By now you're probably used to seeing this each time you obtain the next Level:

Have you actually visited the Elders Page? If not, take a minute to look it over.

Or, you've started doing more Combat. After you attack and click on the yellow See What link, you see what you attacked with and you see what your opponent counter-attacked and defended with. And you're seeing some Abilities that you know you've never seen from Missions or the Crypt. Hmm. Those are Special Elder Abilities.

You need 35 Favor Points to buy one of these. If you can afford it, you can also buy Favor Points and then buy more of these Abilities. Make sure the one being offered is worth buying! And check for the occasional Sales, both for a retired ability and avatar clothing.

You can also use Favor Points to buy clothes for your Avatar. There's things you can buy with Blood. So think about saving your Favor Points for Rare Abilities you almost can't get any other way. Unless you're really into one of the FP clothing items (i.e.: for Judgment). Go for it!

Yes, there is trading, but people are usually not willing to part with these, even the not-so-great ones unless you have something spectactular to offer - or you decide you really don't want or need those Elder abilities you bought with FP (if you do find yourself in that position and want to just get rid of them? contact me ;)).

There are 2 ways to buy Favor Points - directly via PayPal or Credit Card. There is a drop-down menu and you can choose how many Favor Points you want to buy and how much it will cost in real money. The big plus to this is you're directly helping to support the game (servers, staff, etc. are not free!). You can also sign up for various sponsors. Be aware that Zynga is not responsible for whatever the sponsors do, so there is a chance that your email inbox will be FLOODED with spam email forever. Again, that is not Zynga's doing! I try to either stockpile via Leveling, Mission Mastery and Trophy FP or outright buy some.

Now, we all start with 20 Favor Points. When you're just starting out and things are moving slow you may be tempted to use those for things like Blood, extra Clan, etc. DON'T! Those things will come as you Level up and build your Clan.

There is a "character type change", which can work for you if you're really unhappy with your type or just want to try a different one without having to start over. So, maybe you didn't choose what you now feel is more "you". You can also change your name (or add tags, which for me is a fairly recent development - seeing tags) - helpful is: your name is SO common that you're getting HL'ed constantly because another player with the same name is acting stupid or you're getting comments that your name is really offensive (and you wouldn't do that in the first place would you?) or your Vamp name does not suit you at all. Either of these will cost 15 Favor Points.

You can now buy SR with FP. 10 SR for 25 FP. This is causing a bit of stress, just be aware that there are players who will see this as an "unfair advantage". If you don't want to reallocate but simply "beef up" 1 or 2 stats to try to make your character a little more balanced, personally I don't see a problem. If someone can afford to become a "credit card player" and buys a ton of SR, that's when other players who have been trudging along gaining SR through leveling and masteries can get touchy. Just something to be aware of.

You will also see that "chance to reallocate your stats" - hopefully you won't need this unless you really, really messed up. First, you will need 30 to perform the reallocation. The cost doubles every time you decide to reallocate, so keep that in mind. It's gotten to be a real touchy subject with many players and can be seen by some as a kind of unfair advantage. What reallocate means is simply that you can take all your stats, lower 1 or 2 of them and use those points to beef up your other stats. Please note you cannot take any of your base stats below your beginning stats, so no you can't take your health below 100 and use the points somewhere else.

Here's The Elder Page showing how many Favor Points are owned, the Offers and Get more Favor Points: