Vampirism

Anyone who played Morrowind should remember the fun times that came as a result of becoming a vampire in that game. (Sorry, the lycanthropism of the expansion packs isn't included here - presumably it'll be in whatever expansion pack Oblivion eventually receives.)

To become a vampire, simply find a vampire lair and fight a few enemies within. (You can find a vampire lair in the Memorial Cave, to the east of the Arcane University, just across the water of Lake Rumare.) After a few good fights, your character will contract what's known as Prophyric Hemophilia, a disease that drains your Fatigue by five points. No big deal, you'll say to yourself, but if you let the disease stew a bit, then go to sleep in a bed, you'll wake up with a peculiar craving for human blood. Welcome to the world of vampirism.

Get ready for a lot of comments on your paleness if you become a vampire.

Note that while vampirism shouldn't ever prevent you from attempting quests, so long as you periodically feed, it can be inconvenient at times. The quest for a cure is a lengthy and difficult one, especially when your character is at low levels, so if you don't want to become a vampire early on, be sure not to sleep before you can take a Cure Disease potion to get rid of your Prophyric Hemophilia.

Feeding

When you become a vampire, you'll initially only find that there are benefits to be had from the condition, which we list below. As time goes on, though, you'll rack up disadvantages as well, so long as you refrain from feeding. To feed as a vampire means that you have to sneak up on a sleeping human character and activate their body; you'll be able to choose between feeding and either pickpocketing or waking them up for a chat, depending on whether you're in stealth mode or not.

You can only feed when your victim is asleep.

Finding a sleeping character will obviously be easier at night, when most characters will be at home asleep. Beggars can be found in most cities, sleeping away the night hours in parks or alleyways; if you have some kind of long-range Life Detect ability, you can easily discern them on the lifeless streets of any of the towns. Mages and Fighters Guild houses will likewise have a bunch of easily-accessible sleeping characters for you to latch on to.

Note that feeding has no ill effects for your target; they don't die or become a vampire themselves, so feel free to pick your targets liberally. Feeding will be considered a crime if you're witnessed, though, so be sure that you close the door before heading inside.

Good Effects of Vampirism

To begin with, as soon as you become a vampire, you gain a 100% percent resistance to Disease and Paralysis. In addition, you'll gain bonuses to a host of different skills and attributes. Each of these gets a bonus of five points per day that you go without feeding, up to a maximum of four days. So the first day you're a vampire, you'll gain +5 to all of the following attributes and skills. On the second day, they'll all be +10, and so on, up to the fourth day, when they all gain +20.

Here's a list of the affected skills and attributes.

• Strength
• Willpower
• Speed
• Acrobatics
• Athletics
• Destruction
• Hand-To-Hand
• Illusion
• Mysticism
• Sneak
• Protection from Normal Weapons

Suffice to say, whether you're a warrior, a wizard, or a thief, you're going to find that these bonuses are general enough to be useful to your class. By the fourth day without feeding, your character will be significantly more powerful than he or she was before.

Vampiric Abilities

Each day that you go without feeding, you'll gain a new vampiric ability. These can be selected and activated from your spell menu.

Day One: Hunter's Sight

Hunter's Sight is a lesser power, meaning you can use it as often as you like. For 30 seconds after casting, you'll gain Night-Eye and a Detect Life spell that stretches out to 100 feet from your position. Useful for scamping around in dungeons, or for finding sleeping beggars in the streets of a city when you want to feed.

I'm technically only un-dead, baby.

Day Two: Vampire's Seduction

Once per day, you can cast a 50-point Charm spell on any target. This becomes most useful on the fourth day without feeding, oddly, since that's when most of the characters in the game stop talking to you. If you really need to get back on the good side of a questgiver or merchant, and don't want to have to feed to do so, use your Seduction power to temporarily charm them, then get whatever you need from them before the effect wears off and they go back to shunning you.

Day Three: Reign of Terror

Once per day, you can cast a 60-second Silence in a 20-foot radius around the target you touch. Useful for demolishing high-powered spellcasters, such as the bosses in Conjurer or Necromancer dungeons. This is paired up with a Demoralize effect, which may cause your target to run away, but it only works on targets up to level six, so that aspect of the power likely won't be useful to you after you've leveled up a few times.

Day Four: Embrace of Shadows

Last but not least, the infamous Vampire ability of invisibility becomes yours on the fourth day without feeding. (If you fight vampires in their various lairs, you'll run across this ability multiple times.) In this instance, you get a 90-second Night-Eye ability along with 180 seconds of Invisibility. While it's unlikely that you'll ever actually use all 180 seconds of Invisibility (due to the fact that it goes away when you interact with an object or attack), it can profitably be used to maneuver past too-tough enemies (although there won't be many of these by the time you hit your fourth day) or escape from a tough group of enemies.

Bad Effects of Vampirism

I'm not touching you...does this bother you? ...still not touching you.

With that said, though, there are plenty of drawbacks to being a vampire. As soon as you become a vampire, you'll obtain a small but noticeable weakness to fire damage, which grows more severe as you proceed without feeding. By the fourth day, this vulnerability maxes out at 50%.

On the first day of your vampirism, you and your pale skin won't necessarily feel any ill effects from sunlight, apart from making some itchy flaking. On the second day, though, one point of damage per second of exposure will be meted out. This increases to four damage a second on the third day, and eight damage a second on the fourth. (For the game's purposes, "day" is considered to be any time between six AM and eight PM.) This constant damage prevents you from waiting while outdoors or using fast travel. (If you attempt to wait while outdoors so that you wind up waiting through some sunlight hours, don't be surprised if you end your wait period and instantly die.) Overcast skies or rain will reduce this damage somewhat, but you'll still usually find yourself making a mad dash for an indoor area to wait out the sunlight. (Luckily, your enhanced speed will make this easier for you.)

On the fourth day of vampirism, your appearance will have changed enough to make your affliction clear to the rest of the world. While you won't be attacked outright or assaulted by guards, most of the characters in the game will simply refuse to speak to you, or at best tell you to get the hell away from them. You can overcome this once per day with your Vampire's Seduction power, or perhaps with other charm spells if you happen to have some Illusion abilities.