New Diablo II patch includes respecs

By Oli Welsh Published 11 December, 2009

Version 1.13 available to test now.

Blizzard has announced that it's releasing patch 1.13 for its 9-year-old action-RPG, Diablo II. The patch isn't official yet, but is available for all to try out on the public test servers.

The main changes are the addition of character respecialisation - you're awarded one free respec after completing the initial Den of Evil quest - and a mysterious new challenge for players on Hell difficulty.

"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..." said the patch notes.

There's also a raft of bug fixes, class changes and balance tweaks. You can try out patch 1.13 simply by logging into the "ClassicBeta" Battle.net gateway when logging in to Diablo II.

Plenty more information at the official FAQ and patch notes.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Goffee #1 2 years ago

    Oh, God! Don't send us back to that place.... noooooo! I've been clean for years, but just one more Pindleskins man, I can handle it.

  • RustyBullet #2 2 years ago

    Funny i just reinstalled this game last weekend for a piss about. Still have a lot of love for this game.

  • cianchristopher #3 2 years ago

    Amazing, a patch for a nine-year-old game!

    All developers should take note of Blizzard's treatment of their properties....

  • butler` #4 2 years ago

    if only, cianchristopher

  • butler` #5 2 years ago

    but tbh more people play diablo II now than most games released for the PC in the past 5 years+

  • kipper #6 2 years ago

    I abandoned Diablo 2 years ago after I was instantly killed by the second boss, my sorceress's skills being 'wrong', and I then realised in order to get the 'right' skills I would have to kill a lot of the same creatures all over again. (I don't think 'grinding' was even in the gamer dictionary back then - thanks Blizzard. >_< )

  • mull #7 2 years ago

    I love that Blizz are still patching D2. One of my formative nerd experiences was staying up 'til 7am playing over dialup the night 1.06 came out.

  • Darren #8 2 years ago

    Blizzard are still patching Warcraft III too... the 1.24c patch was only released a few days ago for the original game and the Frozen Throne expansion.

    While I respect them for still releasing patches for older games, it would be nice if they took a bit of time to implement proper widescreen support for Warcraft III too. I'm currently using a hack for 16:10 1920x1200 but it stretches the graphics and user interface horizontally.

  • makeamazing #9 2 years ago

    All developers should take note of Blizzard's treatment of their properties....

    Having lots and lots of money helps with this :)

  • StooMonster #10 2 years ago

    Never played it, but this news made me order up a copy, £6 inc P&P yeah! Should run nicely in Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro, but I'll prolly need to hack the 1920x1200 too by the sound of it.

  • StooMonster #11 2 years ago

    Amazing, a patch for a nine-year-old game!

    Valve still updating Half-Life and that was released in 1998.

  • bionutz #12 2 years ago

    yeah, well my characters are all deleted (why Blizzard why?) because of not being in battle.net for a long time. I'm not going to start a new character just to see what's new.
    Saying that, I'm hoping for a Torchlight mod to have a better story in it...

  • Pastici #13 2 years ago

    @StooMonster Blizzard games run in OSX. No need for boot camp :).

  • Buran #14 2 years ago

    Key points:


    -The patch is now in open beta state, you can go into the new realm; when the pacth reaches a solid state enought all the new accounts in the 1.13 will be erased, the old 1.12 accounts and characters transfered to no ladder and a new ladder will start.

    -Now the dropping rate of high runes is higher.

    -Now Oblivion Knights will no longer able to cast Iron Maiden curse. This will be VERY nice to all melee fighters, and combined with the previous point will increase the interest in Chaos Sanctuary -last mission in Act IV- as magic finding area for melee characters.

    -Some enemies are weaked in some ways.

    -New superquest in the way of Chaos Tristan.

    -A few tweachs in the balance of some characters skills, oriented to made more useful some less popular builds.

    -Now is possible to replace some skills to some degree, based in the first mission in the Act I (not very clear to me).


    In other words: the game will be a bit easier and the availability of runes to made runewords will be higher -difficult to evaluate in which degree at this moment-. As a Zealot and Skelemancer user, I find the changes very attractive.

    Still, along with Starcraft the main candidate to best game of all time.

  • berelain #15 2 years ago

    whilst i applaud that Blizzard are supporting games for this long, I do have to question whether some of the manpower hours that have gone into this patch might have been better spent elsewhere - on Diablo 3, for example- and put towards getting the game released a little closer to its original schedule.

    Ah, who am I kidding? This is Blizzard. It'll be in development for 5 years then get canned. *coughwarcraftadventures*cough*starcraftghost*.

  • StooMonster #16 2 years ago

    Pastici: awesome, thanks!

    Might have to get Warcraft III now too.

  • Skurmedel #17 2 years ago

    Hm, Stoo I urge you to try Warcraft 2 instead :)
    Edited by 1 at 11/12/09 @ 16:54

  • StooMonster #18 2 years ago

    Skurmedel: thanks mate, I missed this Blizzard classics back in the day (have no idea how).

  • IMD1_Pk #19 2 years ago

    Finally....I have been waiting for this patch for so long. Been lurking on the forums for months now. Very good news to hear.

  • tafkap #20 2 years ago

    So can I play it now that it's had a few patches? Or should I wait a few more years for the next patch to come out before I jump in? I can't stand to play buggy games.

    ;-)

  • Skurmedel #21 2 years ago

    Stoo: Hehe, I don't know which is better really, but I never quite fell for Warcraft 3, not that it was bad, I just felt it was a bit slow. There is a ton of cool mods for it though, like Tower Defense and "DOA" (dunno what it stands for but that Demigod game captured the basic gameplay.) If you haven't tried StarCraft yet then that is where to head next.

    I don't remember much of Warcraft 1 so can't comment on that.

  • lmephisto #22 2 years ago

    Well there are so many mods for that game like Chaos empire that i see that pointless...anw JUST GIVE US DIABLO 3 :p

  • TASTYRYAN #23 2 years ago

    Diablo III release due to 2020 let's release a patch for Diablo II instead to keep the tards happY!