Today was a fairly big patch for Hellgate: London, so of course I had to pop on and check it out.

A lot of it doesn’t directly affect me, since although a lot of Marksman skills were changed, I didn’t use the ones shared with the Engineer class very much anyway. The new stuff in The Wild is also beyond my reach at the moment since it’s a really tough zone.

What was immediately obvious though, was the changes to the experience and damage curves in Nightmare mode. I was previously stuck and unable to proceed much farther since I could barely scratch any enemies, but tonight I managed to get my engineer to the end of Act 4 and partway through level 42, which would have been impossible before.

The really big new feature though, was the in-game mail system. Finally, I’ll be able to mail good items to my other characters that can make better use of them, and to other people I know from some forums.

I finally got back to playing Tabula Rasa for a bit today, getting my Specialist from level 6 to 10.

I briefly stuck my nose into the Divide zone, but otherwise stayed around Wilderness, since I probably need to be 14 or 15 before I can properly do Divide. I got most of the simple quests in Wilderness done, with most of the remaining Logos being hidden away in instances. Instances are a bit tougher, so unless I find a good group, I might have to wait until later for them.

I’m not sure exactly what’s changed in the last few months, but it seems a bit tougher now. I beat Proctor Fulgor easily with another character back then, but this time I could barely scratch him before his shields regenerated. It’s also hard to tell if a group of enemies will be an easy fight for you or if you’ll be the target of their gang-rape, but at least death isn’t a very big setback in this game.

I popped back into Hellgate: London again today, but avoided the frustration of my main character’s dilemma by playing an alt instead. I took my hardcore elite Summoner from level 7 up to 13 in a fairly uneventful trip through the early zones.

I just have to be a lot more careful with him because of the hardcore flag (i.e., death is permanent). Entering a zone can be particularly dangerous, so I often found myself bouncing back and forth between zones, slowly wearing down the monsters at the entrance before they overwhelmed me.

I’ve been sticking with the Carnagor as my main pet, with a couple fire elementals assisting. With some points in its summon skill and some equipment that adds to minion armour, he makes a pretty good tank, drawing aggro away from me.

I played Hellgate: London for a bit more today, but quickly encountered the main problem I’m having with it right now: level limits. The amount of damage you do to monsters goes down as their level increases above yours, and at about 9 levels and above, you do very little damage at all. Right now I’m level 41, but the next area I need to travel to has level 50 monsters, making progress through it excruciatingly slow.

So, if I want to progress any further, I need to grind out some more xp in lower level areas like Stonehenge. But, you also gain xp very slowly at these higher levels, making it a very tedious process.

I wound up just bouncing back and forth between stations for a while in order to reset the crafting vendor, since I’ve got a ton of raw components I can use. I did manage to find a couple nifty items to replace my boots and shoulders, and some better shield penetration and ignite rating mods for my main weapon. Too bad that doesn’t really help with the level difference, though…