The patch is required to play RoE, we used many features which only work with Plus. If you play it without Plus you encouter bugs like not working triggers, you also crash and get stuck more often.
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Plus is a multiplayer patch, This adds protection against crashes caused by malformed packets as well as adding tons of features and allowing you into Plus only servers.
RoE Episode 1 will uploaded on 25 December but I hope I can get it up before that, stay tuned!