Vampires, you are sucking my blog life!

Ok, for all those Vampire Wars-fans who seem incapable of finding the help files: I will explain the skill point/favor point thing again. After that, go back to Facebook and look up some of those VW-groups. There’s about a half million, and most of them not only let you recruit free clan members, but also offer tons of advice on how to play better. Here’s a little side tip from me on how to increase your clan: if someone claims a bounty on you, often they will give you good judgement or leave you a little comment to be nice. Ask those people to join ranks. I’ve also invited two of my hapless victims because they bit me. Both accepted.

On to skill points: whenever you creep up one level, you get free refills on everything, plus one favor point, plus five skill points. Depending on which level you are at, you might want to use some of these skill points to increase your energy (for missions), your health (for getting beat up), for rage (for beating people up, but careful: one step up in rage costs you two skill points!), or to increase your defense or attack strength (though that doesn’t seem to make too much difference). You also receive one skill point for every fifth trophy you win. There are currently about 70-some trophies, so that gives you a maximum of about 14 skill points you can gather that way. I think you can now also purchase skill points for favor points, but unless you’re way up the ladder, don’t waste your favor points on this crap.

Which brings me to favor points… you’ve already seen how can get those. Every trophy you win also gets you one favor point. Therefore, you can max out your favor points from trophies at about 72, or however many there are right now. My advice is: save those for the good stuff. If you’re having a hard time increasing your clan, you can purchase more (under Elders) for about 20 points. Do NOT use the link to add members from your Clan tab! You only get one additional member for the same price.

Another good thing to save up for are special abilities. You’ll need 35 favor points to buy one of those (they vary), but they will make a huge difference in your attack and defense posture! Believe me, I’ve tried to beat up enough low-ranking, no-clan-owning vamps who had no trouble fending me off because of a (as in, one) special ability.

What does ranking do for you? I have no idea. Stroke your undead ego, I suppose. I’ve seen people online with an unreal number of missions completed and fights won. The only thing I can figure is that they’ve played VW since its early beginnings (which is way too long for me. It’s a bloody game! And not even a particularly engaging or interesting one). If it’s your goal to become the number one supervamp some day, you’re going to have to keep whacking people, stealing their blood, etc. to climb up the ladder. When you get to the top, let me know what it’s like. I have no ambition.

Now go and read those daggone help files already!

Satisfy the Reader

I would like to take this opportunity to satisfy two recent reader inquiries.

1. 4th Street Traffic’s album Kick the Habit can be purchased online at amazon (mp3), amazon UK (download or CD), from iTunes, at Tesco stores in Great Britain, in person at any of their gigs, and I’m sure at many other venues I have not investigated. It’s been out for a couple of months now and contains these seven songs:

Second Thoughts
Astray
Friend of Mine
Perfect Circle
White Lies
If You Go
Giving It Up

2. In Vampire Wars, you need blood to purchase things like abilities and minions (which in turn give you more blood). You also need it to enhance your abilities, which you can do once a day. To protect your blood from assailants, stick all of it in the bank and draw out only what you need when you need it. You can also win trophies for depositing certain amounts of blood or dominating a certain number of minions (mostly applicable to college frats, law firms and escaped mental patients).

Whenever you receive a trophy, you also receive a favor point. Every fifth trophy gets you a skill point, as well. Use skill points to enhance your health, energy, defense, attack strength or rage. There is no point in hoarding skill points. The best practice for favor points is to save them for important stuff like additional clan members or extra blood. Don’t waste them on health or rage refills, especially since you can use blood to refill your health! There are currently 71 trophies, with more being added whenever the designers come up with a new idea.