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.