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The Massively Guide to the Hellgate: London Mini-game

robin torres
Updated ·5 min read


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.



What is the Mini-game?
Usually a minigame is something that is not part of the regular game. Much like the parlor games in Pirates of the Carribbean Online (love that Tortuga Hold'em Poker), you are focused on only the minigames while you play them. In Hellgate: London, the Mini-game is something you play while you are doing your regular questing. You try to achieve three objectives in order to get a reward. Many of these objectives can be achieved accidentally.

Objectives? What Objectives?
In the lower right hand area of the screen are three yellowed out icons that have no tooltips. The screenshot above points to their location. You need to achieve all three objectives that the icons represent in order to receive the reward. The icons tell you what you need to do and the numbers inside them tell you how many times you need to do it. The numbers countdown as you achieve each one and disappear when the entire objective is complete. The icon then turns to its normal color. Once all three objectives are completed and at full color, you are eligible for the reward.

Yay! Reward! What do I get?
A snippet of a techno vibe plays (which explains why I would sometimes hear random music) and your luck goes way up. You will now get more Rare (blue) and Legendary (gold/orange) drops and the mobs will more likely be Rare (blue) and Epic (gold/orange) as well. I'm not sure how long this lasts. For those of you who read my post about Patch 0.5 moving to the test servers, you may remember me talking about rewarding the stubbornly optimistic. Obviously, I had completed a Mini-game without knowing it. (Note: The reward used to be that much better loot would drop on the next mob you killed. And before that, the loot would just drop around you once you completed the Mini-game, even if you were in a station. So, the reward may still be evolving.)

Most of the icons for the objectives are a bit cryptic, so I've annotated them with full details. The numbers on the icons will vary according to your Mini-game.

Deal a certain kind of damage:
If you have one of the icons on the right, your objective is to deal damage of that type.

  • The hammer is physical damage which can be in melee or gun form.

  • The flames refer to Fire damage.

  • The lightning bolt is Electric damage.

  • The purple icon refers to Spectral which includes phase damage as well as the damage from foci and other Cabalist weapons.

  • The green symbol refers to Toxic or Poison (why the mods say poison and the weapons say toxic, I don't know).

If you have a damage shield of any of these damage types, that counts too, and so will your minions' damage types. Of course, you only have two hands. There are the Battlesets for easy switching if you are carrying the appropriate weapon in your inventory. Or you can wait until you loot the right weapon to help you finish the objective and then turn it into components when done.

Kill some stuff:
Getting one of these icons means you have to kill those types of mobs. These icons represent the four Demon Castes. The icon will match the one next to the name of the mob you are fighting when it is targeted and the actual name of the Demon Caste is under the level of the mob. Here are some examples for each Caste:

  • Beasts: Firesnaps, Blood coils

  • Necros: Zombies, Zombie Summoners, Flesh Eaters

  • Demon (Primus in the manual): Imps, Crested Stalkers, Gremlins

  • Spectral: Soul Reapers, Bile Lords, Orbiles

Loot some stuff:


Don't get these icons confused with the Damage icons. All you have to do to complete this objective is be lucky enough to loot what the icon represents.

  • The pentacle represents any item that has magical properties. So looting a Green, Blue or Gold/Orange item will satisfy one of these.

  • Getting the wrench icon indicates that you must loot mods.

  • Looting swords satisfies the sword objective. (I thought I had to use a sword and I don't think there is one that my Summoner can use.)

  • Looting guns will complete the gun objective. (Captain Obvious is snickering as usual.)

  • The helmet indicates that you need to loot armor.

Do things:


These icons are for doing things that don't fall into the above categories.

  • The bright star icon indicates that you must land a critical hit.

  • The mystical triangle symbol means that you need to complete a quest.


Patch 0.5 brought some bugfixes to the Mini-game. It was also supposed to implement an automatic 15 minute reset, but thankfully there was an uproar on the forums and some clearer thinking seems to have prevailed. The Mini-game does not reset until you win it.

Well, I've answered all of my Mini-game questions and I hope I've answered all of yours. If not, please ask in the comments and I will update the guide accordingly.

Did you know about the Mini-game? Do you think it makes the game more fun? Or do you think they should be spending their development time fixing more bugs and adding new content?