Blood Letters Play – Second Life

This is sort of a spoiler… I won’t be revealing the things one really has to figure out, no puzzle answers. But, I will be explaining the mechanics of the game and some experiences. I feel my experiences are not going to spoil the puzzles. But, they may. So, read at your risk.

Blood Letters is a hunt through various shops in SL. Many you will know. There are two items to find for each letter/clue in the hunt. The hunt has a story, which is the adult part. Thus most all of the hunt is visually safe for work.

Blood Letters 2014

Blood Letters 2014

Day 1 – Letter 1: Not quite what I expected. This is where I learned it was more ‘hunt’ than game. But, so far it is fun and safe for work, but decidedly adult. Her panties were getting wet… that qualifies as adult.

The first puzzle to solve is getting the HUD (L$400), which is way easy. Find a vendor, purchase, and wear the HUD. The rest is not so intuitive. Getting the letters is the next step. I was told we can only get one letter per day. Well, sort of true. 

However, you will soon find out you can get more than one per day. But, you must pick up the clues from the hint in letter one before you can have the second letter. Today is the tenth day and you can only get 10 letters. But, you can get all ten today. I this allows late starters to catch up. Plus the limit keeps the game/hunt going all month.

In any case, to get the letters you have to make it to the detective’s office. If you use SL Search to get to Blood Letters you’ll be starting at the office. Otherwise, you may have found the HUD vendor in any of a number of places around Second Life. If that is your path, click the HOME button in the HUD to get to the office.

The Razor, a place the first letter’s clues lead to, is a store with totally slutty clothes. Wearing these clothes and instead of being hit on you’ll probably be asked ‘how much?’ My picture doesn’t really capture the ‘slutty’ nature of the clothes.

I picked up several demos. If they fit… well, there are times looking slutty helps.

In the Razor you have a puzzle to solve. The hints are in the first letter from the office. You’ll need your hunt skills to find the clue, a business card. It is there and it is small. Like most hunt clues, it is hidden in plain sight. Look for the fortune cookie while you are there.

Aiden White’s studio is nice. As far as I can tell there is only one must-have-clue. It is easy enough to find. Having that clue lets you get the next letter from the office. It also gives you the first prize of the hunt. You can see the prizes released one per day on Facebook. Just click the Facebook button in the HUD.

It quickly becomes obvious the killer we are chasing is way kinky.

Day 1 – Letter 2: This takes us to Rack Poses. I found Rack Poses from Flickr some time ago. They have some really nice images on Flickr.

I did have a severe case of texture thrashing at Rack Poses. Lots of textures just did not want to render and stayed blurry. SL is having some growing pains as bumps in the CDN texture & mesh delivery are worked out. But, the poor texture render is not a hindrance here. Gabriel is people size.

Once you have talked to the ‘Gabriel’ you can open the third letter. I understand there is a cookie here too. But, I didn’t find it.

Day 1 – Letter 3: This letter takes us to ‘Consignment’, vendors of Mesh Furniture & Virtual Junk.

I continue to deal with texture thrashing (Second Life 3.7.20-296355 Nov  3 – AIS RC Viewer). Way annoying. I only have on 2 HUD’s… I believe it is the location not me or my HUD’s.

Here we find our second business card per the hint. This one is well hidden. It too is somewhat close to a fortune cookie, same room. You’ll have to use your hunt skills to find the card. The cookie is easy.

I think they have also thrown in a diversion. I found Lisa’s archeologist’s tools and gear on the otherside of the region. But, I couldn’t find any clues in them.

This card gets us to Lisa’s flat and another Mysterious Envelope. It opens the way to the 4th letter. In the flat the texture thrashing slowed down, but things took some time to render.

Day 1 – Letter 4: This takes us to Maxi Gossamer, an accessories maker. Nice stuff. The prize is a nice necklace.

Here our hint tells us what we are looking for. Where would one leave a newspaper? Remember. They would not want someone picking it up and walking off with it. So, its not in the common places we would expect.

Again the fortune cookie is in the same room and easier to find.

Day 1 – Letter 5: Before leaving we need to get our laptop and take it with us. They do tell us it is an ADD not a wear thing. That is nice.

This clue takes us to Xclusives Animations, which, you guessed it, is an animation place. When you land you’ll get spammed. Really annoying and way too much spam. As you move through the store you get more spam. Not a place I want to shop. Fortunately it did not take  long to find Gabe and get a flash drive. Once installed in the laptop it opens a web page with supposed additional clues. I didn’t find them helpful, but I may be overlooking something.

By this time I decided the Mysterious Envelopes are, of course, only going to be in places where the murderer has been. The generally accompany a body.

Day 1 – Letter 6: This takes us to Dutchie a furniture store, where we are asked to keep our clothes on… what!?!

I had a problem getting the link to work. There were a lot of people (25+) in the region. I closed and opened the letter and the link worked.

This hint suggests a book store… don’t look for one. Dutchie is a furniture store. They have books but no book STORE. The fortune cookie is again nearby and easier to find. The creator and owner of the fortune cookie and the Blood Letters clues are the same people. So, while nothing has explicitly told me they are connected, I believe they are.

The book is too big to read. So, we are off to meet the author, who we now also believe is the likely killer.

Day 1 – Letter 7: This clue takes us over to GalmRus, a pose and animation maker. Here the promo signs were very slow rendering. I left and only saw 1 or 2 render. No texture thrashing, just no rendering textures. Hopefully this place works better after a restart.

The story is extended here and we do get a prize. But, not much in the way of clues. Back to the office.

Day 1 – Letter 8: Our next clue takes us to Hawk Land and MiChiGaN’s ShAck, the place has sort of gone Christmasy or at least has winter stuff. When I got there I won some kind of lesbian car… been some time since I got my kink on in a car. I have yet to check it out.

There is a fortune cookie nearby. I was sort of expecting to find Janice, but I should have known better. That bad thinking meant it took some time for me to find the business card. At Janice’s… well… I found a body, may be you’ll get there in time to save her. Another Mysterious Envelope is there.

Day 1 – Letter 9: Now we have to go get a statue for dad. This hint gives you nothing. I have no idea how you are supposed to find the statue. Brute force searching is tedious. But, it is there, hidden away. My hint is only cross water once. And the teleports were not working the day I was there. But, you do not need to tp to the store, which kinda sucks for this merchant. But, If I had gotten to the store I would never have found the statue.

I never saw a cookie. I’m pretty sure I just missed it.

Day 1 – Letter 10: Another letter from our murderer. Now we are off to Cheeky Pea to save a writer I am supposed to know… The in chat link doesn’t work. Tried all my tricks. Since it is a link in chat and it is working for others it has to be something in my viewer, which is not working well today. And Chrome is acting up too. But, I put the coordinates in the World Map and got there.

The LoD of stuff at Cheeky Pea is bad. At 10m or so things come undone, using default LOD values in the viewer. This makes it hard to tell what is happening and what is what. Sucks. Examination of the poly count of the stuff there shows amazingly high poly density. They have cut the poly count on LoD 2 and 3 to get the Land Impact down, but that causes things to distort when they change to LoD 2. In my opinion the LoD levels are very poorly done on most of the stuff in Cheeky Pea.

The region never really has rezzed for me. I’ve tried logging off, switching viewers, and turning down draw distance. The region remained a mess. Whether it is the server needing a restart or the high density mesh in it causing lag, I don’t know.

 

Break

I decided to take break. Cheeky Pea was just not rendering well. Textures were gray or not rendering to anything readable. May be after Tuesday’s rollout and restart it will be better. As it is I have no idea how to find ‘motivational posters’ if I can’t read anything.

2 thoughts on “Blood Letters Play – Second Life

  1. As far as I can figure out — Mad Pea hunts are so confusing as to the \What \ of what we are to do or find ( which I don’t think makes a good hunt — just a headache) — there is the envelope & fortune cookie at each place AND something at each crime scene ( body ).

    I got a book as a buy somewhere for $0 but missed the tools you found. Why can’t we be told what to look for?

    I’ve had to go back to stores in the gray muck a few times. If Linden doesn’t see the bad rezzing we are having since they did the latest changes— I am really worried. Old days — you could hover mouse- wait- change tag– and you would get a texture(s) to fill in. Now– gray is gray for good. I’ m sure they have some wonderful charts to point at as to less load or whatever matters to them– but I am really tired of places that never rez.

    • Mad Pea leaves a lot for the player to figure out.

      By not telling players about the cookies, they increase traffic to the various shops, which is the point of this whole exercise and what pays Mad Pea to develop the games.

      The problem of gray areas is known by the Lindens and the CDN provider. They are working on it. I have not yet heard if they have figured it out. In any event yesterday in Cheeky Pea it was a horrible problem with lots of people complaining all day long.

      When things work, CDN and HTTP Pipeline makes it really nice.

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