Diablo II v1.11 Patch Released

Blizzard Entertainment has released an official v1.11 patch for Diablo II, which adds a new items, enhances hirelings, closes exploits, and more. The full patch notes:

A new Mystery has been revealed!

– Players of Hell Difficulty Realm games are hereby warned once again, that a series of new and challenging tests await you! The answer lies within Diablo’s Bosses, which span across the world from the Den of Evil to the Throne of Destruction…

New Items

– Added 10 New Runewords.
– Added new Unique Items that will drop from Special Bosses.

Hireling Enhancements

– Players can purchase hirelings that are within 1-5 levels below their own level.
– The rate at which hirelings gain experience has been increased. They should now stay closer to the player’s level.

Major Bugs

– Creating a town portal when corpses or other objects entirely fill the area where the portal will appear in town will no longer crash the game.
– Skills obtained from runewords created while the item is equipped will no longer disconnect you from Battle.net when chosen.
– Barbarians will no longer become stuck when using Whirlwind right after Inferno from the unique item Balrog Blade Flamebellow.
– German, Spanish, and Polish users will no longer crash when the mouse cursor moves over an item that grants an Aura while equipped.
– The game will no longer crash when selecting a skill granted by a weapon at the same time as switching weapons with the W key.
– Dying or being requested to trade while changing the key configuration will no longer cause you to get stuck.
– The “Missile Firing too far” assertion error has been corrected.
– Attempting to sell a Horadric Cube or a quest item to an NPC by holding Control while clicking will no longer disconnect you from Battle.net.

Minor Bugs

– Running the game with -install no longer causes the game to be installed as a Windows Service. -install is now ignored.
– Sometimes the seals in Diablo’s lair would not activate. This has been corrected.
– Character expiration messages have been updated to reflect the expiration policy implemented in patch 1.10.
– Unidentified items sometimes caused other set items to display green for items the player does not have. This has been corrected.
– The German mouseover text for the Ist rune has been corrected.
– Account recovery is now allowed for existing accounts whose name is only one or two characters.
– When leaving a game on Battle.net, you will now be brought back to the channel in which you were previously.
– Transmuting an ethereal item now retains the ethereal stats bonuses.
– In Japanese Lord of Destruction, items that add to all Assassin skills incorrectly stated in their mouseover text that they added to all Druid skills. This has been corrected.

Fixed Game Exploits

– It is no longer possible to bypass the 10-second hostility timer by activating a waypoint at the same time as declaring hostility.
– A player must now have sufficient room in their inventory to receive the Scroll of Resistance. This prevents receiving multiple copies of it.
– Uber Diablo is no longer killed when Shenk the Overseer or Blood Raven die nearby.
– Necromancers with Trang-Oul’s Set equipped could sometimes become invincible to attack. This has been corrected.
– Blessed Hammer no longer remains active while in town, preventing players from subsequently declaring hostility and having the hammers hit other players for damage.
– Set items retained their multi-piece bonuses after the player died, even though they were removed. This has been corrected.
– Items with skill-charging effects will no longer give synergy bonuses to skills when equipped on a character without those skills.
– Pasting from the Clipboard no longer allows the creation of characters with more than one dash or underscore in their name.

They’ve also released a new wallpaper to go along with it.