Evoker skills: Full descriptions and ratings

Introduction

Ever grow tired of those ridiculous and naive skill descriptions? Hellfire: "It unleashes the fires of hell to burn stuff!". I think Bill Roper hired the guy behind Ask a Ninja to write those, since they tell you nothing whatsoever about the skill itself. Well, this is what this is here for, I started this as a personal reference to remember the skills that I don't want to invest in for the future.



I used to believe that evokers had all of the super good and powerful skills all waiting for me to learn them at level 30, like how Frozen Orb was like in Diablo 2. Alas, I found out that some of the most powerful Evoker skills are the ones you start with.



Tests were made in Single player in patch 0.1, that means I didn't get to try these skills in group environments, and they could change in some future patch. I plan to add a video for each skill when I have the time and probably write reviews for other classes (and maybe weapons as well). If you wish to add any of the text here to the Hellgate Wiki then feel free to, but it would be nice if you could add a small reference ;)



On a small note, my main language isn't English so read with a grain of salt.

Score System

Scores are out of 10 (0 is crappy, 10 is godly)

• Usability: Is it fun, easy, and effective? How often will you use it?


• Damage: How powerful it is, keep in mind that the focus item is the main damage factor in most skills.


• Utility: Does it do Something?to your enemies that benefits you or your group? How useful? Any tactical usage?


• Upgradability: Does it improve a lot when upgraded? (Spending additional skill points)


• Overall: The overall value of a skill. This is good?or This is crappy and worthless?

Level 1

Word of Fear

Instantly cast a fear nova that sends all foes within 10 meters running away from you.

7 Usability

0 Damage

8 Utility

6 Upgradability

7.5 Overall
Comments: Works very nicely for the beginning of the game, and it can be powerful when invested in. But it does no actual damage and has no guarantees that it’ll actually work. Good in many situations. I personally don’t use it as often as I should.

Firestorm

Rapidly casts short-ranged scattering sparks that cause fire damage (scattering in a cone in the direction the caster is facing). Hold down the mouse button to cast it repeatedly.

8 Usability

8.5 Damage

7 Utility

9 Upgradability



8.3 Overall
Comments: Upgrading it will cause the ignite effect to work almost all the time (You’ll notice this from the first extra point), this means guaranteed death to almost any rare, epic, legendary or boss mob provided you can get in range. Range is the primary issue here, I’ll also add that it consumes a good amount of mana if you’re just holding the mouse button, to conserve mana you should just fire in bursts of 1-2 seconds since that’ll ignite almost everything around you. Even with all that, I find myself using this skill often in many situations.

Spectral Bolt

Fires a spectral bolt that after 0.5 seconds splits into many bolts that move a bit haphazardly, if the single bolt DIDN’T have the time to split then it’ll simply cause the damage of 1 bolt. Every evoker starts with this so just go try it out.

8 Usability

9 Damage

8 Utility

9 Upgradability

8.9 Overall
Comments: Very good skill. Phased foes take 50% more damage and cause 50% less damage, and with this skill at higher levels you’ll phase out almost anything in a single shot. Although the bolts move randomly and can get annoying, they do hurt a good deal of damage

Level 5
Brom’s Curse

2 seconds cast time, cannot move while casting. On cast it unleashes a curse on X enemies within 15 meters for Y seconds. Anyone that causes damage to those cursed mobs will get Z% of his Total HP back, the effect can occur once every 2 seconds per mob (That means u cant fire a machine gun and get infinite health back). Mass enemy damage spells and weapons will work with the curse. E.g. if you cursed 5 zombies and hit them all at the same time, you’ll get 40% of your total HP back, very handy.

7 Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

7 Upgradability

8.5 Overall
Comments: While it is indeed a very powerful curse, the 2 second cast time make it difficult to time especially on fast moving mobs since you could easily die if they get close enough. Also, this isn’t that handy for your everyday evoker since the heal effect won’t restore your shields, it’ll simply forcibly prolong your life. It is, however, very nice when used right. Very useful for Templars in your group though, and probably summoners too.

Drain Power

Channels a beam that automatically locks on ALL enemies in front of the caster. 20 meters range. Each enemy will increase your mana regeneration by X%.

4.5 Usability

0 Damage

4 Utility

10 Upgradability

5.5 Overall
Comments: Not a bad skill, but not good either. It does work very nicely in certain situations where there are lots of mobs cramped together, but I’d rather switch to a gun or mind control weapon if I’m low on mana, or use a powerpack than use this skill. Investing skill points multiplies the effect greatly.

Dual Focus

Passive. Allows you to dual wield focus items. “Two focus items are better than one” as the damage from the other focus item directly increases your total spell damage.

10 Usability

10 Damage

? Utility

6 Upgradability

9.7 Overall
Comments: Upgrading will reduce the willpower feed (The cost of willpower you need to equip weapons/armor/mods). Evokers naturally should have high enough willpower, unless you have very powerful gear that needs amounts of willpower. Some evokers who rather wield a focus item and a gun or mind control device could skip this, but I wouldn’t. It’s a must-learn.

Demonspine

Important Note: DOES NOT require any corpses nearby to use, the official description is very misleading!

Casts a bone spear that travels in a straight line, hitting and penetrating all enemies for 20 meters, and most likely stunning them.

9.5 Usability

10 Damage (Multi mobs) - 8 Damage (Single mob)

7.5 Utility

9 Upgradability

9.3 Overall
Comments: A few points in this and you can stun almost anything besides giants and main event bosses. The best part about this skill is that as mobs come (and as you run away from them) they automatically align in a vertical line, allowing you to use 1-3 shots to stunlock and kill them all without breaking a sweat! A monster of a skill.

Venomous Spirit

Fires a long range, slow moving homing (specter-like) projectile.

? Usability

8 Damage

? Utility

? Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: It is good but the slow projectile speed can get frustrating. And the fact that it only hits 1 monster is enough to give this a bad rating. I need further testing to see how useful this really is. I can imagine it being a little viable for PvP, but I’d certainly invest in arc legion for that.

Level 10

Arcane Shield

Enter a stance where you’re unable to move but have increased maximum shields. Effect wears off as soon as you move.

? Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

? Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: I can imagine this being useful in certain situations, like when you’re locked on with lightning beams from those floating eye thing mobs and you want to nuke em down. Other than that, I much prefer mobility if I want to survive, standing still and taking the hits isn’t really a cabalist job..

Spectral Lash

Channels a spectral beam that causes damage. Must recast spell when target dies or is lost from sight (Annoying to do). Spectral Lash Mastery upgrades this skill.

5 Usability

7 Damage

? Utility

6.5 Upgradability

6.8 Overall
Comments: Only focuses on 1 target at a time. Upgrading the skill will cause it to have a really long range, sort of an sniper-killer kind of thing as it hits really far and doesn’t need aiming. I’m yet to see the usefulness of this skill, as arc legion bests this in everything besides range.

Lightning Field

Throws a ball of lightning (Infinite range) that travels like a grenade and explodes on impact, causing the floor to have an electric field that lasts for 5 seconds (approx.). Current game mechanics allow only 1 floor damage effect to exist at a time, that means you CANT stack lightning fields.

8 Usability

? Damage

? Utility

4.5 Upgradability

8.0 Overall
Comments: Combine this with Brom’s Curse for excellent HP recovery. A very good skill all in all and can be key in certain low HP / low speed mob situations, like when fighting Zombie Summoners. No cooldowns, low mana cost, and its grenade-like throwing makes this a rather useful skill. Just not so useful against fast moving things that don’t like to stand still.

Bone Shards

Important Note: DOES NOT require any corpses nearby to use, the official description is very misleading!

Instantly (as fast as word of fear) damages enemies within a 10 meter radius around the caster, likely stunning them. 8 second cooldown.

6 Usability

9 Damage (Multi) - 6 Damage (Single)

? Utility

8 Upgradability

7.4 Overall
Comments: A better version of word of fear that causes decent damage, but more risky. Fear causes mobs to move away, giving you an opening. Stun just makes them sit there and block your exits, while the rest rotate around you and beat you to death. Plus the fact that most melee mobs have higher stun resistances than the rest will increase the risk factors. Still, the skill is good to pick up if you invested in Demonspine.

Level 15

Drain Life

Channels a bolt that causes little damage and restores your life by X per second. It’s harder to lock on multiple targets than its predecessor.

5 Usability

3 Damage

? Utility

8.5 Upgradability

2.5 Overall
Comments: I hate this skill, I’d use brom’s curse if it wasn’t instant. As far as I’ve tested it doesn’t technically DRAIN life, it just heals you and causes some very low amount of damage. I’d imagine this being useful if you’re trying to skip a batch of mobs by spraying this as you pass and praying that you live to reach the portal. Health Injectors are there for a reason even if they do have a 10 second cooldown.

Summon Ember

1 second cast time. Summons 1 elemental creature to assist you in combat.

8 Usability

7 Damage

? Utility

7.5 Upgradability

8.2 Overall
Comments: No pre-requirements greatly increases the overall value of this skill. And since the pet basically causes extra damage for no direct mana cost, its pretty handy to have, provide it doesn’t run around killing itself (sadly that happens often). Its one of those “Why the hell not?” type of skills, just a bit of a hassle to cast every now and then. I heard that his damage scales with the character level, but I haven’t been keeping an eye on his progress much.

Flameshards

Launches X number of flame spikes in a chinese fan-spread like way in front of the caster, each spike will explode after about 1.5 seconds. Spikes can stick to monsters, and on cast they’re not evenly distributed. (e.g. sometimes all spikes appear on the right most side). 20 meters range.

8.5 Usability

9.3 Damage

? Utility

9.5 Upgradability

8.5 Overall
Comments: Good range, no cooldown, lots of fun! Use this on the frontline of a huge army and you can easily blow the first few lines away. Although I’d typically use Demonspine, this is more useful if the enemy is approaching you in a horizontal formation. Also, while almost all spikes can stick to a giant mob or boss to cause good damage, its usually better to use Firestorm to get the ignite effect on. You can also cast spikes on the floor and time the explosions to do a good deal of damage to an incoming force.

Venom Armor

Instantly creates a Venom Armor around you that increases your armor value, and whenever you take any hit unleashes a single swarm of locusts (sometimes more, unconfirmed) that home to nearby enemies and damage them.

7 Usability

7 Damage

? Utility

8 Upgradability

7.6 Overall
Comments: Decent. Just the high mana cost that bothers. Should be an interesting combination with Brom’s Curse and other spells, but I’m yet to test that kind of approach.

Level 20

Concentrate Damage

Blink

Tempest

Skullsplitter

Coming soon…

Level 25

Afterlife

Elemental Drain

Coming soon....

Spectral Lash Mastery

Passive. Causes a small explosion on an enemy killed by Spectral Lash, can only happen once every 2 seconds.

8 Usability

5 Damage

? Utility

7.5 Upgradability

6.7 Overall
Comments: While it’s passive and free, the explosion is rather small and weak, and not worth using Spectral Lash for it. Just wait for Arc Legion and use that if you really like homing beam attacks.

Swarm

Throws a green ball that travels like a grenade and explodes upon collision, causing the floor to have a swarm field of damage that lasts for 7 seconds (approx.). Works almost exactly like Lightning Field, but with a cooldown.

9 Usability

10+ Damage (Multi) - 9 Damage (Single)

? Utility

7 Upgradability

8.7 Overall
Comments: A powerful spell, while it does have a cooldown and a big mana cost, the damage it does is very high. Just pray that you throw the ball somewhere near a floor or the effect is wasted. Also, don’t use Lightning Field with this as it will override the swarm field.

Level 30

Hellfire

First, a white beam appears for 2 seconds so you can point where to strike. After 2 seconds, a red glyph appears on the floor, and after about 3 seconds, a meteor strikes the glyph causing a good amount of damage and burning the floor for about 4 seconds. No cooldown.

3 Usability (Opinion may vary)

10 Damage

? Utility

6.5 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: Situational. This skill would be a TON better if they remove the annoying 2 second wait on the white aiming beam and just get on with the meteor shower. Huge mana cost on this spell, but upgrading it will solve the issue. I can’t rate it yet (or ever) until I test this fully in multiplayer and see how powerful it can get on stationary mobs.

Arc Legion

Multiple lightning beams appear and lock on nearby enemies, usually all beams focus on 1 enemy but they can focus on multiple enemies if they’re close enough. Costs a fixed amount of mana per beam only when its in range and doing damage.

10 Usability

9.5 Damage

9 Utility

6.5 Upgradability

9.1 Overall
Comments: Automatic lock-on for easy targeting. Powerful, and acceptable mana cost. Its short range is absolutely not an issue, and if it was then a few extra skill points will fix the problem. Can shock your target very quickly, and you can cast this skill even if you’re shocked (in fact, you can cast all lightning type magic when you’re shocked). This skill is almost perfect except that its generally not good against waves of cramped up mobs as the other evoker skills, and not nearly as good as Firestorm on bosses that have high HP (Due to the Ignites). I can imagine this skill being the most popular PvP skill in all of Hellgate, I’d like to try it in a duel.

Level 20

Concentrate Damage

Enter a stance that allows you to deal X% extra damage.

8 Usability

9.5 Damage

? Utility

9 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: An excellent way to start attacking something unaware of you, combine it with enough power and you’ll kill things before they get to you. But don’t be Rambo about this and start moving if it gets dangerous. I’m sure this skill has its priceless moments in party play, like when you have a good guardian. The only downfall is its 10 second cooldown.

Blink

Causes you to instantly teleport a few meters ahead. If there’s a wall blocking you then it won’t work and won’t cost you any mana or trigger the cooldown.

? Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

7 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: This is strictly down to your style of play. It’ll teleport you ahead, either saving or killing you in the process. But it can be amazingly useful in skipping rooms when used right. In my personal opinion, learn it since it has no pre-requirements, you never know when it’s handy.

Tempest

About 3 seconds cast time. When done, creates a thundercloud that’s about 20 meters wide and lasts for roughly 15 seconds (Can’t remember exact time). Any monster that goes near the cloud will get zapped with a powerful attack. The cloud has 3-4 zaps (Again, not very sure) that shoot at the first enemy, and each one of those zaps has its recharge time of about 3 seconds. So it’s not exactly mass damage (AOE), it’s just a cloud that has mini lightning turrets zapping 1 monster at a time.

8 Usability

9.5 Damage

7 Utility

8.5 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: Very powerful skull, albeit slow and painfully hard to pull off right. It totally depends what you’re up against, and it should prove to be much stronger in party play. If you’re up against slow moving melee targets, one Tempest will make a difference.

Skullsplitter

Throws a fast moving, small ricocheting ball of bone that after 1.5 seconds explodes into X number of instant hit splash damage bone bullets. The explosion from these bullets has a good radius, but the direction they travel in is hard to spot, my best guess is a wide cone in the direction the original ball was heading to. Note that if the original ball hits a monster then it won’t explode and instead cause very little damage. When used right, it can cause ridiculous amounts of damage.

? Usability

? Damage(Varies greatly)

? Utility

9 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: Very hard to pull off, or maybe I need a lot more practice using it? I can’t say that its good or bad, I can only say that if you throw a high level Skullsplitter into a small room and HOPEFULLY the ball didn’t hit anyone in its way there, there’s a good chance everything in there will be dead. Personally, I think Hellfire is easier to pull off than this. But with enough practice, Skullsplitter can be very devastating even if it lacks the stun power from its predecessors. I think the key to using this is how you ricochet the shot, need more experimenting..

Level 25

Afterlife

2 seconds cast time, cannot move. Drains the life of every corpse around you in a 10 meter radius, restoring X HP per corpse drained.

5 Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

4 Upgradability

5.4 Overall
Comments: Free instant HP recovery, but absolutely not necessary. As an evoker you shouldn’t be taking damage that burns through your shields that often, and even if you do, you can simply use a healthpack or something. It can be handy in certain situations, like if there are waves of mobs spawning on top of each other, and I can imagine this skill being handy, or key, for some high HP / armor Evoker builds. This skill could actually useful in battle if it was instant and its energy cost was lower, or even zero

Elemental Drain

Starts channeling a beam into your target for 3 seconds, you CAN move while it’s casting. When the channeling is done, you gain X% Elemental Defenses and reduce the target’s Elemental Defenses by Y%. Both effects last for about 7 seconds, 20 meters range.

7.5 Usability

9.5 Damage

10 Utility

9.5 Upgradability

8.9 Overall
Comments: Wow! Absolutely powerful and amazing to use on any stubborn creature, albeit costs a good sum of mana. I love the fact that you’re able to move as you’re casting. Every party play or boss hunting Evoker is advised to learn and maximize this skill!

Hellgate on GOTY List

The end of the year always brings ou tthe GOTY awards and Gamespy posted their list for PC Roleplaying game. No surprisew which title took the top spot but it was nice to see Hellgate making it into the top 10 at number six ahead of more recently released titles such as Tabula Rasa and even GuildWars. The full list below:

Hellgate London E-Card from IAH

The South East Asian Hellgate London publisher IAH has posted up an E-Card on their website that you can send to your friends to wish them all the best for these festive hollidays!

The cards feature the upcoming Hellgate London figurines that will be released in 2008.

So head over to the IAH site, and fill out your friend’s details to send them the card!

Video Game Review: Hellgate: London

The general premise behind Hellgate: London (HG:L) is that the world has been overrun by a demonic invasion and there’s a group of survivors holed up in London’s various subway stations trying to survive. It’s produced by Flagship Studios, formed from many former Diablo developers, and published by EA

The Good

HG:L is very much the spiritual successor to Diablo, and therefore can best be described as “hack and slash”. For much of the early goings, you will be charging through a horde of beasts, demons and zombies merrily shooting, casting or slashing them into tiny bits and collecting all sorts of gear along the way. It does capture a lot of that old spirit “just another level real quick” feeling of Diablo despite the new setting.

The interface is a bit sparse, but functional. Your health and shields are shown on one side, mana…excuse me, POWER on the other with your skill buttons in the middle. A great many conventions of the user experience have been taken from World of Warcraft (which arguably took them from Diablo, of course) so if you have any sort of familiarity with that game you should be able to navigate the interface pretty easily without directions. Exclamation marks denote quest-givers, item quality is denoted by color, and so forth. While not original perhaps, they are a good standard to base around nonetheless.

Gameplay revolves around clearing out various levels, most randomly generated. While generally some variation of ruined cityscape, Flagship has tried to present at least some variety in the levels with pseudo-RTS play or specialty levels where it’s pitch-black save a provided light. Monsters and static objects (which can be smashed) all have a chance to drop items, but unlike many RPGs, there is no pressing need to swap out items all the time. At stations, you can “upgrade” your weapons to improve their stats or add new abilities to them, theoretically allowing you to keep a favored weapon for as long as you want to use it. The upgrades are paid for through both money and materials which you obtain from breaking apart unwanted items.

Graphically the game looks nice, though obviously a better card translates into better graphics. The armor and weapons for the three different factions is very distinct and well-done, and the monsters will give you a feeling that you are indeed fighting something otherworldly. There are also some very nice animation effects, such as a zombie having chunks of blown off by weapons fire until it’s just a pair of legs charging at you. One great graphical feature is that armor can be colored to present a uniform scheme, eliminating the “I lost a fight with a clown tent” appearance common in games such as the aforementioned World of Warcraft. It’s a small detail, but appreciated that in the future they have not lost the ability to use paint.

Another major point on the game is that while it has a Singleplayer version, you’ll almost certainly want to play the multiplayer and tackle the dungeons with your friends. This multiplayer has many interesting ideas in the genre, such as the subscription model. You can play HG:L online, for free, forever. Of course, you won’t gain the benefit of all the new content they put out unless you subscribe, but you’re not obligated to pay unless you feel what they’re giving you warrants it. This is a nice feature, as people can see how the company behaves for as long as they feel they need to before forking over more money. Don’t think it’s worth it to shell out the fees ($9.99 a month as of this writing)? Then don’t until you see something you feel is worth the money. It’s an interesting model, to say the least.

The game also includes Xbox Live-ish “achievements” for various things such as slaying X amount of monsters, accumulating Y amount of money or more esoteric ones such as the Templar-only achievement of killing the end boss with a cricket bat. A nice feature, if mildly pointless, but it does give you smaller sub-goals to focus on while trying to get through the game. It’s also a chance for them to show some humor with their “I really hate boxes” achievement you gain for smashing the little blighters in search of the elusive “phat lewtz.”

The Bad

Right now the biggest knock against the game is that it’s more than a little repetitive. There’s currently a finite number of tilesets and structures, and the more you play the more you’ll see these repeat themselves. Monsters, too, suffer from this as your enemies tend to simply be re-skinned versions of what you fought previously. There’s some variety in their abilities, but once you get past the first few levels you see fewer and fewer new enemy models popping up. This too is similar to Diablo, but can be a put-off all the same.

Another big problem is the lack of what some would consider “core MMO functionality” in the multiplayer segment. Things like an Auction House or in-game mail system are currently not in the game, and the guild management options are almost totally inadequate. However, Flagship has stated that these things are at the top of their priority list for inclusion into the game. Even so, this can wreck the game for many people, so it’s definitely bad.

Monster AI, at least on the basic level, is also woefully bad. It is entirely possible to wipe out whole swathes of enemies by running backwards and holding down the mouse button (for a ranged class at least). While some enemies have interesting tactics from time to time, for the most part it will simply be a slaughter of epic proportions. It’s good for the ego, perhaps, to be a whirlwind of destruction (which is admittedly the point of hack-n-slash), but every so often it just feels like you’re stomping on kittens. I hear this isn't as hideous on the harder difficulties, but since you can only do one at the start, it is worth mentioning.

The most grievous sin (in this reviewer’s opinion) was the inclusion of the most reviled portion of Diablo: Inventory Tetris. Sure, you have the six squares needed to pick up that legendary rifle, but because they’re not in the correct shape you have to juggle around your inventory until it will fit. While it’s quaint and familiar at first, it rapidly descends into the “tiresome” realm. It’s a minor quibble in the grand scheme, but it’s one that crops up with such regularity that it’s probably the most prominent issue with the game’s design. No word from Flagship on if that will be remedied.

The Ugly

Some of the uglier portions of the game would be the chat interface. While it got great improvements with their most recently released patch, it’s still a very large, clunky…thing. It gets the job done after a fashion, but it’s just very confusing to figure out at a glance. Nothing insurmountable, but annoying.

The level randomness that’s one of HG:L’s nicer features can also come back to bite it as it doesn’t appear that it has any “safeguards” on the random portion. This can lead to the puzzling situation where your quest will involve you going across multiple zones, but the entrance into the level from the station is, quite literally, across the hall from the exit to the next zone. While you’re likely to go around slashing away at the whole level in search of loot and XP, it is quite disconcerting.

Another issue is the temperamental respawn mechanics. When you log in and enter any level, logging out and going back into it will present you with an entirely new level. Fair enough, but the respawns on levels when you have NOT logged out seem murky at best. Sometimes you’ll return through levels you’ve cleared a half hour or more ago to find them wholly deserted still, others you’ll walk back to find them fully re-populated mere minutes later. This is especially fun when you were exploring a hellrift and return to find monsters all over the portal that kill you before the screen has fully rendered them…but I’m not bitter.

Talents…sorry, SKILLS, are another issue. The explanation on skills does not always give a good idea of how useful a given skill will be, or at what level of investment you see returns. For example, Blademasters have a “Charge” ability that is generally regarded as a “one point wonder” meaning it’s good to put one point into it, but further investment is largely a waste even if it goes up to 10 possible points. This, combined with a lack of a respec mechanism, makes the game very unforgiving of not doing research on these skills beforehand as you can pump points (of which you will only have 49 to distribute as you see fit) into something that seems good, but turns out to be useless. Whether respeccing will be included in a future patch is still up for debate.

The Gryph Factor*

HG:L is currently very low on Gryph Factor. There are no API for user addons, and there’s very little information available outside the game currently. Their web assets are very lackluster and there’s a minimum of “geeking out” that can be done over the game in its present state. This would make for one very sad Gryphon.

Overall

If you miss the days where you could get a couple buddies and charge into a dungeon without having to worry about “who’s the tank?” or “we need a healer” or “Damnit, the boss didn’t drop my item again” then HG:L will undoubtedly be a breath of fresh air. It’s familiar enough to Diablo/WoW players that the learning curve for them will be almost non-existent, and it captures the spirit of “hit stuff on the head until it doesn’t move anymore and then take their stuff”. It’s not a WoW-killer, or a blockbuster mega-title but between the gameplay and the support that Flagship has shown thus far it’s still a solid buy. The jury is still out on their long-term appeal, as that relies heavily on what their patches hold in store.

Control Freaks - David Glenn Interview

While this video is hosted on “My Video Daily” website, it was conducted by Control Freaks with David Glenn, at one of the recent game conferences.

The video shows an ad at the start so wait through that.

It starts off with the familiar trailer of Hellgate, then David comes on. He talks of how the studio started, talks of how many people they have, of Mythos, Ping0, how they progressed through making the game as well as their cinematics.

It is a good interview, and while no new information on the game is provided, it is still full of information on the company.

Hellgate London - Biggest Disappointment of the Year?

Primotech has published their game of the year awards for 2007, and they list Hellgate London as their most disappointing game of 2007.

Hellgate London is not a bad game, but it is the biggest disappointment of the
year.

The title showed so much promise: it was to be the first major
project from Flagship Studios, the newly created team staffed by high level
ex-Blizzard employees. With a game this similar to Diablo created by the people
who actually made Diablo, we can’t help but make comparisons, and unfortunately,
that’s where Hellgate falls well short.

The game lacks the same
addictive quality that made Diablo what it was. To top it all off, the fee
structure is unusual, to say the least. Not only do players have to shell out
full price for the game, but also need to pay a monthly fee if they don’t want
to be at a disadvantage when playing online.

And, if you were one of the
unfortunate souls to have paid for all of that, your online character may have
been suddenly wiped clean shortly after the game’s release.

You’ll
notice that we haven’t posted a review of the game. It’s because none of us have
been able to bring ourselves to play long enough to actually write one. Here’s
hoping that 2008 brings a better offering from Flagship.

Hellgate for the Holidays

Flagship Studios has sent out a newsletter wishing season’s greetings and providing details on what’s to come in the new patches. Here are its contents, in case you didn’t receive it:


Fellow Hellgaters,

The leaves have long since fallen, snow coats the ground, and the temperature is cold enough to freeze Sydonai’s tentacles off. The master of Earth’s Burn is not pleased. But we sure are! How could we not be? This is our first post-release newsletter!

Below, please find the latest HG:L happenings.

Multiplayer Patch 0.7
As the players who participated in our Test Center server found out earlier today, the 0.7 content update will be launching for both the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers this week.

Big additions in this patch include a massive memory usage fix, Nightmare difficulty rebalancing, and a new “Looking for Group” interface.

A number of notorious bugs were also squashed in this build. Impassible maps and quest monsters that refused to spawn are a thing of the past.

With 0.7 subscribers can enjoy additional content in the form of the Transmogrifier — an item used for extra inventory and recipe crunching — and twelve new unique items.

Bill & Stonehenge
Curious about Hellgate: London’s first major ongoing content release for subscribers? It’s what we call the Stonehenge Expansion and Bill Roper is here to fill you in…

“We’ve decided to take the time necessary to make our first major content patch
right. If there is one lesson we’ve learned from launching Hellgate: London, our
releases should be a question of “what” and not “when.”

We were pushing
to get Stonehenge released before the end of the year, but we realized that we
wouldn’t be doing the right thing to push it out before it was ready and
properly tested. We’re still on our schedule and meeting our original promise of
providing a major quarterly update. We just felt that we would be doing everyone
a disservice to push this out before it was right.

We are, however,
going to have the first in our continuing Hellgate chronicles, entitled
Stonehenge, into Test Center before the holidays. This is so we can get a lot of
people finding the issues and getting us feedback over their holiday breaks.”

– Bill Roper

If all goes well, you’ll see the Stonehenge Expansion hit the Test Center this week, with the full release scheduled to launch in January.

Single Player Patch 0.6
Hellgaters who prefer solo play have been eagerly awaiting this news… SP 0.6 is now available. Some major fixes include issues with the mini-game, quest items, and unique drops. Fresh content includes rebalanced skills, more chests in secret areas, and user interface tweaks. These adjustments match SP to MP 0.6 and shall greatly improve your single player experience

So Long!
From everyone here at Flagship Studios (yes, even Sydonai), we wish you all the best this holiday season and we hope 2008 sees you all safe and well. See you online!

HellgateLondon.com - MP Patch 0.7 Tomorrow, Patch 1 Preview is Online

Scapes, Flagship Studios’ Community Manager, published two announcements today, and I just cannot decide which one is more exciting.

First, the 5th Multi Player patch, 0.7, will be available tomorrow, one day late due to a small chat bug.

You, our active and dedicated Hellgaters, have been remarkably patient. This
morning, I received an update on Patch 0.7 saying that a new issue had been
discovered. The Global chat was showing up in the Guild and Party chat panes, a
bug that would render partying and guild play rather difficult. In order to
deliver a sound product free of known defects, Patch 0.7 has been delayed by a
day.

While you wait for the patch, why not try Patch 1.0 ? Yes, as an extra early Christmas present, Flagship Studios has released a preview of the first big content update ! Just log on to the Test Center to get a taste of the “Stonehenge Chronicles”:

We just couldn’t help ourselves. All this holiday cheer got to our heads, so we
put something special in your Test Center stocking… It’s just a little something
we call the Stonehenge Chronicles. We’re hoping you’ll all check it out and have
a good one on us.

Single Player Patch 0.6 and New HG:L Launcher

Saying that people were looking towards this announcement would be an understatement. Finally, the 0.6 single player patch has been released ! Lots of fixes inside

And to introduce the new patch, an updated version of the Hellgate: London launcher has been released. Just click on the “Updates available” button and this all-new launcher will install itself. Here is what it looks like (main menu, patch menu, patch menu while downloading SP 0.6):












Just in time for Patch 1.0, with its 300MB which would have been quite a hassle to download through the previous system !

First Stonehenge Pics - Hanbitsoft

The Korean publisher for Hellgate London has today published a whole set of screenshots and concept art of the upcoming Stonehenge area, as well as some new items. While the text is in Korean, there are a lot of pictures to look at. There was also a video that was shown at the presentation, but that is not for the public for now.

The new areas look amazing, and will hopefully get implemented in the game soon!

HGL Fan Interview

The official Hellgate London has posted up an interview with HGG member Doffy, who was one of the winners of the Halloween competition. This is the first of three interviews with the three winners.

What inspired you to create your submission?

For the first part of the
video: The thought of people continuing to try and trick or treat in
Hellgate:London’s setting was amusing to me.

For the second part: The
gods of sarcasm.

What did you use to create it?

Software: Fraps,
and Sony Vegas 6.0

Otherware: Clay Gootgeld and his beautiful voices.

How long did it take to complete your submission?

Two nights of
capturing/voice acting/editing. Not to mention the 3 years of preproduction.

Have you ever won grand prize in a contest before?

RL? Yes. A
few paintball tournaments. Non-RL? HG:L Halloween contest

Patch 0.7 and 1.0

Flagship programmer Cellwind has told us some information on Patch 0.7 and 1.0. For one thing, there will be no 0.8 or 0.9, they will jump directly to 1.0. It seems like we will finally have a TestCenter in Europe soon as well.

Vaevictus: Thanks for being patient. I'm pretty sure we had planned on having
the 1.0 patch out by now.

0.7 and 1.0 patch are right on top of
eachother at this point. We have 4 different branches going at the same time and
they are all competing for test time and TestCenter usage. We've got the single
player patch, 0.7 patch, 1.0 patch and the latest branch.

As far as I
know, we should have 0.7 out early next week and have 1.0 on TestCenter about
the same time. When 1.0 gets released depends on what issues we find and how
long it takes to fix them. If there are no problems for a few days then I
imagine it would get released the following week.

HellgateDigger Online!

HellgateDigger.com is now open for first public testing and we are wanting you to go test it out. This is the latest Community Driven project here at Hellgate IncGamers and with your input this could be a very useful resource. We have started things off with a few bits and pieces but it needs the community to help out.

This complete database for the game will grow over time and we have worked hard at making the information input as complete as possible including shots and user comments as well as all the stats you would expect to find in a database.

Cellwind Gives Updates on Patch Status

Flagship Studios programmer Cellwind has dropped some status updates about the release for the upcoming patches 0.7 and patch 1.0 on the official forum in a thread that addresses the issue of the game’s out-of-memory issues and his progress on dealing with it.

Here are some of the things he’s mentioned regarding the upcoming patches:

DK_Lond: Sorry for the lack of communication. We would have released 0.7 patch
this last week, but we thought there was a problem with the server code which
turned out to be nothing. At first we turned off the new allocators, but that
didn’t fix it. After what looked like a 5x increase in memory usage per user, it
turned out that our stress test code wasn’t simulating any users logging out. It
should be out Monday or Tuesday.

…

Vaevictus: Thanks for being patient. I’m pretty sure we had planned on having
the 1.0 patch out by now.

0.7 and 1.0 patch are right on top of
eachother at this point. We have 4 different branches going at the same time and
they are all competing for test time and TestCenter usage. We’ve got the single
player patch, 0.7 patch, 1.0 patch and the latest branch.

As far as I
know, we should have 0.7 out early next week and have 1.0 on TestCenter about
the same time. When 1.0 gets released depends on what issues we find and how
long it takes to fix them. If there are no problems for a few days then I
imagine it would get released the following week.

…

mjollnerus: I think it’s a case of fear of the unknown. FMOD releases a new
build like every 2 weeks, so the fear is that taking a new build to fix known
issues could introduce greater unknown issues. The majority of our test effort
has been directed at patch 1.0, so it was thought best to put the new FMOD drop
there where it would get the most testing. As Summer says, we’re skipping the
version numbers from 0.7 to 1.0 patch, so there won’t be a 0.8 and 0.9 patch.
There should only be a week between the 0.7 and 1.0 patch.

1001 Facts of Hellgate: London

Well, not quite as few as 1001 facts, but the HellgateWiki.com now features 1001 content articles!

Obviously, there are a LOT more than 1001 pages, but there are about 1001 pages with enough content to be considered a "proper" article; such as a Class, NPC, Item, Weapon, Quest or Skill. The whole Wiki contains 3329 pages, but many of those are stubs or talk pages (Wikis' equivalence of a Forum or comments page) and 1586 uploaded files. What all these numbers actually mean is that it's the best source of information for Hellgate: London, and that we, as a community of Wikians, are quite darn proud of it!

A Wiki is an open-ended project of a community, in this case the Hellgate community, and we would love to be able to eventually give ALL information there is about Hellgate: London to anyone that is curious about the game. The first 1001 articles is a big step in the right direction. Anyone can help, even if it is just a spelling error or a minor Data Gathering number added, and who knows, you might get hooked on the Wiki-ing!

Thanks BSTL, Crichhhhwwt, Cydira, Dark Matter, GoodWill, Mileron, Pixelz, PtViper, Tenera, TheEnemy and Xodusness for your frequent and high quality contributions, and a BIG thanks to the hundreds of users that have contributed with a statistical number, skill addition, screenshot or spelling fix during the last few months! Lets go make it even better!

Missed out on the Founder’s Offer?

This is the last month to be eligible for the Founders Offer as the offer only lasts up until December 31st. For those of you who aren’t in the know, the Founders Offer allows you to pay a one-time payment of 150 USD for a lifetime subscription to Hellgate: London instead of monthly payments.

After the end of the month, you will no longer be able to get the founders offer. Please keep in mind you don’t need to subscribe for online play, but if you’re interested in the perks of subscription and on-going content, then this is definitely worth looking into.

Missed out on the Founders Offer? You can still get yours with a pre-order from bGosu.com.
You can grab the Pre-Order from the site which includes a Founders Offer eligibility offer where you can pay for the founders offer and attain a wasp dye kit for all of your characters.


Details:

The wasp dye kit can’t be traded and will always be with your character(s) even
if you make a brand new character they will obtain a wasp dye kit in their
inventory.

Only those who with a pre-order registered account are viable
to the limited-time founders offer.

You can add a ‘pre-order’ badge to
your account from the hellgatelondon.com website into your account there after
signing in at anytime, but the founders offer must be paid for before December
31st of 2007 to obtain the Founders Offer.

Also, if you just wanted the
wasp dye kit and didn’t want founders offer you can get that too. You can add
all 4 different pre-order dye kits to 1 account. It’s certainly a great looking
dye kit for those of you with bland colors. Metalic black with gold pipe lining
and patterns make for a kickass scheme.

Game Informer Reviews Hellgate London

The Game Informer magazine has reviewed Hellgate London in it’s current issue.
They talk of the games positives such as the gameplay, items, randomly generated levels, however also mention the negatives such as the repeated quests and areas as well as HGL being more of a good Co-Op game rather than an MMO. They do say that what the game does well, it does very well, but it’s bad points is that it doesn’t venture too far out of its scope.

All in all, Game Informer gives Hellgate London 8.5/10 and gives the following points:

Concept: Apply Diablo style leveling and loot grinding to a 3D rendered post
apocalyptic vision of Earth

Graphics: Quite nice, especially the variety
with which you can customise your avatar’s appearance via equipment

Sound: Voiceover are good, but the effects grate after a while and the
music annoyingly only plays about 15 percent of the time

Playability:
The action is fast, interface smooth, and loads short

Entertainment: You
won’t find better level and loot grinding anywhere, but that’s about all this
offers

Replay Value: High

It then goes on to say that you can play the game free, and if you fall in love with it, it’s well worth the $10 per month to become a subscriber.

PC Powerplay Reviews Hellgate London

PC Powerplay, an Australian gaming magazine has published a review of Hellgate London in their most current issue. While we do not have scans, we actually don’t publish scans on this website anymore, so don’t expect to see them. However HGG member Darksabre posted a summary of the article that I will now shamelessly copy and paste here!

The two-page review features six screenshots, a boxout of classes and a few
pictures regarding the skill tree, inventory and world map.

Quotes from
the article:

POSITIVES:
“If you like action RPG’s you should buy
this game. If you like FPS games, you should buy this game. If you like RPG/FPS
games, you should probably start cancelling your social committments for the
next six months”

“Killing baddies is the heart of the game, and it’s
both visuall appealing and fun in a classic Quake kind of way: the difficulty is
pitched just right”

“Hellgate is a wonderfully deep, wonderfully
balanced Diablo 2 ripoff”

NEGATIVES:
“The side quests are uniformly
awful, presented 1997 style, as poorly written text over poorly written
dialogue, and the central plot isn’t much better”

“But Hellgate wants 28
different kinds of magical pants, and couldn’t stretch back stories for any of
them, so its greenhorn dungarees for you, hero”

“It bothers me that
Hellgate pretends. It bothers me that it thinks its an update, not a rehash of
the dungeon crawl formula It bothers me that it could have been so much more.
But it is what it is: a good game which doesnt bother with the bits it thinks we
don’t care about”

No mention is given to online modes, subscription or
ongoing updates or patches.

7/10
+ Insanely replayable
+ Easy to
learn, hard to master
+ Great monster designs
- Unexciting Story
-
Recycled RPG cliches
- Little sense of immersion

Beginners Guide to the Evoker

Hellgate: Londen is a great game. But it’s very vague for new players. So I did a lot of playing, testing and searching around the net in order to get an idea of how things work. While doing so I thought, why not just compile all the information which I obtain so that other can benefit from it as well. But I must admit it isn’t completely finished yet. I still haven’t seen all spells, as I didn’t get into the beta and have a busy life at the moment. None the less, I tried my best and plan on keeping it updated. Anyway, here it is!


This Guide Contains: v1.1
Overview of the Evoker
Elements
Focus Drives
- Weapon Rating Number
- Power
- Elemental Attack Strength
- Relic Slots
- Types of Focus Drives
- Magical Properties and Spells
Attribute Points
Skills


Overview of the Evoker:
Evokers are the primary caster class of Hellgate: London. By the means of their focus drives they are able to tap into the powers of the nether, and manipulate these to conjure devastating spells. Granting them full skill access to all the ingame elements, which makes the evoker a versatile class, able to specialize in different types of combat. With that in mind we will continue on to the rest of this guide.


Elements:
Before we go further into the evoker it might be useful to know what kind of elements the game contains, and their corresponding status effects. These effects may apply when any of the elements causes a target to lose life while having the corresponding attack strength. Note that I said lose life, as HG:L contains energy shields that absorb damage and thus prevent status effects from applying as long as they hold. There are ways around this, more on that later. Anyway, here is the list of elements:
Physical: May stun the target, preventing it from taking any actions for a short amount of time.
Fire: May cause the target to become ignited, causing it to lose 5% of its maximum health per second.
Electrical: May cause the target to become shocked, preventing it from using any skills.
Spectral: May inflict phase which causes the target to take 50% more damage and decrease its damage output by 50%
Toxic: May poison the target, preventing it from gaining health. It may also slow move and/or attack speed and cause a minor health degeneration.


Focus Drives:
Focus drives are the gauntlet like weapons that the evoker requires to wear in order to cast his spells. They are referred to as weapons because they can also fire bolts of energy, much like a pistol. But more important, they directly determine how effective the evokers spells are. Evokers also have a skill called Dual Focus, which makes it possible for them to wear two focus drives at the same time.

Key Features:
Focus Drives have three key features: Power, Elemental Strength, Relic Slots. The power and elemental strength can be viewed by pressing the right mouse button on a focus. This will cause the weapon menu to pop-up, which contains all its stats. Most are pretty self explanatory, but some may need additional clarification. Speaking of which, lets first clear up the…
Weapon Rating Number: This refers to the number you see when holding your mouse over a focus, also seen in the upper right corner when viewing the weapon menu. It has its corresponding elemental symbol on the background that refers to the type of damage it deals*. This is often confused for the focus weapon’s power, but in fact it is supposed to give an indication of the overall rating of the focus. Taking in account all stats, including those given by any inserted Relics.
*(so far I have only seen spectral, but I don’t have proof that others don’t exist)
Power: Determines two things; the amount of damage spells do, and the focus weapon fire damage. Each spell has it’s own damage factor, which is multiplied by your power factor for the final amount of damage. Note that currently the exact damage of a spell cant been viewed.
When dual wielding, the power used for spell damage isn’t a simple sum of the two focus drives. If the information I have read is correct, each focus gives off 60% of their respective power. For example, when wielding one with power 60 and a second one with power 50 the effective spell power will become: (60 x 0.6) + (50 x 0.6) = 66.
What most people might not realize at first is that equipping a second focus can lead to a decrease in the final power factor. By solving the formula it becomes clear that the secondary focus must have at least 2/3 of the power of the primary one in order to not negatively influence the total power outcome. Above 2/3 will always increase the total power. It is, of course, unlikely for the difference between the two focus drives to become so big.
Elemental Strength: Determines the chance that any elemental damage triggers their corresponding status effect. I am pretty sure that both the amount of damage and the base trigger chance of the source are also factored in the final proc chance. (Proc means the triggering of the status effect)
Besides the chance to proc, also the duration of the status effect seems to be influenced by the elemental strength. I don’t know if the final elemental strength is calculated the same way as power when dual wielding.
Relic Slots: Focus drives may contain up to 2 relic slots, except for prism’s which have 3 or 4. Relics are items that can be found and inserted into weapons in order to upgrade them. They have their own special stats; like increased damage, elemental strength, special spell triggers on a kill and so on. When inserted into a weapon it takes on the relics effects. How these influence spells will be listed below, under magical properties. Note that in order to insert a relic, the items it goes into must be of a certain level. This level range is displayed among the relics stats.

Types of Focus Drives:
There are several types of focus drives, which have inherent special properties:
Axis: Decreases power cost of spells.
Core: Decreases recharge times of spells.
Lens: Increased critical hit chance.
Locus: Enhanced damage.
Prism: Increased number of Relic slots, always 3 or 4, instead of up to 2.
Radiant: Increased Elemental Strength.

Magical Properties and spells:
Items that have green, blue, orange or gold names are magically enhanced. These contain special modifiers which boost the wearer in some way. With focus drives most of these also apply to the evokers spells. It’s not always that clear what does and what doesn’t apply. So, the next section will sum up several magical attributes that effect spells.

+X% of any damage type: for example, +10% fire damage. Important to know is that this doesn’t only apply to fire spells. Spectral Lash (which does spectral damage) also gains 10% extra damage, but that will be fire damage. So as a result spectral lash now does spectral and fire damage, and can trigger both phase and ignite. Although the ignite chance will be significantly smaller due to the small part being fire damage. This even counts for physical damage.
Adds X to [Status Effect] Attack Strength: This increases the chance an elemental attack will trigger its status effect. For more information see the elemental table above.
Shield Penetration: This also applies to your spells. Some percentage will negate the shield and directly result in life los. Penetrating damage can apply a status effect. It’s highly recommended to get a total of 100%, which will cause you to completely negate shields.

Others that also apply to spells:
Shield Overload.
X% Chance to cause a spell on kill/hit.
Critical Damage Bonus: +X%. (Don’t know if all damage spells can crit)
Critical Multiplier +X%.

A note worthy exception is:
+X% Increased Range does NOT apply to spells. I have tested this and it didn’t have any effect on spell range.


Attribute Points
The evoker focused on Stamina and Will:
Will: Will is of course important for power pool and power regeneration. Allowing for more spells to be cast. Focus drives and Relics also require Will to be equipped. So keep in mind that in mind. Especially when making a more Stamina based evoker.
Stamina: More Stamina means more hit points, which is always good. It’s also required for equipping armors.
Strength: Some players also spend some points in Strength, because this is required in order to equip armors with higher defense ratings. Which might be desired when you use close range spells. But this is very build dependent.
Accuracy: Evokers don’t need this. Don’t put points in this.

Skills
The evokers skills can be split up in several groups; Curses, Drains, Miscellaneous, Fire, Spectral, Lightning, Bone and Toxic skills. Spells that deal damage have their own factor which is multiplied with the powers from the equipped focus drives. So spell damage is not related with skill level.
I chose not to use a spell rating system, because I believe that most spell are to situational and build dependent. Instead I’ll first give a description of each spell, mostly covering how it functions. This is followed by some comments about how the spell could be used, and what to keep in mind while doing so. I hope this will make people see how they can combine spells in order to design their own builds. Before you start reading these you might want to view the skill tree, or use the talent calculator to help you play around with skill points as you design your evoker.

Evoker Talent Calculator


Curses:

Brom’s Curse (lvl 5): This curse heals anyone that damages the afflicted creatures. The amount healed is equal to the given percentage of the attackers max life. It has a 10 meter radius and a casting time of 1 second, during which you can’t move. The life gain effect can only trigger once every 2 seconds or so, per target. Additional points in this skill increases the health percentage gained, maximum number of targets and duration.

This skill is a good way to keep up your health, and works great in parties as well. When combined with other defensive spell like Venom Armor and Arcane shield it can significantly increase your survivability. Therefore most evokers consider it a must have skill. It doesn’t require to be maxed, though. 3 or 4 points should be enough. The first few points really help to make it more durable, to last until the end of the fight, as well as increasing the percentage life gained. But after 4 points it’s duration increase shouldn’t matter that much and the small percentage bonus isn’t worth the points.
It also works well together with Drain Power, which deals really small amounts of damage but enough to trigger Brom’s Curse.

Afterlife (lvl 25): This skill heals the evoker for a certain amount of life per corps in a 10 meter radius. The life gained scales with character level. It has a 2 second casting time, during which you can’t move. Initially it has a 20 second cooldown, which decreases by additional skill points.

Can be useful in between battles, for health recovery. A 2 second casting time is rather long for it to be an effective heal spell during combat. Brom’s Curse is better way to fulfill this function, as you can continue to be offensive while healing yourself. I don’t recommend putting points in this skill, instead get a focus with + to afterlife. Set this as one of your additional weapon sets (F2 or so), and swap it out when you need to heal. It isn’t worth the points.

Spectral Curse (lvl 30): This curse causes all afflicted creatures to explode with spectral damage on death. A sort of automatic corps explosion. It has a 10 meter radius and a casting time of 1 second, during which you can’t move. Additional points increase the maximum number of targets that can be afflicted and it’s duration.

Initially this has a very short duration of only 3 seconds, coupled with the short range in which it takes effects makes it tricky to use. Although the duration can be increased with additional skill points. This skill has the potential to cause a chain effect. As in killing one triggers an explosion that in turn kills another and so on. In theory this could work great for an evoker that focuses around close combat. With spells like Firestorm and Venom Armor. It should be noted that it overrides Brom’s Curse, which is disadvantage for such builds. Although Arcane Shield may be able to compensate for this.


Drain Spells:

Drain Power (lvl 5): With this skill the evoker channels a beam to each enemy in a narrow 20 meter cone. For each affected target the evoker gets the given percentile bonus to power regeneration. It also deals a minimal amount of damage. You can freely move while using this skill. Additional skill points will increase the percentile bonus to power regeneration.

This spell can be useful for power intensive builds. Since the bonus gained is percentile, the effect of this skill is greater if the evoker already has a higher base power regeneration. I this case it might be worth a few points. But I recommend to wait until later levels before you put additional points in this, so you can see how your power pool / power usage scales late game.
As has been said before, this triggers Brom’s Curse, which can lead to a very effective refill.


Drain Life (lvl 15): Works the same as Drain Power, but the cone in which it locks on to its targets seems to be narrower. For each affected target the evokers heals for a fixed amount of health per second, which scales with character level. The damage is better than that of Drain Power, but still not low. Additional skill points will increase the health gain per second.

This spell can be useful. It deals better damage than Drain Power, but less than the amount of life it drains. Just as Drain Power it can trigger Brom’s Curse. Combining those will result in a very nice and quick health regen. Can be useful in pvp, if health injectors are forbidden.


Elemental Drain (lvl 25): All I have heard about this is that its bugged and because of that ineffective, therefore I haven’t tested it yet. I will update this in the nearby future.


Miscellaneous:

Word of Fear (lvl 1): May cause enemies within a 10 meter radius to flee away from you. Additional skill points increase the chance that they will flee.

A defensive spell. Not fully reliable, but still a potential life saver. I don’t know how it scales at higher levels nor difficulties. Personally am not a fan of this type of skill, at least not when playing something like an evoker. So overall its hard for me to say if it’s worth it.


Dual Focus (lvl 5): The first skill point is required for the evoker to dual wield focus drives. Which is likely to result in increased spell power and elemental attack strength. In addition two focus drives allow for more item bonuses to skills and relic slots, increasing the strength of the evoker even further. Additional points decrease the will power feed.

A must have skill. At the very least 1 point should always be spend on Dual Focus. The evoker is an offensive class, and foci are the way to increase your damage output. It’s as simple as that.
Evokers naturally have high will, but endgame legendary foci require huge amounts as well. Always keep this in mind when designing your builds, and thus keep some points reserved. I recommend spreading the investments in this skill over a large amount of levels. See how your Will scales with your gear as you progress. This is especially important for evokers that focus more on stamina due to their build.


Arcane Shield (lvl 10): Instantly recharges and boosts the evokers shield above its maximum. The maximum shield bonus scales with character level. You must stand still in order to maintain the shield bonus. It has a 10 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the maximum shield bonus.

At least 1 point should be put into this, as it instantly recovers your shields to 100%. Even if you move directly after casting it, only the maximum shields bonus will be lost. Remember that shields are important because they protect you from status effects. Can also be used to buy time for healing abilities to kick in, or protect you while casting spells that might require you to endanger yourself. Examples of such are Tempest (takes some time to cast), Firestorm (due to the short range) or Concentrate Damage (also requires you to stay stationary).


Summon Ember (lvl 15): Summons a fire elemental that fights for the evoker. Takes 1 second to summon, and you can’t move for 2 seconds afterwards. Maintaining an elemental also lowers your maximum power. Additional skill points increases the elementals damage output.

It’s rather weak and suicidal, although I have only seen it at skill level 1. Maybe its useful at higher levels. Still, in my opinion, if you want to summon stuff go play the summoner, if you want to blast stuff play the evoker. As you are reading this guide I guess you are interested in blasting stuff so never mind this thing.


Blink (lvl 20): Instantly teleports the evoker 20 meters in a straight line. Cant pass through all obstacles . Has an initial cooldown of 20 seconds. Additional skill points decrease the cooldown.

Recommend either one point in this or 8 to 10, depending on your goal and build. When surrounded you can teleport out of harms way, saving your live in the process. In PvP the enhanced mobility can be a great advantage, if this fits your play style put in 8 to 10 points.
The way blink paths is rather shady. Some obstacles seem to block it, others don’t. One thing is sure, you cant pass through walls. If the path is blocked it wont cost any power nor will it trigger the cooldown.


Concentrate Damage (lvl 20): When activated this skill enhances damage output at the cost of mobility. Increasing all spell damage by a given percentage, but requiring the evoker to remain stationary in order to maintain. It has a 10 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the percentile damage bonus.

Sacrificing mobility is a very high cost, especially in solo play and PvP. On the other hand this skill can be immensely powerful. It’s best used as an opener. Combine this with skills as Spectral Lash and Tempest and it will wrack havoc among enemies. The trick, when combining this with tempest, is that the damage bonus is applied when you cast the spell, you don’t have to maintain Concentrate Damage afterwards. Then use the long range of Spectral Lash to pull enemies towards you, through the tempest. In addition you can throw down a Lightning Field or a Swarm. This should devastate most mobs.
Another use is in party play, were you pretty much become an artillery cannon while your allies keep mobs busy.


Fire:

Firestorm (lvl 1): This spell creates a barrage of small fire blasts, which takes shape in a 8 meter cone. Additional skill points significantly increase the ignite chance.

This is probably the most effective boss killer, especially with a few additional points. The damage is impressive, coupled with a high ignite chance makes this spell literally burn through most health bars in a matter of seconds. The biggest concerns are the limited range and power cost. Speaking of which, the power cost is misleading. The given cost is per spark, not per cast. Still it’s a great skill. If you want to build around it keep in mind that you will need to go up close and personal. I recommend using this with skills like Brom’s Curse, Venom Armor and maybe even Arcane Shield.


Flameshards (lvl 15): This spell launches a given number of shards that spread out in a cone shape. The angle between the shards seems to be somewhat random. The shards embed into anything they hit, and explode soon after. It has a 20 meter range and no cooldown. Additional skill points increase the number of shards per casting.

The damage and power cost are good, but personally I don’t find this spell effective. Unless you have a horde of enemies in front of you most shards wont damage anything. Another problem is that it doesn’t guaranty to launch a shard where you aim, making it even less reliable. Of course this will get better with additional skill points, as there will be more shards. It is possible for several shards to hit the same target, but this requires the target to be big and close by. For such a situation you already have Firestorm, which has a better ignite chance as well. I must admit I haven’t seen this at high skill level.

Hellfire (lvl 30): Soon to be added.

Lightning:

Lightning Field (lvl 10): This spell creates a lightning orb that travels in an arc, much like a grenade. It generates an electric field on impact, which deals damage to each foe that comes in contact with it. It has a 30 meter range and lasts for about 5 seconds. Additional skill point increase the size of the electric field.

This skill definitely has its uses. Great at taking out small pesky enemies without spending a lot of power. Great against slow enemies as well. It functions good as backup damage, while casting other spells, as the damage is mediocre by itself. Swarm functions mostly the same, but has better damage. You might think; why not use both of them. Well, the spells don’t stack when they effecting the same area. Neither does lightning field with itself. So keep that in mind.


Tempest (lvl 20): This spell conjures a large dark cloud that fires bolts of lightning at enemies within range. It has a 3 second casting time and lasts for 20 seconds. There are several bolts, each with an individual cooldown. Additional skill points increase the rate at which the cloud fires its bolts.

Hard to use, but extremely damaging when used correctly. This skills damage output does increase with additional skill points! Simply because it will fire more frequent. When using this skill you need to do so tactical, plan ahead. Set up the cloud and pull in some enemies. Then try to keep them within the clouds firing range. By stuns or maybe kite them around with a high level Blink. See the comment of Concentrate Damage for another tactic with this skill.
One more thing; sometimes it doesn’t form when the sealing of the area is too low, which of course is really annoying. Can’t be helped, though.


Arc Legion (lvl 30): This spell generates several lightning beams that lock-on to enemies within range. It takes several seconds for all the beams to generate, so the damage has a short build up time. They can also split up and lock-on to several targets, spreading the damage among them. It has an initial 11 meter range. Additional skill point increase the range.

Arc Legion does great damage, especially when all beams are focused on a single target. In that case it even out damages spectral lash. Another great thing is that it seems to spam status effects. By equipping foci with +X% elemental Damage and a lot of the corresponding status effect strength, it can phase/ignite/poison/stun/shock almost everything. You may not want to put more then 1 point into this. Increasing the spells range also increases the chance that the beams will spread out. Which increases the power drain but not the total damage output. Still it can be useful for spreading out status effects. Just keep this in mind when you think about how you want to apply this spell.


Spectral:

Spectral Bolt (lvl 1): Fires a purple bolt that splits up into several after a short time. It has a range of 28 meters and 1,5 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the phase attack strength.

It’s very hard to use effectively. The damage of one bolt isn’t that impressive. It needs to be timed right so that the bolt hits the target directly after it splits up. This significantly increases the damage and phase chance. This is also has the best phase strength of all evoker spells.


Spectral Lash (lvl 10): Shoots out a spectral ray that locks on to a single target. It deals damage as long as its locked on. It has an initial range of 18 meters. Additional skill points increase the range.

This skill is the evokers sniper skill. The range can get up to 45 meters. When you combine this with Concentrate Damage you can take out enemies before they even come near to you. The biggest disadvantages are its high power cost and that it only hits one target. The spectral lash mastery upgrades it a little by adding a small explosion effect when you kill the target.


Spectral Lash Mastery (lvl 25): A passive skill that enhances the Spectral Lash skill. This causes targets to explode when they are killed by the spectral lash spell. In addition, it increases the phase attack strength of Lash. Additional skill points increase the phase attack strength bonus.

The explosion radius is quite small and weak, which limits its usefulness. But it’s phase chance is decent, especially with some additional points. It depends on how important it is for you that some enemies phase.

Bone:

Demonspine (lvl 5): This spell fires a fast moving white missile in a 20 meter straight line. It penetrates any enemy it hits and has a good chance to stun. With only a 1 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the chance to stun significantly.

With some additional skill points and stun attack strength you can stun lock allot of creatures out there. The actual hit radius of the spine is also larger than it might indicate. Often it will hit enemies even if it only skims them. Best used by pulling some enemies, then walk backwards as your fire away. They often line up while chasing you. Personally I find this a great skill, one of my favorites.


Bone Shards (lvl 15): Instantly creates a nova of bone shards. Damaging and often stunning enemies within a 10 meter radius. The cooldown is 8 seconds. Additional skill points increase the stun attack strength.

The damage is really low. This is skill revolves around its AoE stun effect. It can buy you some time to, much like Word of Fear. But due to the cooldown it can’t be used very frequently, which really limits its usefulness. Skill points are better spent elsewhere.


Skullsplitter (lvl 25): Soon to be added.



Toxic:

Venomous Spirit (lvl 5): The evoker summons a slow moving spirit that tracks down a single target. It has a good range of 35 meters and can fear the target as well. Additional skill points increase the chance and duration of the fear effect.

For those who are familiar with D2, it works like Bone Spirit, but slower. The damage it decent, and the fear effect makes it possible to kite enemies. Its tracking abilities are pretty good, but the lack of speed can be annoying. It also tends to get stuck in random objects, after which it disappears.


Venom Armor (lvl 15): Creates an Armor of poison and locust around the evoker, increasing armor by the given amount. This scales by character level. Whenever an enemy within 10 meters attacks the armor retaliates by sending a swarm of locust. These cause a damage over time debuff (DoT). The spell initially lasts for 20 seconds, and has a 60 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the duration and armor bonus.

This is a good spell, The armor bonus is quite nice. When you invest 8 or more points into this it can be maintained constantly. A must have spell for evokers that have build around close range spells such as firestorm. The DoT effect from the locusts stacks with itself, meaning that enemies with a high attack speed will tend to kill themselves.


Swarm (lvl 25): Launches a sphere containing poisonous wasps. This spell functions the same as lightning field. The sphere travels in an arc, and releases a field of poison. It has a initial cooldown of 20 second. Additional skill points decrease the cooldown time.

This is a more powerful version of Lightning field. Therefore it also costs a lot more power, and has a larger cooldown. It can be used in combination with tempest. Create the tempest, pull the mobs and throw down the swarm at your location. Any enemies that make it to you can be finished off with Firestorm. Don’t forget that this doesn’t stack with Lightning field.

Patch 0.6 coming to Asian servers

Good news to all of you playing on the Asian servers! IAH Games are patching you up with both the old 0.5 and the new 0.6 patch on December 11th.

Dear Gamers,

Please be informed of the scheduled routine maintenance tomorrow, 11 December 2007, Tuesday, from 0800hrs to 1300hrs (GMT+8).

During this period, the HGL Game service will be taken down for standard maintenance and patch deployment of 0.5 and 0.6.

We have completed our round of comprehensive testing on the Patches and we will continue to monitor the servers closely. We need your help in informing us of any issues you may come across while enjoying HGL.
For your reference, attached are Patch 0.5 & 0.6 notes from Flagship’s Hellgate: London website.

Hellgate: Rifle Weaponary

Clsuter Rifle
Damage Type: Physical (Direct & Splash)

The Cluster Rifle is one of the standard - but highly flexible - weapons in the battle against the demons. The oversized barrels allow for large caliber, high explosive missiles to be launched at a sustained rate of fire. With correct tactical choices in terms of rocket arrays, this weapon can be utilized equally well against a wide variety of targets.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 battery

1 relic

1 tech

3 rockets

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Harp
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

The HARP is a bulky, 2-handed device that houses both electrical and sonic generators. Resonance projection is accomplished through the generation of a static field that is arced forward, serving as a conduit for the oscillating sonic waves.

Originally created to clear debris from underground passages, HARP (Harmonic Resonance Projection) technology was soon utilized to combat the forces of darkness. A slowly oscillating beam of sound, channeled through tightly focused electrical particles, is used to vibrate objects at random frequencies. The effects of this are somewhat different depending on the target. Non-organic objects tend to vibrate slowly at first, building speed over 3 - 5 seconds until (in a near blur) they shatter in a usually impressive fashion. Organic targets, however, tend to have their internal neural systems disrupted and are held immobile in the weapon's beam.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 battery

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Spark Rifle
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

By generating a rapid pulse of electromagnetic energy through a series of miniaturized Tesla Coils, the Spark Rifle can create a literal storm of sparks. These high-intensity bursts are short in duration but have an exceptionally potent yield. Any means used to increase the Teslic generation only enhances the effect of this weapon.

Max mod slots:

1 fue

3 battery

1 relic

2 tech

1 ammo

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Tempest Rifle
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

In reference to the powerful electrical bolts discharged when it is fired, this weapon is appropriately named after the Roman god of storms. The Tempest heavy assault rifle is another of the weapons used during the final months of the nation's military war against the demons.

The Tempest uses a combination of a powerful magnetic field generator and high-voltage electricity to discharge a burst of electrical "balls". Designed to damage as many enemy combatants as possible, the firing pattern is a spread of independently moving projectiles that move in a random, forward path.

Max mod slots:

3 batteries

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Viral Lance
Damage Type: Toxic (Direct)

This weapon spews forth a liquid stream of ancient venoms that bathes a single target in deadly poison. The range of the Viral Lance is impressive, making it a favorite of those who wish to incapacitate their enemy from an extremely safe distance.

Max mod slots:

3 fuel

1 battery

1 tech

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Zeus Rifle
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

Named for the Greek god of sky and weather, this weapon would do the supreme ruler of Olympus proud. Discharging a multitude of electrical orbs that split and move in erratic patterns make it a difficult weapon to precisely aim, but also makes it nearly impossible for enemies to dodge. The Zeus Rifle is highly effective at dispersing large groups of demons and is commonly used when fighting in open, outdoor locales.

Max mod slots:

2 battery

2 tech