Minions, Collectibles & More

Last week we saw some blog changes. Many people love them and I'm glad to see such great feedback for it.  The top of hour page loads are much better, hope you all agree. So happy about that. I've got quite a bit lined up for you here, hope you're sitting comfy.

Petrik's Shack, the home of enslaved minions ready for work

Minion Updates

Ah the minions. A loved feature. But can be a little frustrating to get the little things to fight, right? I have watched minions over the past year, seen how people use and upgrade them. I have read the feedback on them, and have now come up with a list of changes which are active from today.

Attack Chance Increase

Your minion can now be upgraded to have a 1 in 5 attack chance, rather than the 1 in 10 chance it has been since release. There is a slight $ price hike when you're upgrading from 1 in 10 down to 1 in 5 (as to be expected.)

Food Increase

Because the attack chance has been doubled, I don't want to add to any frustration by making minions get hungry twice as fast. So I have doubled the amount of food required before getting hungry to 100. The food packs now fill up that 100, but are the same price as before.

New Defence Stat

Some argue (the same with the stat 'speed') that the counter to minion attack is itself. I somewhat agree, but because of the slight (unforeseen whilst developing outcome) issue that if you are not fast enough to get any hits on your opponent, your minion is still able to get hits in, and sometimes kill your opponent without doing any damage yourself. As fun as that might be, and seeing as your minion cannot do more than 10% damage than you, something isn't quite right there. So I am introducing minion defence.

Your minion attack increases the damage your minion does, and minion defence reduces the damage done by any minion to you from their minion.

Some might choose to ignore the defence part completely if their battles are not effected by minions much, but the option is there for people who do.

Minion-AP

Minions now have their own version of AP called Minion-AP. When your minion used to level up, you got +2 attack. Well now you have 2 stats, that makes that a little more complicated. I was just going to give defence when you level up, but that gives no room for strategy whatsoever.

So now every time your minion levels up, you get +2 minion-AP to use on  minion attack and defence.

Your minion defence cannot be higher than 10% of your toughness (just like your minions attack cannot be more than 10% of your strength.) You can now choose whether to use your personal 3 AP per level on either attack or defence (or even a bit of both.)

Hold up, that's not fair! I've already leveled up my minion!
You're right it isn't. Luck for you, I'm a nice guy. I have given every minion the amount of minion-AP of their current attack (minus the 5 you start with) for you to be able to allocate either back onto your attack, or to throw some on defence. It's up to you. I'd suggest you go to this as soon as you finish reading this post.

To view and use your Minion-AP. Just click the [increase] link under your minions attack or defence on the minion page.

New Profile Location

As many of you know, the minion only gets a one line space on profiles. With the update last week allowing you to have 5 blogs listed instead of 3, profiles can look a little lopsided. So I have created a minion section below the links on the right, giving it a bit more attention.

General Potion Store

I have given facelift to the general potion store at the Dead City. I have also reduced the cost of the turns heal option from 50 to 20. The most significant update to this is the new ability to drink a potion which gives you the strength to resist taking blood from vampires that attack you and lose. Of course there is a reversal potion for this when you wish to get blood again.

Pentagu's Hut

Pentagu has setup camp on the outskirts of Ghost Town. He is there starting a little project of his own in regards to all of your collectibles. You should head over there to check it out.

Collectibles

Vampires love their collectibles. We introduced the feature a couple years ago and until now they've not had that much use. Pentagu sorts that out. That's not all though. There are now 6 collectibles hidden around the site for completing certain tasks. You can view your collectibles by either clicking the [view all] link on your profile, or going: Home > Equipment > Your Inventory.

Here's a sneak peak where one of the collectibles are:

Winner winner chicken dinner!

Little Things

- Increased the amount of blood you get from 'the daily' daily quest
- Fixed the vampire powers activated number bug on home page
- Inventory summary section added  at the bottom of the equipment page
- New reign of blood game blog format (as you can see!)
- You can now add a reason with vampires you've blocked from your coven
- Inactive account deletion policy page wording updated

Voting Sites

I have finally gone though all the voting sites, cross referencing them with my analytics to find out which ones are giving good new players back to RoB and which ones are not. This resulted in me removing a few of the voting sites.

This has resulted in slightly less turns available for everybody each day. To make up for that though, I've put a timer on the voting page. What's great about the new timer system, is if you are completing your votes, it makes no difference. When you click a voting link, and continue with confirming the vote (sometimes including the captcha), close the tab/page, and come back for the next one, you will get bonus turns for not clicking through them too quickly. (Extra turns for patience and going through them slowly!)

There is a yellow or red notice on the top of the voting page, keep an eye on that text for information on when you can grab bonus turns. (You don't NEED to pay attention to this, you can pace through clicking all the vote links and voting quickly, but you will not earn the bonus turns, just the +5 turns for the vote.)

The voting page refreshes by itself every 10 seconds, but you can click the [refresh] button yourself to get the most up to date notice on when you are eligible for bonus turns.

Rare summer packs

[ This offer has ended ]

On a general note about payment methods. Of course all payment processing companies charge fees on all transactions. Some more than others. (For example pre-paid cards and mobile.) Some people increase the costs of items to the player (you) to cover those fees. I don't do that here. You pay for the value of those items no matter payment company you use.

Enjoy,
Ash