streamline the start of the game.
 * Added new unique bosses to The The Coast and the Mud Flats. They have interesting skills to use on players.

Features

 * Added monster auras. Rare monsters can now spawn with an aura which affects nearby monsters. These can stack if multiple rare monsters are nearby. Auras added in this version are: Resistances, Energy Shield, Accuracy/Critical Strike Rate, Speed, Damage Reflection, Elemental Damage Reflection, Medium Damage Increase, Large Damage Increase, Life Regeneration.
 * Attributes (Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence) are now available on items as mods. These do allow you to equip other items and we do currently allow items to support themselves. The addition of these attributes on items means that players will be able to more easily solve problems with item requirements.
 * Added zoom to the passive skill tree screen.
 * Revamped the character screen. It's not completely finished yet, but it's a lot more useful than before. The DPS displays are now pretty accurate and it lets you see your stats with regard to specific skills.
 * Added a display of what gems are supporting an active skill on the hotbar, to differentiate between otherwise identical skills. Each support gem has a letter that is displayed in the top right of the skill.
 * Changed monsters so that they walk around randomly more often and are more likely to disengage chasing their target if they can't see it.
 * New monster hover user interface added.
 * Moving belt flasks around is now allowed again if the inventory is open.
 * Shield crabs now throw their shells off a lot faster.
 * Tidied up the display of monster mods so that it is easier to see at a glance what the monster does.
 * Temporarily made Hillock's door one-way so that he can't be farmed as easily with the new boss drops.
 * Added new user interface for the level information display on the minimap screen.
 * Improved the server backend to make player saves substantially faster.
 * Added quartermaster voice intro in the ship scene when creating a new character.
 * Added tent bandit-spawners in Act Two.
 * Characters and monsters now have three blood effects depending on the size of the damage relative to their maximum life.
 * Alira will no longer use the Raise Zombie skill. She has a cauldron for that.
 * Monster descriptions now show their resistances and have been tidied up to only show properties that are special about that monster.
 * Added support for a new system of creating, storing and displaying unique items.
 * Implicit mods on items now do not stop explicit mods of the same type being spawned. For example, a wand with built-in "+10% Spell Damage" can now get an additional random spell damage mod generated.
 * Disabled ground tile tesselation for now as a workaround to problems with the nVidia 285 series of drivers. We'll re-enable it in the future.
 * Updated and added pages on the official Path of Exile site that describe skills, support gems, monster auras and advanced item mod information.

Art Improvements

 * Substantial art changes were made to reduce visual chaos in many areas.
 * Changed the art for item sockets to make them easier to distinguish for colourblind players.
 * New flask graphics have been added for each base type.
 * Seagulls have shadows now.
 * Added a new level-up effect and sound.
 * Updated buttons in the user interface and their font used on them.
 * Substantial environment/texture changes to many world areas.
 * Improved almost all sounds in the game.
 * Fixes to the shimmer postprocessing effect.
 * Added a wind effect to the Ledge and Rocky Climb.
 * Changed the ground hover of items to be smaller with less border.
 * Added new amulet/ring artwork.

Core Mechanics Changes

 * All classes have been rebalanced to promote their core strengths. Melee classes are now substantially stronger with regard to dealing damage up close. Spellcasters have lower damage output than before but can be formidable if left unchecked.
 * Changed the gem-support system so that only Support Gems in the same physical group as a Skill Gem connect to it. If you have two groups with the same skill, you get two bindable skills. This is done so that supports can be made more impactful and so that players can have multiple variations of the same skill in their build.
 * Attributes (Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence) now affect the player. Strength provides a physical damage increase and additional Life. Dexterity provides Evasion and Accuracy. Intelligence provides Energy Shield and Mana. This makes it more appealing to specialise in your character's core attribute (as it synergises with the rest of your build), while still providing incentive to splash in other attributes to get the aforementioned benefits.
 * There's now a massive discrepancy between the difficulty of normal monsters vs that of magic or rare monsters. This is to make the higher difficulties less grindy while still providing extreme challenge when you encounter multiple bosses at once. Monster auras help this substantially because they promote nearby normal monsters.
 * On the new passive skill tree, non-attribute nodes do not grant attributes any more! You must get your attributes by allocating the nodes as you need them. This allows us to create passives stat and attribute gains that are meaningful, while also allowing easy travel around the passive skill tree on attribute highways.
 * Increased spell damage percentage is now likely on caster weapons. A larger amount of late-game killing speed for casters now comes from their weapon mods. This makes their itemisation similar to that of weapon users.
 * Changed the way that to-hit calculations are done so that they are much more reliable. There is far less variance now, which will result in Evasion being less swingy.
 * Armour and Evasion and values on items are now comparable in scale and roughly equivalent to each other. This allows you to objectively say as a Duelist that a 35 Armour item is probably better than a 30 Evasion item.
 * Overall monster damage per hit has been reduced so that the high variance of Evasion is less of a problem. Evasive characters still need to care about getting enough life to survive if they're unlucky.
 * The damage reduction (Armour) system has been changed so that it doesn't provide a linear reduction in damage received. The equation now reduces the damage based on the size of the damage you take. The equation is: reduction = armour / (armour + 25*damage). This allows Marauders to tank groups of swarming enemies much easier, while technically making Evasion more useful against monsters that strike for large hits at once. If you have 500 armour and are hit for 50 damage, you'll reduce it by 28.6%. 25 damage is reduced by 44.4%. 75 damage is reduced by 21.1%.
 * The critical strike system has been changed so that your weapon and/or spell have a direct critical strike percentage that other things modify. For example, if you're using a weapon with 8% critical strike chance and have a total of +50% critical strikes from your passive skills and items, then you have a 12% chance to score a critical hit. The old "critical strike rating system" is gone. To clarify a common misconception - spell critical strikes do include the normal critical strike chance.
 * Support gems now have a flat multiplier to the mana cost of the skill that does not go up exponentially as they level up. Much of their benefit is available at the first level of the gem, but higher levels offer improvements (for free) if you meet their requirements. Support gems are balanced such that only a few of them are needed to make a skill feel powerful.
 * Made damage scaling from weapon-based skills multiplicative. For example, if a skill adds 50% damage, it'll do so regardless of your other damage scaling.
 * Made damage scaling from weapons themselves multiplicative. +% damage on a weapon is more important than anywhere else.

General Balance Changes

 * Single target skills are now designed to be substantially more meaningful than before. It should be a viable strategy to kill the enemies one by one as opposed to before where you were forced to use Area of Effect skills. Monster pack sizes in higher difficulties were reduced slightly to facilitate this.
 * Combat equations do not care about your level or the level of the monsters any more.
 * Players now gain enough accuracy per level that they are never going to be completely terrible at hitting. This allows us to reduce the accuracy bonuses from elsewhere so that they are individually rewarding but neither mandatory nor overpowered.
 * Base weapon types now have more appropriate implicit mods to create strong differences between them. For example, Axes do additional damage and Swords are more accurate.
 * Rebalanced every single weapon in the game so that they have a hand-crafted progression of median damage, damage range, speed, requirements and variations on their implicit mod.
 * Rebalanced all the shields to have an interesting progression. They all have different amounts of block chance, armour (or evasion, or energy shield) bonus, or implicit mods specific to each type of shield.
 * The level requirements, drop levels and implicit mods on Rings, Amulets, Belts and Quivers have been rebalanced so that there are more interesting choices available at different levels. Most of these items are available substantially earlier in the game.
 * Strength-aligned weapon types now do slightly more damage than other weapons. Many weapon types now have implicit accuracy built in, due to their Dexterity alignment. Intelligence weapons have higher critical strike chances.
 * Bosses can only drop equipment now. This was done so that we can control the distribution of currency items and skill gems better.
 * Added PvP damage multiplier of 1/(1+(attacker_level/8)) for now.
 * Completely rebalanced the drop rates of all the currency items.
 * Increased the currency item drop rate, but added a penalty to the rate of currency item drops if you're playing in areas far under your level.
 * Changed the experience split in parties so that it more strongly favours playing with people near your level.
 * Changed the experience penalties for killing monsters far above/below your level. There's still a large safe zone of full experience near your level.
 * Energy shield now makes it a lot harder to get stunned, but doesn't prevent it all the time like it did before.
 * Set the maximum number of each type of charge to two for all classes. Additional ones can be picked up in the passive tree.
 * Charges have been rebalanced. They have large effects now because the default limit is two of each type and it takes a substantial investment in the passive tree to get a large maximum.
 * It's now much easier to get appropriate socket configurations on items. The average number of sockets and links is a lot higher.
 * Players now have a default critical strike damage multiplier of +50%. Monsters are now set to +30%.
 * Higher difficulties now have a substantially increased chance of magic and rare monsters spawning.
 * The Marauder and Templar now start with one-handed weapons.
 * The Shocked state that enemies enter when dealt a critical strike with lightning damage now adds +40% damage taken per instance stacked, and stacks up to three times.
 * Default drop rate per monster is reduced to 16%. Boss drops and experience gained are increased dramatically.
 * Reduced the drop rate of Rare items to compensate for the much higher rate of boss drops.
 * Changed how uniques bosses are balanced to make it far easier to control how hard their fights are.
 * Implicit bonus for dual wielding is now reduced to +10% attack speed. The rest will come from passives.
 * Characters now block 15% of the time by default while dual wielding.
 * Adjusted the rarity of all currency items to make the common ones more common and the rare ones rarer.
 * Hybrid skill gems now have a primary attribute and are changed to 60/40 alignment.
 * Removed the 12% extra damage mitigation you get from aligned armour types. This is going to be handled by the new passive tree instead.
 * Increased default mana regeneration of characters.
 * Reduced monster density in The Ledge.
 * Modified the set of monsters that flee due to being ignited so that it is only humanoids, monkeys and Sea Witches.
 * Improved the flasks from the Medicine Chest quest in Normal Difficulty to be the second tier flasks.
 * Monsters are now not resistant to elemental damage if the value would fall at less than 15%.
 * Disabled the item mods that added three stats related to a single weapon type.
 * Added some new Unique items. More will be added in subsequent patches.
 * Added the "Culling Strike" mod (for some uniques). It causes monsters to die if you strike them down to 10% or less life.

Skill Balance Changes

 * All skills were rebalanced against each other from first principles in this patch. The following notes are functional changes only:
 * Shock Nova and Freezing Pulse now scale all damage from support gems in the same way as their main skill damage (based on distance).
 * Shock Nova now deals its damage from outside (maximum damage) to inside (minimum/no damage). The outside damage is dealt first. It is a linear damage progression (not exponential) now.
 * Spark now defaults to casting two sparks (with reduced damage). This makes it have less variance in outdoors areas.
 * Cleave now does its augmented damage to one target and half of that damage to other enemies caught within its swing. The penalty for hitting with two weapons in a Cleave is now -40% total damage.
 * Ice Spear now uses an increased critical strike chance to achieve the damage bonus and freeze when in its armed state.
 * Double Strike is now disabled on bows (and wands). It was far too abusive and will be replaced by much more interesting single-target bow skills soon.
 * The stats which convert damage from one type to another (used in skills such as Infernal Blow and Glacial Hammer) now calculate the damage in a way that takes into account your physical damage bonuses as well.
 * Flicker Strike now only attacks one target (ignoring Frenzy charges). Changes are coming soon that will restore the good parts of the old behaviour while not having the myriad problems it had before.
 * "Warlord's Mark" now only grants life leech to physical attack damage.
 * Blood Rage now gives increased attack speed that only comes into effect when the character is on low life (35% or less).
 * "Reduced Mana Costs" is now a Strength support gem.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug where Infernal Blow was able to explode an enemy several times.
 * "Beast" type monsters (the large bear monsters from Act Two) have been re-rigged so that attached effects do not scale to strange sizes.
 * The outskirts of levels do not have monsters walking around them in places where they can't be attacked any more.
 * Upon re-entering an area, dead Moss-Monster-category-monsters are no longer targetable.
 * Fixed a bug that would cause a small graphical stutter when a new item type was dropped for the first time in a session.
 * Removed some incompatible flask mods from hybrid flasks.
 * Fixed a bug where flasks would appear unverified when linked on the website if the number of charges had changed.
 * Fixed a bug with elemental effects being played at the wrong sizes.
 * Fixed a bug where Cleave dealt damage with the wrong timing.
 * Fixed various ways that skills could be used to target monsters that were too far away.
 * Fixed a bug with amulet inventory positioning.
 * Fixed a problem where Templar footsteps were 60% louder than other classes.
 * Fixed a client crash that would occur if you die to damage reflection.

=Version 0.9.2g=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2g released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Fixed a bug where monsters would drop dozens of items if they die from damage over time while regenerating life.
 * Fixed a server crash that would occasionally occur when using Explosive Arrow.
 * Added rate-limiting to the login server to prevent clients making too many incorrect password guesses.

=Version 0.9.2f=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2f released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added preloading of graphical shaders which should remove micro-pauses when encountering new effects or objects.
 * Fixed some issues related to the game pausing slightly on the first frame after a level load.
 * Fixed an issue where extra portals were visible for a split second when joining town.
 * Fixed a bug with Explosive Arrow not exploding serverside when the monster is killed by the arrow outright.
 * Fixed a bug with Explosive Arrow interacting badly with other buffs.
 * Reclassified Flicker Strike as Melee and Frenzy as both Melee and Bow, for the purposes of mods on items that add effective levels to gems of certain types.
 * Fixed an issue with the chat box where it would sometimes display a global message briefly when changing area, even when global chat was turned off.
 * Fixed a bug related to instant-use flasks that heal your minions.
 * Fixed two server crashes that occured rarely when using Explosive Arrow.
 * Fixed a client crash that would occur if you were disconnected from a server while joining it.
 * Fixed a client crash that would occur if the patcher was slow to start up.
 * Fixed several UI crashes.
 * Attempted to fix two other miscellaneous client crashes.

=Version 0.9.2e=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2e released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Fixed a crash that would occur if no sound card was found.
 * Added a --nosound option to the client to turn off all sound.
 * Fixed more bugs with inviting people to a party by right clicking on them in chat.
 * Fixed a rare crash related to user interface scrollbars.
 * Fixed minor quest typos.
 * Reduced the drop rate of Mirror of Kalandra.

=Version 0.9.2d=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2d released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Loading the title screen should be substantially faster. This may improve the "out of memory" errors.
 * Curse durations have been increased by 2 seconds at all levels.
 * The icon of the player on the minimap while alone is now the correct colour.
 * Reduced graphical lag related to Merveil's fireballs.
 * Improved ambient sounds in most areas of the game, fixing the relative volumes in the process.
 * Ambient sounds in Merciless difficulty are now set to the correct areas.
 * Fixed a crash that occured sometimes when inviting a player to your party through chat.
 * Increased timeout times for various events so players are less likely to get disconnected when changing areas.

=Version 0.9.2c=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2c released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Changing areas in game should now be substantially faster.
 * When a player enters an area, they are now placed in the game world much later in the load (for their safety).
 * Added a five second grace period of invulnerability when entering an area. This is cancelled if you perform any action.
 * Fixed the experience calculation (again).
 * Fixed a bug where buffs that are already on a player when entering the area were not displayed.
 * Fixed the disconnection-on-lag code so that it won't disconnect people who take too long to load. It should now disconnect you no more than seven seconds after your connection has dropped.
 * Fixed a bug where the Critical Weakness curse would prevent critical strikes from doing damage.
 * Made new cursor larger.

=Version 0.9.2b=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2b released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added the ability to ignore a character. Type /ignore charactername (or /unignore charactername). Currently you can't view the list of who you've ignored yet. You can also right click on someone in chat and select "Ignore".
 * Fixed a bug where experience was being calculated incorrectly.
 * Fixed the volume of many ambient sounds that were too loud.
 * Removed Mud Flats ambient sounds from all Maelstrom of Chaos areas.
 * Updated the description of Explosive Arrow to describe that the area of effect of the explosion is proportional to the number of fuse charges.
 * Fixed the way that the length of curses are described, to be clearer.
 * Improved the portal graphics slightly.
 * Added new mouse cursor.

=Version 0.9.2=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.2 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added new skill prototype - "Explosive Arrow": Fires an arrow which inflicts a short duration fuse charge on the enemy. Applying additional charges extends the duration. When the target dies or the fuses expire, the charges explode, dealing fire splash damage to nearby enemies.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Temporal Chains": Curses all targets in an area, making time pass more slowly for them. They will move, attack and cast at a reduced speed and effects on them expire slower.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Elemental Weakness": Curses all targets in an area, making them less resistant to elemental damage and more vulnerable to elemental status effects.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Warlord's Mark": Curses all targets in an area. Attacks on the cursed targets will leech life and mana, and killing them will result in more flask charges and a chance to gain an endurance charge.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Punishment": Curses all targets in an area, causing them to suffer some of the physical damage they deal with their attacks.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Enfeeble": Curses all targets in an area, making their attacks less effective.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Critical Weakness": Curses all targets in an area, making them more vulnerable to critical strikes.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Projectile Weakness": Curses all targets in an area, making them easier for projectiles to pierce and easier to knock back, while reducing their evasion against projectiles.
 * Added new skill prototype - "Vulnerability": Curses all targets in an area, making them take increased damage from physical attacks and degeneration, and easier to stun. The target's energy shield will regenerate more slowly.
 * Added functionality for cut-throat leagues. We'll test this with some events in the near future!
 * Added user interface elements to show the life totals of party members in your instance.
 * Projectiles should only collide with chests now if they would open them.
 * Further improvements to the new user interface.
 * Added new Portal art.
 * Enabled a lot of new music for many areas.
 * The outlines around friendly entities are now green rather than red.
 * Added new loading screen art/layout.
 * Increased the size of the chat box.
 * Many website forum improvements.
 * Disabled the ability to lift flasks in the HUD version of the belt. Now you won't accidentally drop them while playing. Either mouse button can be used to drink from them now.
 * Made monster description text easier to read.
 * Reduced the grass in some areas of Act Two to improve performance on older hardware. This is being investigated.
 * Added proper support for 1280x1024 and other similar resolutions.
 * Dropping items with skill gems in them will warn you.
 * Added crash dump reporting.
 * The Dark Forest now has a spidery entrance to the Weaver's Chambers.
 * Substantial incremental improvements to areas, environments, effects and sounds.
 * Overhauls to the look and feel of many Act Two environments.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a memory leak with the shader compiler. Areas will now not become progressively slower to load. This may reduce "out of memory" errors as well.
 * Fixed some bugs with monster spawning in dungeons.
 * Fixed a bug where moving the client from one monitor to another would crash.
 * Fixed a bug where players would receive the "Surgeon's" Flask bonus more than once per action.
 * Frenzy no longer grants frenzy charges for shooting Frost Walls.
 * Spell critical strike chance is now shown on the character screen.
 * Fixed a crash with Frost Wall.
 * Fixed some font position issues with the chat box.
 * Fixed a bug where UI buttons could get stuck down.
 * Fixed a bug with Shock Nova's damage calculation if the area of effect was increased.
 * Fixed some issues with socket colours on ground item hovers.

Balance

 * Most important balance changes are coming in 0.9.3 (the major balance patch). There are plenty of planned balance improvements that are not addressed in this 0.9.2 patch, because we can do them better with the new balance in 0.9.3.
 * Significantly reduced the mana cost scaling of most skills at higher levels
 * Added a five level grace period above the player where monsters still give full experience.
 * Reduced bow-monster damage by 30%.
 * Removed "Spell damage %" from spawning on some types of items.
 * Changed high-quality versions of "Multiple Projectiles" and "Faster Projectiles" support gems to have increased cast speed as well as attack speed.
 * Reduced overall drop rate of items slightly. Also reduced drop rate of equipment slightly in favour of currency items.
 * Reduced size of most direct mana passive skills by 20%.
 * Doubled the stack sizes of all currency items.
 * Reduced the amount of Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge from 3% to 2%.
 * "Elemental" now doesn't include chaos damage any more.
 * Made boss (magic/rare/unique) monsters more dangerous. 0.9.3 will further address this issue.
 * Cleave now has less of a penalty when dual wielding.
 * Reduced upper Shock Nova damage by 30%.
 * Fireball splash damage is now centered on the monster itself, rather than the point of impact (which was in front of the monster).
 * Increased Fireball's splash area of effect and increased its damage by 23%.
 * Increased the damage of Sweep, Ice Nova, Ice Spear and Phase Run's melee damage bonus.
 * Changed Sweep's quality bonus from knockback distance to increased attack speed.
 * Massively increased Cold Snap's chill duration bonus.
 * Sweep is now affected by increased area of effect stats.
 * Reduced the mana cost of Elemental Hit.
 * Reduced the cast time of Phase Run.
 * Viper Strike, Poison Arrow, Infernal Blow and Glacial Hammer do more damage at higher levels than before.
 * Reduced maximum number of Viper Strike charges to 4.
 * Increased Blood Rage's life leech at low levels and decreased the damage it deals you at lower levels.
 * Reduced the number of flasks charges gained on Critical Strike for both Surgeon's and Avenger's mods.

=Version 0.9.1=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.1 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added the first version of the new new user interface. Many more tweaks and improvements are coming.
 * Added the Captain Fairgraves quest to the Ship Graveyard.
 * Added support for temporary leagues.
 * Separated global chat by league. Now you can only talk to people in the same league with global chat. This should make it easier to find parties and trades. Eventually global chat will need to be even further segregated.
 * Added a friendly exile in the Twilight Strand.
 * Magic and rare boss monsters now have effects to make them easier to notice. Eventually there will be special effects for their mods as well.
 * Removed DPS display for skills. It was wrong and will be added again when it's correct.
 * Changed Support Gems to have a different icon and made the text on them state their function in a more clear way.
 * Updated effect for Freezing Pulse and Ice Spear.
 * Made the Coves area more interesting.
 * "/online" now states the number of people online.
 * "/whois name" will show you information about a character.
 * Added some more loading screens and increased their detail.
 * Continued improvement of animations, sounds, world areas and spell effects.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a crash that occured if you kill a Shield Crab on level 6-20 of the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Fixed a crash involving Detonate Dead.
 * Fixed a bug that allowed Shield Charge to be spammed really fast.
 * Fixed a client crash that occurs when playing near Templars or Rangers.
 * Fixed a bug that could cause massive experience or item gain from monsters when partied.
 * Fixed the behaviour of Ground Slam so that you don't miss things really close to you.
 * Fixed the performance of the rain in the Maelstrom of Chaos beach area.
 * Restored the large chest in Merveil's Lair.
 * Disabled the abiltiy to cast Cold Snap on invalid locations.
 * Fixed a bug where arbitrary doodads would block doors.
 * Glacial Hammer now doesn't prevent item drops from slain monsters.
 * Fixed occasional very large Terraces levels.
 * Fixed a problem with Flicker Strike so that it'll now teleport each time.
 * Fixed a bug that would cause animations to visually click when returning to idle.
 * Sound should not repeat endlessly when exiting the game.

Balance

 * Reduced the drop rate of equipment (not currency/scrolls/flasks/gems), but upped the rate of magic/rare items to compensate.
 * Increased the rate of experience gain and Flask charge recovery to +75% per additional party member.
 * Increased rarity of Mirror of Kalandra.
 * Made Oak harder.
 * Increased difficulty of all monsters by 5%.
 * Increased the stack size of Armour Shards and Jeweler's Orbs.
 * Reduced damage and accuracy of ranged enemies.
 * Increased the chance that monsters will change targets when they receive damage from 12.5% to 20%.
 * Changed the two Flask mods that deal with critical strikes to only refill a certain number of charges (rather than the entire flask). Old versions of these flasks will only refill 1 charge for now. In a later patch we will reroll the value on these to make it correct.
 * Substantially increased the currency item costs of higher items.

Skill Balance

 * Swapped Spark and Fireball in terms of skill levels and quest rewards. Fireball is now lower level and available to Witches from Tarkleigh.
 * Increased damage of Spark.
 * Reduced damage and collision size of Freezing Pulse.
 * Increased damage of Glacial Hammer.
 * Reduced Viper Strike duration at lower levels.
 * Reduced damage of Flicker Strike at lower levels.
 * Reduced damage of Sweep at lower levels.
 * Increased damage and attack range of Cleave.
 * Increased stun and knockback on Shield Charge.
 * Added a small occasional knockback effect to Leapslam.
 * Split Arrow now fires additional arrows at higher levels.
 * Changed the damage equation for Shock Nova so that the deadzone immediately around the player works better. It's now much more important to have enemies at maximum range.
 * Changed Raised Zombies to not decay over time automatically.
 * Increased damage of Elemental Hit at higher levels.

=Version 0.9.0=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.9.0 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added client timeouts so that you vanish from the world five seconds after you stop responding. Hardcore player should get fewer unfair deaths.
 * Modified the rain in higher difficulties of the Twilight Strand. It was causing performance issues on slower machines.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a crash that can occur when using Flicker Strike.
 * Fixed experience progression of the high levels of certain skill gems.
 * Fixed the size of Freezing Pulse so that it more accurately reflects the art.
 * Fixed a problem that would cause a bad frame to be displayed for a second or two when joining a new area. It's now faster because of this.
 * Fixed the quest rewards for difficulty 2 Hillock.

Balance

 * Nerfed the life recovered from life flasks by 33%.
 * Increased Split Arrow damage.
 * Increased Sweep damage.
 * Changed the base types of many of the temporary unique items.
 * Made Shield Charge of both players and Rhoas faster.
 * Slightly reduced the size of weapon damage and armour percentage mods.
 * Split the armour percentage mods into multiple mod series (one of which can get decreased stun duration).
 * Made the first two areas slightly easier.

=Version 0.8.9=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.8.9 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a client crash that occurs if you enter an area when a monster or player is holding an item and has a visible buff. This commonly occured during multiplayer play.
 * Fixed the implicit mod on Ornate Belts to work properly.
 * Fixed a bug with Viper Strike related to the range check.

Balance

 * Changed how requirements work - now weapons and armours have level requirements and somewhat lower attribute requirements. It's easier for characters to use items from adjacent classes with only a few points in the relevant passives. This is an experiment to see if it helps build variety. Future changes to promote character class personality/specialisation will be made.
 * Reset all passive skill points.
 * Changed monster composition so that many monsters are substantially easier to kill and more numerous (for example, Scavengers or Spawn). This means that there's a greater variety of monster difficulty in areas, so that the player always has some enemies they can kill rapidly.
 * Made monkeys only flee on death of kin 50% of the time.
 * Made +armour%, +evasion% and +energy shield% mods a lot larger.
 * Reduced damage of Shock Nova by 20%.

=Version 0.8.8=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.8.8 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * It's now a lot easier to hit moving targets with melee attacks. Some slow weapons (two handed swords?) will still miss against faster monsters if they are fleeing, which is intended. Note that this means that monsters can now hit you easier if you run near them!
 * Added new support gem: Increased Physical Melee Damage (Strength)
 * Added new support gem: Faster Cast Rate (Intelligence)
 * Added new support gem: Increased Item Quantity (Strength). Currently does not affect monsters dying to fire or chaos damage over time.
 * Added new support gem: Increased Item Rarity (Intelligence). Currently does not affect monsters dying to fire or chaos damage over time.
 * Added Quivers, an off hand item that can be equipped alongside a bow. These do not have sockets, but do get mods.
 * Added a loading screen for the preloading step so the client doesn't look frozen.
 * Changed the client to store a hashed copy of the player's password. You'll need to re-enter your passwords. Later it'll be optional.
 * Renamed "Hard" difficulty to "Normal" difficulty.
 * Added a checkbox to the chat interface that allows you to hide global chat.
 * You can now walk through friendly minions.
 * Overhauled the Chamber of Sins rooms and layout
 * Player can now click through each other to access the stash and NPCs in town.
 * Reduced default transparency of the minimap overlay.
 * Added a /help command that explains other commands.
 * Continued improvement of animations, sounds, world areas and spell effects.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed multiple problems with the game's patching server.
 * Fixed some bad descriptions on the passive skill tree.
 * Fixed a bug that could lead to Brutus spawning on other prison levels.
 * Disabled tree canopies drawing.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented people gaining access to the Maelstrom of Chaos.
 * Frost Wall now behaves better near terrain.
 * Kills from poisoned enemies are now attributed correctly.
 * Prevented spectres from dropping items.
 * Raise Spectre can no longer target player corpses.
 * Fixed a crash with Infernal Blow.
 * Fixed a bug where remote characters will appear to run on the spot if they equip an item near you
 * Fixed Shield Charge so that it can't go through Frost Wall.
 * Arrows can no longer pass through Frost Wall. Monsters don't know this yet, though, so they'll keep firing.
 * Fixed some passives that grant effects that trigger on killing an enemy.

Balance

 * Changes how critical strikes work so that they are calculated once per action. This means that an Ice Nova will freeze all of its targets if it gets a critical strike, for example.
 * Increased recovery from all flasks by 50% and made them refill slightly faster (reduced max charges and charges per use).
 * Re-enabled the "replenish on critical strike" flask mod.
 * Removed the three bonus levels from vendor items. Now they'll only offer you items that go up to your current level. Low level characters can still see items up to level 4.
 * Doubled the duration of the Shocked status ailment and doubled the damage bonus it gives.
 * Glacial Strike, Flicker Strike and Infernal Blow now work with both main and off-hand weapons.
 * Made higher difficulty monsters 10% easier to kill.
 * Increased item drop rate by 25%.
 * Substantially increased drop rate of rares.
 * Removed any bias against high level items. Higher level items are now strictly more common than lower level ones.
 * Added skill gems to quest rewards alongside support gems.
 * Drastically increased item drop quantity and rarity from bosses.
 * Monsters are no longer faster at moving in higher difficulties.
 * Increased damage of all bows by 10%.
 * Changed Sweep to have a 60 degree blind spot rather than a 120 degree blind spot.
 * Changed the damage mitigation bonuses for hybrid characters to be the same as pure characters, for their relevant attributes.
 * Reduced critical strike chance per Power Charge to 3%.
 * Reduced damage of Alira's Detonate Dead skill in higher difficulties.
 * Rebalanced many passive skills in response to feedback.
 * Changed mana costs for most skills - single target ones are now generally a lot cheaper than AoE ones.
 * Made Hillock a little easier in higher difficulties.
 * Reduced the size of the Terraces level.
 * Changed bow bandits to walk rather than run.
 * Reduced the effectiveness of Rhoas and archers.
 * Increase Dual Strike damage.
 * Rebalanced movement velocity mods.
 * Reduced Phase Run speed.
 * Nerfed Viper Strike damage and charge duration.
 * Increased Ice Nova damage.
 * Increased Freezing Pulse damage.
 * Cleave now hits with both weapons when dual wielding, and requires both weapons to meet the weapon restriction. It will do 50% physical damage when dual wielding.

=Version 0.8.7=

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.8.7 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Added new skill prototype - Frost Wall: Creates a wall of ice which holds back enemies. Targets under the wall are damaged and pushed back.
 * Added new skill prototype - Shock Nova: Casts a shocking circle of lightning which deals maximum damage at its outside edge.
 * Added new skill prototype - Freezing Pulse: An icy projectile which has a chance to freeze enemies it passes through. The damage and freezing are highest up close.
 * Added new skill prototype - Phase Run: Makes you hard to see, and you move faster. Lasts for a short time or until you make an attack. If that attack is with a melee weapon, it deals extra damage.
 * Added new skill prototype - Viper Strike: Poisons the foe, which can stack up to five times. Each time they are re-poisoned, the duration is extended. Requires a claw, dagger or sword.
 * Added support for items having mods that increase the level of gems of a certain type socketed into them.
 * Merveil's caves now have an important river flowing through them.
 * Added support for dungeons within dungeons. See if you can find one.
 * Improved synchronisation of monsters in combat.
 * Added aggressive resynching when things are detected to be in the wrong place.
 * Added automatic resync when the player fails to perform actions too many times in a short time period.
 * Removed the resync request (equals) key binding.
 * Implemented the "poison on critical strike with dagger" passive skill.
 * Continued improvement of animations, sounds, world areas and spell effects.
 * Gave the patcher a facelift (it's only visible once you've patched the first time).
 * Some monsters (currently Monkeys) now flee when other monsters of that type are slain.
 * Many monster types now flee when set on fire.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug that would cause monsters to get out of sync when an action completed early on the client but not the server, or vice versa.
 * Fixed a bug in the existing resync code that prevents moving objects from resyncing correctly.
 * Fixed bow attacks so that they still do damage when firing really fast. The arrow may still be taken away visually.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented the game from working on older Radeon 1950 series graphics cards. This affected approximately 5% of Alpha testers.
 * Fixed a rare server crash when buying items.
 * Fixed a problem that caused all monster evasion/damage reduction values to be calculated incorrectly.
 * Fixed a bug where the portal effect in town would sometimes be incomplete.
 * Spells now face their targets correctly.
 * Fixed a bug that caused impact sounds involving animal claws to not play.
 * Made the Multiple Projectiles support gem work on skills that use wands.
 * Fixed the mods on unique boss monsters to be the ones we intended.
 * Fixed a bug with burning damage being wrong.
 * Fixed a bug with monsters returning during a flee.
 * Fixed a bug where projectiles would fail in certain directions along elevation changes.
 * Fixed a problem with the "enemies chill as unfreezing" passive skill.
 * Fixed various bugs related to piercing projectiles opening chests.
 * Infernal Blow doesn't explode unique monsters any more.
 * Fixed various crashes that would occur when removing items while skills were active.
 * Fixed bugs with the timing of Blood Rage.
 * Quality is now correctly taken into account when picking the dominant skill gem.
 * Fixed a crash involving portals.
 * Fixed some visual problems with the portal effect clipping into the ground.
 * Fixed a bug where raised zombies over level 10 did not decay.
 * Fixed a problem with the progression of elemental spells where they didn't ramp up exponentially in damage at higher levels like attack skills did.

General Balance

 * Player attacks are now 20% faster by default.
 * Player spellcasts are now 15% faster by default.
 * Player run speed is 10% faster by default.
 * Players now dual wield at an additional 25% increased attack speed by default.
 * Reduced default mana per character slightly.
 * Endurance charges grant 3% to all resistances, per charge.
 * Increased cast/attack speed per frenzy charge from 4% to 5%.
 * Flasks now have substantially higher numbers of charges and require a lot more charges per use. When a monster is killed, all flasks gain a charge (rather than one at random).
 * Flask charges are biased so that mana is harder to come by at the start of the game (to help with progression).
 * Flasks now heal faster. Vials are substantially faster.
 * Increased the size of life regen mods/passives.
 * Improved damage reduction on items by around 10%.
 * Reduced energy shield on items by around 10%.
 * Doubled the size of non-percentage life, mana, accuracy, critical strike passives.
 * Made many minor changes to the size of various passive skills.

Monster Balance

 * Rebalanced higher difficulty levels substantially so that the monsters do approximately half the damage they did before, and are easier to kill.
 * There are now a lot more monsters in the Ruthless and Merciless difficulties.
 * Monsters now have resistances. They're higher on higher difficulties. The resistances are currently not shown anywhere.
 * Halved the damage of Merveil's fireball attack, now that she's able to hit you with multiple fireballs at once.
 * Reduced the attack range of skeleton casters.

Item Balance

 * Increased the chance of rares dropping.
 * Item mods are now biased towards 70% of the generation level of the item (like drops). This will increase the chance of getting a "good" item but cause players to converge on "great" ones slower.
 * Monsters now drop items in quantity proportional to their relative effectiveness. This means that bosses drop more items than before, and hordes of small monsters like Blood Monkeys drop less items per monster.
 * Halved the number of gems that drop now that there are so many from quest rewards.
 * Changed claws back to be 50/50 Dexterity/Intelligence for a while.
 * Jeweler's Orb is now 60% more common.
 * Reduced drop rate of Scroll of Wisdom to increase Portal Scroll.
 * Many belts now have different implicit mods than before.
 * Lowered the levels of most support gems so that they're easier to use.
 * Increased the drop rate of rings, amulets and belts.
 * Changed the formula for the quality of skill gems. It's now a lot harder to get ones with higher quality.
 * Increased the likelihood of caster mods on caster items.
 * Improved the odds of getting off-colour sockets on high level items.

Skill Balance

 * Completely rebalanced every skill in the game so that they're all powerful at high levels. Most skills received damage increases! Only behavioural skill changes are listed here:
 * Ice spear now does substantially higher damage in its pre-arm form.
 * Shield Charge can't miss now.
 * Poison Arrow does additional chaos damage on the actual arrow itself now, in addition to the cloud damage.
 * Frenzy and Flicker Strike now attack even faster if you have more frenzy charges.
 * Made raised zombies faster by default, but not as fast as high levels were before.