Action Points
Many people seem to be a bit confused early on about how the Action Points function based on various criteria. Because of that, I think it needs enough clarification to warrant a page of its own.
Action Points, which I and other players/groups simply call AP, are pretty basic things. You move, it uses an AP. You bite, it uses an AP. As this is addressed pretty well in the How To Play that RavenBlack wrote for the game, I’ll reprint that here:
You have a maximum of 50 Action Points (fewer if you have less than 100 blood, plus one at 200 blood and at every doubling thereafter). They recharge at the rate of one every half hour. Actions can currently be used to move to adjacent city squares (with the 'Move Here' links), to drink the blood of victims in the same square as you, to speak, use powers, use location-based features, or use objects. If you are out of action points, you cannot act until you have rested (wait half an hour).
To elaborate, there is also a bit in the News of the game which gives better detail about your restrictions as a low-BP vampire. Again, reprinting:
...Vampires with less than 10 blood have their maximum action points reduced by 15. Vampires with less than 50 have their maximum AP reduced by 10. Vampires with less than 100 have their maximum AP reduced by 5.
Now, for further details. You start off in the game with a base AP of 50. But, as explained in the News selection above, vampires with less than 100 are a bit crippled in that area. Hopefully, you are not too far off in your getting to 100 BP and this isn’t as big an issue as it could be. Also, the rate of getting one AP every thirty minutes and total Maximum AP is alterable by getting certain powers, which we will get to later on.
AP can be used by the following methods: Moving in the City, biting a human or vampire, robbing a vampire, using an item, using any location based actions, speaking, using certain powers` abilities and refreshing too often. This last one is done to discourage a certain kind of behaviour which was eating up RavenBlack’s bandwidth allotment pretty bad and you can pretty much assume that refreshing more than once a minute or so is going to start docking you AP.
If you don’t use your AP for four days, you become what is called ‘Lost in Shadows’. This means that you cannot be seen on the City view and cannot be harmed by HW, biting or robbing. You are still vulnerable to SoTurns, as they effect an area, not a specific vampire. Once you use an AP, you come out of shadows and can be seen again. If you stay in shadows too long, you cannot come back. That is, if you do not log in and use an AP in three weeks, the code of the game script will delete your vampire from lack of activity.
Those items I mention we will get to later and the effects of being in Shadows as well as how to change the time it takes to drop into them will be elaborated further on. Let’s keep going.