From Hellgatewiki.com

This page holds a wide selection of miscellaneous character information. Check the individual Factions pages for specific information about the Templar, Cabalist, and Hunter.

Contents 1 Ease of Entry 2 Character Creation 2.1 Expansion Classes 3 Stats and Attributes 3.1 Shields, Armor, and Defenses 3.2 Damage Types 3.3 Stats and Attributes 3.4 Requirements 3.5 Respeccing 4 Heads Up Display 4.1 Context Dependent Functions 4.2 Interface Wheel 4.3 Weapon Switching 5 Skills 6 Inventory 7 Paperdoll 8 Gold

Ease of Entry

Playing Hellgate: London should feel familiar to gamers with experience playing RPGs. Action RPGs especially; Diablo II, for instance, the last game most of the guys on the Hellgate Team produced. Your character starts off weak, virtually-naked, and clueless, and as you complete quests and kill demons you gain in experience and level up, allocate the the attribute and skill points you've earned, find new equipment, face more difficult monsters, and so forth.

"Character development will be based on classic RPG precepts, meaning as you gain more experience in the world, you gain more skills or spells, as well as increasing your basic physical and mental statistics. Each class will have their own set of abilities, either mundane or magical in nature, and players will be able to choose a skill path to take their character down. We are looking at ways to introduce some new dynamic elements into the skill/spell system that should make even the most experienced role-player sit up and take notice."
--Bill Roper, Total Video Games Preview, July 6, 2005

Just to make things easier for players who are new to RPGs, (FPS players drawn by the look of Hellgate: London) the Hellgate Team are considering including an automatic stat apportioning program. It would be optional, of course, but might help new players get the hang of things.

As I'm fine-tuning my character and picking talents, Max Schaefer comes over and asks what I think of individually tweaking stats like intelligence and such. Personally, I'm fine with how BioWare pulled it off in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. There, you had the option to juggle numbers or just trust the class specific defaults (which were often right on).
--CGW Magazine, April 2006

Before you worry about that though, you've got to create a character.

Character Creation

See the Character Creation page for full coverage of this aspect of Hellgate: London.

Expansion Classes

Hellgate: London will ship with two classes in each of the three factions. It's widely believed that an additional class will be added to each faction sometime after the game's release, either as part of an expansion pack of just a content upgrade. Based on the known skills that don't seem to fit with the announced class types, speculation is that we'll see a Cabalist Shapeshifter, Hunter Scout, and Templar Holy Knight, or classes along those lines. For more information see the Hunter Classes, Cabalist Classes, and Templar Classes pages.

Stats and Attributes

Understanding how attributes and skills work can be tricky in advance, but don't sweat it. This will all seem like common sense once you actually get some hands-on play time with Hellgate: London. Also keep in mind that these figures and functions are constantly changing during game development, and will be tweaked right up until the final release.

Also see the Game Mechanics page which which also contains a great deal of additional info on character movement, game physics, and much more basic "how to" type stuff.

Shields, Armor, and Defenses

All characters and most higher level monsters have an inherent shield. This is basically a form of extra hit points; damage first subtracts points from the shield, then once it is exhausted additional damage reduces the character's or monster's hit points. Defense value can be seen in monster hover information, and characters can see their defense value displayed near their hit points and power bars. Damage to shields is graphically displayed with flashes of a "Rune Shield." Player shields are boosted by equipment, stats, and some skills, and have a regeneration rate that can also be boosted in various ways.

In addition to shields, there are also stats for "armor" and "defenses" though these have changed during the game's development. There were initially values for the five types of armor, and the five types of defense. More recently, there is only one armor value in the character stats, and five defenses that correspond to what most RPGs call "resistances". A key difference: Hellgate: London's defensive values are not percentage based. They are absolute values, so you can always add more of a given type of defense, instead of being capped at 75%, or 85%, or wherever.

Hellgate: London also has five "states" or "conditions" that correspond to the five types of damage. These are similar to the state of being poisoned in Diablo II, where your character took initial poison damage, turned green, and continued to take poison damage over time. The effects are more varied in Hellgate: London, and the infection is uncertain as well. Attacks will display their % chance to ignite, or stun. It's not a given that every fire attack will ignite, or every toxic attack will poison. In fact, the odds per modifier are quite low, usually 5% or less. It's not yet known how or if multiple items will stack and improve the odds.

Damage Types

Here are the five types of damage in Hellgate: London and the "states" they can result in. All states can apply to characters or demons.

Physical 

May stun target. Stunned targets can not move or attack.

Fire 

May cause target to ignite, resulting in a loss of 5% of total hit points per second.

Electrical 

May shock target for X number of seconds. Shocked targets are prevented from using any skills.

Spectral 

May phase target. Phased characters/demons take double damage and deal half damage for the duration.

Toxic 

May poison target. Poisoned targets may not heal hitpoint damage. Poisoned characters/monsters may be slowed in movement and attack for the duration.

It's not known how much variety in attacks and defenses monsters will have in Hellgate: London but the Hellgate Team has stated that they want much more variety than existed in Diablo II. In that game virtually every weapon did physical damage, most skills modified the weapon's physical damage, and as a result very few monsters were immune to physical damage. The weapons and skills in Hellgate: London will vary far more in damage type, and while it's unlikely the five types will break down to 20% each, there will be a lot more variety, making it important for characters to defend against all five types, and be able to deal out at least three or four types, to customize their attack for any sort of enemy.

Stats and Attributes

There are four Attributes for all Hellgate: London characters. You will gain five points to spend among these four values every time you level up. Points added to your attributes raise your other stats, at rates that vary between the character classes. Rugged Templars will likely gain more health per point of stamina than magic-using Cabalists, for example. The values and results of more points in these stats have changed many times during the game's development, and will likely continue to change during the beta testing.

Here's the most recent breakdown:

Accuracy 

Points here increase your % chance of Critical Damage and to/hit, as well as damage on some item types.

Strength 

Points here increase your damage with some item types, and may also boost defenses.

Stamina 

Points here increase your hit points and stamina points.

Willpower 

Points here boost your power, as well as armor and defenses.

Strength recently replaced Concentration, and substantially changed the stat's function. Previously Concentration added to your power (mana) points. Now willpower boosts that stat, and Strength has some factor in your damage, which was previously all about Accuracy. Expect further changes.

Requirements

In addition to the stat boosts, points in attributes also allow you to equip better equipment. The blue slider bars below each stat in the character window to the right show how much of a character's allowed points are being used by his equipment. Of his 50 stamina points, 40 are being used by equipment. That means that if he finds a great armor that requires 12 more stamina points, he will be unable to equip it unless he removes something else that requires stamina points, or adds more points to his stamina.

These requirement points are not subtracted from the other bonuses your character receives from the stats. The equipment requirements are separate from the benefit you derive from points in a stat. Points in Stamina, for instance, add to your hit points, and give you stamina points to use on item requirements. Wearing equipment that requires stamina points to equip does not lower your hit points. These are parallel, not overlapping, aspects of the stat points.

The requirement values are cumulative in Hellgate: London. If your helm requires 6 stamina and your belt requires 4, that's 10 of your stamina points gone for those two items. Everything adds up, and equipment and stats must be balanced at higher levels.

Skills and items no longer overlap in requirements. This was the case earlier in Hellgate: London's development, but it is no longer a factor.

"How many skills you can use at once depends on your Concentration level, so every time you level up you can decide whether you want to have a lot of different skills I can use, or do I want to concentrate on some core skills so I can, for instance, carry bigger and better gear. That definitely brings out the meta-game of deciding how your character will turn out."
--Bill Roper, June 3, 2005

As Bill said, in earlier versions of the game, skills and equipment pulled from the same requirements, and you might have had to choose between wearing your Guardian's armor or using his favorite aura. This is no longer the case, and items now pull from the strength and accuracy stats, while skills require points from willpower and stamina. (Subject to further tweaking, of course.)

Respeccing

To respec a character means to re-roll their allocated skill and/or stat points. As of community day, May 2007, there is no respeccing support in Hellgate: London. There was no respeccing allowed in Diablo II either, and the design team seems to feel now as they did then; that respeccing kills the beginning and middle game since it lets players forever rearrange their high level characters rather than working through the game with a new build.

Whether or not a computer game should support respeccing is a hot topic; most RPGs now allow some form of respeccing. Guild Wars permits unlimited character remodeling for an in-game fee, and many other games such as World of Warcraft allow limited respeccing. Whether Hellgate: London should allow it is endlessly debated; see this very long forum thread, for instance. There are points to be made on both sides of the argument.

• Pro-respeccing:
  • Helps players who don't have much time to play try a variety of builds.
  • Keeps characters from being ruined by major changes in patches.

• Anti-respeccing:
  • Cheesy, lazy, unrealistic way to play.
  • Shortens game longevity and crowds the "end game" since players simply alter existing characters instead of creating new ones.
  • Promotes "cookie-cutter" characters since players can instantly switch to the most popular builds.

Those anti arguments apply mostly to full respeccing, where every or almost every skill and stat point can be reused and moved around. Limited respeccing is less divisive, and most players support it if only to provide a fix for accidental button clicks on the skill point screen. How much respeccing to allow is the critical issue, but unless/until Flagship announces something new about the issue, there's not much more to say.

Heads Up Display

The screen in Hellgate: London is wide and largely uncluttered by icons or the GUI (Graphical User Interface). Most everything you need to know while playing can be seen in the top left corner of the screen. Here you see your character's avatar, hit points, power (mana), shields, and the vital stats of your minions.

On the bottom of the screen is more information. To the left and right the functions you have mapped to your left and right mouse buttons can be seen, and in the center of the screen is a quick hotkey bar, as you see here.

In the game's default setup, the top row of your keyboard is the hotkey strip. The 1234567890-= keys can be mapped to do anything, while the F1, F2, and F3 keys control your different weapon switch configurations. To use the hotkeys, open the inventory or skill window, and the hotkey interface will pop up. Then it's simply dragging and dropping the skill you want to use in the slot you want. Spells can be cast directly from those buttons; if your Cabalist has Summon Fire Elemental mapped to the 7 key, then when you press 7 your character will cast the spell. You do not need to map buttons to the mouse clicks, as was the case in Diablo II. You can do so, of course, and it's usually the best way to go with combat skills; ones you're going to be clicking constantly.

A newly-remodelled and streamlined user interface was revealed in April 2007, and can be seen in shots here, here, and here. Further changes and modifications can be expected up to the release date.

Context Dependent Functions

This image shows an outdated version of the interface. See the screenshot immediately above this entry for the current layout, where the shift skill is to the right of the life bulb, next to the #1 slot on the hot bar. The function is the same though; appropriate skills to use at every instant of the game are shown in the shift slot, and by pressing the shift key you activate them. Most often the universal Sprint skill is shown, since just about any time you are not targeting a monster a quick click of shift will make your character run very quickly for a few seconds.

It's when you are targeting an enemy that the context sensitive skills get interesting. The shot to the left shows a skill menu, with three skills visible. The one with two buttons is an active skill, and clicking the lower button will add it to the context sensitive skill list, and allow the game to suggest you use it in appropriate situations. (Passive skills, summoning skills, auras, and so forth do not have two buttons since they can not be added to the context sensitive list.)

Skills must be added to the list to be suggested, and the only default skill is Sprint. Once a skill is on the list, if the game thinks you should use it, it will pop up on the context sensitive list, which defaults to the Shift key. For example, if you add a good melee hit sword skill, and you're in a fight with a monster, that skill will appear mapped to the shift key. If you hit shift, instead of the right or left mouse click you're using for your basic attack, that skill will be used. You can also map all active skills to the hotkeys, but the context sensitive is a way to have one button skill uses.

The Hellgate Team claims the option works very nicely, and that different skills are prioritized intelligently. For instance, the Cabalist Evoker has one spell that works very well against distant targets, one that works best against targets around 8m away, and a spell that is very effective at close range. If you add all three of them to the possible context skills, the game will prioritize logically, and Shift will use the one most appropriate for your situation.

The Control key works the same way, but with potions. The game will suggest you use a med kit, or a power potion, or an antidote, if you need them and you have them in your inventory, and all you have to do is hit the Control key. These potions only appear when you really need them though, so if you want to top off, or drink one in advance of combat, so the potion will refill as you lose points, you'll have to do that from the hotbar.

The point of the context sensitive buttons is to enable players to use a lot of skills (or potions) with a single button. Controls are at a premium in Hellgate: London with the right hand busy with the mouse and the left controlling the avatar's movement with the WASD keys, and the Hellgate Team all seems to enjoy the ability to cast appropriate spells/skills with one click of the Shift key. It seems an odd concept to many new players, but the designers assure us they got used to it and they like it. It will be interesting to see how players take to the control design come alpha and beta testing time.

Interface Wheel

A new addition to the game in mid-2007, the wheel pops up when an item is selected and lets you buy, sell, trade, ID, examine, and more, all with just one or two mouse clicks and no hotkey touches. See the Game Mechanics page for full details and images.

Weapon Switching

When the inventory window is opened, this display is located in the lower middle, above the hotkey bar. To equip weapons, you can drag them to the weapon spots on the paperdoll, or pull them down to the appropriate slots in this interface. the F1, F2, and F3 keys cycle through the 3 weapon switch options. All configurations support one or two weapons, and making regular use of your weapon switch slots will be mandatory for higher level play in Hellgate: London with so many different kids of monsters and damges.

A nice feature is the ability to use the same weapon in more than one configuration.

"It's a bit weird, but the weapon config slots are semi-virtual in that the same weapon can be in more than one weapon config at the same time. Semi because a weapon in a weapon config slot doesn't take up grid space."
--Peter Hu, October 2006

"You can totally duplicate the same weapon across different slots. I do it all the time. Like...

• Bound to F1 I have Ivan's Firesword and a Grappler.
• Bound to F2 I have Ivan's Firesword and a Shield.
• Bound to F3 I have Ivan's Firesword and a Ham Sandwich.
  

--Ivan Sulic, October 2006

In other words, you can use the same weapon in conjunction with other weapons, or alone. If your character had a good Firebrand sword and you were mostly playing with that sword and a shield, but you wanted to carry a stunning Harp Pistol, or a Grappler, for special situations, you could put the Firebrand in the left slot on your F1, and F2, and F3 configurations, pairing it with the shield, HARP pistol, and grappler. You wouldn't need 3 different swords for that, as you did with the weapon switch in Diablo II.

Skills

This section grew so large it had to be moved to its own page. See the Skills information page for full details.

Inventory

Carrying your loot is an important consideration in Hellgate: London. The shape and function of the inventory grid has changed several times during Hellgate: London's development. It looked like this at E3 in 2006; a sort of double grid. The upper, larger squares held one individual item of any type, such as guns, pistols, swords, armor, etc. The smaller lower ones held one small item each, such as mods or health injectors.

This layout didn't last long, and by September 2006 the inventory had changed to look more like the Diablo II inventory. (Image on lower right.) One large grid, with larger items taking up more spaces, and some Tetris-style maneuvering required. Expect more changes; Flagship has talked about adding more space through quests or special items, (there won't be any Horadric Cube for crafting in Hellgate: London, but there might be inventory items that open up for more space) as well as implementing the much-desired "gem bag" concept, where lots of mods and other small items would fit out of the way of larger items in the main inventory.

Note that in both inventories your gold is displayed directly above the items, in a digital readout. The inventory also contains a trash can icon, which is how you drop items in Hellgate: London. It can be confusing at first, if you're used to dragging items and dropping them on the left, but this simply returns the item to where you picked it up in Hellgate: London. To drop something you must drag it to the trashcan. It's not yet clear how trading items will work; there was no interface for that in the show builds we played at E3 and in Flagship's offices in 2006, but trading items with other players will, of course, be supported.

There's also been talk of making some inventory items stackable. As of now there are a few, but only health injectors, town portals, and other such identical items. Not mods though, which all vary in stats and values.

"Right now we do have stackable items, but only for certain things and even then the number that can be stacked is pretty limited -- health and battery packs stack, but I don't believe there are ever more than six or eight in a stack. This is all a very, very minor thing, though. It could change drastically in the next 12 seconds, as far as I know. Weapons, apparel, and mods do not stack, BTW, though I always thought mods should."
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006

Here's Bill Roper talking about an earlier version of the inventory, then adding some interesting tidbits about added storage capacity.

"As far as inventory management, we’re currently using two “sizes” of items – large and small. Large items are things like weapons and armor. Examples of small items include Mods and health packs. We’re constantly playing with the inventory interface, changing how many of each size of item you can carry, how to more effectively access and manage your inventory, and so forth. As the game grows, so does our understanding of what players want to get to in the inventory. User interface design is something that takes a long, long time to get right, so we put UI in very early in Hellgate: London and will probably be tweaking it well through our beta test.

"There are a preset number of inventory blocks for holding items. I believe certain bonuses will add space for your character and I also believe that there will be designated storage areas for stuff you want but don’t really want to haul around. Right now there are 50 slots that hold things in the inventory screen. Some, like those around your body, only hold a specific type of weapon, of course (helmets go on your head). Right now each item in the game also only takes up one slot. And we do not use a weight system, BTW."
--Bill Roper, etoychest Interview, January 11, 2006

As Bill alludes, the Hellgate Team are planning to include a "stash" in town, a sort of secured storage locker that only your character can access. There you'll store extra equipment, things you want to trade or pass on, etc. How large it will be is unknown, and even if we did know it would probably change before the game's release.

Paperdoll

Here you see the progression of paperdoll design during the game's development.

• January 2006.
• January 2007.
• April 2007.

As you can see, there have been changes, and more are likely before the game goes final. The biggest difference over the year of development between these two shots is that the jewelry, implants, and tattoos were removed from the game. Actually, none were ever seen in screenshots, so for all we know they never got past the drawing board. The most recent version, as of June 2007, looks just like the April 2007 shot seen on the far right in the above composite image.

It doesn't affect gameplay, but a cool feature of Hellgate: London is that you can rotate all of the items in the various inventory and paperdoll slots to see how they look from any angle. You just click on the item you want to examine, and when it pops up into the center of the screen you click and drag the mouse around. You can do the same with your character in the paperdoll, to see how your new equipment looks from every angle. And you can use the view option in the game to pan your viewpoint around in every direction; that's what they're doing in so many of the screenshots that are taken from odd angles; watching from the monster's point of view, or from the tip of a sword.

Gold

Whatever you think of the items inventory in Hellgate: London, you've got to like the money management. It's virtually transparent; gold (called paladium, though this may change again) is picked up automatically when you walk near it; you don't even need to click the "F" key as you do to pick up items. It's fun to watch the paladium slide across the ground and cha-ching into your purse as you run past the shining piles.

Your gold total can be displayed right on the main screen, as seen in the shot above. Otherwise, you need to open your inventory and you'll see it listed on the top right of your inventory screen.

There will likely be some upper limits to paladium capacity, but we have no idea how the game economy will work at this point, so we can't even speculate about that. There's been talk of a "stash" in town to store extra loot, but it's not in the game yet so there's no telling if it'll hold paladium, or how much of it. Flagship has been toying with gold penalties upon death, with characters losing more or less gold depending on whether they respawn at their death point, or in town, but details on that are not yet finalized.

Buying items, selling items, and paying for repairs are the main points of gold in most RPGs, and Hellgate: London is no different. We don't know enough about prices and the game's economy to say how much is a lot or a little bit of gold, and we don't know if there will be really good and expensive stuff to buy, or not. Flagship's said they probably won't have gambling in the game, so at this point we have no idea what they'll do to provide some sort of "gold sink" for high level characters. Games need some long term expenses or else gold becomes worthless if high level characters can't buy anything with it. Most RPGs offer gambling, or require continual expensive repairs, or allow players to purchase training from NPCs. Hellgate: London will surely do some of these things, and perhaps all of them, but the late game balancing has not yet begun, so we can only speculate at this point.