All the basic settings I wanted to change were inaccessible in this last time I used it, and while apparently still available by editing gconf, were inaccessible to me as a basic, general user. In fact, the default settings I found very annoying and frustratingly hard to change. I thought XChat wasn't the client for me until I tried regular xchat. I'll have to review this again to see if it's changed since last time I used it.
Perhaps the best graphical IRC client for Mint, even though it lacks some things to be perfect.