Ok, so the fact that I mentioned the mini-game in my last post has generated more traffic on my blog than anything previous, so it seem folks aren’t quite getting the hang of it, or are just searching for more information about how it works.  It’s certainly less than well documented, so here goes my attempt to help…

First, I bookmarked this page that shows what the icons mean:

http://hellgate.incgamers.com/wiki/Mini-game 

(Edit: the pics and process descriptions are MUCH better today (Nov.5) than they were a few days ago)

I tend to keep this open on a nearby screen while I’m in-game.

In the game, you get three icons at the lower right of the interface.  These icons indicate what and how many things you need to kill, pick-up, or damage in a particular way in order to win.  As you can see, this is another reason to have multiple damage types “at the ready” on your F1-F2-F3 keys. 

Lets say you have: fangs/3, pistol/2, and hammer/8.  This means you need to kill 3 beasts, pick up 2 ranged weapons, and do physical damage to 8 enemies before you win.  You can do this in any order.  When you win, a little jingle plays that reminds me of the Exorcist theme and loot pops-up around you.  And the icons reset to a new mini-game.  As each requirement is fulfilled, the icon becomes “solid” and there aren’t any counters on them any more. 

 It took me forever the other night to complete one of these because I had to pick up 2 melee weapons and they just weren’t dropping for me.  Hope this helps!

Another great resource, esp. for those like me who get lost easily, is this great “station map” for all five acts. I dl’d it and printed it out (re-sizing to fit on one page).  It’s awesome: http://www.hellgateguru.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/hellgatelondonkartefo6.jpg

Definitely comes in handy if you can’t remember how to get to certain places. I had got a quest to go kill some mob somewhere I’d never been and so I started looking for maps.  I still haven’t killed that mob because now I know it’s an act ahead of where I’m currently at, argh!  Oh well, at least now I know it’ll be awhile before I complete that one…

In other news. There was a single player patch the other day that completely ruined the NPC’s odd-wacko-sexy voice acting.  I guess too many people complained about it, but I loved it and will certainly miss the funny-odd-strange stuff that the NPC’s used to say.  Thank goodness I only DL’d the patch on my laptop and not my main gaming system.  I’m going to try and hold off patching the “fun” NPC’s until the shared locker patch comes out.  I wish they would put in a toggle when they do censorship like that.  Similar to how they have a “blood” toggle, they could put in a “language” toggle, so those of us who enjoy the funny-sexy-psycho talking NPC’s can enjoy it, whereas others can set it to the boring-serious-censored talk for the RP’ers or whatever.

Guess that’s it for today, I’d like to get my set of characters up to ACT-3 today, but I’ll probably only make it with my Marksman or my Engineer – my others are a bit under-geared for it, so I’ll need to do some loot farming with them.