Tutorial: Fighting, the Hit List, and Town (Healing and Banking)

VDS is a Fight Game.  The strategy of the game, the purpose of all the aspects of the game, is ultimately for the purposes of earning and managing the skill points, powers, and items that will make you a more formidable opponent in fights.  Therefore, all of the tutorials on this blog have elements relevant to fighting, and this tutorial will just focus on the basics of actual combat itself.

Get used to getting killed/KOed (knocked out), and attacked - please try to take it with good humor!  Nevertheless, getting attacked naturally gets under some people's skin, so the subject of attacking can quickly become controversial.  I'll try to give you the lay of the land with neutrality.  :)   Note that each time you are killed, you will lose 10 XP, but this won't happen when you are KOed.  Note also that you can see all attacks on you, including the player's name and the result, in your Information Feed on your Home page in VDS.

Fight Button

Attacking:  You can attack from three places: (1) off the "Fight List," which is found on the Fight page of VDS, (2) directly from someone's sanctum/profile in VDS, by clicking the "Fight" button, and (3) from the Hit List (HL), if trying to claim the bounty.  Vampires above the 10-19 tier cannot attack childe (levels 12 and under).

Generally, it takes several "hits," several individual clicks of the Fight or Attack Again buttons, to end a fight in a "kill" or "knock out."   People unfortunately often use the word "Fight" to refer both to an individual hit/click, as well as to refer to the series of hits that lead to a kill/KO, which leads to some confusion.

Fight List

Fight List:  The "fight list" is what appears when you click over to the "Fight" page in VDS.  It is a fairly random list of a certain number of vampires in your tier, and gives you the vampire's clan, level, bloodline, age, and trinity alignment.  Tiers are defined by levels, 1-9 is the first tier, then 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc (until you become a master, which is one tier from levels 70-89; all elders, levels 90 and up, are also their own tier).  Your fight list will include both other "real" vampires like yourself and dummy/bot vampires (some people choose to fight only or primarily dummies/bots).  Generally when you first enter a tier, and while you are in the early levels of a tier, you can expect to get your butt handed to you on a regular basis (this is a good time to stick to fights with bots and with the Trinity!), but as you rise in a tier, you should be able to win more often. (An exception to this is levels 10-19 and 20-29. My VDS mom says, "There is no significant change from 13-25 in difficulty. Level 25 is the first level where a vamp finds himself at the bottom of the food chain.")  If you find you are losing a lot when you think you should be winning more, it's time for you, and/or a more experienced player you trust, to check your skill points allocation and powers. Watch your health while you fight!; it is entirely possible to KO yourself or commit suicide otherwise.

Fighting etiquette is very controversial, and will be discussed in a different tutorial, and perhaps in some op eds.  For now, just remember that there are no rules to how you fight in VDS, and that though certain conventions have evolved, they are not always universally accepted.

Hit List: When a player is ticked off at another vampire one option is to put them on the Hit List (we call this being "Hit Listed" or "HLed").  This is commonly (though not exclusively) used when, for example, you are not strong enough to take out a vampire yourself.

To do this, you must go to a player's sanctum/profile, and click "Hit List."  This will take you to the interface where you set a "bounty" - the amount of blood you will pay out for the kill.  The game will automatically default to the lowest amount you can hit list for, but you can increase it as high as you like.  Then set the bounty, and the person's name will appear on the Hit List (though if the vampire is "already dead," meaning his/her health is already very low, you cannot HL them).  Hit listed players usually go down FAST.  Your information feed on the "Home" page will show you who collected your bounty (and also shows when a bounty has been claimed on you!).  You can also "Self-Claim," which means you Hit List someone you know you can kill yourself, then claim your own bounty yourself (you have to be fast to claim it yourself before someone else does!).   Those who regularly surf the Hit List to collect bounties are known as "bounty hunters."

Interestingly, there are actually two separate hit lists.  The one you see depends on what server you happen to be on.  (You can't see both hit lists unless you have the relic known as the Eye of Providence.)  Therefore, if someone places a bounty on someone else you won't be able to see the listing unless you are on the same server, so you cannot claim the bounty (unless you have advance notice of the HLing and kill the target directly from their sanctum/profile; this is called "relaying," and is discussed in the etiquette tutorial.)

(Aside: People also use HLing to do "blood transfusions," which is when a player places a very large bounty on an easily killed bot/dummy vamp intended for another specific player to collect.  This practice is the only way to give your blood to another player, but it's oten tricky; it must be very well-timed to prevent some random third-party from collecting the bounty!  Doing blood transfusions where at least one of the two of you is experienced in the procedure will increase your chances of success, because then one person can talk the other though the intricacies of the process.)

Success!

Town: Banking:  For every time you hit someone and lose, and for every time someone hits you and you lose (you are notified of this in your information feed on the Home page of VDS), you are at risk of losing un-banked blood to your opponent.  The one way to avoid getting blood beaten out of you is by banking regularly!  You bank on the Town page.  Each time you bank, you lose 10% of your blood to fees.  Some activities (like healing) will automatically withdraw against your banked blood, but others (like purchasing powers and slaves) require you to withdraw blood manually from the bank before the blood can be spent.

Healing after a KO

Town: Healing:  When your vampire is killed, KOed, or injured, s/he can be healed in town for a blood fee.  Heals are performed in Town.  The blood, if banked, will be automatically withdrawn for the process.  You generally cannot heal twice in a 60 second period - the game will tell you you have to wait.  Many players keep their healing page open in one browser window or tab while they fight in the other, so they can try to heal before suffering a death or KO.