GameBanshee has updated their Hellgate London section of the website with an item database, a skill database, quest database, many high resolution screenshots as well as exclusive screenshots from the Abyss Chronicles and an interview about it with Tyler Thompson.
And, to help you track down weapons and armor that meet specific criteria, we’ve also set up an advanced search page. Should you ever find yourself looking for a one-handed weapon with over 1000 ignite attack strength, a piece of armor that increases your critical chance and your accuracy at the same time, or maybe a Focus item that adds a rank to all Evoker skills, we hope you’ll find this page to be invaluable.
GB: What can we expect from The Abyss Chronicles? What were your primary goals when developing this particular update?
Tyler: Our Chronicles are designed to be much more than a patch and the Abyss Chronicle is much more significant in scope than our first Chronicle. We’ve added a long laundry list of new features with this update, but the four big goals were making a new set of levels with new boss fights and some really cool rewards, three new skills for each character class, the Blademaster rebalance and the Consignment Shop. The new levels should give Subscribers a lot of new content to run around in. The new skills really enhance the current character classes and allow for some completely new play styles – including the Summoner transforming into a demon who focuses on melee and summons freaky melee fighters. The Blademaster needed some love. He will be doing much more damage and have more viable skills with this update.
GB: Are you introducing any new unique items with The Abyss Chronicles update? If so, will these items only be obtainable in the new zones or will they also have a chance to drop in the original and Stonehenge zones?
Tyler: We have a large set of new items in the Abyss Chronicles. There are new armor lines for each faction which look pretty cool and have some interesting plus and minus choices for the player like Cabalist armor that adds to power but removes health. There are also some new weapons for every class – like a massive mace which has spinning blades when you swing it. With the exception of the new focus items designed for a melee Summoner, all of these items can only be found in the Abyss areas. All of them have unique versions which mostly are set to drop off of specific bosses.
GB: Also included in Patch 2.1 is a (much needed) rebalance to the attribute feed system on items. What can we expect from these changes? Will feeds still be dependent on which enchantments are present on an item (ie. critical bonuses requiring accuracy), or will they be calculated in another manner?
Tyler: Patch 2.1 will include a careful rebalancing of the feed system. We have a few ideas about how to approach the problem. One thought has been to make the enhancement’s feed requirements match your faction’s more common attributes. We are still talking about a few other ideas as well. To help players until Patch 2.1 comes out, The Abyss Chronicles has an NPC that will charge you palladium to redistribute your attributes.
GB: What’s next after The Abyss Chronicles and Patch 2.1? Can you give us a rundown of features and changes you’d like to implement into the game with future content updates?
Tyler: We’ve got a few different directions that we can go with Hellgate: London after Patch 2.1. I can’t really commit today on which path we will take – there are some high-level debates about this going on right now.
Well, not really. But they are on the official Korean website, which means that we can officially post them now!
I can’t embed them as they are in Windows Media Player, but if you go to the link you can either open them from there or download them.
The first video on the list is the Patch 2 trailer, but now in a much higher resolution and the second is the 1.3 trailer, also in a much higher resolution (1280 by 720 for both) than before (however it has Korean subtitles now).
EDIT: Just to add, the video is titled China Joy 2008, which means it’s being shown at the large China Joy game’s even in China. So guess the marketing for the game is starting with Patch 2 over there in time for the launch which I would think is some time soon.
Yay exams… That’s right I have exams in three weeks so I’ve been studying that’s why this news is late. Sorry.
But yes, patch 2 has hit the Test Center and Scapes has provided us with a large set of patch notes available on both the official and our own forums.
The Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2) is heading to Test Center today!
This is the largest addition to Hellgate: London to date. There is a new town with a new quest line that includes four new boss fights, the Consignment House, the Blademaster rebalance, Mythic and Double-Edged items, rings that go into the new trinket slot, new armor sets for each faction, new weapons and uniques for each faction and on and on… I’ll let these Patch Notes get into the specifics, but we have a lot of improvements in this patch for subscribers and non-subscribers alike.
We’ve been fixing bugs and polishing this new content for a couple weeks now, and we plan on focusing on polishing it for a while longer. You will see by the list of caveats in this post that we aren’t finished yet. In fact, at the time of this writing we have made 140 changes since this specific build was completed – we are still fixing things as fast as we can, but we tried to get you the first build that was ready for Test Center. This post contains the current Patch Notes for The Abyss Chronicles, but I can guarantee you that things will keep changing over the next few weeks. During that time, as we see you guys playing in Test Center and hear your feedback, the new content will probably be nerfed, buffed, and radically changed. Please just roll with the punches.
We need your help to polish this Chronicle while it is still in Test Center. Players who are in Test Center enjoy several cool perks: double experience gain, a free Skill Retrainer each login, a free Attribute Retrainer each login, a free Expertise Retrainer each login, a Test Center-only vendor who sells the skill scrolls (he didn’t end up in this build), and a nice small community of fun people to play with. So, hop on Test Center and post the issues that you have found here in the forums.
Scapes also has a preview of the Trinkets up on the official website.
After consuming many worlds, the Abyss has acquired and retained magic secrets from many extinct civilizations. Only the strongest artifacts have survived within the Abyss. However, due to the omnipresent demonic taint of the Abyss, these trinkets have been corrupted and lost their original powers. The only device known to humankind to expel such corruption is the Transmogrifying Cube.
One of the new features introduced in the Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2) is the “trinkets” equipment slot, the first types of which are rings. Of the seven types of rings available, one drops from Champion monsters anywhere in Hellgate: London, two can only be found off of monsters in the Abyss, and four are specific drops from Abyss boss monsters. All rings drop as Cursed rarity items and need to be cleansed of their demon taint using the Transmogrifying Cube in order to be properly identified.
Each of these rings grant at least one point in two skills of a single class. The Abyss-only rings have an additional affix and the boss-specific rings have one or two additional affixes. While all seven rings can drop as Enhanced, Rare, or Legendary rarity, the boss-specific rings can also drop with Unique rarity. The higher the rarity level, the better the properties of the ring. All rings are tradable to all players.
There is also a new section of the forums dedicated specifically to the Developer blogs by Hellgate’s developers.
EDIT: The patch isn’t actually on TC yet, here is an update:
Ugh, the download. It’s totally borked our schedule today. We are almost done uploading it again in the US and the EU copy is getting close too. We will double check the consistency of the files this time.
Now, it’s getting a little late in PST. It’s too late at night to have enough Flagship eyes watching the first wave of players enter The Abyss on Test Center.
So, we have closed The Gate on Test Center until tomorrow morning.
Until then, read the Patch Notes a few times - it’s about 18 pages typed! This patch is huge!
Yes, we normally split up news posts into lots of bits, but I am busy today so it’s going to be one big news post!
First is the MAJOR news for most of you, which is the fact that patch 2 is coming to Test Center on Monday. The file is going to be a stand alone patch at a massive size of 1.3 gigs!
The Abyss Chronicles boasts a long list of new features and fixes and as such has required a long internal testing process. The studio is currently in a “bug squashing” stage with regards to the major content update meaning that development of Patch 2 is complete and we are now working on cleaning it up and making it pretty (and balanced). As part of the path of all our patches, the Abyss Chronicles will first be enjoying a good stay on our Test Center server where it can be poked and prodded and picked at by you, our thorough Hellgaters and brave test subjects.
The Abyss Chronicles is slated for Test Center launch this coming Monday, June 9th. The update will be applied via a standalone patch (1.3 gigabytes). We will have more information on this big move first thing next week.
– Scapes
Second is the news that Patch 1.3d has hit the test center today. The patch notes are the following:
Patch 1.3d introduces a few significant adjustments to gameplay, character creation, and one vendor NPC in particular. Players can now create Elite Mode characters (and subscribers can create Hardcore Mode characters) if their account has a character that reaches level 20 or above. The update also fixes a PRD bug and a character options issue.
Good hunting, Hellgaters!
The Hellgate: London Team
—
General
All accounts can now access Elite Mode when one of its characters reaches level 20 or above. (Accounts that already have a level 20 character or above will have to gain a level for this to apply.)
Subscriber accounts can now access Hardcore Mode when one of its characters reaches level 20 or above. (Accounts that already have a level 20 character or above will have to gain a level for this to apply.)
The rate at which Rank experience is gained has been rebalanced.
Our favorite Premium Item Merchant, Ko, just got a new shipment of items from a new supplier. Unfortunately, they aren’t quite the quality that he is used to getting. In fact, they are all mostly Enhanced items. Sure, he’s still got the Rare, Legendary and Unique stuff that he always had, but you are pretty likely to get an Enhanced item from him now. He’s got to do something with this new shipment after all.
Fixes
Fixed a bug which could cause a player’s PRD to function incorrectly if they were kicked from their party while warping through the PRD.
Fixed a bug where character options would change as a result of minimizing the character options tab.
Third is the new post on the forums by Tyler Thompson, which is of a thread that’s going to act like a blog of his. So follow i regularly!
Today, I also fixed a bug with ragdolls floating in the air. I caught up on about 50 company e-mails and reassigned several bugs. I met with HR to talk about a few issues. I prepared plans for what the UI SCRUM group will work on next - mostly cribbing from our Team Advocate’s suggestions for guilds, some auction house and e-mail features.
Then I spent a couple hours running around to see whether Patch 2.0 was ready for Test Center. I worked with Matt who was gathering the notes, got them passed to Evan to write them up, checked with Alan who was finishing up his to design changes, checked with QA about the bugs in the latest build, met with some engineers to make sure that they didn’t have concerns about the state of their features, and wrote an e-mail to just about everyone to make sure none of them knew of an issue that would block it.
Afterwards, I met with the team doing Auction House and Guild Features to talk about how long it will take to do their features.
Then I made a big decision about Patch 2.0 and Test Center, but I’ll leave info that to Scapes.
Lastly, is the new Undeground Communique #7, which this time talks of the three patch 1.3c, 1.3d and 2. The news of (most) transfers being complete and (most) items being transferred with the characters (Check your characters for if they worked before Patch 2 hits TC), new ATI drivers that fix issues in Vista as well as the new Sneak Shots about Patch 2 next week being about Trinkets!
With what seems to be a mistake on Scapes’ behalf, the Patch 2 trailer video has been uploaded to youtube a day early. The video was removed, but not before many fans saw it and made copies which have now appeared on youtube again.
And this is why I shouldn’t upload videos when sleepy.
The video has been replaced with the intended Patch 1.3 Trailer.
– Scapes
EDIT: Removed video on request, however those who know how to can still find it.
Enjoy!
P.S. Patch 2 makes me want to play the game again!
Scapes has posted a few bits of news on the official forums regarding patches. First is the news of patch 1.3c coming to the live servers tomorrow.
Hellgate: London Patch 1.3c will be live on the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers tomorrow. This is the same build of Patch 1.3c that is currently on Test Center. The Shulgoth (US) server will update tomorrow, June 3rd, at 6:00 AM PDT. The Sydonai (EU) server will update later tomorrow at 8:00 PM PDT (0300 GMT). The downtime for each server will be about one hour.
Patch notes for Patch 1.3c will be available tomorrow after the launch.
– Scapes
There presently isn’t an ETA for when the Abyss Chronicles will be live on the Test Center server. An announcement will be made when there is one to share.
– Scapes
A number of sites have been reporting this new trailer from FSS for a few days now. It’s a trailer for the now few week’s old 1.3 Patch, however the trailer is quiet humorous and worth a watch!
Scapes is back from Japan with updates! First he brings us a new communique, number 6, which talks of his trip and various news we’ve already reported on. To add, there is also the first of many previews of Abyss Chronicles in screenshot form!
Welcome, Hellgaters, to the first installment of SneakShots. This article will offer a collection of images of upcoming Hellgate: London content composed and captured by yours truly. However, you didn’t navigate to this thread to read me prattle on: feast your eyes on this fine selection of pictures from the Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2).
That last fellow, he wouldn’t let me leave without taking his picture. He was very insistent. — Scapes
Been sick lately so haven’t had time to post much. But better now so time for news posting!
The official site is reporting news that Nightly Server restarts have now finished.
With the launch of Patch 1.3b on the live servers, nightly restarts of the live servers have ceased as of May 20th. The restarts were an effort to prevent server instability brought about by Patch 1.3.
Thanks for your patience!
The patch notes for the new patch are also up on the forums and are as follows:
General
In-game mail has been updated for speedier service.
The donation reward armor bonus (Ares’ Bane) now applies bonuses to shields.
The donation announcement now displays the percentage needed to complete the war drive when a donation is made. Donations of 100,000 Palladium or more also announce the name of the character who made the donation.
Subscribers on the Sydonai (EU) server now get full subscriber benefits on the Test Center server.
Skills
Engineers now have a 12-second shared cooldown time on the Smackdown, Shock and Awe, and Napalm Strike calldown skills.
Fixes
Fixed equipped weapon mods being lost in Shared Stash.
Fixed a bug where you could see other characters’ attributes under certain conditions.
Fixed non-subscribers (who were once subscribers) being able to party portal to a subscriber only area.
The donation announcement now says “Palladium” instead of “gold”.
Russian clients should no longer crash on certain donation announcements.
Sammy, a side quest NPC in St. Paul’s Station, is no longer subscriber-only.
Fixed the /wave emote.
Fixed items sometimes getting lost when sent via email.
Patch Notes Disclaimer: While we make every effort to include all upcoming changes in our patch notes, please be aware that occasionally some changes are unintentionally omitted.
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