News and Updates

There is a bug in SL at the moment that may be affecting your HUD and Bloodlines items. We want to make you aware of it, as well as ask for your help in filing messages on the SL JIRA, in hopes that it may get fixed sooner rather than later.

The SL bug is one that affects the owner data on prims; in some regions, the sim is unable to report who owns what prims properly. This has a negative effect on many things, including our HUDs; if your HUD cannot tell that you are the owner, or can’t tell that your friend owns their HUD, then you may have issues with scanning, drinking blood from casks/tanks, using potions, etc.

This is NOT affecting all regions, so if you are having issues, definitely try your items in another region to see if they resolve. 

If you’d like to do your part to help get this issue fixed – you can vote on the JIRA issue associated with this bug. Voting only takes a moment, and if sufficient votes rack up the Lindens tend to give the issue higher fix priority.

The JIRA issue can be found here.

Once the JIRA page loads, on the left side, near the top, it should say: “If you were logged in you would be able to see more operations.”

If you click the “logged in” portion  of that statement, it will prompt you to log into the SL JIRA. Once you do, you’ll then see (on the left side again):

” Voting: You have not voted for this issue. Vote for it if you wish it to be fixed”

Click on “Vote for it” and you’ll add your voice to those that wish to see this issue fixed in the near future!

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.

Announcing the much anticipated Electrum Potion! This potion gives the user the ability to move their soul from the possession of one avatar into the possession of another. So, for all of you that have wanted your soul to go to a special someone, now you have the power. However, to do this, there’s a price. The person receiving your soul must ransom another soul back to the current owner. So, the Electrum potion doesn’t change soul counts, it just trades the position of two souls. The person receiving the drinker’s soul must be present (within 20 meters) and must approve the transaction. They can choose to have any one of their souls go as ransom, or can choose a specific soul to go. The person losing the drinker’s soul does not need to be present and need not consent. Enjoy!

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!

Today we’re proud to announce the release of Version 3.0 Blood Containers, Blood Siphons, and Blood Bottle Container Refills.

The Version 3.0 containers have a few exciting new features: Group Security and Drink / Fill Records. We’ve gotten rid of the unwieldy user list feature that we had on the version 1 and 2 containers, and we’ve added a feature so you can allow access to a Second Life group. So, you can either set your container to open access, or to group access only. You can still set the container to fill only or fill / drink for others that have access. To see a readout of the current security settings, just press the check button on the menu. In addition, we’ve made it so you can check the drink / fill record for your containers. Under security, just check ‘View Record’, and you’ll get a readout of the last 25 drinks and fills, so you’ll know who’s been filling and who’s been drinking.

The Blood Bottles are 5L refills for your blood containers. They will work on version 2 and 3 containers, and you can track them on your Blood Cellar page.

The Blood Siphon is a tool you can use to quickly move large amounts of blood between your containers, without having to drink from or bleed into them. You can use it to distribute or consolidate your blood. It’s a must-have tool for blood merchants, and anyone who keeps a blood cellar for their clan or bloodthirsty guests. Blood Siphons will also work on version 2 and 3 containers. Once you get your blood siphon, you’ll get a new item icon on your Blood Cellar page.

We’ve just released catalogue vendors which include the majority of the non-Bloodlines items at Liquid Designs; you can now resell “The Brethren”, “The Murder”, and the various Halloween-themed items we have at Blood.

The vendors can be found at the Blood store at Bloodlines West, or on our Halloween sim at Blood:Halloween.

We’ve released a an updated set of Catalogue Vendors. In addition to performing better and having less dropped sales due to lag (thanks Andy Enfield!) we’ve added several sizes, as well as an optional TP board with links to a few important Bloodlines locations, like the Eternal Orchard. The vendors are available at Bloodlines East, to the left of the Thirst vendor.

* UPDATED: 10.21.08 – The new Cask/Tank Siphons should appear in the Bloodlines Catalogue vendors, but you may need to take them offline / update them in order for them to show up.

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.

A few security checks have been activated on the Bloodlines systems today. First, we need to get everyone to indicate that they agree to our terms and conditions to continue playing. If you detach and reattach your HUD, our terms of service will be vended to you, and you’ll have to answer ‘Yes’ to the blue dialog window indicating that you agree to them. You’ll only have to do this once. In addition, we’ve added an automatic validation system, so that even if those pesky hackers and counterfeiters are able to modify the permissions on the HUD again, it won’t work unless it validates with our purchase database. No activation keys will be necessary, the system knows who purchased a HUD and who didn’t. We wish we didn’t have to waste your gaming time and our development time with troubles like this, thanks to everyone for your patience, and please know that we’re doing these things in the best interest of the system.

If you get an error message telling you that you’re not validated, or if it just tells you “There was an error, please try again.”, this may mean that our system didn’t get your avatar name properly. If your connection happens to be slow or there is a lot of lag, you might notice that the name on your SL resident profile appears as “(waiting)”, or “Loading…”. Our system may also get your avatar name this way, so it’s unable to check you in, and will give you an error message. If you just wait a few seconds, or try viewing your own profile and making sure your name comes up, then reattach your HUD, it should work. If not, be sure to let me (Lyle Maeterlinck) know, and I’ll look into it for you as soon as possible.

Also, please note that the current version of the Bloodlines HUD is 2.7, if you’re not currently using 2.7, you’ll need to update in order for it to work. We’ve been able to turn our auto-updaters back on, so your HUD should check in when you attach it and make sure that you have the most recent version.