News and Updates

UPDATE: Scheduled maintenance tonight has been postponed until tomorrow night, Thursday, March 13, 2014, for the same time, 2-3PM. No scheduled maintenance will happen today. We’re very sorry for any confusion that this causes.

Previously:

The Bloodlines Thirst, Rage, and Human systems are scheduled to be unavailable from approximately 2:00 AM SL time until approximately 3:00AM SL time tomorrow morning, Wednesday, March 12, 2014 for server updates. Bloodlines War will remain available during this time. We expect this to be the last period of downtime for routine maintenance for the foreseeable future. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

This maintenance period is going to be adding a layer of robustness to our server architecture that will protect us against future problems, and help ensure the availability and durability of Bloodlines for a long time to come.

Please let me (Lyle Maeterlinck) know if you have any questions. Thanks to all of you for making Bloodlines the ultimate vampire community in Second Life!

Bloodlines War will be undergoing scheduled maintenance tomorrow morning, February 26, 2014, starting at approximately 2AM. We expect the maintenance to last less than 15 minutes. Only Bloodlines War will be unavailable during this time, all other Bloodlines services will be available. We’re sorry for this inconvenience! If you have any questions, please contact Lyle Maeterlinck.

Announcing The Thirst 4.2, The Rage 2.2, and The Human HUD 2.2! The updates to these HUDs are relatively minor, but important.

First, we have reduced the number of scripts in the HUD by 16, from 24 down to 8. Second, we have fixed a couple of bugs that showed up in the last release, namely a memory error that sometimes showed up in the Thirst Fangs Glamour function, and a problem with custom animations when doing bites in Free mode.

We’ve also added a new feature to the scanner: the ability to get text or web stats on any Bloodlines member from your HUD, just by typing in their name. This is a convenience method so that if someone isn’t online, you don’t have to go to the website in order to get basic stats on them. You can access this feature by pressing the stats button on your HUD, then selecting ‘TYPE NAME’ from the dialog, then typing their name on the specified channel. There is a different channel for each of the Thirst, Rage, and Human HUDs. You can also quickly get stats for someone by typing the command stats:[name] on the specified channel. For example, you could type /7 stats: Lyle Maeterlinck for the Thirst HUD. Scans done in this way don’t count towards achievements, sorry!

The new HUD crates also include an auto-updater for your fangs, claws, bite marks, and claw wounds, so you don’t have to move your animations. You just have to rez your attachments on the ground next to the updater, then touch the updater to start the update process. Please refer to the README notecard included in your crate for detailed instructions, and feel free to let me (Lyle Maeterlinck) know if you have any problems with this process.

Thanks to all of you for being a part of Bloodlines and making it one of the biggest and strongest communities in Second Life!

Hi everyone, overnight tonight we are having a period of scheduled maintenance starting at about 3:00AM SL time. We expect the maintenance to last for 30 to 45 minutes. During this time, all Bloodlines services will be unavailable, including the Bloodlines website, and all in-world web-connected items. To view the status of the Bloodlines system during the downtime, please stay tuned to http://status.slbloodlines.com.

We’re really sorry about this. We take downtime of the system very seriously, and will be taking additional steps to prevent future maintenance episodes of this kind.  If you have any questions regarding the downtime, please contact me (Lyle Maeterlinck) in-world. Thanks!

Today we made some updates to the Bloodlines generations and stats. We have released a new subdomain for Bloodlines at hybrid.slbloodlines.com. If you have the Thirst HUD, you have a profile on slbloodlines.com, if you have the Rage HUD, you have a profile on lycan.slbloodlines.com, and now, if you have both, you get another profile where you can access both your vampire and lycan stats on the hybrid site.

This comes with some updates to the stats and generations. Before, hybrids were part of either the lycan or the vampire stats depending on what resource they were dominant in: blood or lumens. Now, anyone who is both enraged and embraced will show in the hybrid stats. If you are only embraced, you will show in the vampire stats, and if you are only enraged, you will only show in the lycan stats. To move from the hybrid stats to the vampire stats, you would need to drink Wolfsbane, and to move from the hybrid stats to the lycan stats, you would need to drink Nightshade. If you’re hybrid, you can safely do this without losing any souls.

Humans have a new homepage where they can compete for the stats Cider Wealth, Lumen Fountain, Blood Fountain, and also compete in a soul ranking. We’ve made a number of other small improvements to the website that we hope make it easier to browse. Let us know what you think!

Introducing The Valerian Potion! We often hear from members of the Bloodlines community that they regret certain attacks that appear on their profile, or wish to forget certain names off of their profile. The Valerian Potion is an herbal tonic that can purify your blood and lumens by removing the attacks of a selected person from your history. It can be reversed by drinking the potion again. Valerian has the magical properties of turning negative things into positive things. If you have a negative ghost flowing through your veins, Valerian will help you to release it. For more information, see the Valerian Potion page.

We would like to give everyone a heads-up that we are preparing to finally make some much-requested updates to the Bloodlines stats. We are adding two new stats pages, one for Hybrids, and one for Humans.

This means that if you are currently a Hybrid (both embraced and enraged), and you are currently in the Vampire or Lycan stats for Generation or Royalty, you will be moved to the Hybrid stats. This means that instead of only two players being Generation 1, now there will be three. This also opens up two more slots in Generation 2, four more in Generation 3, eight more in Generation 4, etc. If you are a Hybrid currently in the Vampire stats and want to stay there, you will need to drink the Wolfsbane potion, and if you are currently a Hybrid in the Lycan stats and want to stay there, you will need to drink the Nightshade potion. You don’t have to do this yet. As we get closer to launching these changes, we will let you know exactly when it is going to happen.

For Humans, this means you finally get your own Bloodlines homepage and separate stats. We’re adding rankings for Cider Wealth and total amount of humanity converted into blood or lumens.

We’re also going to be making some updates to the site to make them easier to navigate and access on mobile devices.

The Mandrake Potion

Introducing The Mandrake Potion! This potion has hypnotic effects on the drinker, and can be used to insure HUD-for-soul transactions.

We know that one of the biggest challenges of hunting new players and bringing them into your clan is the possibility that they are not who they appear to be, and that they will not fulfill their part of a bargain when someone wants to pay their way into the clan. If a new person agrees to transfer their soul to you in exchange for a Bloodlines HUD, you can splash the Mandrake Potion on them, and if you gift the HUD to them within 24 hours, their soul will be transferred to you. If you don’t buy them the HUD in that period, the potion will wear off and have no further effect. If you have questions, you can find all the details on the Mandrake Instructions Page.

In order to cover up the foul taste of the Mandrake root (we had to add it, it’s the magic part), we’ve added a refreshing lime-mint flavor to this potion, which should also be helpful for when you get up-close and personal for a few bites or scratches with your new minion!

The Mandrake Potion is available now at the main Bloodlines stores, and in Human, Thirst, and Rage accessories affiliate vendors. If you own a set of affiliate vendors, please click on your vendors and update them, and the Mandrake Potion will be added to the vendors.

Today we have 3 new Bloodlines drinks you can buy and share with your friends: Bloodlines Vital Blood and Moonshine in glass longneck bottles, and Cider in cans. The bottles contain 0.35L of Vital Blood or 3.5 Lumens, and the cans contain 0.35L of Cider, which will restore 7% humanity. You can distribute and share these new drinks in two ways: from affiliate vendor fridges that you set up on your own land, or by buying packs of them to store up or share with your friends.

The fridges come in several different packages, and come with posters and neon signs to hang up and decorate your bar. You can get each of the individual fridges with their associated posters and signs: The Blood Bar, The Cider Bar, or The Moonshine Bar, or, you can get all 3 (plus a Haunt system to place on your land), in The Bar Pack.

You can also buy them in packs of 6, 12, 24, and 48 to take home and store up, or share with your friends! The Vital Blood Pack, The Moonshine Pack, and The Cider Pack all have extensive options for sharing drinks with your friends.

Today we’re also releasing Bulk Apples (at last)! Bulk Apples work just like the drink packs, and also have lots of options for sharing.

Soon, we’ll be holding special events for Bloodlines Haunt bars, so get your Bar Pack, and set up your Bloodlines bar today!

We’ve made some updates to the way events are scheduled for Haunts, and added a new events calendar for Haunts to the site. The new rules for Haunt events are:

1. Events cannot have a start date more than 24 hours in the past, when the event is created or edited.
2. Events that last more than 24 hours are marked as ‘ongoing’ events, and are listed in a separate calendar: the ongoing events calendar. Ongoing events are for things like hunts, contests.
3. No event can last more than 30 days. Any events currently listed that were longer than 30 days have been truncated to last 30 days. Some people have listed events that go many years into the future. Please don’t do ridiculous things like this, or we will delete your event entirely. Party 24/7/365 is not an event!

In addition, we’ve made an easier way to browse events with the new events calendar and ongoing events calendar. You can also quickly find events happening today on the Haunts landing page.