When I was reading the Patch 0.5 notes, I came across a couple of items about the Mini-game. I bought Hellgate: London the day after it came out and have been playing ever since. I even looked at the very small manual. I knew nothing about the Mini-game. Questions to friends produced the same results. What Mini-game?

I found nothing official on their website, but I did find a couple of posts on the forums that describe the Mini-game. (If you don't have a Hellgate: London account, you are unable to read the forums.) MSKoSSK summarizes the game and Nocktis has a handy printable cheatsheet. I have further investigated the game and researched the icons, so after the jump, you will find the Massively Guide to the Hellgate: London Mini-game.

The Hellgate: London servers will be down tomorrow, November 20th, from 9am to 11am PST to implement Patch 0.5.

I'm very excited about the new patch because the game as is has some cumbersome bugs and clunky features. One bugfix that will not be in tomorrow's patch is the Invisible Party Members bug, though they do have some solutions for this and promise it for the next patch. I have not noticed this bug because, like our Soloist, I tend to play alone.

Some differences between previously published patch notes and the new official ones are:

• Because the Guy Fawkes event is ending, there is some more information about "Fawkes Force Five"

• They are no longer adding an automatic reset to the Minigame, which means the people who were upset about that (which included me) will be much happier.
  

Full patch notes are after the jump.

The people at Flagship Studios have announced that patch 0.5 for Hellgate: London is moving to the test servers and, if enough goes well, they will be releasing it sometime next week. They invite everyone with a U.S. account to help test the new patch this weekend. They've even copied all of our characters over for us.

(You're right, the picture has nothing to do with the post. But, seriously, isn't that a great pet name? Khaaaan!)

Some highlights for the new patch are:

Increased character slots: You no longer have to be a subscriber to get 24 character slots. I think this is a very good change. 3 character slots is embarrassingly few.

Chat interface improvements: Thank the gods! How did the current chat system ever get into the "final" build? It stinks in a way that only a trip to the dump can approximate. The chat window is no longer going to cover up other menus (this really should have been a showstopper) and will be open by default when logging into Multiplayer. You'll be able to see whispers in all tabs. Whispers and Admin announcements will automatically open the chat window. It looks like we'll finally have something we can use.

Many Quest fixes: My favorite will be the ability to complete an interrupted side quest. There is nothing like running around trying to figure out if I missed something or if it is just another bug. After going through a zone 4 times, I did discover that the rare and legendary/epic mobs have a higher chance of spawning and dropping fun gear. I guess they like to reward the stubbornly optimistic.

Full patch notes are after the jump.