gaming

Vampires Live Iphone Strategy Guide

Jason Coyne — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:50:01 GMT

UPDATE:

As I have played deeper into the game, I have discovered some flaws in the strategy below. The overall understanding of the rules is still valuable, and the strategy works great, until level 30-40. At level 30-40, enemies start having a full set of the most powerful abilities. To compete against those enemies, you must also have a full set of abilities. The upkeep on a full set at level 40 is around 24 million blood per hour. It only gets worse from there. The raw cost to purchase all of those abilities is approaching billions. Therefore, the only viable long term strategy is massive slave investment. I now reccomend camping at low levels (keep leveling up until you can buy the vampire, then stop). not buying ANY abilities that require upkeep, and investing in slaves until you have somewhere between 50-100 million blood per hour coming in. This will allow you to easily buy a full set of abilities for your low level, plus continue in slave investment for future levels. Please read the rest of the guide, as there is still other useful information and strategy. I have bolded parts of the strategy that are still valid, and tried to strikeout the parts that are wrong.

This is a strategy guide for the Iphone/IPod Touch game, Vampires Live. The company (Storm8) that makes this game has several other games in a very similar vein like Zombies Live, iMobsters, Kingdoms Live, Racing Live, Rockstars Live, and World War Live. The strategies here should work for all of these games equally well, since they are basically all the same game, with just different names and pictures.

New Players :

Take all of the "deals" offered as a new player for extra points, or free items if you install another game. The points are only available for (real!) money later, and the items offered are extremely powerful. Install the other game (free), launch it, and then you have the new items in the original game. Unless you want to play those other games, delete them after you get the free stuff. Every once in a while you will get another offer for more free stuff for re-installing the same game again!

Spend your free loyalty on clan members. Clan members are very easy to get in this game in the long run, don't spend loyalty points on them. I would save loyalty points until you have a very large blood income, then turn them in for extra blood. Or save them for name changes. Blood offered for loyalty points is based on a multiplier of your current blood flow (after removing upkeep)

Skill ups :
Whenever you level, make sure you spend your skill points in the "My Profile" screen. Spend as many points as you can in Frenzy (or whatever the skill is in your game that lets you attack more players). Attacking players is by far the fastest way to level and generate money. Extra points should go into Attack, with a few points here and there going into defense. Don't spend for energy for missions. The skill strategy above works great for low levels, but dies out as you get higher. Attack and defense are the main skills to invest in.

At some point, you will do enough frenzy attacks per round that you will run out of health before you run out of frenzy (around 8-9 frenzy). At that point buy a few health points (to give 130-140 health). Never buy health, it actually has negative benefits. Then go back to buying frenzy and attack again.

At around 20-25 frenzy, you will notice a few things :
1) You have a tough time finding enough weak enemies to spend all your points every round
2) people are a lot tougher in general
3) Even if you do find enough people to kill, it takes a long time.

At this point, switch to energy for missions, or attack/defense if you want. Energy is the best choice, because it will allow you another good income source, and a way to get experience when weak enemies are in short supply.

My clan code is 49rw26 Please add me if you find this guide helpful!

Clan/Mob size :
Clan size is not as important as many people think, especially at low levels of the game. Here are two rules to keep in mind. For vampires, you can only attack with 5*level vampires. That means if you are level 5, you may use 25 vampires. Having a clan of 500 is worthless. Don't try to grow past what your level * 5 is.

Secondly, the attack screen is split into clan size brackets. One bracket might be 1-4 vampires. Another bracket is 5-8 vampires, etc. When looking in the attack list, you will only see other vampires/zombies in the same bracket as yourself. Try to keep your clan size near the top of your current bracket. If you have 5 vampires, try to get to 9. But don't go to 10. If you go to 10, you will be at the bottom of the next bracket, etc. Bracketing stops being important at around 40 clan members. After 40, don't worry about staying at the top of your bracket as much, because the brackets get really big.

As stated, more clan members than 5* level is worthless. There is in fact a downside of having max clan members, which is that your bracket size becomes max only. That is, you will not see people with less clan members than you in your attack screen. Also, people at max clan size tend to be better players, so if you keep your clan size somewhat smaller than max, you may find easier targets that will let you level more quickly.

This is another reason why clan size really doesn't matter. Unless you get put on the hit list, you are only going to be attacked by vampires with a similar clan size. And even if you do get attacked, losing means very little to a smart player.

Rather than adding other people's clan codes to your clan. Advertize your own code to other people. When you add someone, you have no control over if they accept or not. This can cause your clan size to change suddenly, and put you at the bottom of a bracket. If you have other people invite you, you can choose when to accept their request. This lets you add in batches to stay at the top of your bracket.

When to attack :
Save up all of your frenzy points to use all at once. Do not spend them as they are given to you. Once you get to like 10 frenzy points or so, you can start spending any time you have 10.

Who to attack :
When you look in your attack list, you will only see players the same level as yourself. You can also see their clan size.

Try to attack someone with less clan members than yourself. This is why it is important to stay at the top of your bracket. You want to have as many enemies as possible to choose from, while making yourself an unattractive target to be attacked.

Never attack a player without looking at their details screen (by clicking on their name).

There are two ways to decide if a player is a good target or not.
1) The easy, fast, slightly inaccurate way.
2) the hard, slow but very accurate way.

I almost always use the fast way, unless I have just entered a new clan size bracket.

The fast way :
Look at the player's win/loss record. If they have more losses than wins, attack them. If the have more wins than losses, pick someone else.

The slow way :
Compare all the abilities and slaves the player has to your abilities and slaves, and see who will win this way.

Make sure you read all the way down an enemies ability list. Some players try to trick you buy buying Lots of entry level abilities that you see in early in the list, and skip everything else thinking people won't scroll down. You can take advantage of this too, and some people might skip you.

How to attack :
Once you found a player that is a good target, attack them once. See how much blood they gave you. If they are a smart player, they have all of their blood in the blood bank, and you will get 0 or a very low amount of blood. If this happens, skip the player, and find another target.

If you get a good amount of blood (around level 10, you can easily find people that give you 20,000 blood per attack!, at level 30, you can make 80k per attack!), then attack this person over and over again. This is why you save all your frenzy. when you find a good target, bleed them dry. If you spend your frenzy one at a time, when you find a good target, you are already out of frenzy! then you are back to finding a random person to attack. Some players dislike this strategy (they call it spam attacks). While it may not be nice, a) this is a game about predators. b) if the player had any sense, and put their blood into the bank, you would be skipping over them.

Abilities : Spend your money on abilities that give good attack, with a lesser amount on abilities that give good defense. The reason for not needing defense will be described below. Remember that each clan member you have can use one ability from each tab. Therefore try to buy as many high level abilities as you have clan members. the really good abilities cost blood upkeep.

Make sure you buy abilities in all three trees. Lots of people don't put enough points into the transformation tree. This is a good thing to check when you are deciding who to attack. Some players have hundreds of physical attacks, and almost no transformations. These people are usually pretty easy to beat.

There are lots of stupid players that buy thousands of one ability, with a clan size of 100. They are just wasting blood. You can only use one attack per tree per clan member.

It is more important to have an attack from each tree (3 attacks total) for each clan member, than to buy high level attacks. You could spend 100k on an ability that gives you +15 attack, or spend that same 100k on buying 100 +1 attacks, to make all of your clan members do something. Make sure all of your clan members have a low level attack, then grow up to the next level of attack. Don't try to only buy the most expensive attacks, as its an inefficient use of blood.

Slaves : Some people like to have lots of slaves, and have a huge blood income. I think this is a mistake. I only buy enough slaves to keep up with the blood upkeep. The blood I get from attacking players is far greater than the blood I would earn from slaves, unless you spend days and days buying thousands of slaves. A single set of 5-7 attacks can easly earn 100k or more blood at level 10. Therefore, buy abilities until your blood income is close to 0. Then buy a few slaves to let you afford more abilities.

At level 15, you get ~30k per attack, and can make 250k per set of attacks. At level 30 you are making 60-80k per attack and can end up with a million or more blood per round.

Around level 15-20, it may be worth investing in "investment" slaves to earn blood while you are sleeping etc.

At level 30+ investment slaves become almost mandatory, because you start running out of really weak enemies. The only people left are really strong, and you must have lots and lots of slaves, to afford all the high level abilities to help defend yourself. I personally sold almost all my abilities at level 35, to maximize blood income, and started reinvesting in slaves. You can pretty quickly get up to around a million blood per hour. You probably need even more than this to stay strong enough to attack. Keep reinvesting in slaves until you can afford high level abilities and still have lots of blood income.

If you are trying for slave income, a good hint is to NOT heal yourself when you are done playing for a while. Use up all your attacks, and leave yourself very weak. 5-10 hp or something. When you are weak, other players cannot attack you and steal your blood. You will heal slowly, and someone might be able to attack you 3-4 times during the night, but that is way better than being attacked 9-10 times.

Which slaves to buy:

Lots of other guides talk about "lifetime value of slaves", and say you should buy slaves early to maximize the total amount of blood you get from the slave. That is a good idea, but is only half of the needed logic.

Here are a few ideas to keep in mind :

1) Keep track of the blood per hour compared to the cost of the slave. Some slaves give significantly less blood/hour/cost than the slaves either before or after them. Skip over those tiers completely.

2) The more slaves you buy, the more expensive they become. Once you buy too many of a given slave, they become very expensive (see point 1 above). Once thei payoff for the slave becomes too low, go up to the next slave tier, but check if that tier is a bad deal, if it is, skip that tier too.

Blood bank :
After each round of attacks, buy more abilities, slaves if needed, and heal yourself. Stick any thing extra in the bank. blood in the bank is not lost when you are attacked. Blood bank is useful at low blood income levels, when you lose a significant portion of your income each attack. Once you are making millions per hour, putting the blood in the bank causes you to lose more than you would lose from attacks.

Because of this, there is almost no penalty for losing a fight if you are attacked. you lose some health, which is cheap to get back, and you lose no blood. This is why you can skimp on defense skills and abilities.

Some players advocate stocking up on lots of defensive abilities, defensive skill, and then not putting blood in the bank to save 10%. They make comparisons saying if one person puts blood in the bank, and the other doesnt, the non-bank person will grow a lot quicker. They are right, IF the income is the same. However, by focusing on defensive skill and abilities instead of frenzy and attack, their income will be a lot smaller. Being able to attack more times, or do more missions will easily outweigh the 10% loss from the bank. Think of this. You start out with 3 attacks. Each point of frenzy gives you a 33% increase in income (compared to original income). Not sticking the money in the bank gives you a 10% increase in income, but you will lose some of that to attackers.

Missions : Missions are mostly worthless compared to the money from attacking, but spend your points when you have them. Try to spend on missions that will give you loot, as those can be worth a lot of blood if you get a nice ability. At very high levels, start putting points into energy for missions. This is because at high levels, you tend to have to fight better players, and you may not be able to find someone to kill every time. Therefore you can use missions to get experience.

My clan code is 49rw26 Please add me if you find this guide helpful!

A member of my clan has written an alternate strategy guide, focusing mostly on defense and slaves. If you would prefer a more conservative strategy, check him out. http://www.howesnet.com/vampliveguide.pdf

Here is another great strategy guide i found on the net. This one explains many of the same general strats I did here. This guide focuses mostly on slaves and blood income acquisition. It has a great spreadsheet that tells you the best slave to buy at any given time! http://www.immoforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6

Oblivion Guide : How to become and play a vampire

Jason Coyne — Tue, 09 May 2006 19:38:00 GMT

NOTE : There have been some comments getting out of hand. I am deleting any rude or personally insulting comments in this thread. Keep it clean.

So in reading my blog referrers, it seems becoming a vampire is a problem many people have, so I decided to write a little vampire guide. This guide contains some mild spoilers. be warned.

Becoming a vampire is really easy. There are two major paths

1) Fight a vampire.

2) Recieve the “dark gift”

There is not a way to make yourself a vampire via spells, a ritual, or anything else like that.

Two notes : 1 )You cannot become a vampire in GOD mode, if you are cheating, it wont work.

2) If you cure yourself, you cannot become a vampire a second time. You are permanently cured.

The Dark gift is available as a Dark Brotherhood quest reward. To get this, first join the Dark Brotherhood. You may be able to join the brotherhood by going straight to their hideout and sanctuary in Cheydinhal, but the standard way is to kill someone. This is slightly confusing, because you can't kill just anyone. You need to kill someone who is not attacking you, and who is a member of at least one evil faction. The easiest ones in my opinion are the Deadra shrine worshippers. Complete a Deadra shrine quest, then kill the worshippers (do the quest first, if you kill first, you can't do the quest). Then go sleep somewhere safe (an inn or something), that will lead you to the Dark Brotherhood. Do a few of the quests, and bingo, Vincente will make you a vampire.(You can choose not to accept the gift as well)

The other way to become a vampire is just to fight vampires. There are MANY vampire covens around, and many side quests that lead you directly to Vampires. A few of the quests and where to start them are listed below. When you fight a vampire, you may contract Porphoric Hemophilia. At this point you are not a vampire. If you drink a cure disease potion, or visit a cure shrine, you will not become a vampire. However, if you wait 3 days, then sleep. You will become a vampire. Fighting vampires is easiest with fire spells or weapons, and some detect life spells, because vampires can become invisible. For best effect, let the vampire hit you without fighting back too much, so that you have more chances to contract the disease.

Being a vampire has perks, and some downsides. There are 4 levels of vampirism. At the first level, its pretty much all perk. You are stonger, sneakier, more powerful with magic, and have a night vision & detect life power. The only downside is an increased weakness to fire.

Each 24 hour period you go without feeding, you become more of a vampire. You get more powerful, and gain additional spells (like invisibility). However, at levels 2-4 you take damage from the sun. At level 2, the sun damage is not too bad, a mage can run around and heal faster than the sun hurts. However, at levels 3 and 4, the damage is quite heavy, and you will need to stay indoors. Also, at level 2-4 you cannot fast travel during the day. The further you get down the vampire path, the less people will like you. If you have high personality or speechcraft, this isn't a problem. You only increase levels when you wait or sleep, so you can go for many days at any given level as long as you don't wait or sleep. If you need some time to pass, just run around, or fast travel to another city, and do a step or two of a side quest. I prefer to stay at level for the most part, so that I can fast travel during the day. But if I am going to fight in a hard dungeon, then I wait for 3 or 4 days to become stronger. If you are taking sun damage, just go inside and wait until night. This serves 2 purposes. 1) you wont be taking sun damage anymore, and 2) people are now asleep so you can feed on them.

Feeding : Its easy to feed, just walk up to someone that is sleeping, and try to talk to them. You will get a choice between talking and feeding. Feed, and you are back to level 1! There are many easy targets for this, any of the guild halls, the blades, sleeping bums, or random people's houses.

Curing Vampirism : I have not done this (because I like being a vampire), but there are several ways to start the cure vampirism cure. You can talk to the count of skingraad, Vincente in the Dark Brotherhood, or your contact in the Mages Guild.

Quests to meet vampires, note these may be considered mild spoilers.

Ulterior Motives - Mages guild quest, Arcane University, Imperial City (Vampire Hunting Quest)

The Order of Virtuous Blood - Temple District, Imperial City (Vampire Hunting Quest)

Lost Histories - Thieves Guild quest, eventually vampire related

Origin of the Grey Prince - Side Quest, Arena, Imperial City

A Brotherhood Betrayed - Side Quest, Bruma - THIS IS NOT A VAMPIRE QUEST, but it seems like it.

Oblivion : How to make an unbeatable, invulnerable, immortal mage.

Jason Coyne — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:17:00 GMT

So I give this information as both a guide, and as a warning. Playing the mage char is pretty tough. You get killed pretty easily. So I found a way (without cheating) to not get killed. But be warned! this makes the game REALLY easy, even on hardest difficulty.

Choose a Breton, with sign of the mage (or atronach) Specialize in conjuration, illusion, destruction, and sneak. And play through the mages guild to become archmage (I actually became immortal about 1/2 - 3/4 through the mages guild). Becoming a vampire helps.

Find some absorb magica, and resist magica items. My char (at level 10) already had 100% resist and 20% absorb (as mage, not atronach). Enchant these items yourself if you don't find them, using azura's star.

Practice summoning monsters. You can get them REALLY cheap if you get up to master level. Summoning a zombie only costs me 9 magica. I can cast zombies forever, as fast as they appear, just summon a new one, and NEVER run out of magicka. My current prefered summon is the wraith, but I might go find a xivali or atronach spell.

Buy an invisiblity spell, or become a vampire (but the vampire is only once a day, the spell I cast over and over. Vampire is usefull anyway for the skill and stat boost tho).

For me, the game now cojnsists of : Become invisible, run past all monsters, except those that I choose to kill because of loot or plot. When I choose to kill, summon a wraith. Either go invisible again, and let the wraith kill the mob (summoning and going invis again occasionally) or help out with 70+ point fireballs. I have 400+ magicka. I can cast 4-5 fireballs without using any magicka potions. Not many creatures can tank the fireballs and the wraith. This works for all the oblivion gates (where you dont have to fight at ALL, just run past and grab the sigil), all the dungeons, everywhere pretty much.

So far none of the creatures can see invis, or bother to cast detect life. I have found that zombies will occasionally see me while invis, but only if I have been fighting that particular zombie already, they will never find me as I walk past.

xbox 360 and windows integration - The killer feature : streaming FROM xbox to CPU

Jason Coyne — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 22:04:00 GMT

So XBOX has a lot of synergy with the computer, especially with MCE, stream your MCE content to the XBOX etc. But I must complain that I can't stream from my non MCE box to my XBOX. Situations like this do not make MCE more valueable, it just makes it obvious that you are trying to upsell MCE. Thats great, my next box is going to be MCE anyway (when they support HD over Digital Cable) - but in the meantime, you are just annoying me for no reason.

In any case, Xbox and MCE are blurring the lines between TV and gaming, but only in one direction. If I want to watch my WMV files on the XBOX you make that easy. Give me the reverse. I have one TV in the living room. If my girlfriend wants to watch a movie, I am SOL if I want to game. Let me stream the XBOX to my computer!

The only big problem with this I can see is latency, especially in a fast twitch game, but I know its possible to send video that fast pretty efficiently. VNC and RDP can send video over the network without any problems, xbox should be doable too. I would even accept 480P (after all, when I want quality I will be on the big screen HDTV anyway, this is about convinience)

This would add an incredible level of value to the XBOX for me, and is something that doesn't seem to be out of this world tough (and I say that as a software developer both for computers and embedded)

If you wanted to be super cool, you would let me send split screen games, one to the HDTV, one to the CPU, so when playing head to head in an FPS, each person gets a full screen!

And just think how much it would piss off the PS3 team :)

Anyway, Just my $0.02.