GODLY DIABLO II BUGS/GLITCHES
AND HOW TO EXPLOIT THEM
By: ResinLord

INTRO
This is my guide. Everything listed here can be done on closed battle.net realms with current patch 1.12... it can all be done without any programs/hax. I repeat, no downloads are required for any of these methods! I consider most of these exploits to be game-breaking in power, and it's my actual hope that some decent info for once will be spread around and maybe make Blizz get up and fix them all. Many would reason with me, "why now?" "Why would Blizzard fix these now, in a game that's nearly a decade old?" My answer is simple. They've shown a renewed support to Diablo 2. They reset the ladder for us. They patched the bonewall/meteor dupe. They announced Diablo 3 and they publicly invited all Blizzard fans to return to the world of Diablo 2, stating that it was now a better time than ever before to return. They lied. Now is one of the worst times to return, because all of these things are floating around on closed realms, unchecked, and being abused to great effect against legitimate players.

So am I being immature by posting all of this publicly on as many diablo 2 forums as I can? Will this cause the number of people who exploit these common (and by no means secret, not really) bugs to increase dramatically? Maybe. Maybe, indeed. But maybe, just maybe, it will cause Blizzard to implement some LONG-NEEDED fixes to this game. If not? Then let the chaos begin. I see no reason why an "elite underground" of Diablo 2 players should be the only ones to know these tricks, and so now... let's make sure everyone knows them all.

1. FREEZE ANYONE'S DIABLO 2 SCREEN!
Also known as "Drop Hack", "Drop Barb", "Game Crash"...
This is basically a new variation on a very old bug dating clear back to the beginnings of Diablo II. To the best of my knowledge, it can no longer be induced artificially without external packets, but there is now a way to do this legitimatly with nothing but in-game items and character skills. Follow along and learn one of the most devestating and quite possibly the most annoying exploit that currently works on closed realms--and learn to do it yourself. With absolutly no download or proggie required!

How it works
To the best of my knowledge, only a Barbarian can do this. It requries you to have one character with at least 19 different states stacked on them all at once. (Not counting the silent/hidden ones like Alignment state) What is a state? A state is any "mode" that exists on your character that modifies the character. For example. Auras. Combat Shrines. Battle orders. All of these are states on your character.

A Barbarian can stack the number of states necessary to "drop" people because they get 13 of them for free. The first 10 come from the Combat Masteries tree. If a barb puts one point in every skill on the Masteries tree, then he will have 10 states or "auras" on him at all times by default. These are Axe Mastery, Sword Mastery, Mace Mastery, Polearm Mastery, Throwing Mastery, Spear Mastery, Increased Stamina, Increased Speed, Iron Skin, Natural Resistance. One single skill point in each of those skills will give us 10 states at all times. Now we only need to cast Battle Command, Battle Orders, and Shout to gain three more.

Now how do we come up with the extra 6 states required to "drop" people? There are many ways. You could venom from arach belt, cast enchant from demon limb, cast cyclone armor from infinity, wear doom (for holy freeze), and then wear beast (for fanat) and then morph into werebear. You would then have 19 different in-game states, and anyone who came on your screen would be "dropped."

This rather expensive solution is not the only one. You could just as easily cast Fade with Treachery, cast Shiver Armor with Fortitude, cast Cyclone Armor with Rain, wear a Dragon/Dream (for holy fire/shock) auras, and cast chant with demon limb. There are many other different ways, you just have to use your imagination.

Why it works
Whenever a foreign character enters into your range of perception, the battle.net game server sends you a packet telling you information about this character, including all the states he has. With this method, you will simply cause this packet to be too big. Because of this, the end of the data is excluded. This is basically like leaving the period off the end of a sentance. Your Diablo 2 game will recieve a packet from b.net that has no "end-cap" on it, and thus it will hang up forever, waiting for the packet to end. It won't end.

What does it do??
Sound like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo so far? Think I'm pulling your leg? Wondering what any of this means or what you accomplish by doing this? It's simple. Once your barb is in "Drop Mode", that is he has all the states stacked on him, any other character who comes close enough to your character where they appear on your automap, will "crash." That is to say, their Diablo 2 screen will freeze up completly, and the only thing they really can do is to Control+Alt+Delete and End Task Diablo II (which is now listed as not responding). During this time, their character will remain breifly in the game, until they finally drop due to timeout. Depending on what game server you're playing on, and their interent connection, some characters will stay afk in the game for minutes, some will drop almost instantly. The important thing is, that you just forced that character to "go afk" and become completly helpless. This can cause you to die to PVM or even in duel games, obviously much more dangerous in hardcore mode play.

Are there any limitations?
A few. #1 there is a patch that protects certain people from Drophack, however VERY few people have this. It's not really circulated publicly. #2, if you set up all your states when someone else is already on your screen, that person will not be dropped until you leave their map completly and then come back onto it. This is becasue they will not recieve the "death packet" that gets them stuck in a loop, until your character newly appears on their automap and thus needs to be reported about by battle.net

I still don't see the point
It is used basically to grief people. Drop someone in a hell baal run right before Ventar or Lister spawns, and watch their character suddenly stop moving/fighting, and die. Drop someone in a duel game and watch them get slain. Drop everyone in an uber game and sneak your own smiter in to steal the torch. This is the power to kick anyone out of a game at will. Just use your imagination, you can see why this would be a very powerful exploit in the wrong hands... Especially on hardcore, where death is forever.



2. STACK MULTIPLE AURAS
Also known as "Aura Glitch", "Stacked Auras", "Stacking"...
This is a way that any character who wears a Dream runeword helmet and Dream runeword shield, or a Hand of Justice runeword weapon and a Dragon runeword Armor (or all four of them), can stack their holy shock/holy fire aura over and over again. This can cause your character to do insane ammounts of damage, including the ability to kill hell Baal Runs or even Uber Tristram bossess with one hit, if you stack enough. This also works against players, and can one-hit-ko many players under most circumstances.

How it works
This requires two people to do. It can either be yourself with 2 computers/Loader, or it can be a friend. The person who wears the 2 dreams and wants to do "massive damage", will from this point on be called The Stacker. The friend who helps The Stacker get stacked will be called The Assistant. First of all, The Assistant needs a 100% full inventory. Even just buy thawing pots (only about 90 gold each from Akara) to fill your inventory completly up. Now The Assistant enters into a trade screen with The Stacker. The Stacker offers any item from their inventory up for trade (doesn't matter what item, as long as its from your inventory, and not something you are wearing). The Stacker offers this item and then clicks Accept Trade. The Assistant also clicks Accept Trade, but the trade will not go through. You will hear The Assistant's character say "I can't" or "I can't carry anymore." because they have no room. You will hear The Stacker's aura "re-activate." You have now stacked the Holy Shock aura, so that you have 2 of them now. Offer an item up for trade again, try to click accept trade on both chars again. The same things happens. You have now stacked 3 auras... get the idea? Repeate as many times as you wish. There is no limit. You can stack 500 times or more if this is your desire.

Why it works
Maybe someone who knows a bit more about the Game Engine of Diablo 2 could better answer this question. As well as I know, this works becasue whenever you attempt a trade with another player, Diablo II re-equips all your items automatically. What this exploits takes advantage of is the fact that it will requip your dream/dream without ever removing it in the first place. Thus it will allow you to have stacked your holy shock aura repeatedly as many times as you want. I believe, but am not sure, that this re-equipment of your gear is actually a fail-safe to protect people. For example, if you had only enough strenght to wear your helmet from charms/rings, and you moved stuff around while showing your gear in the trade-window. This will prevent your helmet from falling on the ground after you exit trade. It "resets" your gear as if you were never in the trade window to begin with. Minus whatever it is you traded/gained. That's my own personal theory anyway. The fact remains, this works.

What does it do
This will cause your character to become Superman. Go outside in Hell Act5 or somewhere with strong monsters with just the dream/dream legitly placed. Note the damage you do to monsters. Now go back into town and stack oh I'd say even just 30 times or so with The Assistant. Now go backoutside. You will notice, the monsters all die with one hit now. Everything except Lightnign Immunes will die VERY quickly. And even they will die if you have conviction aura. If you stack enough times, at least 200 or more, even Act End bossess like Mephisto and Diablo will die in one hit. This is a very, very powerful, game-breaking exploit!

Are there any limitations?
Yes. It's important to realize that when you stack auras, you are not creating a lvl 900 aura. You are not hitting once for 1 million damage. Instead you are actually hitting 500 times with a lvl 30 aura. In other words, it's as if there were 100 of your characters in the game. So you may be thinking, "Ok, so what's the big deal? It's still gonna kill anyone with one hit." The thing is, if an enemy player wears Tgods + 2x wisp, enough so that they take no damage from your lvl 30 holy shock aura, then it doesn't matter how many times you stack--you're not going to damage them. So basically stacked resistance + lighting absorb > stacked dream auras. Of course you coudl wear Hoj+Dragon+Dream+Dream, and then they'd have to sorb 2 elements intead of just one to survive. Then there's always conviction aura / lower res curse.

There are more intersting tidbits about this exploit. This exploit, although it can be done manually with no programs, can also be enhanced with hack programs. Mostly in the form of bots which do the stacking process automatically and much faster than a human being can do. It's not my place to tell you about such hacks or where to get them--I'm only letting you know they exist. It should also be noted that this aura stacking glitch works best on certain characters. Sorceress, for example, can max the Lightning Mastery skill and cause each of her stakced auras to do over double it's usual damage. Paladins can max Resist Lightning and Salvation to boost the damage of Holy Shock as well (It's a synergy bonus). Please note, if you do this on a paladin, that paladin should not have a skill point in the Holy Shock skill at ALL. Their only source of holy shock should be from Dream. If you messed that up, then it's not going to work for you until you rebuild your character without Holy Shock.

3. BECOME INVINCIBLE
Also known as "Glitched Barb", "Invincibarb", "Frostwind/Flamebellow Glitch"...
This is a way that your Barbarian (yes it works for barb's only), on closed B.net Realm, can litteraly become Invulnerable. They cannot be killed no matter what hits them. You can have 7 Hammerdins spinning on them at once, hit them with any element, and they will simply stand there and tank it all, and will never die no matter what! Keep in mind that this is a very old glitch and is not really that much of a secret. I wouldn't be surprised if many of you reading this one already knows about it.

How it works
You need a Barbarian with at least one skill point into Leap. This barb has to carry either Flamebellow sword (Unique balrog blade), or the FrostWind (unique cryptic sword.) You are required to have one or the other, but not both. For Flamebellow, you put the Infeno Skill (Flamebellow gives you this skill to any characters) on one of your mouse clicks, and you put Leap on your other mouse click. (Note I said LEAP, NOT LEAP ATTACK!!). Now all you do is cast Inferno and then cast Leap right after you cast inferno. If you did this right, open up your inventory and you shoudl see a red background behind all your items, as if you weren't wearing them anymore. You can now run around anywhere on your screen, and you should still be frozen in place on everyone else's screen. The easiest way to test if you did this right is to run back into town after "glitching", and then ask your friend if you're still standing outside on their screen. If they say yes, then you did it right. With Frostwind it works the exact same way, only instead of Inferno, you use the Arctic Blast skill.

Why it works
Because Blizzard had to come up with an animation for various characters to use some of these skills from oskills in the 1.10 patch. For Inferno/Frostwind they chose to be cute and gave the Barbarian the Leap animation, whenever you fire those skills you will "leap" a bit into the air and start spitting the fire/wind out. Now if you cast Leap right afterwards, it glitches because the animations are the same. I know that's not very descriptive, because to be honest, I don't really understand the why of how this glitch works. It's my belief that it causes a server-side crash/error. This could possibly leave the barb in server-side limbo, where its trying to calculate what to do next, and simply doens't know. For this reason, nothing else is going to be able to interact with or effect your barb.

What does it do
It leaves you invincibile.. but also frozen in place. On your screen you can run around up to a certain distance from the piont you glitched at. (Once you get TOO far away, you will encounter a "black wall" and not be able to go any further.) You will notice you are also able to run right through walls and other usually impassable objects. But no matter what you do or where you go, on everyone else's screen but yours, your barb will still be standing in the same place. If someone else hostiles your barb and starts attacking him, his health MIGHT appear to go down, but once he gets to "zero" he's still not going to die.

Are there any limitations
The biggest one is that you cannot move/attack while you're glitched. You're stuck in place obviously. You also run the risk of not doing it right the first time, and getting killed. So make sure you preform one of the "test" methods I told you about above before you let people attack you. That is, the background of your items shoudl become red, and also you should run into town and ask someone if you're still outside. If you're in town on your screen, and everyone is saying you're outside, then you know you did it right.

What's the point?
Mostly just as a novelty. A joke, if you will. "Har har, you can't kill me." However, there is one VERY deadly use for this glitch, which will be explained in the NEXT bug exploit, "Kill People in Town!"
CONTINUED FROM MY NEXT POST! CHARACTER LIMIT IS EXCEEDED

4. KILL PLAYERS IN TOWN!!
Also known as "Town Kill", "TK'ing", "merc glitch"...
Yes, this is real, it works on closed realms, it can kill players when they are in town, and it requires NO PROGRAM/DOWNLOAD TO DO IT!

How it works
You need a character with a powerful Act 1 Rouge Mercenary. Usually the best setup to use is a Windforce, with a Guilliam's helm (deadly strike), and a fortitude. Could also use ed/ias jwl equipment or even a faith bow. The point is, you need a Rouge that deals out some pretty good damage. Or else you'll just hit people in town and not really kill them. It also helps, but is not really necessary, if the character who owns the act1 merc is a pally with a strong conc or fanat aura, or a sorc with enchant. Just whatever ways you can boost that merc's damage up. Because we want to kill whoever we hit, right?

Ok, this is how this glitch works. It requires at least two people working together. The character who has the strong act1 merc is called the Town Killer from here on. The Town Killer is going to need one friend to help him do this. His friend is called The Target. Now, the Town Killer is going to want to declare hostility against his friend, The Target, and also hostile against anyone he wants to town kill. Now the Town Killer is going to tele near the exit of town, and The Target is going to attract his merc's aggro. This can either be done by having the Target leave town and run around making the Town Killer's merc fire at him, or it can be done by having a Druid/Necro be The Target and have them just cast Oak Sages and Golems outside. Either way, the point is to have the Town Killer's merc shoot at The Target, but MISS him. Any arrows the Town Killer's merc shoots at The Target that happen to miss, will go into town and will actively hit any other hostile player in town!!

IMPORTANT: Pro "town killers" on Hardcore Mode have come up with a much MUCH more efficent way to town kill people! Use an Invincible Barb as The Target! (See Glitch #3) Simply Glitch a Barb with frostwind/flamebellow near the entrance of town, and have the Town Killer hostile him. Now you get a nice stationary Target for your Merc to shoot at, and because the Barb is Glitched, those arrows are going to all go right through him, and sail into town! They will then hit and possibly kill any hostile player in town, that happens to get into the path of the arrows!

Why it works
:shrugs:. Blizzard got sloppy with their programming somehow. No player skill can do this, but for Mercenaries only, this does work. If a Merc shoots an arrow into town, it will harm people there. The only way to FORCE a mercenary to shoot is to have a hostile target near them. For this reason, The Target is used to make the merc shoot, and then whatever arrows miss The Target will fly into town and pose a risk to anyone in the way. When using a Glitched Barb as The Target, all the arrows will miss him, even though he doesn't move. This is why using Glitched Barb (see glitch #3) is the best way to Town Kill!

Are there any limiations?
Obviously, you can only Town Kill people that are standing near the Exit of town, because those merc arrows only go so far. Also, you have to make sure you can kill who you are hitting, or else they'll notice they're taking damage and simply run away in fear. It's best to get the quick one or two hit kill and surprise people. It can also be used to great effect on people who leave their character afk near the exit of town. It's also one of the more difficult glitches to pull off, becasue it takes time getting used to controlling your merc with teleport and lining those arrows up just right. It takes patience and a lot of practice. This does work though, and here's two clips from my screenshot gallery to prove it.



5. KILL NEUTRAL/ALLIED PLAYERS
Also known as "Town Portal Player Kill", "TPPK", "Surprise Duel"...
This exploit is one of the oldest ones in Diablo 2, although it did not become widely popular until patch 1.09 on hardcore mode. Over the years "TPPK" has both seen a decline, and in recent years, an enormous surge in popularity. The way things are now, if you play hardcore mode, you probably don't need to read a word of the following. If you play Hardcore Mode, you certainly already know all about exploit... possibly even using it or falling victim to it yourself.

How it works
According to the Diablo 2 game engine, in order to attack other players, you must declare hostility with them first. According to that same engine, you must be in town in order to declare this hostility. Because of this, if another player is in your party, you are completly safe from them. After all, if they wanted to PK you, they'd have to go to town, declare hostility, then wait for that pesky waypoint-timer before they could come and hunt for you. If you believe this, you are wrong. There is a way to PK other players without properly declaring hostility! This method is done by exploiting a very simple flaw in Blizzard's little game engine here. It's so simple, you may be amazed you never thought of it before (if you're learing this for the first time).

What this requires is a character with powerful projectile attacks. It can be an Ice Blast sorc, a Tornado Druid, a Bone Spirit Necro. Almost any character you can dream of that fires off missiles or "projectiles." What you do is very simple. While in someone's party--say a baal run for example-- you begin firing your missiles at another party member. Then you quickly go up a Town Portal into town, and the moment you are in town, you click hostile. What happens? The missiles you were firing off when you were in the party will suddenly become hostile, and they will hit and can kill anyone.

Why it works
This works because the missiles/projectiles you shoot do not dissapear when you go to town. Unlike some "area" spells, like Blizzard or Firewall--those do vanish when you enter town. But Ice Blast? Nope. Those Ice Blasts you shoot will stay in the area as active projectiles, even if you quickly run into a town portal after firing them. In this way you can launch missiles at your desired target, and then declare hostility before all of those missiles reaches the target. Your target will be sitting around enjoying the exp they are leeching, when suddenly they will see a declaration of hostility, and in the next moment, get bombarded with unexpected damage. As I've said before, this is a very popular and well-known exploit in the Hardcore community... but many people in the softcore community have no idea this even exists... and it's always great fun to TPPK people who had no idea it was possible!

Are there any limitations
There are many. Over the years, Blizzard has made an attempt to "patch up" the TPPK exploit. For this reason, many spells and skills actually DO dissapear the moment you enter town. Among these are the Sorceress skills Hydra, Meteor, Firewall, Fireball, Blizzard, and Frozen Orb. Assassin traps also dissapear in the same way when you enter town, as do Paladin's Blessed Hammers. Basically the best way to test whether or not a skill can be used to "TPPK" with is to practice by simply shooting the spell right outside of town and then running back into town quickly after. If you see your magic dissapear the moment you enter town, then you know it's one of those protected skills. Some, however, like the Druid's Fissure skill, only appear to vanish--but Fissure does not vanish when you enter town! It can be used.

Another big limitation is timing. In my intro to this post, I promised that all of these exploits can be done without using any hack program. And I meant it. You can do this without a progarm at all. However, I'm not going to lie to you. This is the one exploit listed here that is nearly impossible to do without a program. On the hardcore community, we have hacks called "Triggers." or "trigs" for shorthand. What a trigger does is streamline the TPPK process into a deadly speed. It sends the packets to the server in rapid succession... "Open town portal packet", "click on Town Portal", "Declare Hostility to player." Using the trigger scripts, TPPK goes from a joke that only actually works once in a blue moon.. into a sure-fire way to rack up major kill counts against unsuspecting newbs. Infact it has often been said by TPPK victims in hardcore that the PKer went to town and hostiled so fast, that on their screen they didn't even see a town portal open.

What else should I know?
Here are some of the most popular TPPK skills used, but by no means the complete listing of them. Ice Blast (Great damage, huge minus enemy resistance). Tornado (Powerful physical damage that isn't resisted by most common newbs) Firebolt (although fireball cannot TPPK, firebolt can. And with the right built, it causes massive damage.) Bone Spirit (an old favorite. bone Spirit causes iressistable magic damage, and even homes in on your target. Can't beat that) Multishot (good for killing entire groups of newbies leeching in your baal games! Just make sure you have high damage) And many more. There have been a large number of extremly unique and unexpected TPPK builds in the history of hardcore... even Fist of Heavens can TPPK with the assistance of an Auto Aim mod!

Well, that's all for now. There are a number of others I know of, that are not quite as game-breaking or urgent to discuss. In all honesty, Blizzard should fix every single exploit listed in this guide. Hopefully spreading this guide around the internets as widely as I can will accomplish just that. If not, then I truly hope that a great magnitude of people begin abusing all of these exploits and causing huge chaos on the realms. So, in closing: feel free to spread this guide around to as many Diablo II forums as you can think of.

OOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I AM STUNNED BY Wake of fire, MindBlast, Lightning sentry, shadow master, blade shield and 6 max fps kicks LOLOLOLOLO!!!!
I wanted to start playin hc next month... but simply IM AFRAID O_o!
MASS RESPECT for person who found out thos bugz!
Blizzard@com this is the place where this topic should spawn!!!

elite underground? all of these are public knowledge, and this isn't "strategy" it's cheating/bug abusing.

excellent guide.

sticky imo!

cool read

sure nice guide, but not nice giving those exploits out to every noob at jsp

Interesting

agree