STICKY: Small Updates and Tweaks

[Mooncalf]

The cap on max hitters in a 12 hour period has been raised to 4 individuals. Certain mastery powers will also speed up the searching and killing process somewhat, when they are released.

We are also working on fixing the issues surrounding anonymous attacks, private elevators and so on.

[Mooncalf]

- The use of anonymous powers no longer lock you or your target out of lairs. However, they do still count towards the 4 hitters cap.

- Fighting with wraiths no longer counts towards your 4 hitters cap, or your lockout period.

- Catch-up points are no longer accumulated for dead characters.

- Blood packs now cost $600, due to the fact that these black market traders find it much harder to get hold of them now, due to high demand from vampires and the fact that security has been tightened.

- Lockout countdowns are now reset if a target is hit (or an attack attacks) again, even if the attack falls within the 48 hour lockout period. This means you do not need to wait until the end of the 48 hours to hit a target if your intention is stop them running back to their lair. However, more changes will be forthcoming soon which will ensure accidents do not cause lockouts.

- Feeding, buying blood packs, or blood boosting now count as a movement, allowing you to be hit again. Healing an ally, however, does not count as them moving, as they could be offline when this happens.

[Mooncalf]

There is now an option in settings (under "character") to turn off skirmish PVP buttons. This is for players who want to avoid accidentally skirmish attacking people.

[Mooncalf]

Further re-balancing updates made today are as follows:

• - Lair lockout only happens on the second hit. This means that the defender doesn't get locked out of lairs due to 1 mistake click. The system will wait for the second hit before locking the victim out of any lairs, in order to ensure that the lockout system is being used for what it was intended (war, rather than accidental clicks). However, the first attacker is locked out of the all private abodes, as it was their mistake. To avoid mistakes, people should consider switching off the skirmish buttons via the settings page.
  
  - Summon ally now works when trying to summon a fighter into a public location, even if they've been involved in a fight over the past 48 hours. It still doesn't allow you to summon them into a private location of any kind, though.
  
  - Hiding in the shadow realm or using grave digger now adds 12 hours onto your going to ground countdown timer. Meaning, if you've recently been fighting and you use one of these powers to escape harm, you'll have to wait a further 12 hours before you're able to go back into a private area. The timer doesn't pause while you're in hiding, however.
  
  - Being dead now reduces your experience points by 300 per day, until you reach 0 exp (you will not drop a level). This is partly to reflect the fact that vampires get weaker while in the SR.
  
  - Kiling targets now drops the overall city alert level a little bit more than before. It now factors in the number of individual violations the target has, as well as their more recent violation score.
  
  - The game rules have been updated to prohibit intentionally hitting somebody with 4 characters in order to make them invulnerable to other hitters. The rule states as follows: "Among other things, this rule prohibits you from 'hitter blocking', which is using 4 allies, thralls or alts to hit your own character (usually softly) in order to make yourself invulnerable from further attacks."

Next up: mastery powers.

[Mooncalf]

Azraeth AKA Josh has been given the role of Storyteller Mod. This is a new role, for the purposes of helping me to bring the story to life, plan RP events, write cannon and so on.

Josh won't be privy to certain deep and dark secrets about the story, and he won't be voting on regular mod matters. His role is purely to help me flesh out the roleplay side of things, while my hands are busy coding and fixing bugs. Josh also has my authority to answer canon questions on the canon Q&A thread, as long as the questions are regarding minor things, with quite small consequences. For now, continue sending impact thread reports to myself, until Josh has helped me to fill in the blanks in the RP section of the wiki.

[Mooncalf]

If you're a necuratist, vampire blood can now be bought in black market shops (regular green squares). However, this service isn't available for blood thieves right now.

[Mooncalf]

You can now shout to everyone in the same area (floor or similar) as yourself, by using the speech function and ticking the "shout" box. You cannot do this on the main world map or the shadow realm.

I've also added a refresh button on the bottom-left of the grid. You can use this to reload the visible grid without moving or refreshing the whole page. Most of the time you won't need to use this, but it's quite helpful during a live fight, waiting for allies, during territorial battles, and similar.

[Mooncalf]

Facebook share bonuses are now limited to 1 per IP per week. So you can only get the bonus once, on whichever character you share with first. This is because most people only have 1 facebook account.

[Mooncalf]

Thralls can no longer buy items from the Karma Shop.

[Mooncalf]

The factions page has been slightly improved to help you find factions to join. You can now sort by various things such as member count, team raid wins, purpose, etc.