Rolled a new char and would like to share and hear your opinions/gameplay idea & tips on it.

The main focus is on Illusion and Sneak. Being a vampire boosts both these skills by a whooping 25%, making you the best stealthy character in the game. Since the master difficulty setting has a tendency of one shotting you anyway (if you don't go all out on health level ups) I decided to abandon health all together and rely on the shadows and cunning tactics to keep me alive. As a result you'll only have 40 HP left when your vampirism reaches stage four during day light.

The way to dispose of enemies is mainly by means of sneak attacks and illusion magic tricks. If there's a room full of enemies let them first fight each other (Fury/Frenzy/Mayhem) till there's only one or a few left and then sneak attack the remaining (damaged) victors.

I've decided to do this with dual wielding maces instead of daggers. The sneak attack factor is obviously less (6vs15 or 12vs30) but the maces more than make up for this because they provide the highest base damage. This can be boosted even further by fortify one-hand enchants (unlike daggers). Plus they ignore 75% armor making them more reliable against all enemies.
The difference is that enemies detect you after a stealth kill (unlike daggers). However, I consider this an upside regarding gameplay though because it adds a certain risk to the game, whereas with daggers you can kill a whole room without the dumb AI reacting one bit, which is not very realistic at all.
With this type of gameplay you have to combine multiple combat styles which increases the tactical aspect of the game.

Late game the two enchants you'll want are fortify sneak and one-handed. This means you won't have zero mana spells but that's no problem since you didn't need to invest in health level ups anyway. Having to be careful with your mana bar adds another tactical aspect to the gameplay since you might be overun without mana left for your bag of magic tricks. As a result; the preferred racial choice is High Elf for the constant +50 mana and mana regeneration spell. All other options are somewhat useless because resistances don't matter if you only have 40 hp anyway. Orc could be considered for the once a day temporary double damage but High Elf benefits far outweighs it imo.

The constant need to feed as a vampire can be annoying in 'normal' games. With this playthrough I decided to stay in the final blood starved phase as much as possible. This means you'll have to sneak around in towns and calm (illusion) the people you want to talk too.
Kinda like in the game "Vampire: The Masquerade" where playing as a Nosferatu you had to go through the sewers to go places because you were so hideously deformed and didn't look like a human anymore.

In the 4th and final Vampire phase you'll have certain dis- and advantages:
Pro:
+ Free spell: Embrace Of Shadows (Invisible with improved night vision for 3 minutes per day)
+ Free spell: Vampire's Servant (Reanimate a very strong dead body for 60 seconds per day)
+ 100% frost resistance. (Not sure if it is an actual 100% immunity or is also capped at the standard 85%. If not capped then this benefit is massive since your 40 hp suddenly becomes infinite against frost attacks.)
+ 100% resist decease and poison. Awesome

Cons:
- 100% fire vulnerability. Normally it's really bad but with this 40hp build... who cares. They won't/can't hit you anyway.
- During daylight (from 5 am to 7 pm) you have minus 60 hp, magicka and stamina and -100% regeneration. The regeneration is difficult and makes dayfights more difficult where you have to manage your massive mana reserves more carefully. Gameplay side effects may include: happiness to go inside.
- As aforementioned; people don't like you very much, which is an understatement.

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All in all being a dedicated vampire assassin means you'll have to embrace the darkness to the fullest extend and accept your new way of life in this lonely world full of vampire racists. :ninja:
Instead of seeing the feeding as a 'mandatory' nuisance; reap the amazing vampiric benefits and roleplay a proud vampire who accepts his final form.

Appreciate your thoughts & ideas.

There is a huge downside to your build. On level 100 in sneaking, which you should be able to reach fairly fast with that build, the sneak skill will probably effectively drop to 0 (known bug) rendering your character completely dysfunctional.

Any stealth build becomes invincible once they reach a certain point. On the other hand, what exactly do you intend to put your levelup points into, stamina? Most stealth types end up with hundreds of health just by default.

Care to explain the bug? My sneak skill is fine at 100.

For many people, once your skill hits 100, it resets to 1. Some kind of +1 thing going on in the code. Maybe 1.3 fixed it and we just don't know yet.

Shouldn't be too much of a problem. Only lategame, if at all, and easy to fix on pc till they patch it if necessary.
Plus you always have the Invisibility spell at your disposal anyway.



Invincible because the AI doesn't react to people randomly dropping dead next to them. Flawed game mechanic, pure and simple. Using a normal 1h weapon should solve that problem and besides solving the unrealistic nature of daggers.. maces do more damage anyway.

Having no risk at all is lame. Going through the game as a vampire assassin as described will give you better stats but definitely puts you in risky situations (the way it should be) and where victory depends on the judgement calls you make on how to approach a battle situation.
If it's a large group though you can't sneak attack them all in time thus having to thin out their numbers via other means (illusion/alteration/...). Single enemies you can still dispose of easily with a sneak attack.


Regarding where to put the points: Most if not all in mana. Not that many are needed in stamina since you only use it for occasional power (sneak) attacks but never during a long fight out in the open.

You have inspired me, my friend.

Here's to your and my next play-through! :foodndrink:

I am not sure how you would clear out the dungeon I just did with this build. Last room was a clustered group of shades withe the boss being a mage in the center of the group, he alternately casted fire and ice spells. You're setting yourself up for some very difficult encounters, that's for sure.

Interesting build, sounds like a lot of fun.

Awesome, that's what I like to hear!
Post your vampire adventures here to inspire others. I had my first dragon (main quest) fight earlier and it was awesome actually being afraid of his dragon breath. Stab 'n run tactics. Already better and more memorable than all my previous fights with a high HP "stop tickling me" shield char.




Hard to say without seeing the full scenario. Non-animal/humanoid enemies are definitely more difficult since they cannot be charmed at start. At 90 the illusion perk allows you to calm/frenzy/fear undead, daedra and automatons as well.
Undead can be dealt with restoration before that if needed.

Possible solutions:
1) Use destruction magic to (double) cast strong Runes on the floor and kite the shades one by one, returning to the shadows if needed.

2) Bring an army. Use your followers and possibly conjuration Atronach spells. Mana shouldn't be a problem. Plus you've already got a strong summoner spell as a stage 4 vampire.

3) Assassinate the mage and make a run for it. (With maybe "Become Ethereal" Thu'um)
You should be able to one shot him, if not craft some strong poisons and put them on both your maces.

4) Mass Paralysis spell/scroll might work. I'm just guessing some possible solutions here. Plenty of options if you prepare for it. But most importantly:

5) Skip the dungeon part till you're strong enough. Mastery difficulty is supposed to be hard. Not every dungeon you set your eyes on should be doable right away.

Well you will die alot. Plans and words aside this isnt the tightest and most responsive combat sim in the game. I assume this isnt a DiD thing or else it will be short lived.

Doing great so far. Combat is more like solving a puzzle instead of a simple heads-on approach which is great.
You definitely want to level your sneak and illusion somewhat before going stage 4 vampire though.

You've created a build with 40HP to use on Master? I salute your bravery.

The thing is, it doesn't really matter if you have 40, 150 or 300 HP on master. The strong enemies that normally give you trouble will one shot you anyway.
It does however change how you clear most common area's with weaker enemies, they're still easily doable but the fight is more exciting because now they too can kill you if you don't pay attention.

Please correct me if im wrong but i believe its if you have 100 sneak and you take the 5/5 perk for the first perk in the skill tree/

I did a similar character, without any invisilibty at all (and not being a vampire). Too easy once you get get the x15 damage + DB gear. (didn't trigger dragons, so nothing could actually kill me)

...sounds tedious

but have fun

I've cleared that room with a thief before, but it was quite difficult. You have to use invisibility to sneak attack the Necromancer and then use it again to flee back to the door and get in the corner until the shades lose sight of you. Then you just rain arrows on them until the sword appears and once they start to corner you make a break for the sword (not going to specify to avoid spoiler) and the moment you take it the shades all die.

Interesting. I love cool builds like this.

Well there's the problem. The easiness comes from nearby enemies not reacting to dagger kills at all. Go another 1h weapon for more realism. I myself didn't enjoy the non-interactiveness with daggers in the slightest. Didn't need any other tricks to beat enemies either.

As far as Guardian Stones with this vampire build go:

If you go vampire early on and decide to stay in your fourth and final form, you might want to go with The Shadow Stone. It will give you a 1 minute invisibility per day. This is on top of the 3 minute invisibility you get for being a blood starved vampire.
Meaning: you can go in and out any city/house without getting attacked along the way, go to the NPC you want to talk/trade with (or assassinate) use calm on them (or your Vampire Seduction spell) because otherwise they will attack you, and then return back to the wilderness with your other free invisibility spell.

All of this can be done right from the get go if you want. A save way before you get your own invisibility spell from the Illusion school, which requires quite a bit of leveling.

Once you have those aforementioned unlimited invisibility spells however, you're better of with the following stones:

The Serpent Stone (Paralyze 5s on target, also doing 25pts damage)
The Ritual Stone (Raise all dead to fight for you for once a day)

Though my personal favorite: The Apprentice Stone
With it, you get a whooping +100% Magicka regeneration. The more magicka you have the more mana per second you regenerate and because pretty much all points go into magic (since no health needed) the extra regen is a very nice bonus. Normally this sign svcks because of the "+100% weakness to Magicka" drawback, but since this build will always get one shotted anyway the extra weakness has no impact at all. :ninja:

This is actually very similar to the character im playing now, although i just cured my vampirism not even two hours ago. haha. but i have 200 health, over 600 magick on expert. sneak is 100, illusion is 100. illusion was my main skill for most of my game although im getting into much more now that i have most my main skills maxed. illusion is easily the funnest [censored] in the game though. gotta buy the whole perk tree. the WHOLE thing. every perk is completely worth it. i always used daggers. smithings 100. daedric dagger at 47 dmg x30. i agree way too easy. i usually only play that style now when im doing assassinations or killing in public, or if i just feel like being an [censored].

all the vampire abilities besides night vision are completely useless once your illusion is strong enough. kinda depressing. main reason i just got myself cured. all drag with almost no boost.



If you like the aspect of tactically approaching battles id recommend dabbling a mixture of conjuration in with illusion. maybe just necromancy even if youd like it to match your characters style more. once both are strong enough the battlefield becomes your playground. each battle is just like a question with infinite answers. highly recommended.

overall a very fun way to play. its kinda like my character on hardcoe mode. haha.

stage 4 vampirism gets totally pwnd by fire though. also youre gonna have to watch out super hard for traps. lol. stronger undead and dwemer machines will probably give you the most grief as illusion is useless against them till late game.

good luck. sounds like youre in for some epic [censored].

wut?
Does it still show up as 100 or does it reset in the game too?

Sorry to derail the thread, but you didn't trigger dragons? Does that mean there's no dragon encounters until you start the main quest?

40hp eh? I can see some really funny moments coming on, you'll probably be killed by a kettle at the start.