(Fixed) Where's my stake?

Please tell me that after all that talk of losing Humanity when one sends Copper (the thin-blood on the beach) on a suicide run, you didn't take out the 'Holy Stake'? It's not on the beach, or in the beachhouse, or the Pier, or in the half of Santa Monica that contains Mercurio's Apt. I know you talked of not making things visible unless you have a High enough Inspection feat, but surely a 3 Inspection is enough to find stuff in S.M.

Dammit. How else am I supposed to dump excess Humanity without leaving bodies?

Other than that, things are going great. Download went off without a hitch. Lacking any Readme file to tell me otherwise, I put the 'Thumbs.db' file in the main Bloodlines directory, where the Vampire.exe is located.

Male Assamite is working great so far. I'll see if I can't mess things up.

Finally!!! Someone said the download went great, phew, well at least I can rely on Filefactory to get things done for us!

The stake is still there at the Santa Monica pier where it always was. I'm at work so I can verify this, but Inspection 3 should reveal the stake, and Inspection 4 will put sparklies on it. If you're Inspection is 2 or less, then you can always just purchase the stake from Trip at Trip's Pawn Shop.

Trip sells stakes!?

He knows too much.

8people wrote:

Trip sells stakes!?

He knows too much.

Maybe a quest to remove that pesky Masquerade threat? Better not, Trip is kinda cool. Guess Beast rose its ugly head and gave me this idea

I'm thinking about renaming the item to a wooden piano leg or something, so it's not exactly a "stake" per se. Why would Trip be selling stakes, but if the user was looking for something stake-like then maybe a wooden piano leg or something to that effect would be enough to sell to Copper.

Zer0Morph wrote:

I'm thinking about renaming the item to a wooden piano leg or something, so it's not exactly a "stake" per se. Why would Trip be selling stakes, but if the user was looking for something stake-like then maybe a wooden piano leg or something to that effect would be enough to sell to Copper.

Rename it to Pinokio's lost nose.

Pinoccio...

Pinocchio

Trip has the stake, but it still wasn't on the beach. Bumped my Inspection up to 3, and even using Auspex 2 to make Inspection = 4, there was no stake. Maybe it's just me though, as nobody else has reported this. Not going to reinstall for that.

On a side note... 600 bucks for a friggin book? Good thing Trip's behind that chain link, or I'd be comin' over the counter and slapping some sense into him. (grumble... better be able to buy it twice, at least...)

It might be Inspection 4 reveals the stake on the beach and Inspection 5 puts sparklies on it. I will need to test to see if Auspex will light them up realtime, I'm pretty sure Malkav wrote the script so it would.

The Low Grade books are actually only $300, your Haggle Feat must be at level 1 which is why it's double. As your Haggle rises, the prices will come down and at Haggle 10 you pay "at cost" prices. All 12 Lore books in the game are rebuyable as many times as you want, there is no limit as to how many times you can buy any Lore book. So as you can see, having money is a VERY good thing in TFN.

Okay... here's the deal with the stinkin' stake:

If I enter the S.M. Pier map with an Inspection lower than 3, the stake is just not there. I raised my Inspection as high as a 6 (the highest I tried) -- including Auspex -- and the stake never became visible.
If I have Inspection of 3 before I enter the S.M. Pier map, I can see the stake, although it doesn't have the Twilight 'sparkles' yet.

So unless I have Inspection high enough to see the stake before I go down the stairs to the beach, it never becomes visible, no matter how much I raise my Inspection feat afterward. Is that how you designed it?

If that's not what you meant to happen, then it makes me wonder about every item I'm not supposed to see, unless my Inspection is above a certain level. Is there some some stuff that I'm supposed to find later, which will end up being invisible forever, because my Inspection wasn't high enough when I entered Downtown, or Hollywood, or the Hallowbrook, etc.? If I can't find some major item, how will I know if it's a glitch, or my Inspection is just too low? Or whether you just took it out of TFN?

Inspection should be checked every time you enter a map, so if you had a level 2 Inspection and walked down to the beach you wouldn't see the stake. If you walked up to the beachhouse, completed the mission, used that XP to raise Inspection 3 and went back down to the beach, you should see the stake there without sparklies. Things shouldn't remain hidden forever if you didn't see them at first. In fact I know that they don't stay hidden because I tested that out ALOT.

Now it may be a possible glitch that Auspex isn't lighting things up right there on the spot when you use it, that is something that still needs testing.

Cool. I was just worried I'd miss something important like the Tal'Mahe'Ra blade, because my Inspection was too low, and never get a second chance to get it.

No other problems so far with the Assamite.

PGM1961 wrote:

Cool. I was just worried I'd miss something important like the Tal'Mahe'Ra blade, because my Inspection was too low, and never get a second chance to get it.

No other problems so far with the Assamite.

You won't miss the Tal'Mahe'Ra blade, trust me, you can even get it a lot earlier it seems.. If you plan right...

No, you won't miss anything, including the occult blade (if I indeed hid one somewhere teehee). Let me just say that if you plan on cashing in on Inspection then you'll find yourself running back to older hubs on occasion to do a sweep of the area. Items are hidden but I didn't place them in super hard to find areas, like on top of the diner or anything.

When you reach Inspection 9 and 10, you can even find the next hub's armor sets and occult items like the Bloodstar. Having a high Inspection definately pays off, and you can always go back to the old hubs to find stuff you missed at lower levels.

Imagine being in Hollywood and you haven't unlocked Chinatown yet, and finding the Tier 4 armor laying near a dumpster, for FREE no less. High Inspection rocks! And yes, you can find the body armor in Chinatown for free as well.

I'm only telling you guys this because your Beta testing, hopefully nobody else reads this, heh.

One last thing, I remember now that using Auspex will only light up items that are already unhidden but don't have sparklies, it will not temporarily reveal items that haven't been found yet.

Example: You have level 3 Inspection, if your down at the beach and you turn on Auspex, the stake will get sparklies, however the level 4 hidden item will not suddenly appear. Make sense?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Example: You have level 3 Inspection, if your down at the beach and you turn on Auspex, the stake will get sparklies, however the level 4 hidden item will not suddenly appear. Make sense?

Sounds good, but how about if you are already running Auspex before you enter that map? Would that then allow you to see those items that would normally be hidden?

PS: I know where the blade is.. >>

No, Malkav specfically wrote the script to not take into account Auspex during map load. He's a smart guy because that could've easily been a good exploit.

You found the blade? Funny I never put one in.. lol

But seriously, if you did find the Occult blade can you let me know?

Zer0Morph wrote:

No, Malkav specfically wrote the script to not take into account Auspex during map load. He's a smart guy because that could've easily been a good exploit.

You found the blade? Funny I never put one in.. lol

But seriously, if you did find the Occult blade can you let me know?

Akeem was selling selling it.. I could have sworn I saw it on sale for $5000 or so.. hang on I'll reload my Samedi game and double check..

Your right, Akeem does sell the occult blade... I thought you said you found it for free... I was like ?!?!?! WTF!!! That blade is worth like $2500!! How did you find it?!?! I never put it in any maps, LOL.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Your right, Akeem does sell the occult blade... I thought you said you found it for free... I was like ?!?!?! WTF!!! That blade is worth like $2500!! How did you find it?!?! I never put it in any maps, LOL.

Heh, no, it was the reason I commented that you could get it early, if you planned it right, since you would need to save up for a bit to get it.