Medwin's Ultra Comprehensive Vampire Guide
This guide will cover pretty much everything I know about Vampirism and everything you need to know. In the PTS I was a Vampire and originally started writing this back in January 2014, I will go step by step in the quest so if you want to know what happens but don't want to become a blood sucker yourself, you can read all the text here. I will talk locations, feeding and different methods of feeding, how the stages work, the different skills, any other mechanics I can think of, and eventually I will talk about how to mitigate the negatives as a vampire. I will also talk about my opinions on the current cure and how it should be changed to be more lore accurate. In my opinion the best way to get the folks at ZOS to do something about the cure is to have an incredible guide that gets other people talking. This guide is broken up into different spoilers as to not come off as the huge wall of text that it is.
How getting infected works
You'll need to be hit by a specific mob, for DC these are bloodfiends and very specific bloodfiends at that. I repeat only these bloodfiends in Bangkorai and the respective zones of other faction will get you infected. They only spawn at night in Bankorai (DC), Reaper's March (AD), and The Rift (EP). In this guide I only have pictures of where they spawn in the Daggerfall Covenant zone. The current theory is they spawn around the New Moon in game, around the Full Moon werewolves will spawn, any other night these spots will be empty. If you have any confusion after looking through this guide or in a zone I did not cover I suggest going to the zone I mentioned and asking around in zone chat as to where the spawn is located for the zone.
I would like to thank
@Notleh and
@Attorneyatlawl for their beta thread on vampires, I had to snag some Vampirism info, it helped me when I first made this. Also
@terryammon for his video and
@Senk3tsu for helping me get to Eastmarch for a book. Thanks
@jody.roaneub17_ESO for his video on how a low level melee Nightblade can take out the mobs. Also a big thanks to
@LazerusKI for letting me use his Rift map for Ebonheart Pact. Thanks
@Reavan for the AD locations of a spawn spot and the quest giver location. And a shout out to all you folks that war reading this guide.
Locations (With Pictures)
This section has pictures of maps and in game pictures of locations, as well as a view of bloodfiends at one of the locations. I have locations for Bangkorai (DC) and thanks to
@Reavan and
@LazerusKI AD and EP location are now listed.
Daggerfall Covenant (Bangkorai)
Location one
In game view
Location two
In game view
Location three
In game view
Location four
In game view
Ebonheart Pact (The Rift)Aldmeri Dominion
V Quest giver location V
Quest to turn into a Vampire (Also Pictures)
This section is step by step guide of the quest to become a vampire, this is from the point of view of a DC player.
When you go to the locations and find the bloodfiends (or whatever mob it is for the other zones) just let them hit you and you should be infected right away with Vampirism. Before they would not respawn, folks have been saying they do respawn now however I suggest leaving them alive for others.
Next you will want to teleport to Easter Evermore Wayshrine for DC, I will try to find the Wayshrine names for the other two factions when I can.
The man you want to talk to is Vorundil, he will appear when you are infected with Vampirism.
He says
After you have talked to him you can either go to town and be cured for free or venture on to find out what this creepy blood sucking business is about. If you choose that later you will want to go to the Vampire shrine south of the Wayshrine, it will be on your map.
Now that you made it you talk to Rahaja.
She says
Praying at the alter will bring you to Blood Matron's Crypt. This is also the alter you turn other folks into vampires.
When inside go speak with Rahaja again to continue the quest.
If you talk to her a second time she says
Drink from the first basin and you will be treated to a scene with this nifty dialog.
After which you will destroy the symbol of Molag Bal
During which you get this dialog
Drink from the second basin for another scene and another dialog
After which you got to the symbol of Arkay and destroy it
she will talk to you again
Now you go into the black pool and get the life sucked out of you
After which you finally get to talk to Lamae Bal face to... well since she floats, knee caps. Also must say, incredibly odd fashion choice for the Mother of Vampires... but who am I to judge, I run around in the Seadrake outfit from the starter zone.
Also this dialog
Now you are tasked with taking out them darn cultist that somehow found their way into this super secret crypt... yeah. The Cultist are all 42 by the way.
So pretty much look for these guys, there are ten in total, sorry I didn't mark them on the map but now is your time to shine and explore on your own! Go on, I won't be here to cuddle you forever... on the other hand, once I'm a vampire I technically could be here forever.
Here is a video of how
@jody.roaneub17_ESO took out the mobs as a low level Nightblade, it also displays the Vampire Ultimate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUfUDej7gJU
Once you finish up talk to mother dearest and complete your quest, heck she'll even toss in a bit of exp and some pocket change for you champ!
Now you'll be a vampire like me, and countless other folks. You are a special little snow flake and don't let anyone tell you otherwise... no really, if fire hits you it will be at 50% more damage... so yeah, you're now a snow flake. But you are a snow flake with awesome powers and stuff!
And yes, I was able to kite them at level 20 pretty easily, I've been hearing folks even did it sooner. I ended up hitting 21 with the exp from the quest.
How to be cured and why it is lore inaccurate. (ZOS PLEASE READ)
This section talks about how you stop being a Vampire, it later explains how lore inaccurate the current way you lose Vampirism is and explains why using examples from the game. I also explain a quest that would be lore friendly, ZOS please read this section!!
So you no longer wish to be a life sucking spawn of the night? Perhaps you are failing to many sobriety tests due to you red eyes, maybe your family and friends have become distant due to your new... interests, or maybe your sick of fighters guild members and fire users making you regret getting out of the coffin that night. No problem, I have you covered!
The first thing you'll want to do is go to Evermore and run over to the mages guild.
Once you are there run straight to the back and talk to Prelate Sabinus.
He will say something along the lines of...
Okay, with the simple fee of 621 Arkay has cured you!
...
...
...
Huh? You have a problem with how easy that was? You feel it conflicts with the lore already set forth? You want to see a quest?
Wow! What a coincidence, so do I! Who would have thought I would agree with myself as I wrote this guide, oh how strange our world truly is.
But if YOU are still not convinced let us look at the facts within the game.
You are special, so special in fact that only Mother Lamae herself had to turn you. Let that sink in, you were turned by the mother of all vampires. Obviously being of such close bloodline you would think you would suffer from all the aliments she had when turned.
So why was she turned at all? Well it was to spite Arkay of course! He keep close balance of life and death, vampires screwed with the balance.
Well why didn't she seek out Arkay and just have him cure her? One would assume Arkay would want to nip something like that in the bud. Plus not curing her would just mean Molag Bal won, right?
Oh how right you are! However she did seek him out, and he did not answer.
Why did he not answer her?
Oh, this is where we have to actually read a lore book. Luckily the Opusculus Lamae Bal ta Mezzamortie is in this game, so let's read that why don't we! (Since I could not get into the location where you get it in DC ended up having to make a EP character. Thank you
@Senk3tsu for the warp!)
So now after reading that you should understand that it was never within Arkay's power to cure. So with all those things presented I feel it is safe to say we need a quest or something if we want to cure this Disease. Or you could fix the last line of the lore book to say, "Arkay knew this could not be undone... for no less than 621 gold."
I suggest you make a quest where you go around and collect ingredients for a potion to cure it. This could really add depth to the game, once you have the potion in your inventory you can use it or not, it is up to you. The quest can be repeatable and give you a potion each time you do it, however don't put any gold or exp reward on the quest. And make the potion trade able, this way if folks want to farm and sell the potion they can.
Now what is this potion I am talking about, well here is a excerpt from the UESP.
"The witches of the Iliac Bay caught the attention of the Mages Guild by apparently curing the disease. The cure is a potion, consisting of six cloves of garlic, two shoots of bloodgrass, five leaves of nightshade, the blood of an Argonian, and the ashes of a powerful vampire; these same ingredients were used to cure Count Skingrad's comatose wife, Rona Hassildor, of her vampirism."
-UESP
The quest would be simple enough, when you talk to the priest of Arkay he will tell you he heard rumors of a book that might have the cure, put that book in a public dungeon. After you read the book you go back to the priest of Arkay and he tells you where you can get the stuff. Have a camp with a very powerful vampire (new world boss) in Bangkorai, The Rift, and Reaper's March, the other ingredients spread around the zone, maybe have an Argonian that will donate some blood for some gold or if you use intimidate or persuade on him he will do it for free. Once you gather all the items the priest of Arkay will give you the potion. It is up to you if you use it or not, once you found the book you can do this quest over again and get a new potion.
That is how I think you should implement the quest in game, or do it some other way. Either way it need to be something other than having a priest of Arkay heal it for you for 621 gold. Heck, I'll even write all the quest dialog for you, free of charge.
Also, if you do use my idea for the quest you should change the priest to a female breton and name her Prelate Medwin. That would be pretty awesome ZOS.
Video guide by @terryammon
This is video from another user for those of you that like to see gameplay.
Vampire Skill lines, fully written out
All the basic skill written out, I will add the morphs as I get them. Also in this section I will have the amount of exp needed for each rank.
Not sure if this is updated info but here is what I have.
My character stats to put skill costs and power into perspective.
36 Magicka - 8 Health - 0 Stamina
Max Magicka 1700 - Max Health 1295 - Max Stamina 1093
Level 45 Breton Nightbladei
2% less spell cost from Magicka Mastery (racial passive)
12% less spell cost from Evocation (light armor passive)
-13 cost from ring
Rank 1- 89816exp
Rank 2- 94999exp
Rank 3- 100741exp
Rank 4- 107072exp
Rank 5- 113297exp
Rank 6- 120019exp
Rank 7- 127144exp
Ult: Bat Swarm you need rank 5
Cast time, Instant - Target, Area - Radius, 10 Meters
Duration, 5 seconds - Cost, 275 Ultimate
Summon a swarm of bats which surround you and deal 160 Magic Damage to enemies every 1 second for 5 seconds
Active One: Drain Essence you need rank 1
Channel time, 3 seconds - Target, Enemy - Range, 7 meters
Duration, 3 seconds - Cost, 209 Magicka
Stuns target for 3 seconds and deals 160 Magic Damage every 1 second. Player recovers 150% of damage as health and stamina evers 1 second. Cannot be applied to targets which have recently been drained of fed upon.
((There is a two minute cooldown on this, after two minutes you can use the skill on them again))
Active Two: Mist Form you need rank 3
Channel Time, 3 seconds - Target, Self
Duration, 3 seconds - Cost 430 Magicka
Take 75% reduced damage from all sources and gain invulnerability to healing magic and control effects for 3 seconds.
**(0/2) this means there is more than one rank, I only know the first and will update with the second later.
Passive One: Savage Feeding(0/2) you need to be rank 2
WHILE USING VAMPIRE ABILITIES
After feeding, you target is off-balance and stunned for 2 seconds.
((It doubles to 4 seconds))
Passive Two: Supernatural Recovery(0/2) you need to be rank 4
Increase Magicka and Stamina Recovery by 5%
((It doubles to 10%))
Passive Three: Blood Ritual you need to be rank 6
Allows player to turn another player into a vampire once every 7 day, by returning to the Vampire ritual site. Turned players earn the Vampire Skill Line. Players infected with Lycanthropy cannot be turned.
Passive Four: Undeath(0/2) you need to be rank 7
Increases damage to mitigation when player is below 30% Health. Damage mitigation can increase up to 50%, as Health decreases.
((It increases to when the player is below 50% health))
Passive Five: Unnatural Resistance you need to be rank 8
Health Recovery is improved in Vampirism staged 2 through 4.
Passive Six: Dark Stalker you need to be rank 9
Increase Movement speed while sneaking and allows player to enter stealth more quickly at night.
Feeding mechanics and Vampirism Stages (Pictures!)
Everything about feeding and vampirism stages explained, I also added pictures of each Vampirism stag so you can see what they look like.
What is Feeding?
Well voice in my head, feeding is a process to keep the stages of Vampirism down.
Ehh.. then what are the stages of Vampirism?((It should be noted that there may be a bug when you log in and out that drops you back down to stage 1, also when I did /stuck I had to redo the quest to get Stage 1 vampirism back.))
Vampirism is a debuff/buff of sorts, it has four stages. You will always have 50% more fire damage because of it, the higher in stages you go the less hp regeneration you get. However is also makes it so it costs less to cast vampire spells((At least it seems like it is suppose to, currently it does not work that way)). Think of it as being hungry and while hungry you get weaker (lower hp regen) however you also get more desperate for that snack which gives you more drive (lower vampire spell cost). Cosmetically Vampirism gives you pale skin, red glowing eyes, and it causes the black rings around your eyes to get darker the higher in stages you go.
Here are the stages and descriptions.
The first is a 30 minute buff that can be found in your Character Window. This is the lowest Vampirism can get.
Stage 1 Vampirism 30 minutes
-You take 50% more damage from fire attacks.
-Feeding reduces you vampirism stage, sneak up behind an enemy humanoid to feed on them.
Picture of stage one Vampirism
Stage 2 Vampirism 60 minutes
-Your health regenerates 25% slower.
-You take 50% more damage from fire attacks.
-Your Vampirism abilities cost 20% less to cast.
-Feeding reduces you vampirism stage, sneak up behind an enemy humanoid to feed on them.
Picture of stage two Vampirism
Stage 3 Vampirism 90 minutes
-Your health regenerates 50% slower.
-You take 50% more damage from fire attacks.
-Your Vampirism abilities cost 40% less to cast.
-Feeding reduces you vampirism stage, sneak up behind an enemy humanoid to feed on them.
Picture of stage three Vampirism
Stage 4 Vampirism no timer
-Your health regenerates 75% slower.
-You take 50% more damage from fire attacks.
-Your Vampirism abilities cost 60% health to cast.
-Feeding reduces you vampirism stage, sneak up behind an enemy humanoid to feed on them.
Picture of stage four Vampirism
Oh, I think I get it! But how do you do the feeding part?
Well like the stages say, you need to sneak up behind an enemy to start feeding on them, during this time you and the enemy can not do anything. There are a few ways you can do this that I know of.
Crouching- After stalking around looking for your next victim you finally find a lone bandit wandering around. So you crouch down and slowly approach from the back, once you get behind them a prompt will come up that allows you to use a synergy and suck their blood. Tap that and for a few seconds you will watch blood fly like a stream into your mouth. This method is harder when you are trying to sneak up on more than one person.
Nightblade Shadow skill or Invisibility Potion-
You could just use your invisibility to get behind a humanoid enemy and feed on them. This method is great for when you see a group of three humanoids. You can just kill two of them and go invisible and feed off the third. I'm still testing the Invisibility Potion with this method, I had the option prompt once however it dropped before I could get a picture off.
Is there anything else that feeding does?
Why yes, feeding is pretty much a skill on it's own. It is a free to cast spell the stuns them in place while you siphon blood from them (you are also stunned in place). It does no damage however you are healed while you use it. When you are done feeding if you have Savage Feeding they will be stunned and you can knock them down with a heavy attack dealing extra damage. The victim will turn black and a three minute timer will start where you will not be able to use Drain Essence or Feeding on them again.
Vampire Bugs thus far
Any bug I find are posted here or if anyone mentions a bug I'll test it and add it here too.
Stage two and four bug
Currently Stage two and four does not reduce the cost of vampire skills, drain essence says it cost 116 in both stages. So if it does reduce the cost it is not stated on the tool tip. However stage three is working, it reduces the cost or at the very least has a tool tip that says it does.
Invisibility Potion bug
One of the times I tried to use and invisibility potion they would keep looking at my direction, this meant that I could not get behind them. Not sure what caused it but when I make more potions I will try to find out.
What I think that can be improved (feedback)
Suggestions to ZOS directly, things I hope they'll take a look at.
Feeding, make stage one stack!
Having to feed every 30 minutes is pretty silly, I assume later on dungeons will take more then 30 minutes and might not have human mobs. I suggest letting this stack up to 5 hours and having it hold time when you log off. This way you can feed on 10 people and be set for 5 hours of game play if you wanted and if you log off with three and a half hours left you will be there again when you get back on.
In game time.
Please add a clock in game so we know what time it is, or have a half circle with a picture of the sun if it is day time or moons if it is night time. Have them go across this half circle so we know what time it is. With this when it is night time you can have the moons go across, you could also have them in the shape of what it is that night, so if they are full moons have full moons go across. I think this will help a lot of people in game, it should be made easier to know what the in game time is.
Cure for Vampirism too easy!
Vamprism after becoming a Vampire is suppose to be one of the hardest things to cure, yet I can waddle up to a priest of Arkay and they will do it for 621 gold? Are you kidding me? I go into great lengths in my Cure section on why this is wrong and even give an example of a proper quest that can be added to the game to fix this.
More on why Arkay curing you makes no sense
In the story line when you go though the quest the whole point was that Lamae Bal was corrupted by Molag Bal to spite Arkay. If Arkay had the power to just turn her back to being a human he would have. So why does a priest of Arkay have this power now? If Arkay could have done anything there would be NO vampires. On top of that in the game we are told only Lamae can turn us, this means we are incredibly close to the type of vampire she is. With that in mind that should also mean that Arkay is powerless to turn us back, in fact it should probably be harder than any other game lore wise.
Drain Essence... kinda lacking
Don't get me wrong, I love this skill... when it works. Currently on some monsters it won't work such as bosses or monsters like gargoyles. This actually a common problem with snares and stuns, however usually there is a secondary portion to it such as the life steal and damage. Even if the stun does not go off the damage and life steal should. Maybe make it so you take 50% less damage from the person you are using it on when they are a boss type monster and can not get 7 meters away from you. Currently it looks like you need to wait a minute or two before you can use it again on a monster.
Fire resistance
Now I am fine with having this debuff, I am glad they have a negative but I feel like we need a way to check in game for our fire resistance. I want to be able to pull up my character sheet and be able to check what my resistance is at.
A little about me.
My forum name is Medwin, I was a tester in the PTS server and got to know a thing or two about being a Vampire. I had this write up in the beta and decided it could help people now that the game is live. I know a good bit about the lore in he Elder Scrolls world and work as an officer in the
DC guild Cross. My first Elder Scrolls game was Marrowind back in the day, honestly I mostly just goofed around in that game. That is probably all you need to know.
If you have an questions at all please ask! I have changed my original post to cover most questions brought up so far, so don't feel obligated to have to read through all of the threads.