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Mods
From Hellgatewiki.com
Contents |
Weapon Mods
Socketable Items were a major feature in Diablo II, and the concept returns, with some changes, in Hellgate: London. Like the runes, gems, and jewels in Diablo II, mods in Hellgate: London have no effect by themselves, but once slotted they add additional magical properties to the weapon they are inserted into.
Slotting mods is simple; just click and drag the mod over a weapon with an appropriate open slot, and drop it in. Mods can be removed at any time, and when you click on a mod, weapons glow green if they have a slot for it and red if they do not.
Mod Types
There are six types of mods (a number that has changed several times during game development) in Hellgate: London. See their individual pages for more details. Or read on.
Flagship's official Hellgate: London page currently lists just five types on the mods page, but lists six, the original five plus tech mods, on the individual weapon pages. Shortly after the official site launched, Ivan Sulic stated that he'd forgotten to include Tech mods on the full listing. We're correcting his oversight here. Each type of mod has a particular set of modifiers, though these are not yet known. None of the melee weapons now listed can hold any Tech, Ammo, or Rocket mods.
An item may have no mods slots, or it may have up to 8 slots for mods. Certain weapon types appear with a particular type of mod more often than the others. Although the names of the mods are different, there is a great deal of overlap in what they can do. For instance, you may find a Battery or a Relic that does +12% Spectral damage.
To remove the mods from your item, use the Delux De-Modificator. The price to remove the mods is the same as if you were selling the un-modded item. Nothing is destroyed in the process, so it pays to use them. It will remove all of the mods at once; you cannot remove them individually.
As you advance in levels, you will find mods that are higher level. Be careful when adding a high-level mod to a high-level item - you don't want to create a modded weapon that it too powerful for your character level. Also, if you de-mod an augmented weapon, the mods may be too low level to put back in the weapon.
General Mods Info
"Almost every type of item in Hellgate: London has a chance to have a slot on it where a specific type of mod can fit. Some items have just one slot while others can have multiple possible places for mods. Just as any item in the game, the potential power of mods increases as the character finds them at higher and higher levels. The structure of modding means that while there are some restrictions on how many and what types can be attached to any item, the variations and level of customization is nearly limitless."
--Bill Roper, Total Video Games Preview, July 6, 2005
"Mods are smaller items such as fuel cells, batteries, relics, ammo, runes, gems, and so forth that modify the abilities of the weapon. Everything from increased range to different damage types to affecting rate of fire and on and on and on can be achieved through adding mods to a weapon. Not every weapon has mod slots, and not every kind of mod fits on a weapon. It is a very simple, but very deep metagame that players can dissect for hours and hours, looking for the perfect combination of weapon and mod effect."
--Bill Roper, etoychest Preview, Jan 11, 2006
Along with providing a tremendous assortment of weapons in the arsenal for each class, including all sorts of magical, rare, and named unique weapons, customization again plays a central part. Early on with our noobie Engineer we started seeing weapons with special slots for enhancements; for the high-level characters, almost every weapon sported multiple spots for them. Upgrades take the form of fuel tanks, batteries, tech mods, rockets, relics, and ammo depending on the type of weapon and what effect they add. Within each category there are a number of different add-ons, and they also come in magic, rare, and unique flavors as well.
--1up.com preview, April 2007
Primarily, mods add damage (of various types) and the amount of damage delivered. A mod could add fire damage, or boost the existing damage on a weapon, or make the weapon more effective by increasing its firing speed or range. Mods work on melee weapons as well, and can add damage, or make a weapon swing faster or cut through armor more effectively. There will be hundreds of types of mod bonuses and thousands of possible values for those mods, and when you consider how they will interact with each other, and with the weapons they are placed in, the possibilities rapidly approach infinity
"Each category of mod can contain a wide variety of individual mods of varying effectiveness and type. So within Relic there may be some kind of Superior +4 Spectral Damage Mod, but there may also be an Inferior +1 Fire Mod. The same goes for all the different mod categories."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
The trick will be to find mods with good stats, and then to use them wisely. Mods aren't all free and fun either; some will have requirements that must be met to equip them, and others might have costs to use, draining your concentration or inflicting other minor penalties once you equip them.
Mod Variety
Flagship has said there will probably be special mods; unique and rare ones, and maybe even set mods. Rare (legendary) mods have been seen in game play, but we don't know about uniques and sets, yet.
The names for different types of mods are kind of similar and we won't understand them very well until we grow more familiar with them in the game.
"Right now they're named a little strangely (and sometimes don't make much sense)... Keep in mind I said the titles for these mods were still placeholder and could be a bit misleading, so that's why it may seem most would only apply to projectile weapons... Right now we have a Holy Grilled Cheese Sandwich you can stick into your gun for a powerup. I kid you not."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
We agreed with Ivan about the strange names. We still do, since none of the names have changed since he made this comment.
Not all mods can fit into all slots.
"All mods obviously do not apply to all weapons, but you'd be surprised how many a melee weapon can hold. Fuel for instance, could also grant a melee weapon toxic spray damage and Rocket could grant a melee weapon an extra explosive effect..."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
These ideas might have been left on the drawing board, since none of the melee weapons now listed with mod slots support ammo, rocket, or tech mods.
"Certain slot types are always included or excluded from certain weapons. Like, a grappler can never have a Fuel mod. The amount of slots on a weapon is randomized, but I don't believe the size of a weapon has anything to do with how many slots are technically possible. I believe all Mods take up just one slot.
"Some weapons may be able to accommodate different combinations of these Mods. So maybe one type of weapon can hold Ammo, Rocket and Relic Mods, but another could hold Fuel, Ammo and Battery Mods. So maybe one weapon can just hold Rocket Mods, but it can hold four of 'em to make a really powerful, but very specific type of weapon. That could happen. Of course, how many Mods a weapon can hold and of what type is one of the things we randomize when we randomize all the weapons."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Mod Function
Mods in Hellgate: London stick into holes in items and add magical modifiers, just as they did in Diablo II, but there are some differences. In Diablo II, there were three types of mods: runes, jewels, and gems. All three could fit into any socket, though they did very different things once socketed. Jewels gave the same bonuses in any type of item, but gems and runes provided different benefits depending on whether you put them into a piece of armor, or a shield, or a weapon. Mods only fit into the appropriate type of mod slot in HGL, but since mods only fit into weapons (at least in the initial game release), the same mod will add the same effect to anything you stick it in.
Another big difference is that in Hellgate: London, mods can be inserted and removed at will. In Diablo II they were in a socket forever, at least until Blizzard introduced a recipe to unsocket items (destroying the mod in the process) in a patch some years after the game's release. Not so in Hellgate: London, and players are encouraged to try out every mod they find, and to swap them in and out regularly.
Modding is meant to be easy, fun, and common. It's not a big decision to slot a mod; just do it and see if you like it, and if not take it out.
Q: Can you mod weapons in combat on the fly, like in the middle of a battle?
A: "You sure can. Right now you can apply any modification to any applicable item at any time. The game does not require any sort of work bench or vendor to allow for this."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Modding is just a matter of clicking and dragging. Click on your weapon when you have your inventory open, and a larger image pops up with the slots. Clicking on a mod item in your inventory shows you what slot it goes into (indicated by a green background), or you can click a mod slot on the weapon to see all the items in your inventory that are compatible. You don't have to worry about finding a cool mod right after you fill its slot -- just drag the mod out of its slot back into your inventory, and that slot is empty again.
Something else Hellgate: London will likely have with Diablo II is the fact that mods will change a lot during beta testing. Mods (jewels, especialy) were tweaked a lot during Diablo II's beta, with some of the top, too-powerful modifiers removed.
The Unsocketing Machine: The Delux De-Modificator
(Update 2007-09-19) While Flagship still wishes to keep changing mods to be simple, they have slightly changed how to remove current mods to an item. You now have to use the Unsocketing Machine in one of the tube stations. The point of this machine is to prevent exploitation. At some point the design team obviously thought about something players have suggested, that macros might be written to enable instantaneous mod switching. Click a hotkey and a 3rd party program pulls 5 mods out of your rifle and puts in five different ones, completely changing the weapon's utility in the middle of a firefight.
The Hellgate Team wants to keep socketing and unsocketing quick, free and easy, but they don't want to allow unrealistic scenarios like the one described above, and making players take a quick trip to town and a quick jog from the portal to the unsocketing machine is their way of accomplishing that.
Mod Evolution
Mods have changed during game development, of course. Their names, their function, everything. They were initially called "relics" until that term became one of the five types of mods.
"There will be many types of relics, but not necessarily specific to armor or weapons. Their effects are more general, and less "tech"-y. For example, they might bump all types of damage, while a fuel mod might only bump fire damage. This is sort of a boring example, but the effects are more magical and universal than the tech mods. Nearly all item and weapon types will come with or could be upgraded to accommodate mod slots. These slots serve as holsters for weapons upgrades including different damage types and effects. For instance, a battery might fit to provide electric damage while fuel could add that needed fire kick to an otherwise spectral damage based weapon."
--Max Schaefer, Game Banshee Interview, October 2005
Changes Over Time
Like most features in Hellgate: London, mods evolved over time. Check out this very early of concept art that shows how mods and mod slots evolved. The details and properties will continue changing right up through the beta, but the basic concept of mods and mod slots looks like it was pretty solid even back then. Note the slot locations for the tech, fuel, and relic mod locations, just as we see in the near-finished game screenshots.
Here's the final game art for the Cluster Rifle, just for the sake of comparison.
You can also see how mods work with a weapon's function. Rocket mods go where the ammo sits, fuel mods fit in the heart of the weapon and increase the propulsion, relic mods are small and get tacked on the back or the bottom, etc.
Another cool piece of concept art shows us how relic mods work.
The following text can be read on the full shot.
The relic slot is a small round socket. Relics can come in many shapes and sizes.
A) They will have a maximum width, so that relics won't overlap each other.
B) Relics can not be placed on the gun closer than this maximum width.
Keep in mind that relics were the original names for mods. Perhaps the earliest idea was that all mods would be relics; fingerbones of saints and dragon's teeth and such, and as they got further into game planning they realized that was too limiting and kind of illogical too. After all, why would a vial of sacred blood make your guided missle fly faster?
Mod Appearance
Can items stack?
"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, March 2006
Mods stacking would be nice for space, but how would it work anyway? You're going to find every type of mod with very different properties, so if you had a stack of 4 fuel mods, how would you see what the stats of each one were? How would you remove one from a stack? There'd have to be some modifications made to the inventory system to allow that, but it certainly sounds like it would be a handy change.
As for how mods look in the game, that's easy. Slotted mods are quite visible in many of the official screenshots; search our keywords for "mods" and you'll get a ton of results, and those are just the shots I tagged because the mods were obvious and clearly visible. That tag will probably become useless once the game is out, since no one will be playing with an item that lacks mods. After all, you can insert and remove them at will, so why would you not mod something unless your character was brand new, or you were experimenting?
For now though, while we're all very new to Hellgate: London, it can be interesting to check out the weapons and see how the mods fit. Sometimes they're very obvious; take this set of shock rifle images.
Here we see three different spark rifles, with different mods. The one on the left has no visible mods at all. The middle rifle has ammo mods (the scopes) on top. The gun on the right has two mods near the back, which we think must be battery mods, since this weapon looks to have a slot for fuel mods right in the center, where that wheel with the blue spots is.
It looks so naked that way! These are obviously fuel mods, so either none of these have rocket mod slots, or they're not socketed, or more likely, the rocket mod goes in underneath, where it can't be seen from this angle.
We don't know what other mods Vulcan Bolters support, but their 1-3 fuel mods are quite obvious. Most shots show them with none, or all three, so we suspect fuel mods drop pretty often early in the game. Here's a vulcan blaster with just one mod, but you can bet it'll have two more before you know it. The prevalance of 3-mod vulcan blasters makes us wonder about randomization of mod slots. Does every vulcan blaster have 3 sockets?
You'll see these fuel mods in a wide variety of colors too; we've seen red, blue, white, purple, yellow, green and more. As to what the mods do and how the colors correspond to function, we can only guess. Green is surely poison, yellow electrical, purple spectral, white physical, and red fire, at least going by the colors those types of damage are listed with in the Character Window. We've got no idea what color a fuel mod with multiple modifers would be, though. The first modifer's color? A mixture?
It's on the left of this spectral pistol, and it looks like a short bone, held in some sort of clamp device and inserted into the top of the weapon by that yellow plug.
Besides how mods look in weapons, they often add a visual component to the weapon's attack. This is clearly seen in stream type weapons, but it will probably be visible in projectile ones as well; it's just a lot easier to capture the stream type in a screenshot, which is what we've got to go with for now.
Here you see a firestarter locked in on a zombie and a minion. The firestarter's own beam is that thick orange one in the center. The smaller beams to the sides are caused by mods in the weapon. We're pretty sure a fuel mod goes in the center of the weapon, but there are likely others we can't see in there too.
Also note that the firestarter's appearance changes with modding. A plain one is drab-metal colored; these have red and blue in the core from a fuel mod, and the lower bar turns red, or blue, or orange once they're modded.
Mod Properties
Mods can have a wide array of different bonuses. The potency of these bonuses is largely based on the item level and quality (rare, legendary etc.) of mod. Some properties stay constant with the item level of the mod they appear on, but others, particularly health and power regeneration properties, add greater bonuses at higher item levels. Below is a list of known bonuses that appear on mods so far. White mods are actually enhanced items, and count as such for the mini-game.
- Health Regeneration: X/Min
- Power Regeneration: X/Min
- +% Chance to release an Electric Discharge when it kills an enemy
- +% Chance to cause a Toxic Nova when it kills an enemy
- +% Chance to cause a Spectral Nova when it kills an enemy
- -X Energy Consumption
- -X Weapon Accuracy Degradation
- +% Shield Penetration
- +% Shield Overload
- +X to Shock Attack Strength
- +X to Poison Attack Strength
- +X to Ignite Attack Strength
- +X to Phase Attack Strength
- +X to Stun Attack Strength
- +X to Accuracy
- +X to Strength
- +X to Stamina
- +X to Willpower
- +% Weapon Accuracy
- +% Increased Range
- +% Increased Damage
- +% Critical Chance Bonus
- +% Critical Damage Bonus
- +X Luck
- +% Chance to spray shrapnel when it hits an enemy
- +% Increased Splash Damage Radius
- +% Electricity Damage
- +% Toxic Damage
- +% Physical Damage
- +% Fire Damage
- +% Spectral Damage
- +% Damage to Beasts
- +% Damage to Demons
- +% Damage to Necros
- +% Damage to Spectrals
- +% Critical Chance Multiplier (Beasts)
- +% Critical Chance Multiplier (Demons)
- +% Critical Chance Multiplier (Necros)
- +% Critical Chance Multiplier (Spectrals)
Mod types
There are six types of mods. As already mentioned, these can all appear as normal, rare or legendary. There are also various rare named mods that are gained as quest rewards or are dropped by specific demons.
Ammo Clips
Ammo Clips modify the type of damage or accuracy a ranged weapon does by providing new types of ammunition. Clips carry rounds whose damage types can be technological or magical in nature. Their ability to derive effects from any of the damage classes makes the Clip Mod highly versatile.
Battery Packs
Battery Packs are the general term used to describe Mods that typically impart different types of damage to a specific classification of item. Various energies stemming from the realms of technology and the arcane are used to charge these Mods, ranging from poison to cold to fire to concussive (or physical) damage types.
Fuel Tanks
Fuel Tanks are the label used for Mods that convey different damage types to weapons. Whether using standard technology, alchemical formulae, or a combination of both, these Mods can cause effects within any of the damage types.
Relics
Relics are ancient objects that contain powerful magical properties. Often considered holy in origin, these are commonly fragments of some greater item whose purpose is lost to antiquity, or even something that came in contact with a person of great ability. The Templar have found ways to bond these relics to their weapons, making them particularly potent against the forces of darkness.
Rockets
Like Ammo Clips, Rockets modify the type of damage or accuracy a ranged weapon does by providing new types of ammunition. Designed for use in heavy weapons, these are rounds whose damage types can be technological or magical in nature. Their ability to derive effects from any of the damage classes give these Mods a high value when fighting the biggest of demons.
Tech
Tech mods are used to increase the range, accuracy, and rate of fire for the guns they're applied to. These mods sound like they could be anything from scopes and silencers to gas-vent recoil systems and pistol auto-fire upgrades.
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