Patch notes never tell the whole story. We compared the game files of patch 3.1.2 with the current 3.3 build and wrote down every change that didn't get a single word in the notes. One heads-up: the Season 14 patch (3.2) landed in between, so anything below came with either 3.2 or 3.3.
Most of this is clear in the data. A few things are "the files say so, nobody has tested it yet", and we'll say so when that's the case.
At a glance
| Change | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Colossal Ancients = Prime EvilsNot tested | They likely hit your merc 2× and your summons 4× harder. |
| Gheed's FortuneLive | Now most of the unique Grand Charms that drop, instead of a rare sight. |
| Angelic RaimentNot tested | The new +1 all skills set bonus might work outside ladder too. |
| Warlock ConsumeLive | 10 bonuses that did nothing in 3.1.2 work now. |
| Terror Zone progressLive | Fixed room count in Halls of Vaught, Baal's minions don't count. |
| Bind Demon listLive | 18 more monsters removed. You'd never meet them anyway. |
| Herald Charm and Shard loot tablesDormant | Built, not hooked up. Maybe a future drop system. |
| Pierce craftsDormant | All 65 still switched off. |
Live in the game now · Not tested the data says so, not confirmed in game · Dormant in the files, but switched off
Balance changes nobody mentioned
Colossal Ancients now count as Prime Evils
All three Colossal Ancients got the same flag every act boss from Andariel to Baal carries. That flag comes with an old rule from the original game: Prime Evils deal 200% damage to mercenaries and 400% to pets, on every difficulty. Pets means summons, so your Warlock demons are very likely included. If your merc melts at the Colossal Summit, now you know why. The data is clear here, but nobody has measured it in game yet.
Gheed's Fortune drops a lot more often
When the Sunder Charm drop rules changed, Gheed's Fortune got a much bigger share of the unique Grand Charm pool: from roughly 1 in 7 to about 7 in 10. That fixes the "where did all the Gheed's go" complaints. File diggers spotted it right after 3.3 came out, but the notes never said a word.
Angelic Raiment: ladder-only or not?
The 3.3 notes say changed items are ladder only. The four Angelic pieces follow that (and are marked for Season 15 and 16, while the changed uniques are marked for Season 15 only). But the new +1 to All Skills full-set bonus has no ladder switch at all. So a full Angelic set in non-ladder might get it too. If you own one, go test it.
Terror Zone progress: the fine print
Since 3.2, Heralds spawn based on how much of a Terror Zone you have cleared. The community worked out the general system quickly. These details didn't show up anywhere:
- Halls of Vaught uses a fixed count of 70 rooms for its progress, no matter how big your map rolled. It's the only level with an override like that.
- The Baal fight: Baal on his throne, his clone and his tentacles don't count toward progress, and the Worldstone Chamber itself is left out.
- Swampy Pit and Flayer Dungeon level 3: the treasure rooms down there now count toward progress. Blizzard moved the monster spawning from the level to the room, so it should play the same. Not checked in game yet.
- 162 monsters can now never turn into Heralds: NPCs, critters, summons, act bosses, Ubers and mercenaries.
Bugs quietly fixed
10 Warlock Consume bonuses never worked
In 3.1.2, a botched find-and-replace in the game data broke the stat names of 10 Consume bonuses, so they gave you nothing. The 3.2 notes only say Consume bonuses were "adjusted". Some players had already noticed a few being broken. The full list: four Fallen (Warped One, Carver, Devilkin, Dark One), three Succubi (Succubus and two Hell Temptresses), and the superuniques Rakanishu, Ismail Vilehand and The Feature Creep.
Fun detail: Rakanishu was meant to give a 100% chance to cast level 40 Charged Bolt when struck, and Ismail a 33% chance to cast level 25 Hydra on attack. Those never worked, and now they are gone. All of them give plain +skills instead.
Bone piles had rock-shaped collision
D2R seems to keep a toned-down version of its gore, most likely for the Chinese release: rocks instead of bone piles, books instead of the staked Rogue corpses, charred bones in the Hell braziers. In 3.1.2, the collision boxes of many gory props were built from those stand-ins. Patch 3.3 rebuilt them against the real models. You probably never noticed. At most, items bounced a bit oddly off bodies and bones.
18 more monsters can't be bound
The notes named the Frenzied Hell Spawn and Achmel the Cursed as no longer bindable. The files removed 18 more, among them a few Stygian Dolls, Black Lancers and Moon Clan, plus the cut superuniques Hell's Belle, Taintbreeder and Riftwraith the Cannibal. None of them spawns anywhere in the game, and the Stygian Dolls and Black Lancers you actually meet are different versions that you can still bind. So it's a cleanup with no real effect.
Built, but not switched on yet
Herald Charm and Worldstone Shard loot tables
The files have two new loot ladders. One has 10 steps and climbs from junk and gold up to Sunder Charms. The other has 12 steps per act and climbs from gems up to Worldstone Shards. That looks like loot that scales with Herald tier or zone progress. Nothing in the game points at the top of either ladder, so they don't drop from anything right now. Either an abandoned idea or something for later.
Unused tools and switches
- Herald test spawner: a way to turn any monster into a Herald of a chosen tier. Nothing uses it, so it's most likely a developer test tool.
- "Prime Evil threat" effect: a new status effect with no settings and nothing using it. It appeared together with the Colossal Ancients' Prime Evil flag, so maybe a future warning.
- Two-handers with one-hand damage: a new per-class switch that makes two-handed weapons use one-handed damage. It's off for every class.
- "Monster has modifier" rule: lets drops and formulas check for modifiers like Extra Fast or Cursed. Nothing uses it yet.
- Pierce crafts: the 65 Worldstone Shard crafts that add -enemy resistance are still switched off, exactly like in 3.1.2. Only the six live Sunder Charm crafts next to them changed: they now make level 75 charms instead of 69, to match the new Sunder Charm level.
Good to know: both patches together added just one new line of text ("Max Chains", for Miasma Chains). So there are no unreleased item or zone names hiding in the text files.
Small stuff and under the hood
- "Remove Only" stash: the old-season shared stash tab now says "Remove Only" instead of "Past".
- Steam Deck and other handhelds: the settings menu gets a fifth "Game Settings" tab, like on console, judging by the menu files.
- Snappier Warlock in town: the blend from standing in town into a cast went from 0.4 to 0.2 seconds.
- Safer saves: new error checks for a broken shared stash and for unsupported save versions.
- A much bigger game loader: the small file that boots the game grew from about 8 MB to 37 MB. It now carries a Blizzard security module called "Eidolon". We can't see what it does, and we can't tell how much of it was already there in 3.1.2.
Dev leftovers
- Blizzard's Excel add-in: the data guide that ships with the game now documents "D2RExcel", the in-house Excel plugin the designers use to edit the game tables.
- PC café heartbeat: a new console command that toggles the "Internet Game Room" connection check, for PC cafés.
- China privacy filter: a new setting that filters personal data for the Chinese region.
- Crash reports know your session length: from "less than 1 minute" to "more than 4 hours". They also have a hook for automated QA screenshots.
- Loot filter sharing: the code for a separate "Share profile" window was removed. That window never existed in the menus. Import and new profile still work as before.
That's the list. Tested one of the "Not tested" items in game? We'd love to hear what you found. And there's more hidden stuff in the files (the weird and funny kind), which is coming in a separate article.