Vampirism Analysis

from https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimrequiem/comments/1zm5li/analysis_of_requiem_mechanics_vampirism/

Vampires are pretty infamous if you’ve been playing Requiem, and god forbid you get a quest from your companion shield brothers to go slay one before they’ve offered you their special gift.

Requiem is hard to analyze due to the scope of the mod, but I’ll do my best to completely detail how vampirism and vampires are different. I think I’ve covered nearly everything.

Vampire Gameplay is intended to be a challenge, It requires a lot of micromanagement of your thirst and comes with some large penalties to balance against its advantages.

It is not recommended for beginners to requiem.

–Becoming a vampire–

There are two ways, you can either consume vampire dust, which has a chance of giving you the disease, or you can take damage from a vampiric Drain life. If you are a Altmer, the Drain life varient is resisted using the Altmer’s disease resistance perk, so dust is the safer option.

Once infected it takes 3 days to turn into a vampire. During this time you are taking consistent damage and cannot sleep. To pass a time, you can train at a dummy, study a book, spell research or kill and harvest animals. Make sure you have more healing potions than you think you’d need. Make sure that you also have a cure disease potion in case you run out!

When you get converted to a vampire, you are instantly in stage 4. It is recommended that you make sure that you are inside (out of sunlight), and have dead bodies nearby that you can feed on.

–Minor Knockdown Immunity–

All vampires in Requiem are tagged with having Minor Knockdown Immunity, this immunity is found in a lot of other creatures as well. Having this immunity prevents you from being staggered by Werewolf Howling, Spell Impacts, Shield Bash Disarms, and possibly other effects..

–Vampire Feeding–

Penalties

In Requiem your victims will die if they are at or below 125 health when you feed, and feeding will deal 250 damage to Max HP when done the first time, and 125 damage the second time, after that it is no longer penalized however I doubt your victim will survive. I suppose this mechanics is to make feeding as a vampire punishing, since in the vanilla Skyrim game you could feed on people left and right without killing a single person.

Healing

In Requiem you recover 100 HP per feeding.

Blood Potions

You can use a Blood Potion to sate your blood thirst.

You can craft the Blood-conserving Phial, but they are expensive and only have 1 use, but they allow you to bottle blood from a killed NPC A script runs in Requiem that will automatically Create an Elixer of blood, if you loot an appropriate target with Blood-conserving Phial in your inventory, otherwise you will consume the blood instead.

You can get Potions of Blood from blood kegs in Vampire nests which function in the same way.

Elixer/Potions of blood in addition to sating your thirst also act as a regenerate health potion (5/HPS for 120 seconds)

–Taboo Items (Meridia’s Malediction)–

Meridia’s Beacon - Simply possessing this item will Damage Health by 20 points every second. As it cannot be dropped, this is essentially a death sentence.
Dawnbreaker - Same effect as Meridia’s Beacon. But unlike the beacon - this at least can be dropped.

–Holy Areas–

In Requiem some areas are deemed ‘holy’ and will penalize you with a visual shader that will blur your vision, and prevent your stamina from regenerating.

* Temple of Talos
* Temple of the Divines
* Temple of Kynareth
* Temple of Mara
* Temple of Dibella
* Stendarr's Beacon

–Searing Sun–

In Requiem if you find yourself in sunlight you will cease to regenerate Health, Magicka, and Stamina while suffering penalties to each of them depending on your stage of Vampirism. To walk in the sunlight you would need to have at least 101 BASE hp as stage 1 vampire, and an extra hundred for every stage of Hunger afterwards.

Sunrise: 5am

Sunset: 7pm

–Recovering Health–

Health Potions - The only healing potion that you can use as a vampire are Potion of Healing (Superlative).

Leaving you to recover through other means.

Spells - Restoration healing spells will not work on a Vampire, Necromantic Empowerment (Rank I) from the Conjuration tree is the only exception.
Feeding - Feeding on humanoids is one of the easier ways to heal

–Natural Weaknesses–

Vampires share a weakness of Dawnguard weapons, suffering an additional 5 damage from them before damage reduction. Silver weapons deal a bonus 80 damage to vampires as well. As an added bonus, Dawnguard weapons are treated the same as silver, and that is the only way to get a mace with silver properties in Requiem. Making Dawnguard weapons arguably the best against vampires. NPC vampires take 50% reduced damage from Maces and Warhammers that are not silver, and 66% reduced damage from arrows that are not silver as well. Keep that in mind when hunting vampires.

Vampires also share a weakness of fire, so it is a good idea to slay a vampire with a fire enchanted dawnbreaker mace or warhammer, or fire magic.

–Special Equipment–

The Dawnbreaker in Requiem is tagged as having the same properties as silver and thus receives the 80 damage bonus against undead, in addition to this it is enchanted to deal 50 fire damage against undead targets, and as it turns out vampires are undead. Furthermore, it has a 2% chance to deal 2500 HP in fire damage, and will make undead up to level 35 flee on contact.

–Vampire Traits–

These are the benefits and detriments you get just from being a vampire, vampirism has 4 stages depending on your thirst for blood and each stage has different penalties/benefits. You also gain benefits from being well rested (sleeping in a coffin). You advance a stage every 4.8 hours (needs verification) you go without feeding, being recently fed puts you at stage 1.

In Requiem, you start at Stage 4 instead of Stage 1, which means you will be weak until you feed depending on how you look at it.

Always Active Permanent Changes

Minor Knockdown Immunity

Poison Resistance increased by 100% (Not Immune)

Disease Immunity

Undead ( Silver Weapons do increased damage and weak to fire)

Base Carry Weight Increased by 40

Base Magicka Regeneration increased (Differs by Player race)

Base Stamina Regeneration increased (Differs by Player race)

Health fortified by 300

Stamina fortified by 300

Waterbreathing - Passive and always on

Taboo items cause detrimental effects (Meridia's Wrath)

Holy Area Penalties

Searing Sun - No Health, Stamina, or Magicka Regeneration while in sunlight

Sneaking improved as if the skill was 20 points higher

Drain Life Spell - Spell that drains x attributes and transfers it to you, varies by stage.

Vampire Thermal Vision - Your vampiric blood allows you to see in the dark at will, and to thermally sense living targets. 
                         Your thermal senses can  even work through walls, provided the target is close.

Vampire's Servant Spell - Aimed reanimation spell that raises a corpse up to x level for y seconds, varies by stage.

Stage 1

Searing Sun - Health, Stamina, and Magicka reduced by 100

Drain Life will drain 40 Health, 30 Stamina, and 30 Magicka per second

Vampire's Servant Power will last 10 minutes and reanimate a corpse up to level 50

Vampire Strength - Unarmed damage increased by 25

Vampire Strength - Health increased by 100 between 7PM-5AM or in areas where you would not take Sun Damage.

Illusion magic is 25% stronger

All movement is completely silent

75% Fire Weakness

95% Frost Resistance

100 Damage to Health, Stamina, and Magicka while in outdoor cells between 5AM-7PM.

Stage 2

Searing Sun - Health, Stamina, and Magicka reduced by 200

Drain Life will drain 30 Health, 25 Stamina, and 25 Magicka per second

Vampire's Servant Power will last 8 minutes and reanimate a corpse up to level 40

Vampire Strength - Unarmed damage increased by 20

Vampire Strength - Health increased by 50 between 7PM-5AM or in areas where you would not take Sun Damage.

85% Fire Weakness

85% Frost Resistance

200 Damage to Health, Stamina, and Magicka while in outdoor cells between 5AM-7PM.

Stage 3

Searing Sun - Health, Stamina, and Magicka reduced by 300

Drain Life will drain 20 Health, 15 Stamina, and 15 Magicka per second

Vampire's Servant Power will last 6 minutes and reanimate a corpse up to level 30

Vampire Strength - Unarmed damage increased by 15

Vampire Strength - Health increased by 25 between 7PM-5AM or in areas where you would not take Sun Damage.

100% Fire Weakness

75% Frost Resistance

300 Damage to Health, Stamina, and Magicka while in outdoor cells between 5AM-7PM.

Stage 4

Searing Sun - Health, Stamina, and Magicka reduced by 400

Drain Life will drain 10 Health, 5 Stamina, and 5 Magicka per second

Vampire's Servant Power will last 3 minutes and reanimate a corpse up to level 20

Vampire's Seduction Power - Calms and Charms almost any target, which allows you to feed freely on them.

Health, Stamina, and Magicka no longer regenerate

Hated by NPCs and attacked on site

Vampire Invisibility - Once a day ability to become invisible and gain Night Vision for 300 seconds.

150% Fire Weakness

50% Frost Resistance

400 Damage to Health, Stamina, and Magicka while in outdoor cells between 5AM-7PM.

Well Rested (Slept in a coffin in player home)

5% Magic Resistance for 12 hours.

Skill gain increased by 15% for 12 hours.