News and Updates

We have recently updated our vendor system, and that includes the Catalogue vendors. The new vendors are much less laggy (on average by half, sometimes more depending on the sim). Your old catalogue vendors will continue to work, however we strongly advise converting to the new version. Ideally the new lower-lag versions will result in less undelivered sales, as well as a less laggy sim for you and your clan.

The updated vendors are available now, and depending on which one you own you may be able to get a Redelivery from one of our Update Terminals. If not, they are still just 1 Linden, for sale to the left of either the Thirst, Rage or WAR main vendors on the respective sims.

One note however – the Catalogue Vendors now only can be rezzed by those with payment info on file. (Purchases can still be made by people with no payment info, however). This is a change aimed at allowing us to track and deal with the occasional shady activities that people attempt in regards to the catalogue vendors. It’s a rare occurrence, but something we take seriously so as to protect the integrity of the system and the games. We understand this change will negatively affect those who are unable to file payment info with Linden Labs, and we apologize. We are hopeful that some of the new developments that LL has underway in regards to transaction tracking may allow us to loosen restrictions like this on Catalogue Vendor usage in the future, but until then we have to put certain safeguards in place.

For those of you negatively impacted by this, however, we do have a slight silver lining to offer. As a result of updating the vendor system, we’ve reduced lag on our home sims (Bloodlines East, West, South, and Badlands). So making the trip there when necessary should be slightly less arduous.

Once again, we hope the new Catalogue Vendors create less lag and redelivery issues for you. Thanks for your patience. Happy hunting!

Today we’re happy to announce “The Blood Shot”. The shot is a glass of blood containing .25 Liters of fresh vital blood. The Blood Shot can be sipped slowly or ‘shot’ all at once. They’re transferrable, which makes them great for a social gathering, club, or gift to a thirsty clan member close to destruction. 

As with our other blood containers like the Tanks and Bottles, for security reasons the Blood Shot has to be rezzed on our own sims prior to sale, so unfortunately we can’t put them in the catalogue vendors at this time. They are currently available at the Sanguinus Keep sim here, as well as at The Haunt vampire bar on the dock in the Bloodlines East RP area.

Today we’ve released version 2.9 of The Thirst and 2.7 of the Spike. This is a mandatory update, but the current versions of the Thirst and the Spike will continue to work for 72 hours following the product release. After Saturday evening, 3/7/09, you will need to get the update. When you attach your Bloodlines HUD or Spike, it should be auto-delivered to you. If it’s not, try getting your update from the update kiosks in the main Bloodlines stores on Liquid Designs or Liquid East.

The Spike update is just to coincide with some of the server-side updates that we made to The Thirst. The changes to the Thirst include:

1. Setting your liege is now done through a local sensor and selection from a menu, instead of typing in the avatar name. This means it’s a lot easier to set your liege or to request freedom, but in order to set your liege, you have to do it in person.
2. With this version, avatars younger than 14 days old cannot be attacked. This is to cut down on vampire attacks on new avatars in welcome areas. New avatars can only join the game if they buy the HUD first.
3. Tampering controls have been added to keep the bite from being disguised as something else, like a hug. You can still modify your fangs to fit your avatar, including resizing them and moving the prims around, but please don’t rename them or add prims to the link set, these actions will set off the tamper controls.

If you discover any technical issues with the updates, please let Lyle Maeterlinck know immediately. Happy Hunting!

UPDATE: The Thirst 2.8 and the Spike 2.6 have been deactivated. Your animations still may work, but they will no longer interact with the Bloodlines server.  To continue playing, please update to Thirst 2.9 and Spike 2.7. If you have any trouble getting your update, send a notecard to Noire Luminos.

Sanguinus Keep is now open for residency and business! The first OFFICIAL Bloodlines island made for YOU! Residential and Commercial land available.

You can visit and explore Sanguinus Keep here.

The following plots are available and will be sold on a first come first served basis.

1 plot of 4096 meters with 1874 prims costs $32,000L upfront and has a tier of $4,000L a week.
1 plot of 3072 meters with 1406 prims costs $24,000L upfront and has a tier of $3,000L a week.
4 plots of 2048 meters with 936 prims costs $16,000L upfront and has a tier of $2000L a week.
7 plots of 1024 meters with 468 prims costs $8,000L upfront and has a tier of $1000L a week.
4 plots of 512 meters with 234 prims costs $4,000 upfront and has a tier of $500L a week.

Sanguinus Keep is located on the sim to the North of Liquid Designs / Bloodlines West. You can see which plots are still for sale by opening up the map and making sure the land for sale box is checked.

If you are interested in owning land at Sanguinus Keep, be sure to contact Serra Anansi before paying your first tier payment, as it can only be made through the tier meter, and she will have to tell you your tier number.

If you have any questions regarding tier payments, or anything else, you can contact Serra Anansi via notecard or email (serra@slbloodlines.com).

Greetings vampires! We have two small items to announce today – we’re doing a small adjustment to the Electrum potion, and we’ve updated the profiles with a potion list.

First, the Electrum. As can be seen in the Comments, we’ve had a mixed reaction to the Electrum potion. Our intent with the Electrum was to balance the power of negotiation when it came to ‘hostage soul’ situations. Some players have expressed a lot of satisfaction with the new dynamic offered by the Electrum, but we’ve also gotten some harsh criticism, mainly expressing now the power shift is too far in the other direction, away from the soul owners.

We discussed many different adjustments; the one we are enacting today involves making the Electrum Potion a one-time use per avatar, in perpetuity. This means that as of midnight November 29th, 2008 – an avatar will only be allowed to use the Electrum Potion once in their life, period. This allows those who either were tricked into losing their soul, or have found their soul in a hostage situation, a single opportunity to free it. However, after that, one must be careful where their soul goes, because there will be no further way to force it away from an owner.

*** This is not a retroactive change. For those that have already consumed the Electrum prior to midnight on the 29th, that will not count against your one-time-only-use.

Which brings us to our second update – the profile Potion List. This list will show any potions that an avatar has drank – Wormwood, Hemlock, Nightshade, or Electrum. In addition to showing a little more about your avatar’s life and history, it also will enable those who are involved in soul dealings to know for sure whether an avatar has used up their one Electrum Potion or not.

As always we encourage Comments in the comments section of this post, and will do our best to weigh all feedback when considering updates.

Greetings vampires! Today we released a non-mandatory update to the Thirst HUD and Fangs package. In the last week a bug regarding a “Too Many Listens” script error showed up, and we addressed it in this update. The update can be obtained by detaching and reattaching your HUD, or by visiting the update kiosks around our Bloodlines sims.

Again, this is a non-mandatory update; we realize that it’s a pain to adjust your fangs each time a new set comes out. If your 2.7 fangs and HUD are working satisfactorily, then you can keep on using them. (However, be aware that the auto-updater server will attempt to redeliver a 2.8 version every time you log in, because until the new items are attached, it will continue to think you need to be updated).

Thanks for your patience, and have a great week!

We’re excited to announce two new products today: one for Bloodlines players, and one for people that don’t want to play Bloodlines: The Apple, and The Garlic Necklace.

First, the Garlic Necklace.

In its first few months, thousands have joined the Bloodlines game, and we’re happy that so many people are enjoying being vampires using our system. It’s been interesting to watch it spread exponentially through Second Life, as a real vampire curse might. We have received a lot of positive feedback, and the majority of vampires are using the system as it was intended, for RP and expansion of vampire culture.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Bloodlines doesn’t have the best reputation in some circles. This is due in large part to “Leeches” or “Mosquitos” – the players that for one reason or another are not RPing bites, but rather sending random, unsolicited bite requests to everyone they meet. As a result, citizens in Second Life report annoyance or anger at being constantly offered bite request menus, or accidentally accepting a request and being added to a bite list against their will, etc. In turn, Bloodlines vampires find themselves being banned from sims, harassed and hunted by griefers, or reported for abuse.

It’s unfair that the majority of vampires are punished for the actions of the minority ‘bad apples’. After careful consideration we’ve decided to release “The Garlic Necklace” to alleviate this situation.

The Garlic Necklace is copy, transfer, and free. The user wears it once, clicks ‘Activate’ in the menu, and will not receive another bite request from one of our vampires. Their name will also be taken off of any bite list we have on our website. People may continue to receive vampire bite requests from other vampire systems, but not from ours. You can pick up a Garlic Necklace at Hunter’s Haven at Liquid South.

On the surface this might look like a downer, but we think it will ultimately improve the health of the game, as it will improve the reputation of our community within Second Life.

And also, remember – the effects of the Garlic Necklace are completely reversible! All the human needs to do is use the menu in the necklace to reactivate themselves with Bloodlines. This means that if you’re the kind of vampire who is willing to RP a victim into a bite, then nothing has really changed, you still have that ability. The Garlic Necklace is only limiting the vampires who Leech, Mosquito, or otherwise hope to catch a noob or victim with an accidental acceptance of their bite request.

Next, the Apple.

We realize that some vampires were driven to Leeching due to a blood scarcity. In response to this, we’ve released another product that will help increase the availability of blood: The Apple. We’ve had a lot of requests for “Blood Dolls”, or humans that you can keep around and drink from because they will regenerate blood. We can’t just allow humans to regenerate blood automatically, because vampires could create armies of human alts, have them regenerate blood, and then blood would lose it’s worth. So, in order for humans to regenerate blood, they will have to eat.

On the island below the Bloodlines Plaza at Liquid East, you will find The Eternal Orchard, where you can purchase apples that will give a human Bloodlines player back 5% of their humanity for L$14. Click one of the trees, and an apple will fall off. Right-click the apple and select ‘buy’, then right click it and select ‘take’. You must be a registered Bloodlines player with uncursed, human status in order to eat apples. Five percent humanity translates to 0.25L of Blood, just enough to survive the Curse for one night.

These aren’t the products we previously promised would be out before Halloween. Our previously promised set of pre-Halloween products are near completion, and include a refill for empty tanks and casks, a siphon to transfer blood between tanks and casks in large amounts, a single-use blood drink, and one fun surprise. When those are released, they’ll be announced right here.