News and Updates

Recently, we have gotten some reports of Second Life accounts getting taken over and their Lindens and /or Bloodlines assets transferred to other accounts. Many refer to this as their account getting “hacked”, but it is more likely that they are getting phished, brute-forced, or their passwords simply guessed. Accounts are not getting compromised “through” Bloodlines or because of Bloodlines. There is absolutely no way that someone could gain access to your Second Life account through your Bloodlines account. The Bloodlines system does not interact with your Second Life authentication in any way.

Regardless, there are a few easy, simple things you can do to make sure this never happens to you. Keep in mind that we are not talking about your slbloodlines.com account here, or your account on this blog, we are talking about the authentication you use to log into the Second Life viewer.

1. Make sure your password is strong, and is not anything remotely related to your name, or any word, or anything that remotely makes sense. Make sure it is long, includes numbers, symbols, and both capital and lowercase letters. If your name is Wilson, “wilson” is a bad password. So is “w1ls0n5”. Your password should look something like this: “FSm%9G*NxrZM#C”. Yes, it’s inconvenient to have a password like this, but so is getting all of your stuff stolen.
2. Never give your password to anyone.
3. Really, never ever give your password to anyone, for any reason. I mean it.
4. NO, not even your girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, mother, son, or siamese twin. Nobody. Never, never, NEVER give your password to anyone!!!
5. Ok, now that that’s out of the way: DON’T CLICK ON LINKS POSTED IN GROUPS OR IN ANY CHAT ANYWHERE IN SECOND LIFE! Once again, if someone posts a link to something in Second Life: DO NOT CLICK ON IT!!! This is how you get phished, someone will post a link to a “marketplace” listing that you think goes to marketplace.secondlife.com, but it really goes to marketplace.secondlife.phishingsite.com, which looks just like the sl marketplace, and is designed to capture your login and password (once you type it in), so then they can log in as you and steal all of your stuff. In this example: marketplace.secondlife.phishingsite.com, “phishingsite.com” is the domain you’re going to, and marketplace.secondlife has been set up as a subdomain there. Anyone who owns a domain can set up any subdomain they like on it. Make sure you look at the domain right before the “.com” to see what the real domain is that you’re visiting.
6. Don’t type your password into anything except a trusted Second Life viewer, or into the website secondlife.com, after you have manually typed secondlife.com into your browser window, and made sure that the last thing before the first “/” in the URL is “secondlife.com”, and not “secondlife.somethingsomething.com”. A good practice is to never type your SL password into anything unless you manually typed the URL into your browser.
7. Don’t worry so much about people getting your public IP address. This tells them very little, and everything you do on the internet exposes your public IP address in some way. This is not how they are getting you. They are getting you because you are doing something like:
   1. Having an insecure password that is easy to guess.
   2. Giving your password to someone.
   3. Clicking on links in chat groups.
   4. Typing your password into sites that you clicked on from chat groups.

On top of that, if someone comes to you saying they are “quitting Second Life” and want to sell you all of their souls and containers, it is likely to be a scam. If someone tells you this, and you buy all of their stuff, and then we find out later that the account had been taken over by someone else, we are going to return everything that you bought from them. If someone is offering a large dump of resources like this, it is a good idea to contact their liege and confirm it with them, or someone else in their clan who knows them. Something else you can do is give them a waiting period, tell them you will buy it in 3 days if everything is still for sale, and report it to Lyle Maeterlinck, and we can check on it. If the person is truly quitting Bloodlines or Second Life, then they shouldn’t mind if we lock their Bloodlines account for 3 days to make sure that the real account owner doesn’t come back. If you’re really quitting Bloodlines or Second Life and want to sell all of your stuff, contact Lyle Maeterlinck first, and I can lock your account for a waiting period to make sure the real account owner doesn’t come back.

If someone asks you to transfer money outside of second life through Paypal or a bank transfer or any other way, it is almost definitely a scam. Don’t do this.

Given all of this, we can never guarantee or be held responsible for third-party transactions. If you are buying containers directly from us, we absolutely guarantee them, but if you are buying souls or containers from anyone else, there is a risk involved. Be careful, take things slowly, and use good judgment. Feel free to contact me directly in Second Life (Lyle Maeterlinck), or comment on this post if you have questions.

Introducing a new game feature: Rarity! Every player in Bloodlines now has a new metric and meter displayed on their profile for how “rare” their character is. In general, the more you have done or achieved in Bloodlines, the more rare you are. There are five possible Rarity ratings: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra-rare, and Legendary. You’ll also see the Rarity meter appear under each name in your soul list. Then, at the top of your soul list, you will see a new total of points that reflects the total rarity of the souls you own. Please note, this does not affect any other current stats or rankings, it is an entirely new stat that you can strive for. The new Soul Rarity stat ranking is under the stats section, and lists people not by the rarity of their own souls, but by the rarity point total of the souls that they own.

You can try to get the rarest collection of souls, and you can also strive to increase the rarity of your own soul by collecting items, getting achievements, and increasing your game status.

In addition, you will notice a new control on your profile editor that determines how your soul list is ordered. You can order it by rarity, or by newest souls at the top, or by oldest souls at the top. Once you set this ranking, your souls will be ordered that way for anyone who visits your profile, and you can change how they are ordered at any time.

We hope you have a great time building a collection of the rarest souls, and seeing if you can get to Legendary!

Announcing Bond Rings version 2, including an updated Blood Bond, an updated Lumen Bond, and the new Human Bond!

We’ve made a few changes to the way that Bonds work. You now have the freedom to create any kind of bond with any other Bloodlines player, and you can have multiple active bonds of the same type. For the full details on how the new bonds work, please see the instructions pages:

Now that you can bond with multiple people, you can bond with anyone: your comrades, clan mates, lieges, or just your friends!

Announcing the winners of the 7th Anniversary Party Haunt contest! Huge thanks to everyone who participated in making the grid-wide Bloodlines 7th Anniversary parties a success! It was also great to hang out with the dozens of people who came to the two official Halloween in May bashes on the Bloodlines sims. The winners of the haunt contest were chosen based on the number of votes they received during the contest period from May 1-6. These three haunts will get their link on the Bloodlines home page for 30 days! Thanks to everyone who voted! And now, the winners are:

First Place: Domini Noctis

Second Place: Fallen Ones

Third Place: Dolls of Death

Introducing Liquid Designs Gift Cards! Now you can share a gift card with a friend or loved one good for Liquid Designs products from any main store vendor.

Gift Cards are only available from the gift card vending machines in main Liquid Designs stores on Liquid Estate. Next to every vending machine is a Top-Up Terminal that you can use to add value to any gift card.

You can learn about how to use gift cards on the Gift Card gear page.

The Blood and Lumen Altars allow you to make sacrifices of Blood, Lumens, or Humanity to a selected King, Queen, or Alpha. If they collect enough sacrifices, they can become “Deified” and gain a bonus status of Demigod or Demigoddess. The Lycan, Vampire, and Hybrid Demigod with the most sacrifices becomes a God or Goddess. Find out more in the Deities Guide Section, or the Altars gear page!

Now you can view a list of Bloodlines players whose soul is in the Abyss in the stats section. This list is ordered by last login date, so people at the top of the list are players who have logged in recently. This is a new way to find souls that are floating around in the Abyss that only need a Hemlock to get them out.

The Abyss might be a scary place to go, but there are souls there for the taking if you decide to rescue them. (Just don’t tell them that the Hemlock potion tastes like black licorice and paint thinner!)

Today we’re announcing new royalty statuses for the first time since Bloodlines was created. Now you can be higher than a King, a Queen, or an Alpha, and rise up to starred royalty status, or all the way to an Emperor or Empress. These new statuses give minions new powers as well, because a minion with as little as 10 souls can gain a star on their profile and be part of a 1-star minion court.

For details on how this new mechanic works, see the new Statuses section in the Bloodlines Guide. The basic idea is that anyone who has reached King/Queen/Alpha status (by gaining 400 total souls) can then add up to 5 stars to this status based on how souls are distributed between their minions.

So, having 10 minions with 10 souls each gets you 1 star, 15 minions with 15 souls each gets you 2 stars, and so on up to 30 minions with 30 souls to get 5 stars. Starred kings/queens/alphas can get together and liege to an Emperor or Empress. An Emperor or Empress must have 20 total King/Queen/Alpha stars among their minions. Note the difference between minion stars (that lift a starred King/Queen/Alpha), and King/Queen/Alpha stars that lift an Emperor/Empress.

In addition to creating new levels of achievement to strive for, this adjustment should remove some of the emphasis on “stacking”; in order for players to truly rise, they need active minions pledging allegiance to them. Don’t hesitate to contact us or ask in the comments if you have any questions about this update. More great stuff coming soon!

Happy hunting to all!

There have always been rumors going around the Bloodlines community about various things, and the vast majority of you have learned not to believe everything you hear. However, we thought we might post this handy flowchart that you can use to determine whether a given rumor is true or false. In general, we recommend being skeptical about anything that you hear out there, and remember that the more shocking the rumor is, the greater the likelihood that it is false.

Now, here are a few things that are true:

1. We’re already working on making gacha machines with new custom texture packs for Series 5 tanks and prisms, Soul Reapers, Rampage Claws, and Spikes. The textures will be collectible and tradeable.We’re also planning on making some upgrades to our vendor system and affiliate vendors.
2. We’re going to be releasing a searchable listing of souls in the abyss, so you can find them and hunt them down!
3. We’re going to be releasing more information on the website so you can track activity on containers, including drinks, siphons, coffin / sarcophagus sends, transfers and sales.

There’s more news on the way, stay tuned to this blog for all official updates.

Announcing the release of the new Spike 3.0 and Rampage Claw 2.0. These two attachments have been fully redesigned and updated to mesh. They also come loaded with the following updates:

1. Reprogrammed amount choices with more convenient default options, including auto calculation of the maximum that can be moved between you and your victim, of either Humanity, Lumens, or Vital Blood, and the ability to enter custom amounts to move.
2. Nine different default textures each, with more texture packs coming soon
3. Customize your chat command channel
4. Resizer script for more convenient fitting to your avatar.

If you own a Spike or Rampage Claw, you will be auto-delivered the update if you wear your current Spike or Rampage claw, or you can get a redelivery at any Liquid Designs update terminal.