Diablo II

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Template:Infobox Diablo (series)

General information

Diablo II Website

Diablo II Forum

Unofficial Diablo Wiki

Battle.net Support for game

Improvements

Patches

While the game updates automatically when connecting to Battle.net, it is still possible to download and apply patches manually. If the expansion Lord of Destruction is installed, only LODPatch_xxx.exe needs to be installed.

Diablo 2 Patches

The latest version is 1.13d. (Mac: Carbon; Classic OS)

Patching to version 1.12a is recommended for the use of the high resolution patch. When using 1.12a, official Battle.net play will not be available, as that requires the latest patch.

Older versions for Windows and Mac can be found here.

Lord of Destruction Patches

The latest version is 1.13d. (Mac: Carbon; Classic OS)

Patching to version 1.12a is recommended for the use of the high resolution patch. When using 1.12a, official Battle.net play will not be available, as that requires the latest patch.

Older versions for Windows and Mac can be found here.

Mods

Median XL 2012

A total conversion mod for Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction that modifies the game by replacing character skills, improving items and monsters, and adding new uberquests. (1.13c compatible)

PlugY

A mod that adds infinitive and shared storage along with other features.

Issues and Fixes

Run game without CD

As of patch 1.12, the game officially supports running with no CD. Some newer copies of the game are set up to run with no CD by default.

If you register your CD keys on the Battle.net website, you can download disc-free installers, even if you have lost the discs themselves.

Although there is no limit to how many computers you can install the game to, only one computer can be logged in to Battle.net with a given CD key at a time.

For older copies of the game, you will need to do the following:

Instructions

High resolution support

800x600 is the highest available resolution for the vanilla version of Diablo II. You can stretch this using windowed mode with a fixed ratio (See the Command-line arguments section on how to disable it).

Instructions

Graphical Glitches and/or slowdowns in full screen mode

Instructions

Instructions

Better performance with Glide Wrapper

Diablo II supports three different rendering modes: DirectDraw, Direct3D and Glide. DirectDraw offers the worst performance, and does not support perspective effects. Direct3D offers better performance but causes color issues on many newer machines. Glide offers the best performance of them all, no color issues, and improved ground textures to boot, but is not natively compatible with non-3DFX graphics cards. However, there are many "Glide wrappers" that emulate Glide in OpenGL. The most popular of these is Sven's Glide Wrapper, which was specifically designed for this game; other general-purpose Glide wrappers that work with multiple games are also available.

Instructions

Additional useful Sven's Glide Wrapper settings

Type	Name/Code	Info
Settings	window-mode	The readme file itself recommends not to use this; use the -w command-line parameter instead. This is because of a bug where the mouse jumps around the screen if you open the inventory via the keyboard. However, some window-mode-specific settings may only work if you have this setting enabled.
Settings	captured mouse	If you're running in a window, or in fullscreen with a second monitor attached, this will lock the mouse cursor to the game screen. If you are running in fullscreen on your only monitor, this will have no effect.
Settings	keep aspect ratio	Turn this on if you have a widescreen monitor, and are running in a window or have Desktop Resolution on, to force the game to display in 4:3 letterbox rather than stretched.
Settings	window extras	Turning this on will allow you to resize the window in Windowed Mode.
Settings	refreshrate	If you are running in Fullscreen Mode and are having problems, try setting this to the refresh rate of your monitor.
Settings	desktopresolution	In Fullscreen Mode, this makes it so that, instead of changing the output resolution of your graphics card, the game is scaled up to that resolution. This can decrease performance, so it's recommended to turn this on if and only if your monitor has trouble displaying 640x480 and/or 800x600 resolutions (some TFT monitors have this problem), or if you want to use bilinear filtering.
Renderer	32 bit rendering	Turn this on if and only if your graphics card has trouble rendering 16-bit color.
Renderer	bilinear filtering	If Settings - desktopresolution is enabled, this can increase image quality at the expense of performance.
Renderer	supersampling	If Extensions - WGL_ARB_render_texture is enabled, this can increase image quality at the expense of performance.
Renderer	shader-gamma	In Windowed Mode, this will make the gamma setting only affect the Diablo II window. Also, try this setting if you are trying to take screenshots, but they come out lighter or darker than what is displayed on screen. However, this reduces performance.
Renderer	keep desktop composition	Under Windows Vista/7, this will stop the game from disabling Aero effects. This can decrease performance.
Extensions		Usually all of these should be enabled, except for the ones listed as unsupported. The main exception is WGL_ARB_render_texture, which increases the image quality if Desktop Resolution"is activated or if you are running in windowed mode and have changed the window size, at the expense of performance. If you are having problems, try disabling extensions.

Battle.net Verify Error

If you are unable to connect to Battle.net on Windows Vista or Windows 7, the problem is that the installation folder is a location which requires administrator access (i.e. the default install location, C:\Program Files\). To fix this, do one of two things:

Instructions

Instructions

Colorization Problems Windows Vista and Windows 7

Instructions

Mouse lag/low FPS in single player

Diablo II caps the framerate at 25 FPS in Singleplayer Mode; some users have reported that this causes mouse lag.

Multiplayer Mode does not have this cap.

A workaround is to create a password-protected "Other Multiplayer" game; "Other Multiplayer" characters are shared with single-player mode.

You need not be connected to the Internet or a LAN to do this, and nobody will be able to join your game unless you give them your IP address and password. However, unlike in single-player mode, the map will be randomly regenerated each time you play (though you can still transport between any waypoints you've visited).

Save files

Battle.net Realm characters are stored in the cloud and are tied to your Battle.net account; however, they are only accessible on the realm (server) on which they were created (US-East, US-West, etc.). They are not playable in single-player, LAN, Open Battle.net, or direct-IP-connection online play. Realm characters expire after 90 days of inactivity; to reset the inactivity timer, you will need to perform basic activity, such as buying or selling an item or killing a monster. In addition, newly created Realm characters expire after 10 days unless they are played for at least 2 hours during those 10 days. "Open" (non-Realm) characters are used for single-player, LAN, Open Battle.net, and direct-IP-connection online play; they are not playable on the Battle.net Realms. They are stored locally in the "save" directory in your DII install directory. Note that there is no hack protection for Open characters.

Battle.net accounts

"Legacy" Battle.net accounts (for Diablo II, WarCraft II, WarCraft III and StarCraft) are not the same as Battle.net 2.0 accounts (for Diablo III, StarCraft II and World of WarCraft). Even if you have one of the latter, you will still need to create one of the former in order to play Diablo II on Battle.net. You can create the account in-game.

Up to eight characters can be created per account, but there is no limit on the number of accounts you can have. You do not have to buy a separate copy of the game for each account. However, if you installed Diablo II on multiple computers using the same CD key, only one of those computers can be connected to Battle.net at one time.

Command Line

Command-line arguments

Command	Description
-w	Runs the game in windowed mode (also fixes slow start on Vista/7)
-ns	No Sound
-skiptobnet	Connects to closed Battle.net on start
-nofixaspect	(windowed mode only) Disables the 4:3 ratio lock otherwise enforced when maximizing the game window.

In-game commands

Command	Description
/fps	Shows diagnostic information such as FPS, memory usage and latency
/nopickup	Disables picking up of items unless ALT (show items) is held
/soundchaosdebug	Fills out the available amount of sound channels with all sounds found in Diablo 2
/players X	where X is 1 to 8, changes the "player count" (to increase difficulty and experience gain) to the set amount (single player and local network play only)