News and Updates

Below is a procedure you can use to help make sure you don’t buy a tank or cask that doesn’t work or has been deliberately removed from the system by us when an account is terminated.

1. Check to see if the avatar you’re buying from has an active Bloodlines account. Type their name into the search box on www.slbloodlines.com, and if you can’t find their page, don’t buy from them, regardless of what excuses they give you.

2. See if the container in question appears on their Blood Cellar page. (Make sure that if you’re buying a full 20 L cask, that you see at least one full 20 L cask on their blood cellar page. If there isn’t one, don’t buy it.) You can get to their Blood Cellar page by clicking on the blood container icon on their profile.

3. Check the creator of the object – including the linked prims! This isn’t foolproof, because scammers have found ways to repurpose Mars Bracken prims to link as the root, but have the seller rez the container in front of you. Right-click on it and select ‘edit’. Your build tools window should open. Look on the “General” tab, and make sure the creator is Mars Bracken on all the prims (or Voluntas Blackburn or Lyle Maeterlinck, other BL creators) and that the owner is the name of the avatar you’re buying from. Again this one isn’t 100% foolproof, but often times you can spot a fake this way.

4. In the build window, go to the ‘Content’ tab, and make sure that the container contains a script called ‘Bloodlines Blood Container’ for pre-version 5 containers, and for new containers, look for scripts named “_1_container_api_[version]” and “_2_container_operate_[version]”.

5. Have the seller set the container to open access and fill/drink mode. Once they’ve done this, when you click on the container, you should get a menu with ‘Fill’ and ‘Drink’ buttons.

6. Fill the container with 0.1 L of blood. (If the tank is full, then drink 0.1 L). Make sure that the blood comes off of your vital blood and goes into the container. The best way to check this is by looking on your own Bloodlines profile, and on the Blood Cellar page of the avatar selling the tank. Make sure that your vital blood dropped by 0.1 L, and that the amount in the tank went up by 0.1 L (or vice versa if you drank instead of filled). If this worked, the tank is good.

7. Now, if you’re ready to buy the container, DO NOT pay the avatar directly and have them hand it to you. Don’t take your eyes off of the container that you just checked. Have the seller set it for sale at the agreed price, and then right-click it and select ‘buy’. You will now be the owner of the container.

General tips:

1. If they’re selling it in the Bloodlines store, NEVER buy from them. Selling blood in the store is prohibited. Please report them to us.
2. If you see anything funny happen after you check the container, check it again.
3. Don’t let them rush you. You’re the one that stands to lose if this deal goes bad. Take your time, and if you’re not certain it’s good, don’t buy it. If they’re in a hurry, ask to meet at a better time for them.
4. Don’t let them talk you into any other custom procedure, no matter what explanation they give you. In fact, if they try to talk you into anything else or convince you of anything, it’s a good sign that they’re scamming you.
5. If they say they work for Bloodlines, or that they’re friends with the creators, or that Bloodlines or the Lindens certified their tanks, they are lying to you.

If they give you any trouble or you get a bad feeling about them or anything else, trust your gut and don’t buy it.

If you do end up buying a tank that doesn’t work, I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to replace it for you. Here is the action you can take:

1. File an abuse report on the person for Fraud > $L. We’re not sure that they will be able to help you, but it’s worth a shot.
2. Send us their name so we can possibly take action against them, including but not limited to: banning them from our land, draining and deregistration of additional blood containers and termination and destruction of Bloodlines account(s).

We want to support the blood trade, but we take theft and fraud very seriously, and we pursue blood thieves and frauds to the extent that we are able.

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.

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.