It was back to Hellgate: London yet again last night, and after a bit more grinding in some of the previous zones, I managed to scrape together the final essences I needed to get to the last two generals in Stonehenge. The third one was a really annoying fight — it was one of the new flying creatures that’s fairly tough to keep firing at since it likes to dip, swerve, and fly away quickly a lot, and it had a ton of health. The fourth one looked like it might be annoying at first, since it could summon bruisers that can do a lot of damage, but it went down fairly quickly.

So, having beaten all four, it was off to fight Moloch himself. The first zone on the way to him wasn’t very notable, but the second was a bit different in that it had a huge number of stairways upwards, and criss-crossed over the same large open room several times as you went higher and higher. The odd part was that the portal I needed to go through was near the bottom though, and I didn’t need to go up all those stairs after all (but I did anyway out of curiosity). Yay for randomly generated maps.

And then it was time to face Moloch himself. It again looked like there might be trouble as he could summon a large number of gargoyle-type creatures, and his health wasn’t going down very quickly at first, but after retreating and regrouping after the first wave of summons, I noticed that his health had gone down a big chunk. Something was damaging him pretty well (the molotov bomb bots, perhaps), so I just kept going and it didn’t take too long to beat him.

The reward for all of this? A pile of loot, of course, though most of it wasn’t all that useful. The one piece I did keep was a unique helm of a type that must be new to Stonehenge. I was a bit wary of giving up my old helm, which added quite a bit of elemental protection, but this new one adds a lot of damage and accuracy bonuses.

And that’s it for Stonehenge for me, since I doubt I’ll have a chance to do the grouping part easily. The Moloch quest can actually be redone, but I don’t think I’ll bother until I naturally collect enough essences rather than grinding for them. If they can keep the new content coming like this every few months, then the subscription plan might not be so bad after all.

And yes, it was more Hellgate: London today. I entered the one zone I had the essences to unlock, and it had the same underground hallway tileset as some of the ‘passageway’ zones, but with central chambers added. Not really much of interest there though, as the actual general was yet one more zone away. That zone had the same ‘hell plains’ setting as the final boss fight, and I found the general way down in the SE corner. I actually died once to him as he does a ton of damage with a teleporting attack, but otherwise I was able to gradually wear him down and keep myself just barely healed up.

After a bit more farming I had enough essences for another general, and it went much the same way, except that the general’s zone used the Mind of 314/Exospecter tileset. He was a pushover though; unlike the giant first general this one was normal sized and mixed in with a bunch of other monsters and I didn’t even realize I’d beaten him until finding his head in the middle of the pile of loot.

I still need three or four more of each of the remaining essences though, so they’re not being dropped at an equal rate. I did a couple more Temple Station quests, but the enemies are getting way too high level too quickly, so more grinding is going to be needed. I guess I can get back to farming Shulgoth for the achievement, at least…

I also started a Marksman and played him until level 7. It’s not really a lot different than the engineer in the early game though, so I’m not sure if I’ll bother with him much further.

Today was just yet more Hellgate: London. I had finally made it to Stonehenge yesterday, but I still didn’t have enough essences to get into the generals’ areas. After a sweep of the connecting zone I still didn’t have enough, so I just continued on with Temple Station quests. By the time I took down the Exospector I finally had five essences, but by then it was fairly late, so Stonehenge will have to wait another day.

I’m also tempted to just keep going until I get five of all of the types of essences, but I’m also progressing more and more slowly as the enemies get farther and farther above me in levels, so if I have to grind out some levels, I may as well do it in the new area.

I spent a bit more time in Hellgate: London tonight working my way towards Stonehenge in nightmare mode, and it took a bit longer than expected. Despite being only one station away and having done most of the quests there yesterday, I forgot that I still had a squad control mission and Mind of 314 to go through before I could go to the next one.

The squad mission turned out to be a real pain. Although I had infinite squad members to restart with if they all died, running them all back down to the final boss was annoying, and he could summon groups of monsters that would rapidly kill off the squad. It was a matter of continually restarting with a new squad, running down to the end, trying to get in an airstrike or two on the boss to wear him down a bit before the squad died, and repeating until finally finishing him off.

Mind of 314 wasn’t too bad though, and perhaps even slightly easier than when I did it on normal difficulty. It just took a while since I kept choosing the wrong path to follow at each branch.

And so I finally arrived at Temple Station and can go to Stonehenge. I don’t have enough essences to unlock the generals’ gates yet though, so I’m leaving it there for tonight and will start the farming some other time.

There was a hotfix today for Hellgate: London that supposedly fixed the lag I was seeing last night, so I hopped on and selected my engineer. I realized too late that I’d forgotten to uncheck the ‘nightmare difficulty’ box though, and he wasn’t far enough along in that difficulty to enter Stonehenge yet.

Oh well, I was only one station away, so I figured I’d just keep on going and quickly try to get to that point. Except then my compulsiveness kicked in and there were still a ton of quests left to at the station I was in, so of course I had to start clearing them all… By the end of the night I still hadn’t unlocked the path to the next station, so no Stonehenge for me tonight.

The lag did seem to be largely cleared up though, aside from an occasional hitch.

Today was the big day for the first major content release in Hellgate: London, with a patch that added several new zones, quests, and loot for subscribers only, centered around Stonehenge.

After first zoning in, the difference is rather striking — the Stonehenge hub area is a big, open, bright area, in stark contrast to all of the other cloudy, dreary, and underground zones that make up the rest of the game. The actual combat zones beyond that darken things up again, with a forest valley atmosphere. It’s a refreshing change, at least.

The main new quest line here is to kill the demon Moloch, after first taking out his generals, and to get to them you have to collect essences before you can get into their zones. I didn’t get very far, since lag is fairly bad tonight, so I’m not yet sure if there are any new enemies or terrain beyond that first combat zone.

There’s also one zone that pretty much requires a group of six or more players if you want to survive at all. I stuck my nose in for a few minutes, but remained pinned down at the entrance by a constant barrage of explosive projectiles.

I found some nice new helms, including one much better than my current one, but the stat requirements on it are fairly steep. I need something like 25 more stamina before it’ll let me wear it. It’s also subscriber-only, so if I ever stop paying, I wouldn’t be able to use it anymore. That’s how they get their hooks in you…

It’s kinda nifty so far, but I still need to explore it further, and it might still become uninteresting before too long. I just need to wait for the lag to die down a bit…