For two weeks now, Fridays have been "new build" days for Single Player Patch 1.2 Beta and Test Center Patch 1.3. These patches are both early "test" versions of their final iterations and are used to fix issues, bugs, rebalances, and other tweaks with every build. These fixes culminate and become the finished patch notes.

Single Player Patch 1.2 Beta is rapidly closing in on its final build with just a few remaining issues left to fix. The most vital of these is an issue which prevents players from creating new Elite Mode characters. This past Friday's build solved two bugs: one that caused characters not to load properly and another which prevented Skill Retrainers from being given to characters which required them. A new SP 1.2 Beta build is estimated to be out tomorrow which will fix the Elite Mode bug.

Multiplayer Patch 1.3 is having its kinks worked out and quickly on the Test Center server. The patch notes have doubled in length in the ten short days Patch 1.3 has been on Test Center, half of them being new feature and new details on those features. The patch's list of known issues has shrunk from a dozen plus to two, many of them fixed in the build uploaded to Test Center this past Friday and this afternoon. While an estimate for release is still a little ways off, it shouldn't be too long now.

These updates and others like them are first reported on the Hellgate: London forums.

This afternoon at about 3:00 PM PT, the Test Center server was updated with an early build of Hellgate: London Patch 1.3. Patch 1.3 has grown much like Patch 1.2, starting off as an interim patch and developing into a significant content update. The patch offers an impressive selection of new features including Ranks and the Perk Points system, numerous emotes, character inspection, gambling, shared stash, and then some. More details are available in the Test Center Patch 1.3 notes, published on the Hellgate: London forum.

This early version of Patch 1.3 will be updated as new builds become available and ready for Test Center.

Hot on the heels of Patch 1.2 comes Patch 1.3 which offers a host of new features and improvements to your Hellgate: London experience. This update is just as beefy as its predecessor and then some. Taken from the searing forge of development, it has been hammered and honed on the fiery anvil of in-house testing and will soon be fortified upon being thrust into the cold water that is Test Center.

Metaphors aside, Patch 1.3 has been crafted with an abundance of hotly desired features, the patch notes for which are presently being compiled. The latest addition to Patch 1.3 is Shared Stash, originally slated for the Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2). This feature will allow all of an account's characters to have a space to keep weapons, equipment, and other items in a location where any other characters on the account can access them. Two other new additions to the patch include gambling vendors and an increase to the current Palladium cap per character. Gambling vendors will offer unidentified items for sale which appear as "Normal" rarity and may or may not be worth far more than their purchase price. For more information on the estimated "content schedule" for Patch 1.3, be sure to check the "Lowdown On Upcoming Updates" news post made shortly before Patch 1.2 launched.

Patch 1.3 is estimated to be ready for Test Center next week. A more absolute date will be announced in the coming days along with the update's patch notes.

We're gearing up to release what we internally refer to as Patch 0.5. We intend this update to resolve many of the issues players are having with Hellgate: London.

In preparation for our 0.5 launch, we'll be...

1) Wiping our Test Center tonight.

2) Placing copies of all US characters into the Test Center tomorrow.

If you'd like to see Patch 0.5 early and help us perfect the update, please login to the Test Center over the weekend. If all goes well, the 0.5 update will be made available to everyone next week.

Curious about what you can expect? Here's a draft of our 0.5 patch notes:

General:
• All players now have 24 character slots.
• Fixed a known issue with the inventory user interface that caused the client to lock up.
• Fixed a bug which caused the Mini-game to sometimes become stuck.
• The Mini-game now resets every 15 minutes.
• Added a /help command to provide assistance using available / commands.
• Some new posters have been added to stations, so check them out!

Connection Issues:
• Fixed known issues which sometimes caused players to be disconnected and receive an erroneous network error message.
• Fixed an issue where some home routers would disconnect a user due to an inactive connection.
• Fixed known bugs which sometimes disconnected players during multiplayer quests.
• Fixed problems with NetLimiter 1.30 and some older versions of Norton Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus which would make the user entirely unable to connect to the game.

Chat:
• Made several chat interface improvements and the text entry more intuitive:
• Chat window is now open by default in multiplayer.
• Fixed chat window closing when traveling between zones.
• Fixed several cases where the chat window would obstruct other UI components.
• Chat context (such as Party and Guild) is now more clearly defined in the text entry window, including a color-coded border.
• Chat window is now more transparent.
• Added /g command. This is equivalent to /gchat command (guild chat).
• Whisper text now shows up on all chat tabs.
• Whisper messages and admin announcements auto-open the chat panel.
• Auto-switch to the appropriate tab (such as Party and Guild) if you type text to that channel and are not in a tab that shows the text.
• PageUp/PageDown cycle through chat tabs when text entry is active.
• Chat panel now auto-opens if you type text and press Enter while the panel is closed.
• Chat text entry deactivates after entering text.
• Chat panel no longer closes if you press Enter on a blank line.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Items:
• Fixed known bugs that caused players to sometimes lose items.
• Fixed a bug with the Nanoforge that caused it to inaccurately modify the stats of higher-quality items.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Unique items to drop without special properties.

Quests:
• Fixed various known issues which prevented players from being able to continue interrupted side-quests.
• Quest items should no longer remain in the player inventory after the associated quest has been completed. Players with old quest items (such as Train Parts) associated with quests they’ve already completed or no longer have should find these items removed upon logging in.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from receiving credit for killing the “5 Lies” in The Hellgate quest. Players should now be able to properly advance in this quest.

Engineers:
• Fixed known bugs which prevented Engineer Drones from saving properly.
• Fixed a bug which caused Engineers to receive an erroneous “unable to meet requirements” message when entering a new instance with a Drone that has a weapon equipped.

PvP:
• Fixed an incorrect modifier causing Special Effect Attack Strengths in PvP situations to be much higher than intended.

World Movement:
• Fixed known issues which occasionally prevented characters from being able to load or switch instances.
• Fixed several issues with players getting stuck in the world.
• Fixed a bug related to St. Paul's Nightmare mode progression.
• Portals to party members should now automatically close if the associated party member leaves the game.

World Events:
• The Guy Fawkes event has ended. Characters that have completed the NAME Quest that did not receive the Trinket reward should find this item in their inventory.

See you online!