Hellgate: London Mod Guide v1.0 Written for GameFAQs By White Lynx CONTENTS 1. Preface 2. What is a Mod? 3. Mod Types 4. Mod Effects 5. Choosing a Weapon 6. Installing Mods 7. Which Mod To Use? 8. Mods and the Nano Forge - Mod Levels 9. A Note About the Augmentrex 10. Too Many Mods! 11. An Example or Two 12. Time For A New Weapon? 13. Credits / Legal Stuff / Contacting Me 1 - Preface Hellgate: London uses a system of weapon modification that allows players to add various effects to their weapons, customizing and strengthening them to the player's tastes and personal specifications. This system is very flexible, allowing a near-infinite combination of mods to be installed in many different types of weapons. How effective the mods are, however, depends heavily on the player's knowhow on how to best use the mods they have. 2 - What is a Mod? A mod is a small gadget of one kind or another that adds special characteristics to any weapon it is attached to. They are found as loot drops in the game world, in chests, built from blueprints, constructed at the crafters, or bought from a vendor. You will never find a weapon in the game world with mods already attached. Mods vary widely in their type and use, as well as the kind of effects they can have. Generally, you'll want to have a fair variety of mods to choose from in case you acquire a new weapon or the mods in your weapon(s) become obsolete (addressed later). 3 - Mod Types Mods come in six types - batteries, fuel, ammo, rockets, techs, and relics. You'll find most classes find some mod types very commonly used, and others you rarely have need for. For example, a Marksman or Engineer won't usually find relic slots on their weapons - relatively few Hunter guns have them. Similarly, Guardians and Blademasters won't usually find much use for ammo mods except on the occasional sidearm. Evokers and Summoners can generally expect to find use for most mod types because of the exotic nature of their weapons. In general, all classes will find use for battery and fuel mods. 4 - Mod Effects Mod effects are widely varied. As with mod types themselves, some mod effects are only useful to certain classes - or even certain weapons. Sometimes there are even mod effects you don't want to have together on the same weapon (See notes on Shield Overload and Shield Penetration below). Below is a list of some of the mod effects you may encounter. There are probably a lot more out there. Rare and legendary mods may have more than one effect. Don't forget that these effects are only active while your character is physically wielding the weapon - simply having a weapon in one of your three battle sets won't give the beneficial effects of its mods unless that battle set is actually being used. One other note: Most, if not all, of the mod effects can stack. Attribute +X: Some mods give a boost to your character attributes like Strength or Accuracy for as long as the weapon is in your hands. This is particularly useful if the weapon's equip requirements are just a little too high for you - installing a mod that boosts the needed attribute effectively lowers the weapon's requirements for that attribute. In this way, you can cheat a little and equip weapons you wouldn't normally be able to. Just be careful about nano forging the weapon to the point where the mod ceases functioning (see Mods and the Nano Forge). Health Regeneration X/min: Mods with this attribute give your character a small health regeneration. This will not save you in combat because the bonus given is usually very small; but if you are patient, you can recover your health between confrontations without using health injectors as much. Just don't let your guard down while waiting! Power Regeneration X/min: Similar to health regeneration, except this applies to Power Points. Since your power points regenerate on their own, this boost therefore increases the regen rate. This is useful for just about all classes, but particularly for classes that rely on Power Points like Evokers. +X Luck: Very useful. This gives a Luck boost that can increase the drop rate of rarer items. Despite being a handy mod effect, you'll probably want to think in the direction of combat most of the time and place this mod relatively low on your priority list of effects you'll want. If you do use this, however, you can probably count on more rare items to at least deconstruct to get Nanoshards. Increase Range by X/X% - Very useful for a Marksman or Engineer, allowing you to hit more distant targets. Only affects ranged weapons. Note that this doesn't increase your weapon's actual accuracy - it only allows your shot to travel a longer distance. If you can combine this mod with another that increases weapon accuracy, you'll find it a very effective combination! Increases Damage by X% - All damage dealt by the weapon is increased by the percent given. Usually a small percentage, but like all mod effects, the percentages stack with other bonuses. Adds X% Elemental Damage - These kinds of mods can be useful for adding more types of elemental damage to a single weapon. The damage added is calculated based on the weapon's base damage; for example, if a weapon does 100 damage, and the mod adds 10% damage of a specific element, the effective damage will be 100 + 10 of the elemental damage. Note that this 10% damage is not reflected in the weapon's base damage display. +X to (Status Effect) Attack Strength - This mod is only useful on weapons whose damage type corresponds to the status effect on the mod. In other words, poison attack strength boosting mods should only be installed on poison damage-dealing weapons, ignite attack strength boosting mods should only be installed on fire damage-dealing weapons, and so on. (Phase corresponds to spectral damage, and stun corresponds to physical damage.) The mod essentially increases the chance of inflicting the status effect corresponding with the damage type with each hit. +X% Damage to (Enemy Type) - This allows the weapon to deal additional damage to a specific type of enemy (demons, beasts, necros or spectrals). This can be useful to counter any inherent disadvantages to the weapon's damage type; for example, since necros have inherent resistance to poison attacks, installing a mod on a weapon that deals poison damage will help offset the inherent disadvantage one would normally have while fighting necros with that weapon. Another example would be fighting spectrals with a weapon that deals spectral damage. Critical Chance Multiplier +X% - Increases the weapon's chance of scoring a critical hit. This mod's effect is usually quite small due to the math used to calculate the multiplier bonus. Critical Chance Multiplier (Enemy Type) +X% - Along the same lines as the previous mod effect, this gives a slight boost to the chance of scoring a critical hit on enemies of the specified type. This mod effect is usually quite small. Critical Chance Bonus +X% - The bonuses here are pretty small, but that's because they directly increase your percentage chance to score a critical hit. Mods with this ability are quite useful, especially on rapid-fire weaponry. Critical Damage Bonus +X% - This effect gives a bonus to the actual damage you do when scoring a critical hit, a bonus based on the indicated percentage. Critical Damage Bonus (Enemy Type) +X% - As with the previous mod effect, this effect increases damage when scoring a critical hit - but only on the specified enemy type. Shield Overload - This effect basically increases the damage done to an enemy's shields. If your shield overload was at 100%, that means that your weapon will deal twice as much damage to the enemy's shields on every hit. Shield Overload ONLY affects shields; it does not affect damage to actual enemy health. Shield Penetration - This effect actually allows a certain percentage of your weapon's damage to pass right through an enemy's shields and be applied directly to their health. The percentage is usually quite modest, but it can be quite useful since some enemies have more shielding than health. NOTE (Thanks to Longballer for this tip): Shield Overload and Shield Penetration should NOT be used together on the same weapon. The reason is because the nature of the two mod effects serve to literally cancel each other out - Shield Penetration redirects some of your weapon's damage AWAY from the target's shields, effectively lowering the attack power that Shield Overload multiplies. If your Shield Penetration was 100%, Shield Overload's multiplier would be applied to an effective attack power of 0 and thus would be useless. Longballer also points out that Shield Penetration is a good mod effect for soloers (to bring enemies down faster, and since the effect only really benefits you personally), whereas Shield Overload can be helpful for groups (since it batters down shields faster for the entire group to exploit). Energy Consumption -X - This effect is ONLY useful on certain weapons that bring up a charge bar when equipped - usually continuous fire beam weapons like Zeus Rifles and Venom Lances, most streaming field guns, the Templar's Lightning Sword, the Hunter’s Bladesaw melee weapon, and other similar weapons. This effect will slow the energy drain caused by firing continuously, allowing you to fire longer before the weapon drops down to its lowest attack power. This effect is useless on any weapon that has no such energy level bar, and is thus very specialized. Usually you'll find this mod effect in the form of a battery. Splash Damage Radius Increase - Fairly self-explanatory. Ranged weapons that create a splash damage radius on hit like most rocket launchers can benefit from this effect; it is useless on any weapon that does not have splash effects. With it, a splash weapon's radius can be increased by the designated amount to effectively hit more enemies with a single shot. Weapon Accuracy +X - Extremely useful to rapid-fire and single-shot weapons alike, this mod effect usually comes in the form of a tech. Of course, this effect is only useful on ranged weapons. This mod will permanently reduce the aim straying from a rapid-fire gun and allow it to hit more distant targets more reliably. Note that this effect is also useful on weapons like sniper rifles; it increases the rifle's accuracy over a long distance. As any marksman in Hellgate can tell you, just because the target is in the crosshair does not guarantee a hit at range; In Hellgate, RPG accuracy calculations figure in once the game determines what you are aiming at in the traditional FPS fashion. The math dictates that the accuracy of the weapon can help offset the distance to the target, increasing the chances of a successful hit. This is in stark contrast to the old Morrowind method of weapon accuracy/skill calculation, which didn't seem to take distance to the target into account at all - you could be shoving your gun up the enemy's nose and still miss. Hellgate doesn't seem to have this problem. In other words, not only is your aim important, but so is the accuracy rating of the gun itself - especially at long range. This mod effect will help ensure a solid hit. Naturally, it's a coveted mod for snipers. Accuracy Degradation Decrease - Useful for rapid-fire guns. This effect will slow down the natural increasing spread of a weapon as it is fired continuously (shown in-game by the reticule spreading out gradually). Note it is basically useless on some single-shot weapons like sniper rifles because there is enough downtime between shots to regain precision aim. Also note that unlike Weapon Accuracy boosts, this will not actually reduce the total fire spread - it will only slow it down. It is to weapon accuracy what Energy Consumption mods are to a power bar-based weapon's power level. X% Chance to cause (Explosion Type) When It Kills an Enemy - Just what it says. There are various nova types that can explode from your character when you kill an enemy. The percentage is usually a decent one. This effect is defensive in nature, since the nova comes from your character. X% Chance to cause (Explosion Type) when it hits an enemy - Usually sporting far smaller percentages than the effect above, this is also another mod that's useful on rapid-fire guns. Unlike the above effect, the nova explodes from the targeted creature instead of your character and thus is more offensive in nature - hitting the creature's companions with the nova blast. Increases Use Rate of (Skill Type) skills by X% - Character skills fall into many categories like Swordsmanship or Tactical skills. This mod effect will essentially reduce cooldown times for all skills that fall into the specified category. This is a class-specific mod effect; obviously a Hunter has no need for a mod that buffs Swordsmanship skills! Decreases Power Cost of (Skill Type) skills by X% - Like the above effect, this effect will influence all skills of a specific type. Specifically, it will reduce the Power Point costs to use skills of the specified type. Again, this mod effect will be class-specific. Duration of (Skill Type) Skills +X% - Fairly self-explanatory. Curse skills, buff skills, etc., can get a boost to how long they are in effect by this mod effect. Once again, this effect will only be useful if your class uses the set of skills specified. 5. Choosing a Weapon Choosing a weapon in the first place can get tricky, mostly because of the sheer variety of weapons available. You may find yourself torn choosing between a rarer weapon or a weapon that's not as rare yet has more mod slots than the rare weapon. It's decisions like these that can sometimes make or break your ability to survive in a tight situation. Assuming you already know what types of weapons are available and what is going to fit your fighting style, there are a few things to consider. In general, look at the inherent abilities of the weapon(s) first. Do they suit your class? Are they going to be useful? Do they buff skills you don't even use or have? You'll often find weapons that seem meant for one class or another - for example, a rifle that buffs several Engineer skills. This shouldn't discourage a Marksman from using the weapon anyway if it's otherwise a good weapon, though! Next, take a look at the base damage and damage type of your weapons. Base damage can be easily affected by the mods you install, so bear in mind the weapon will end up stronger than before you install your mods. Weapons whose base damage are about 10 points within each other are effectively equivalent - you probably won't notice much difference in how much punch they have in combat. After that, take a look at the mod slots available. The number of slots is not all you should take into consideration - pay attention to what type of slots are there. Two otherwise identical weapons might have the same number but different types of mod slots. In order to get the most out of your weapons, you should take into consideration what these mod types can do. For example, ammo and tech mods can give boosts to range and accuracy. Relics can boost things like stats, including luck; they can also affect cooldown or power costs of class skills. Of course, in the short run, it all depends on what mods you have available. Once you've selected a weapon, you're ready to install your mods. 6. Installing Mods The best place to install mods is always a station. You'll likely have a lot of mods stored in your locker, so go open it up. Have the weapon your want to put mods in actually equipped and in your hands; this will prevent you from using up your willpower as you install mods in the weapon to the point where it's unequipable. With your locker and inventory open, right-click on your weapon and hit Examine. The weapon's detailed specifics and mod slots will come up. When you do this, the mods that can be installed into the weapon will light up - whether they're in your inventory or locker. Similarly, mods that cannot be installed into the weapon for one reason or another will be either dimmed or red. This gives you an at-a-glance look at your choices for installing mods in that weapon. Consider how you want this weapon to perform. If it's a sniper rifle, you'll probably want range, accuracy and high critical hit ratio. If it's a rapid-fire weapon, you'll probably want accuracy and perhaps an on-hit nova effect. If it's a sword, you probably will want to add elemental attacks or boost the weapon's natural ability to inflict status effects. As you select and install mods, your view will update showing what mods can and cannot be installed based on what's already attached to the weapon (and how much Willpower you have available). Since you already have the weapon equipped, you will not be able to spend more Willpower than you have available to install mods; the game will not let you install a mod if it renders the weapon unequipable. If you don't find a good mix of mods available to you right away, don't make the mistake of throwing in random mods just to fill in empty slots. This will waste palladium in the long run; remember the De-Modificator that removes weapon mods costs more money the more mods you want to remove (and don't forget you can't pick and choose mods to remove - you have to remove them ALL at once). It's much better to wait until you find a mod that suits your weapon than have to go all the way back to a station to pull the mods out of it so you can put in one you just found. 7. Which Mod To Use? As pointed out before, some mods are useless on some weapons. Putting accuracy or range boosting mods on a sword or energy consumption mods on a weapon that doesn't use an energy bar is a waste of time and mod slots. The mods will do absolutely nothing in these cases. Choose your mods by thinking about what kinds of damage the weapon does and what you want it to do. If you have a blade that does spectral damage and you want it to be more powerful, install spectral-boosting mods and phase attack power boosting mods. You might end up with a sword that phases the enemy left and right! When it comes to guns, leave most of the elemental boosting to the batteries, fuel, rockets and ammo. Use tech slots for things like accuracy/range boosts and the like. If you're lucky enough to have a gun with a relic slot (rare for hunters, more common for Templar or Cabalists), you can use that to boost luck or other stats. As mentioned with the bladed weapons, enhance your guns by beefing up the elemental attack attributes they already have. This seems to produce the best boosts in overall attack power. 8. Mods and the Nano Forge - Mod Levels Mods come rated by levels. They have specific ranges of weapon levels they can be installed in. If your weapon is outside that range, the mod cannot be used in that weapon. This is simple enough when installing mods - the game does not let you install the mod at all if it won't work. But throwing a weapon with mods in it into the Nano Forge may present some problems - problems you might not even notice if you're not paying attention. Nano Forging a weapon effectively raises its level; therefore it's very possible the weapon may level up too high for the mods it has installed. When this happens, the mods cease to function but are not removed automatically - you have to do this yourself. The easiest way to keep track of this is to Examine your weapons whenever they come out of the Nano Forge. Mouse over the installed mods and see if the Mod Level is in red. If it is, the mod is too low of a level for your weapon's new level and is therefore no longer useful. Take it to the De- Modificator and re-equip with a new set of mods. One last Nano Forge note: Since a given item can only be Nano Forged a maximum of 10 times, there will come a time that no more upgrades can be put on it. For a weapon with no mod slots, that's about the end. Having more mod slots on a weapon allows greater flexibility and might allow you to squeeze a bit more usefulness out of a weapon before it becomes obsolete. This is just another example of how useful mods can be. 9. A Note About the Augmentrex The Augmentrex is a device that for a considerable fee can put a random special property into any weapon. Emphasis here is on RANDOM - you have no idea what kind of effect the weapon will end up having. Considering the cost, it's probably not worth it - especially considering that unlike the Nano Forge, the Augmentrex has no safeguard against boosting a weapon beyond your current abilities. You might end up with a weapon you can't even equip, even IF the new properties added would have been useful! If this DOES happen to you, you might have a way out depending on what mods or mod slots the weapon in question has. First of all, you can simply remove mods to lower the weapon's requirements. Second, if you have any stat boosting mods, you can try installing them to effectively reduce the weapon's requirements. This is a relatively slim chance however, so if you do accidentally render one of your weapons unequipable, be prepared to look for a replacement until you level up and gain more stat points to spend. 10. Too Many Mods! It's far too easy to drown in mods. Mods you never used, mods you took out of your weapons because they don't work anymore, they all have the potential of filling up your locker quite easily. Mods cannot be upgraded in any way; at some point you'll want to simply get rid of lower level mods that are no longer useful. When you start to drown in mods, take a look at what levels they are in relation to the levels of your current weapons and clear them out accordingly. Dismantling unneeded mods can be a handy way to get materials for the Nano Forge, as well as clearing up space in your locker. Another good benchmark is to look at the level of any old weapon you find as loot in the area you're currently questing in. Keep that in mind for the next time you're at a station, and eliminate any mods that this random loot weapon wouldn't be able to use because of level. 11. An Example or Two I'm primarily a Guardian. That means about the only mods I'm interested in are relics, batteries, and fuel - I might occasionally need a tech, ammo or rocket for my sidearm, but most of the time I don't care about those mods unless they’re really outstanding – at which time I save them for the gunrunners in my battle group. I recently aquired a rare Righteous Star with five mod slots - two battery and three relic. The Righteous Star is a large mace, classified ingame as a sword. It deals spectral damage. Obviously with this many mod slots there's a lot of potential for improvement. The first thing I do is run the weapon through the Nano Forge as many times as I can. This makes sure the weapon is at its highest possible level *before* I take a look at what mods are candidates for being installed into it. This step is optional, and you might want to skip it unless you’re absolutely certain you want to keep the weapon and use it for a while – such as if it’s a legendary or unique! The Righteous Star is a Very Slow weapon. That means I'm going to want to make sure every swing does as much damage as possible. So, in the case of this Spectral weapon, this means installing as many spectral damage-boosting mods as I can. My best bet is batteries, though there are some good relics too. Another thing I'll probably want to do is increase the Star's phase attack strength. Boosting this high enough increases my chances of phasing my enemies with each swing - an attractive proposition considering what phasing can do. Other assorted mod effects I might want to add include simple damage increasers, a boost to damage against the naturally resisting spectral enemies, and maybe a luck boost to increase my chances of finding rarer goodies. In the end, this weapon becomes a great asset not only because it has five mod slots, but because I knew what mods to plug into them! I also have a Marksman - and everyone who plays that class knows an essential part of a marksman's equipment is his sniper rifle. When hunting for one, I wanted something at least rare, and with as many mod slots as possible. The rifle I found ended up being a unique Poseidon sniper rifle that was unusual in that it actually dealt poison damage instead of the usual spectral. It had six mod slots - one ammo, two tech, one fuel, and two battery. Ammo selection is somewhat important because very few guns have more than one ammo slot. (This is often not the case for rockets.) The ammo types available vary greatly, and it's handy to get a rarer type that boasts more than one mod effect - but it's only worth it if all the effects actually help you. My usual choice of ammo involves boosting range (Aligned Ammo). There are fuels, batteries and techs that I know of that will do this as well, so there is some flexibility in what ammo types could be used on a rifle such as this one I found. Other options might be ammo to add a nova effect or increase poison attack power. Another attractive choice would be ammo to increase overall critical chance - on a sniper rifle, the higher this is the better because a marksman knows he's only going to get one shot before being detected. Aligned Fuel is a favorite of mine; it increases range. If I can't find anything else useful to put into a fuel slot I'll sometimes use this special fuel. In the case of my sniper rifle, it was a natural choice. Other options in this case would be poison-related damage boosts and critical-hit ratio boosts. One very good choice is an on-kill nova effect; if your target is in a group of enemies, one kill can really throw them into chaos. Battery selection was mostly to boost poison attack power and base toxic damage. I also installed a battery to increase crit chance against necros, helping to offset the natural disadvantage of using a poison weapon on them. Tech selection can get tricky. I had two slots to choose from in this case (though much of the time a gun will only have one!) and I'm always on the lookout for a tech that increases Weapon Accuracy - especially for a sniper rifle. Combining this with a tech like a Faultfinder that increases crit chance and/or crit damage seals up the package of a very deadly sniper rifle. 12. Time For A New Weapon? Unless you're lucky enough to find new, useful weapons with regular frequency, you'll probably end up in the situation of having a modded, nano- forged weapon in your hands that doesn't seem to be up to snuff for the enemies you're fighting. Even with this beefed up weapon, it feels like it's taking too long to cut down your foes - or worse, you can't survive long enough to bring down your enemies. The worst part is, because what you're already holding is enhanced, 90% of the weapon drops are going to be much lower quality and so they won't seem useful at all. That's when you should start thinking about your options for a new weapon. Your best bet is almost always the custom crafter in your most recent station; they can create rare and even legendary weapons right there for you if you have the materials. Since I break down practically everything I find, I almost always have enough materials for this purpose. If you don't, take a look at what you have in your locker to see if you can dismantle something - such as mods that are too low of a level to be useful to you anymore (see "Too Many Mods!"). The crafter's menu of items changes each time you visit the station; you can abuse this tendency by leaving and re-entering until you get a selection of items useful to you. With any luck and a bit of patience, you can eventually find a weapon to build that when modded and forged, can replace the aging one that's not cutting it anymore. Again, a stockpile of materials is important to bring your new weapon up to spec via the Nano Forge. Another option is buying from the vendors - not as good of a selection as the crafter, but like the crafter, the selection changes each time you visit a station. This is only recommended if you are woefully short of components and can't possibly get anything from the crafter. If you're in multiplayer, you could try consulting with your guild or battle group to see if anyone has anything you might find useful. This also applies to getting materials for the crafter because you obviously can't leave to go scrounge things to dismantle - the weapon you want to craft will be gone from the crafter's list when you get back! Finally, you can try padding your luck stat and going on a rampage. If you can install a bunch of luck-boosting mods on a weapon and spend some time grinding, chances are you might find something useful. This is a pretty risky option, because you’ll probably be removing mods that increase weapon damage and so will have an even weaker weapon to work with. Be careful. Once you manage to get your hands on a new weapon, you should probably retire your old one by removing its mods and dismantling or selling it. Alternately, if you're playing multiplayer and are part of a guild or other battle group, offer this enhanced weapon to anyone who might need it. By the time of this writing, my unique Poseidon toxic sniper rifle is now in the hands of a lower-level guildmate and it's proving very useful for him. 13. Credits / Legal Stuff / Contacting Me Myself, White Lynx, for creating this guide Flagship for creating this great game Longballer for the tips about Shield Overload and Shield Penetration GameFAQs for hosting this file My Hellgate battle group for consultation and input on the guide This guide is © Jordan Roberts 2008, aka White Lynx. It is only to be posted on GameFAQs. Contacting me: PLEASE only contact me if you have something useful to contribute to the guide. When you e-mail, put something like “about your Hellgate mod guide” or something in the message line so I know it’s not spam! My address is blah1056 at yahoo dot com. Thanks for reading! See you in London!