I have tested this a couple times now, and this is my report:

I installed the game initially and patched 1.42 and then 1.44 that is my current build.

The first time I started playing I lost my game due to lack of savegames to revert back on, I learned my lesson the 2nd time around, but I encountered the problem both times.

In Act4 I heavily use the vendors in the battlegrounds until I have all the equipment I want for my characters, this entails dozens of warping back and forth to refresh the NPC merchants inventories. Once I am set, I then begin my slaughtering of the BG dungeons and start working on the BG merchants quests.

What I noticed was somewhere along the lines of departing the Act4 BG Merchant camp, and starting to kill the BG monsters... is that items such as weapons and armor get CORRUPTED. They LOSE all displayed STATS/ATRIIBUTES. The only show in game as WHITE LETTERED, NON_MAGIC items with NO STATS of anykind.

I thought this was at first due to me having a game started on the version 1.42 and then patching to 1.44, however it was not. I started a new game based on 1.44 and this happended again.

Once this occurs, the NPC merchants inventories of items such as weapons and armor become non-existant. They begin selling things like "rat hit" and "demon hit" instead of weapons. Then they just run out of everything and only offer to sell things you previously sold them, if any.

It really ruins the game.

I was able to restart due to learning the lesson of saving often at the start/end of every act and after long quests with particular names, not just 'quicksaves'.


My workaround was--

I only used the Act4 Merchants for items then departed the battlegrounds. I was unable to actually fight there at all, missing the fun of those levels. My game did not get corrupted as long as I avoided the combat portion of Act4 battlegrounds. I hope you can identify the problem here.

My advice is to skip the Act4 battlegrounds combat if you have a 1.42 to 1.44 game.

Suggestions for fix:
Possible it is due to my install of 1.42 then updating 1.44 (If a clean disc install to 1.44 or next 1.45 patch may not have this issue but it is unknown at this time)

Possible my overuse of the Act4 battleground merchants causes some battleground random equipment generator to overload. I know all the items I forced cycle on the merchants while shopping could have maybe overloaded the generator for random items, does it track those? Need a cleaning of the cache buffer for items? Perhaps it runs out of items to make? Thats why it makes items with no stats, qualities, and makes things like "rat hit" "deamon hit" etc.

Anyway, goodluck and I enjoyed the game regardless of the bug.