Infectious Werewolves & Vamps no longer linked to the moons?

Danikat · August 2019

About a week ago I started looking for infectious werewolves and vampires (or bloodfiends to be precise) in Reaper's March. (I have a character who I want to be a vampire, and I'm in no hurry to do it, so I thought it would be fun to look for a 'wild' one instead of asking another player.)

Since then I've noticed something odd. I'd always heard that the spawns were tied to the in-game lunar cycle with werewolves spawning around the full moon and vampires around the new moon, which makes sense. The first time I saw werewolves, which I estimated to be 3 or 4 real days before the full moon I didn't think too much of it, assuming that's just when they started spawning. But then I didn't see either for several days (I think that was last Wednesday) and then today I've found infectious werewolves when the moons in-game are clearly waning.

Not the best image but annoyingly they're right by a huge tree so that's the best angle I could get. Werewolves in the bottom left, and you can see Masser in the top right. Secunda is higher up, off screen and behind a cloud but in the same phase.

Does anyone know what's going on with them? Has it always been this way or did they used to be tied to the cycle of the moons and it changed at some point? Is there any way to predict when werewolves or vampires will spawn now?

xWarbrain · August 2019

I know they were tied to the moon cycle at one point, as far as I know it hasn't changed. I don't know the details of how it exactly works though.

My 1st character, my sorc, is the only one that got a vamp bite naturally. I have no idea where or when it happened, but it was definitely more than 2 years ago.

Danikat · August 2019

xWarbrain wrote: »

I don't know the details of how it exactly works though.

That's part of what made me want to investigate, no one seems to know for sure. The only maps I could find of spawn points are from 2015 or earlier, and no one even seems to know exactly how long a day is, or the lunar cycle.

I think that's partially because once it became easier to get a bite from another player than an NPC most people stopped caring, but it still seems odd to me that no one knows exactly.

driosketch · August 2019

I did both a werewolf and a vampire in this manner not too long ago. From what I read, the moon cycle has not been tied to this for a long time. (Possibly never was.) I just check the usual spots whenever it was night.

xWarbrain · August 2019

I found this:

look to get attacked by the Vampires at night whilst there are stars out, or a dark moon or new moon (and right after a new moon). There are only a few players rumored to have seen Vampires whilst not under a new moon, but this is not validated to be Blood Fiend Vampires though, and further no one so far has ever reported actually being bitten and infected by blood-fiend vampires at times not close to new moons, and never during fuller moons, when werewolves are about instead. During the optimum time to be attacked by blood-fiend Vampires, the Moon may be hard to see or may just be a sliver of light.

from: elderscrollsonline.info/guides/vampire

But yeah, this might not be relevant anymore. If you get a bite with a half-moon, let us know haha

butterrum222 · August 2019

Unrelated to moons but I’ve heard that if you have sanguines black goat when it’s eyes glow red the bloodfiends have spawned that can turn you. I have never checked to see if it’s true but I have seen it with red eyes

Danikat · August 2019

butterrum222 wrote: »

Unrelated to moons but I’ve heard that if you have sanguines black goat when it’s eyes glow red the bloodfiends have spawned that can turn you. I have never checked to see if it’s true but I have seen it with red eyes

I'm checking that too.

I've got the goat equipped on all the characters I've been playing to look out for the glowing eyes, but I've not seen it since I started checking for vampires.

I did see his eyes glowing a few days before I started looking for vampires though, so I think I must have missed them. I've seen werewolves twice since then, but I've also missed a lot of in-game nights because one day/night cycle is 6 hours so I'm often asleep or at work.

driosketch · August 2019

So I checked my achievements. I found vampire spawn on June 20th, and werewolves on June 23. I don't remember the moon phases, but if that's the cycle, today should be vampire and Friday will be werewolves. I'm on NA PC.

Danikat · August 2019

driosketch wrote: »

So I checked my achievements. I found vampire spawn on June 20th, and werewolves on June 23. I don't remember the moon phases, but if that's the cycle, today should be vampire and Friday will be werewolves. I'm on NA PC.

Thanks, that's good to know and fits what I've seen so far.

I checked last night (about 10 hours ago) and didn't see either. I'm going to check again when I get home tonight and I'm hoping/expecting to find vampires. Somewhat annoyingly that would mean I just missed them when I first started looking, but I didn't know that at the time.

It's looking like it's shifted somehow and werewolves spawn when the moons are waning and vampires when they're waxing, but I'm not completely sure yet.

(Thankfully in-game both moons change together, unlike in lore where I think they can be at different phased, based on the khajiit furstocks and the lunar lattice. I'm not sure I'm up to figuring out a cycle with two moons going through different phases at different times.)

Danikat · September 2019

I finally found bloodfiends!

I don't know if I had horrible luck or if the spawns are uneven but I saw werewolves on 4 seperate nights before finding vampires. It certainly doesn't help that I wasn't able to check every in-game night.

But I can confirm it's not linked to the cycle of the moons (they're just passed full and bloodfiends are out) and Sanguine's Black Goat's eyes were not glowing red when they appeared. The only time I saw the goat's eyes glow it was the middle of the day and annoyingly I wasn't able to stay online long enough to check for vampires.

Edit: Now the goat's eyes are glowing. Tempted to rename him from Anakin to Captain Obvious.

Edit 2: I also had a lot of trouble finding Vorundil to start the quest, then discovered that's because it was never updated for One Tamriel, so my necromancer who started out in Northern Elseweyr, went to Reaper's March and has never been anywhere else had to go all the way to The Rift to find him...just because I picked the Pact for his Alliance because you have to choose that at character creation and not later on when it would make sense for him to have joined them. Which just gives me another reason to wish they'd change how characters are created and join factions/start storylines in this game. It's very restrictive for story telling.

ihazzit · September 2019

I play on PC-EU and NA.I have a couple of accounts and all of my vamp/ww characters have gotten the bites naturally except my first one as I do not know how/where I got it. Other than that first one, all of my vampire bites came from the same location in The Rift, NE of Eldbjorg's hideaway. I've had several last year and this year at the same location, all during the full moons, but also many times on the full moons there were no bloodfiends. I circled the location on the map below, my character icon is at the spawn point. My ww bites came from two locations and I've got multiple from both. One location is in The Rift, due south of Skald's Retreat wayshrine, the other Bankorai and I marked them on the maps also. The Bankorai location is on the east side of the Silaseli Ruins.

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