Vampirism is pretty popular. I’ve leveled...I don’t know...four characters through vampirism?

Feeding is not too much of a hassle. You sneak up behind a human npc and feed, much like the dark brotherhood blade of woe. Feeding on one npc resets you all the way back to vamp stage one. A lot of players stay at stage four and don’t feed at all.

The bonuses tend to outweigh the weaknesses, but it takes a bit to learn. For me, the fire susceptibility isn’t that noticeable, but the health recovery really is. You’ll rely on heals in battle a bit more. And as a sorc, probably keeping shields up.

Generally I prefer to wait until I’m vet to make a character a vamp. The line levels based on how much xp you earn based on how many vamp skills are on the bar (more skills slotted = faster vamp line leveling). When I go vamp I tend to want to work it up quickly...on a vet you can do this in an hour or two grinding. I made a level 30 character a vamp and it took forEVER to get the skill line up.

I don’t recommend buying this in the crown store. That gives you vamp on one character. But the game is old enough now that most vets have a vamp or two on their account, and people give bites for free. If you go to one of the vamp shrines (reapers is probably best) and put out a zone chat politely asking for a bite, someone will probably help you out. If you don’t get a response, try again later. I see requests this way all the time while doing writs, and if I have a bite ready I always go help new players out. You can offer to tip...but a lot of vets do bites for free now.

If you ever cure your vampirism on a character, you can do so without losing your vamp skill leveling (in case you turn it on again in the future). However, I believe it’s still the case that you should recast your skill points BEFORE curing vamp, otherwise any skill points spent on it end up locked away behind the cured vampirism, and if you wanted them back you’d have to go vamp again, recast, then cure again.