Alright so my Kajiit is rolling along nicely. I'm going with a pretty relentless assassin build and he only cares about personal gains. I thought vampirism would be good for my guy, because I also thought about focusing on night raids (before I thought about vampirism). The eventual 100% resist frost seems nice, but if I run into a fire dragon f*** that, my dude is helpless. Also, despite the emphasis of sneaking the vampire has, it comes with too many spells and I'm confused what it's meant for. I chose the Kajiit for it's nightvision mainly. I know It's only usable once a day but being a vampire takes that uniqueness away from me. Also, I'm almost never detected, when I am, I have no problem taking enemies down. The vampiric drain spell also would be worthless, because like I said I'm already basically a walking shadow and never get hurt. I would only benefit from a couple things... so is it worth it? I still wanna talk to NPC's...

Also, are any of you guys vampires that enjoy it? Maybe shed some light on it for me or tell me what you do?

I'm on my second vampire character right now. I really like it for roleplaying reasons, but it doesn't really have many tactical advantages. I play with a darker nights/dungeons mod so the night vision is invaluable, but you're a khajiit so you don't need it. The +25% sneak doesn't hurt though.

As for strategy, I always keep my vampire well fed to minimize the fire weakness (and to keep me from forgetting and suddenly hitting stage four and getting attacked by everyone.) You can enchant or find a set of fire resistant boots to help offset the 25% weakness that remains.

Can you explain the whole feeding aspect to me? I've tried getting info but it still seems a bit foggy to me. Thanks

Feeding is used to stay at Stage 1 which is the lowest stage in vampirism. There are 4 stages.

I went with a Dunmer for my vampire character for the passive fire resist. You could always find/enchant fire resist gear.

I'm playing a Dunmer pure mage vampire, I just slapped on a sneak enchant on my boots for breaking into houses to feed.

I can't find any vampires who can turn me (i'm not a werewolf,) I've been trying to become one for a while but there aren't many of them...

Here's more info including locations.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Vampire#List_of_Vampire_Types

I have a seriously fun time playing as a Vampire. I play as a Dunmer to help with the fire vulnerability, I use Illusion, and the 25% increase in potency is great. The Sneak bonus is also Pretty nice, as is Night-Eye. Once you learn Invisibility, you can feed on people without breaking the effect. A Tip though: If you are level 3 vampire and you decide to fast travel to a city, go into sneak mode then travel to a farm nearby so you can feed since you may be level 4, and everyone will be hostile towards you until you do.

So higher stages = greater advantages (and disadvantages)

but low level = low advantages w/ability to communicate?

I thought the stages were just a way a to prevent you from being too strong as a vampire early on. But it seems learning how to manage your stages is the key to vampirism.

Also, it seems best to do a vampire role-play character if you're gonna go with it. There's just so much to it compared to lycanthropy

I can see some really cool benefits from being a Nightingale Vampire. well stealth is the only thing I enjoy anyway... so here's to a new dunmer character

For Sure, and the best part of being a Vampire to me is: When someone walks by that just completely annoys me (Nazim or whatever from Whiterun) I think "It's cool, but you're the one whose going to be dinner."

meh never played vamp in MW OB or skyrim not gonna start now

Your vampirism raises by one stage for each day you've gone without feeding, so it doesn't take that long to reach stage 4, but in my opinion the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. To feed, just approach a sleeping NPC and hit the activate button, then select the "feed" option. Obviously you don't want anyone to see you do this, and you don't want your prey to wake up, so be sneaky. It seems like most NPCs go to sleep after midnight, so its probably better to start your exploring right after the sun goes down (7pm) then return to town and feed before it comes back up (5am).

You can shop during the day, since the huge daylight debuffs are unimportant if you're not fighting anyone, but if you're trying to completely avoid sunlight for roleplaying reasons (or if you're like me and just hate that "stepped into the sunlight" sound effect) you can do your shopping between 7pm and 8pm (everywhere except Windhelm, the storekeepers there close up shop a bit early.)

What happens if you feed on an NPC that's awake? Or what happens if they wake up? Just curious

My friend, your input to this conversation was very informative lol. Here's to ya

My Argonian Nightblade (remember the nightblade class from other elderscrolls games? I recreated it on skyrim) is quite successful as a vampire. He already uses illusion spells, mostly to calm/mass calm people, and being like an assassin/thief as well, he gets a nice stealth bonus to where he can sneak in broad daylight and he doesnt get seen. (with muffle, Dark Brotherhood armor, and 100 sneak with all the perks that matter in sneak.) Just one up close stealth kill after the other, to the point where a whole room just wonders what happened with a body suddenly appearing, and they get killed before they know what happend and start looking for you.

I also heard the Necromage perk helps immensely.. I havent tried that yet but that is my next goal!

I took a generic "mage hood" that is free of enchantments that you find for sale from time to time, and I put mana regen on it.
I took forsworn armor, and put the Illusion costs 20% less mana and 10% mana regen on it.
On the forsworn gauntlets, I put 50+ mana.
On the forsworn boots, I put reduce fire damage by 20%.

All of the armor is at superior quality.
I plan on making better versions as my enchanting a.d smithing gets better. But that offsets the vampire weakness a little bit.

There, that is my vampire build.

My argonian looks the way I picture the Akavari with his cobra-looking fangs.

They scream and call the guards. Nice Dead Mou5e avatar btw.

Does calm+feed work?

And thanks! He's gotten pretty huge lately

I was on the Gamefaqs board prior to this, and there was a lot of talk about recreating Nightblades, but i wasn't aware of vampirism at the time (I never contracted it during gameplay and found out via ESwiki). That's a good thought. Also what is your sneak tree like? Do you have shadow warrior?

I played a vampire Imperial recently, who was infected "by accident", and wasn't being a devout worshiper of any one deity. He decided to join the Companions, and was cured of Vampirism when he joined the Circle, but ended up curing his lycanthropy later on, and still went through the vampire cure ritual with Falion in Morthal just for good measure. That was all from an RP viewpoint; in reality, I was trying to make a character that I enjoyed playing as a vampire, but in order to get the most powerful perks, you have to give up all possible interactions with NPC's that don't involve sharp weapons or combat magic. I think that the ordering of powers/ranks of vampirism ought to be reversed. I think that in order to become more powerful, you should have to feed multiple times a day. Once daily to not suffer some kind of negligible penalty (5 points less health, maybe?), twice for more abilities, and so on and so forth until you hit four feedings a day to be massively powerful but recognized and shunned for the bloodthirsty vampire you are. Make feeding a bit more difficult to perform without waking the victim up, or make it so the NPC has a chance of death upon feeding, so as to reduce the amount of individuals available without careful selection of victims, and you've got a balanced system that's fun to play, from both a roleplaying and a gameplay point of view.

Currently, vampirism is really only good for RPing, unless you're a glutton for punishment.

Check my sig, my vampire necromage is incredibly powerful on master, level 56 now. you literally get a 25% boost to everything.

The nearest place I found to the start of the game is Shriekwind Bastion. I'm guessing that's where the guy in the hour long preview got infected. As long as you feed every other night vampirism is manageable. Carry Invisibility potions and wear Fortify Sneak items when preparing to feed until you get a high enough sneak.

You will want to raise Restoration as mentioned above to get the Necromage perk and wear Fire Resist gear when fighting Dragons. Other players will mention raising illusion but I never did until much later.

I tried to read the post but... is that mustard colour? eughh by the nine have some taste!

Calm and feed doesn't work, you can only feed on sleeping npcs. You can order your follower to sleep in a bed and feed off them however.

On my 6th char and my 3rd Vamp now. It is my 2nd as an S4V-24/7. Getting the disease as soon as possible she has been a Vamp from day 3 and has been running at Stage 4 since day 6. The most fun and the single most interesting playthrough I have had yet. She is a master of Illusion, Sneak and Conjuration.

She uses the Cannibal Perk (Daedric quest) To RP feeding. This way she stays at Stage 4 and can feed on a corpse, like a REAL vampire. Plus it actually helps you as a Vamp, instead of making you weaker. Yes almost everyone is hostile but 90% of the game is trying to kill you anyway. Once you join a Faction or do a side quest for someone they will be accepting of your state and even defend you if you are attacked by others.

Great stuff, indeed.