Citation
Patch 1.3 Notes
April 24, 2008
Greetings, Hellgaters, and welcome to Hellgate: London Patch 1.3!
Patch 1.3 is a beast of a update, offering no less than eight new features to the game including Shared Stash, a Premium Item Merchant, Donation Collectors and Global Buffs, Ranks and the Expertise system, and lots more. This content update also fixes a number of pesky item, skill, and interface bugs and makes a few tweaks to partying and monster scaling in Stonehenge.
Interacting with your fellow players has been enhanced with the introduction of optional chat bubbles that appear when players talk and performable emotes that your characters now have at their disposal. In Patch 1.3, players can also easily browse lists of chat and emote commands using the two according buttons in the chat pane.
A very sincere thank you to the many players who tested the many builds of Patch 1.3 uploaded to our Test Center server and helped report on the new patch's balance, performance, and stability.
See you online!
The Hellgate: London Team
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General
* The maximum Palladium a player may carry has been increased to 100,000,000.
* Weapons hide when performing emotes except for focus items which act as replacements for Cabalists' hands.
* Since many players enjoyed doing Oculis boss runs, we've done some work to allow these runs again, but this time in a more complete fashion. The portal from Monument Station to Angel Passage is now permanently blocked. Players who would like to fight Oculis after reaching Monument Station may use the Station Travel Terminal to return to Temple Station. Any player who has activated, or completed, the "Scrub the Deck" quest and does not have a Cleanser, may speak with Ser Sing in Temple Station to get another one. The Cleanser is no longer removed when the "Scrub the Deck" quest is completed.
New Features
* Ranks and Expertise:
o After characters hit Level 50, they can start earning experience towards gaining Ranks.
o There are 50 Ranks, each of which will take an increasing amount of time to earn.
o Rank is displayed under the character’s level and is visible to other players.
o Each Rank grants you one Expertise Point which can be spent on an Expertise.
o There will be 15 different kinds of Expertise skills with four levels each.
o Expertise will be displayed in a skill-tree-like fashion – with icons and pop-up text describing what the benefits are of the Expertise. Hit U to view the Expertise screen.
o The first level for each Expertise will cost one Expertise Point. An additional Expertise Point will be needed to increase each level after the first, much like with upgrading an item using Nanoshards, for a total cost of 10 Expertise Points to max out an Expertise.
o All Expertise skills are passive.
* Shared Stash:
o Now all characters on subscriber accounts can share their items! Current trade conventions do apply: items will not be able to be traded across play modes. Also, “no trade” items can not be placed in the Shared Stash.
* Hide Helmet:
o Players can elect to hide their headgear and show their characters’ faces without removing it. This toggle can be found at the bottom of the character screen.
* Emotes:
o A host of emotes are now at your disposal including beg, bow, cheer, cry, flex, kiss, laugh, point, stop, and taunt. In addition to these, a set of bonus emotes is temporarily unlocked just for Test Center. Type “/” and the word, then hit enter to perform it.
* Inspect Players:
o Players can now inspect other players’ equipment. Right-click on a nearby character and select the “Inspect” option to bring up a paperdoll interface showing the character and its equipment.
o Players can prevent their characters from being inspected by toggling the Inspect option at the bottom of their character screen.
* Premium Item Merchant:
o Presently located in Covent Garden Station, Premium Item Merchant Ko has items for sale which are unidentified and do not reveal their actual rarity level. Players can risk their hard-earned Palladium to take a chance on these mystery premium items. Premium Item Merchant Ko is subscriber-only.
* Optional Chat Bubbles:
o Chat bubbles are now an optional chat feature and can be toggled in the Game Options menu. Different chat channels will appear as different text colors.
* Donations:
o The medics in our stations are now collecting donations to help the overall cause against the demons. When enough palladium is collected, all players on the server will gain the same random temporary buff. When a player gives a large single donation, an announcement across the entire server will herald their generosity. The overall collection goal might change occasionally. If everyone pitches in some palladium, we all will benefit. So give often. Give generously. For the living!
o The Donation amount resets when the limit is reached. Over-donating does not add anything.
o You can stack Donation-gained buffs by reaching the Donation limit multiple times.
o Buffs persist through death and log-off/log-in.
Stonehenge
* Whenever a player enters a level, all monsters (and their equipment/treasure) are scaled up to that person’s level and the monster’s health is filled, if both: the level is one that is supposed to scale to the player’s level, and if the player is higher level than the player who created the level.
* Change to the new Monster Scaling mechanic: Players now have a 3-level buffer before monsters are upgraded. This means that monsters will only be re-scaled if a player 3 levels above the level of the monsters enters the adventure area.
* Characters must now be level 15 to enter Stonehenge.
User Interface
* Minor improvements to the skill bar appearance.
* Party members’ names now show up on the automap when the Alt key is held down.
* The name of the recipient of a trade request is now displayed in the trade window.
* Players may now choose to abbreviate the names of other players in the chat window down to a maximum of nine letters. This option can be toggled under Game Options.
* Fixed a bug causing items to register as not equippable if they give enough of an attribute to make up for the amount of feed they will cost.
* Fixed a bug causing some items to unequip when the player enters the game or zones.
* Improved the accuracy of attribute and feed changes in the character panel when hovering over an item.
* The “Hardcore” indicator icon now shows up to the left of the player’s name.
* Fixed a bug causing clicks in the server list drop-down menu to sometimes click through to buttons underneath it.
* Buttons have been added to the chat interface allowing for quick access to chat commands and emotes. They can be found in the lower right corner of the chat panel.
World Movement
* Players can now warp to any friend or guildmate who is in a town by right-clicking on the person’s name. The buddy list and guild list will have the player’s current location noted.
Combat
* Fixed a bug which sometimes caused shields and/or power to decrease in larger chunks than they should when getting hit or using a skill.
* Fixed a bug which caused proc-on-attack effects to never trigger.
* Fixed a bug which would sometimes cause skill cooldowns to not trigger.
* Fixed a bug which caused fields to often not damage monsters in indoor areas.
* Fixed a bug which caused Armor Percent bonuses to be applied twice during damage reduction calculations.
PvP
* Players with PvP enabled may no longer open party portals.
* Consumable items other than health injectors are no longer usable in PvP.
Skills
* If a player removes an item that grants them the only point in a summoning skill, or otherwise forgets a summoning skill, all pets summoned by that skill will now be dismissed.
* The Phase Elemental’s (Summoner) spectral nova particles have been redone to improve performance.
* Monsters now receive damage from Rebounder Rounds when they are aimed at ground.
Items
* Gyro Stabilizers may now be used while stunned.
* Fixed a bug which sometimes caused a crash when the player attempts to drop a quest item.
* Fixed a bug which caused many skill-group related properties to not properly provide their bonuses.
Fixes
* Many new skill and status icons.
* Fixed a bug causing Rebounder Rounds to not do damage if the missile/bullet hits the ground first.
* Fixed a bug which caused monster nameplates to not always update the level of the monster.
* Fixed a bug which caused Moloch to sometimes not drop loot for players in the area.
* Fixed a bug which was allowing Nanodyne Ballistic Cannons, including The Exterminator, to make multiple attacks on a single target much more quickly than designed.
* Fixed a bug which caused the quest reward dialog to not always disappear when multiple people receive their rewards at the same time.
* Fixed a bug causing the New Email icon to flash upon logging in, even when there were no new emails.
Known Issues
There are a few minor bugs which will be fixed in short order.
* The /wave emote does not work.
* Poison (Toxic damage special effect) has no particle effect. The effects are still applied.
* The armor and shield donation bonus (Ares’ Bane) only adds a bonus to armor.
* The speed donation bonus (Hermes’ Boots) does not update in the character sheet.
* The Luck Expertise (Fortune) has an erroneous 0 in its description (displays as +240 instead of +24).
* The text for the donation health regeneration bonus is missing a % sign. (displays as +5 instead of +5%). The bonus applies correctly.
* Text related to Donations refer to Gold instead of Palladium.
* European languages do not display new Marksman skills in the skills panel.
* Italian displays the text for Power Cost as Increase Maximum Shields.
* Salvage materials cannot be accessed from Shared Stash nor Personal Stash when crafting/upgrading items.
