"In The Beginning..." The FTA Help System.

WARNING: I'm going to be extremely careful in explaining the items as new players seem to have many many seemingly obvious and simple questions about them and how they work. If this page seems painfully simplified it is only because I have been painfully pestered with little, time-consuming questions about what seemed to be the most obvious of facts regarding items. The only thing which seems to garner more confusion and questions than the items are the guilds. That's understandable, but still: I get an alarming number of questions about items, so I'm going to elaborate on them in extremely simple terms and examples.

Since it's precisely relevant to this page I am reprinting the info from the Shops page which shows the item prices. There are just three items at the moment. The commonly used abbreviations are:

And, here again are the cost and resell value of the items from and to the appropriate shops:

Now, as for using them and what they do, I'll tell you that all items are used from the More Commands option at the bottom right of your city view, and we can address what each one does in turn. Much of what follows is a rewite of the text info available in the FTA files section called 'ScrollsAndStuff'. It was written by 'Jezebel Moon`s Ho', 'Countess Boo Wolfe' and the geeky Holy Water formula was contributed by 'Sasquatch', though I must say that it's not absolutely correct. RavenBlack says it's a pretty close approximation to the actual wave and can be used as a good enough guide to estimate.

If you have an item, you can go to your My Vampire screen and you will see it listed in your Possessions with a little help icon next to it. You can hover over the icon to get an information tip in the form of a text box which appears at the top left corner of your screen. For each item I'll reprint that Tip Text as well.

Also, before I go on, I must mention that each item is a single-use item. If you use it, it's gone. Personally, I like to imagine the scrolls igniting into balls of purple flame as I read the incantation. Ok, so I'm weird. Anyhow, all items are unusable until you have at least 50 BP. Specifics follow.

Tip Text

Ok, what that means is, you use the item by clicking More Commands and you will see an option to read a Scroll of Turning to the [DROP-DOWN-LIST], where the list is a list of each direction of an eight point compass: North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West and Northwest. I would click More Commands, select a direction from the SoTurn drop-down menu and then click the button next to it which says Turn. When I did so, all vampires in the given square would be processed by the game script as being hit with the scroll's effect, and if they didn't resist the effect by having the Stamina power (which is never going to resist 100% of the time), they would be bounced out of the square to a random one next to it and lose 10 BP.

To illustrate, let me once again show you a standard map view, this time with the 'More Commands' options showing, and make some notation for you to have a better idea. Refer back to this example when I describe the options of each item and how you use the More Commands to activate them.

Ok, looking at that example, if I were to open the More Commands options, I would have the choice of directions which would let me read the scroll of turning towards the Northwest to 'Turn' the vamps with the names preceded by NW_ in the example. Not much point in that unless I feel like pissing off a couple vamps for no reason.

If I accidently chose to read it to the North, no vamps would be effected by the scroll, as there are none in that square. By this you can probably reason out that I'm also saying vampires in the same square as I'm in (names with the word 'Same' in their names in this example) will not be effected by the scroll.

Suppose, though, I wanted to clear out that bank which is all blued out and impassable, so I can get in there and deposit or withdraw some coins and drink up that tasty human. I'd go through the process I described above, selecting South for the direction, and watch as all or most of the 9 vampires in that square moved. The human isn't effected by items so it stays put.

SoTurns are considered area effects by the script, not an attack, so you can use them over and over on the same vampire, if you want to. There is the afore mentioned Stamina power which can resist these, however, and Neutral vampires, whose vampire names appear in pink text, are movable but cannot lose BP to the scrolls. We'll get to all that in the Powers section.

Lastly, this item requires that you have at least 50 BP to be used. Just an incentive to play. And that should pretty much cover the SoTurns.

Tip Text

This one's pretty straightforward. You click More Commands (you better remember where the link is) and an option appears which says 'Use Scroll of Teleportation to go to...' with two little drop down lists for all the streets in order and a button to activate it. Next thing you know, you're in the middle of the intersection for the streets you selected. Again, you must have at least 50 BP to use this item. The end.

Tip Text

This is the one and only true 'weapon' in the game so far. It is also the one item which requires you to have a minimum of 200 BP to use. This is to prevent a pire who hovers at some tiny BP from hounding a stronger player by repeatedly finding and attacking them with no regard for their own BP. It's a long story.

To use HW you must be in the same square as the vampire you wish to 'spray' with it, click the (you guessed it) More Commands link, select the target pire's name from the appropriate drop-down list and click the Spray button. Some players, myself included, call it giving a pire a bath or bathing them.

When you spray a pire with HW, it severely reduces their BPs. How much it actually takes off is somewhat random, but basically the higher the vampire's BP, the more it takes off. Sort of. It's kind of a wave or curve which Raven Black generated that will give you greater resistance to HW if you get into really high BPs like the 5000 to 10000+ range, and reduces the damage to lower BP vamps as well. Anyhow, it's really shitty to get Holy Watered and you can take the act as an outright 'fuck you' from whoever sprays you with it.

Oh, and I should point out that spraying one vampire can sometimes effect other vamps in the same square, though not nearly as bad. Imagine it like spilling a couple drops of acid on someone while throwing a bucket of it on someone else. Ouch.

Now, Sasquatch, a fellow FTA moderator and geek, has presented the following formula to us which he believes to be an accurate calculator for the HW effect. As I stated above, this formula isn't really 100% correct, so take it as best guess from a really bright guy (meaning Sas). Raven vouches that it's close enough to the actual wave that it gives you a relatively good idea of what amounts of BP loss to expect on a given vampire. Here's his formula from the text.

=========== BEGIN MATH GEEK HW FORMULA INFO ============
+
When hit by a HW, the formula is:
  NBP = OBP - (OBP^0.1 * OBP^0.5)
  OBP = "original blood points"
  NBP = "new blood points"
  HWL = "holy water loss"

Examples:
> OBP - HWL = NBP
================
  100 -  16 =   84
  250 -  27 =  223
  500 -  42 =  458
 1000 -  63 =  937
 2500 - 109 = 2391
 5000 - 166 = 4834

[Note: actual amounts may vary slightly]
+
============ END MATH GEEK HW FORMULA INFO =============
[andronicus@jmocbox714 ~]$

And that ought to wrap up items. Now... The Guilds!