D2 buglist

[yerkyerk]

Heh - I'm not going to be making an unofficial patch for D2, so don't get your hopes up Just hope they fix everything in their 1.13 release

Anyway, I can't seem to find a comprehensive buglist for D2, so I decided to post one here with the bugs I know, as something everyone can take benefit from. If you play a game where you really invest in a character, I think you should at least know what the more serious bugs are.
Also nice for those whiners out there who think Titan Quest [S]is[/S] was very bugged - believe me, it is not that bugged compared to other games. Some bugs are completely destroying certain builds/skills.

Feel free to add bugs and I should update the list.

Skills
- Poison Dagger bug - when you have a dagger equipped and select poison dagger, than replace that weapon with another, the AR rating seems to be retained, however, this is just a display issue
- Dodge/Avoid/Evade bug. Fend misses all swings in an attack following being hit
- Inferno/ArcticBlast/Wake of Inferno Bug: These skills only do 1/2 to 1/3 of their listed damage. The animation for the area of effect is also misleading, as the damage does not occur in the entire area of the graphic.
- Hammers ignore Demon and Undead immunity
- When you level up, all minions that were not gained from hard points apparantly die. You can simply resummon them..
- Poison Javelin poison cloud doesn't do damage
- Added Damage on weapons transfers to Smite (either the LCS should display the damage, or Smite shouldn't get this damage bonus)
- Amazon Bow Tree AR Bug: The Amazon's bow skills do not actually get the AR bonus listed, despite what the skill description and character screen say
- The Charge Bug: Paladins using Charge who are hit at the wrong time at the begining of the attack will experience the attack being disabled. Saving and Exiting fixes the problem
- The Leap Bug: Barbarians using Leap Attack who are hit at the wrong time at the begining of the attack will experience the attack being disabled. Saving and Exiting fixes the problem

Chests/Urns/Shrines
- The monstershrines in the Frozen Tundra as well as Arreat Plateau (near Tresh Socket) don't spawn monsters
- Sometimes monstershrines spawn a champion. Doesn't seem right that it's a single champion - as opposed to the regular hero + minions you usually get.

Equipment
- Raven Charges on HotO (runeword) are broken - Raven disappear after about 2 seconds.
- Vampire mode (complete Trang-Oul set) allows you to go as fast in walkmode as you go in runmode.. (a nice addition seeing that a lot of breakpoints are increased by turning into a vampire - and don't try to break vases with a vampire..)
- The Min/Max Damage in Armor Bug: +min/max and +enhanced damage when added to armor in the wrong order will not apply all of the damage.
- The sanctuary bug- the +dmg to undead is not given to party members, but rather enemy monsters.


Quests
- If you talk to Warriv after you kill Andariel (in the same game), Andariel will always have a questdrop from than on.
- Players can go to the Mephisto by killing the Council members and get the waypoint from another player - effectively circumventing the main quest for Act 3. Players shouldn't be able to enter portals leading to the Durance of Hate before they destroyed the quest item with the flail.
- Keys for battle.net realm world event drop in SP, while there is no World Event in SP

Horadric Cube
- Ethereal armors get 1.5x bonus defense when socketed in shields.

Monsters
- Creatures which either are lightning enchanted or naturally emits sparks when hit (various scarabs) add all other forms of damage they have to the bolts.
- Gloams Damage Bug: Gloams use their mana burn damage values instead of the proper values in their lightning attacks. This results in approximately 200-300 damage per attack instead of 5-190 intended for hell gloams. The damage dealt is pure lightning damage. .
- Tomb Vipers do massive damage (their poison cloud attack you with the vipers physical attack every frame) - although apparantly a Blizzard employee says it works as supposed, that dude clearly had his head up his ***.
- Fangskin doesn't drop anything in Hell anymore
- Nightmare Fire Explosions do high, bugged amount of damage (was fixed for Hell)

Mercenary
- Chance to cast valkyrie from the % chance on the new Runeword Peace doesn't work (previously it would crash the game)
- If your merc dies, he looses all aura's from equipment. You can fix this by reequipping the item, but the merc will only retain the aura from the last item you reequipped.

Game mechanics
- Mana burn should supposedly drain mana based on their damagex4, but apparantly melee monsters drain mana based on their damagex256 (effectively always draining all your mana). This makes energy shield nearly worthless for pvm purposes.
- Lying Character Screen. Nuff' said.
- TPPK - certain missiles that are cast by a character that return to town and turns hostile, will damage the former allies.
- After getting killed, the resistance bonuses you got from Anya (10 per difficulty) don't apply anymore, even though the LCS displays them. Can be 'fixed' by a restart
- Two aura's granted by equipment stack (not sure if it's a bug or intended)

Obviously unbalanced
- Poison skeletal mages have an enormous time to spread their damage, but don't spread more damage per second - a lvl50 poison mage is about as effective (or less so) than a lvl 1 poison mage.

Visual/minor bugs
- The Door Bug: Sometimes doors that are closed really aren't and monster's and players can walk through them

[sbach2o]

The Phrozen Keep is quite comprehensive on all (technical) things regarding Diablo II.

This list is awesome, though it might not be totally comprehensive. It is generally a good idea to look for Nefarius' posts there regarding information that is hard to grasp but usually very well researched.

Btw., what were you talking about?

Just hope they fix everything in their 1.13 release

This is a weird idea. The chance of this happening is exactly zero.

Edit: You could reformulate that: "... that they fix the most important stuff". Still, exactly zero chance of it happening, practically regardless of your definition of "important".

[BrotherRatcliff]

On the charge bug, there is also a holy shield component. If you are killed while charging with holy shield activated then you can no-longer charge till you save/exit. That's why we don't use holy shield when dueling vs non physical damage dealers.

[yerkyerk]

Well, what I'd consider important (or major) is the Anya, manaburn and the all-damage-conversion to projectiles bugs - and several skills not doing 1/3 of the listed damage.

Why would the chance be exactly zero? I mean, they're not going to fix everything, but they might fix something...
1.13 is probably not going to be a minor patch, but rather a major one to promote D3.

I've found a lot more bugs somewhere, but they're more technical of nature (found them indeed from the Phrozenkeep).

[BrotherRatcliff]

As a hardcore player (mostly) the Anya bug means nothing to me, but the NM fire bug, TTPK and the tomb vipers are HUGE! I do hope they fix the low damage skills though, that would open up a lot of builds.

Although I think the biggest bug of all, and the one that most needs to be fixed is duping. If they can finally get rid of the duping exploits the game will be such a better place!

[yerkyerk]

It's not just the duping that's a problem, you know? The stupidly low chances of finding high runes (why make a whole load of runewords that even experienced player will never ever be able to make?

Overpowered and underpowered skills, unapplicability of certain skills, not able to respect, crappy resolution and a whole other load of balance issues.

Still, it's a fun game

[ward_rb]

Although I think the biggest bug of all, and the one that most needs to be fixed is duping. If they can finally get rid of the duping exploits the game will be such a better place!

i think its a bit too late for that....its been a couple years since i played on closed b-net, but even then the market was flooded with dupes.

[BrotherRatcliff]

Well if they remove duping and do a reset at least the ladder side will be clean.

The skill balance is crazy for sure, but a lot of that is because of bugs and combinations with specific equipment. Personally I think the chance to find the later runes is exactly right, the reason is because those runewords that use high runes are INSANE. Enigma and Infinity are just too powerful, people should not be able to get those easily.

You can still get there by combining forge drop runes which isn't that hard, so its not like the high runes wouldn't exist. It would just mean they are really worth a lot, as they should be. Right now you can get a high rune for like 80 perfect gems. That makes high-end runewords way too accessible, which makes all the high-end uniques useless.

Most of the other stuff I either like (no respecs is as it should be I think) or is just the nature of the beast. There is no way to raise resolution in a sprite based game without showing more viewable area. That creates a balance concern because people with smaller monitors can't see as far.

[sbach2o]

Why would the chance be exactly zero? I mean, they're not going to fix everything, but they might fix something...
1.13 is probably not going to be a minor patch, but rather a major one to promote D3.

Well, my comment was exaggerated due to my frustration over the latest patches for D2.

In the initial announcement of the patch it was called a 'content' patch. The last 'content' patch we've seen (1.11) was abysmal, very unbalanced in runewords and the reward for that 'uber' challenge. It introduced several bugs that a minimal amount of testing would have uncovered. One of these bugs, a crash, was almost the only thing that got fixed in the rushed after-patch while really *every* semi-skilled text-file modder could've mended practically every problem in that patch in an hour or two.

The recent history of 'content' patches to D2 isn't exactly encouraging. 1.11 was such a terrible slop-job that it clouds my expectation.

The good thing is that 1.11 was the last patch issued before Blizzard North was dissolved. So there is some decent chance that the person (more than one it probably hasn't been) occupied with 1.11 isn't any longer employed there.

I think that in a game where hardcore mode plays such a prominent role with the remaining fans, fixing the bugs with damage routines should have the highest priority. You can, in rare circumstances, be killed in extremely unfair ways in D2. I am *not* talking about exploding dolls, or the desired effects of harmful boss mods stacking in unexpected ways (fire/cold enchanted bosses withtheir multiple death explosions and the like). There are even more sinister bugs in the damage routines that can add up, and there are desync-problems that may let kills come from bosses which are far off-screen for the victim.

All that stuff is a mess according to the people who tried analyzing the game mechanics in debuggers, and I find it unlikely that the programmers, if any, who might try to fix bugs would delve too deeply into it. After all, hardcore players have accepted the current state of the game for ages.

Although I think the biggest bug of all, and the one that most needs to be fixed is duping. If they can finally get rid of the duping exploits the game will be such a better place!

That is what I should've though about when I made my above, rash statement about 'zero chance' (I didn't, I only care about single player where duping either plays no role or youcan freely ruin your game with it, whatever you like), because a deep redesign of game mechanics and server storage architecture would be required for a fix.

[BrotherRatcliff]

I'm not sure about that. They already have dupes poofing as they should, so if they can write things to remove the ability to perm them and somehow track which runewords are made with duplicate runes that would work. Obviously removing the exploit would be better, but they've done that several times and people always find a new one.

On the other hand, most of the dupe methods center around the character rollback on server-crash effect. If they simply removed that, it might take care of it? That behavior was created when b-net servers were trash and crashed all the time. These days the only times I have a server crash is when people are forcing them to for duping purposes...