Welcome to our ESO Vampire Guide. If you’ve played Elder Scrolls Online, you’ve probably seen some disgustingly pale looking players running around. Vampirism from the Elder Scrolls series makes a strong return in ESO, and anyone can get infected with it. This guide will explain how to become infected, cleanse the disease, and all of the implications the skill line holds and enables. If you wish to stalk the night, and strike fear into the lives of mortals in Tamriel, stay a while and listen.
“Vampires suck!” (me before I tried it)
Vampirism brings a lot of changes for players once the infection fully sets in. You’ll gain some weaknesses, and some strengths; both of which can truly alter your performance in combat or even simple enjoyability of the game. Most notably is the weakness to Fire damage, which can really offset players from coming into contact with it. However, thanks to some updates and a few tips, we can almost nullify these weaknesses, and abuse our newfound powers to become true masters of the night.
In Cyrodiil, nearly everyone is a Vampire. This raises us the question, what in world is so strong about it if so many players take it? After finally taking the dive, and finding someone willing to share their curse with me, I found out why. In the below section, all of the strengths and weaknesses will be revealed and explained, so you too can understand the power of Noxiphilic Sanguivoria.
Table of Contents
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- How to get Vampirism
- How Vampirism Works
- Vampire Skill Line
- Curing Vampirism
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Strengths and Weaknesses
The biggest change one notices with Vampirism, is the weakness to the Fire element. All Flame damage dealt to a Vampire will be increased by 25% in its final stage. By final stage, I refer to the fact that your effects will continue to amplify, the longer you prolong to feed, which will be explained in a further segment. Below is a simple chart giving a brief overview of what comes to us as a Vampire. If you’re looking for more concrete explanations, check the Vampire Skill Line segment below.
+ New powerful abilities
+ Passive bonuses for Stamina and Magicka regeneration
+ Can earn gold selling bites
+ Sneak speed increase
+ Not permanent
+ Great for role playing
-Vulnerable to fire damage (25% at Stage 4)
-Diminishes your Health regeneration
-Vulnerable in PvP (Silver Bolts, Expert Hunter, etc)
-Continual feeding (maintenance)
+ or – Changes your look (good or bad)
After looking over that list, it really seems Vampire is powerful choice. So let’s see how we can get it!
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How to get Vampirisim
Getting Vampirism is pretty easy now that a lot of players have it. Here are the ways to obtain the disease;
1) You can get bitten by a rare spawn “Bloodfiend” in each faction’s “final” zone (see spawn location areas below)
2) Or you may get bit by another player already infected with Vampirism near a ritual shrine. This is the likely the easiest, as you won’t have to wait for rare spawns and you won’t have to pay real money! Just make sure the player with Vampirism has the passive bonus spent to they can share their powers!
3) You may purchase a Vampire infection from the Crown Store for 1500 Crowns.
Here are the following Bloodfiend spawn locations in each of the zones they will be found;
Aldmeri Dominion (AD)– Reapers March
Daggerfall Covenant (DC) – Bangkorai
Ebonheart Pact (EP) – The Rift
Once you get bit by a player or an NPC, you’ll need to head to a shrine for the Scion of the Blood Matron quest that unlocks the vampire skill line. Below is the shrine location per faction.
Aldmeri Dominion (AD) – Reapers March
Daggerfall Covenant (DC) – Bangkorai
Ebonheart Pact (EP) – The Rift
After you reach the shrine, you’ll notice a quest icon on a piece of parchment. Pick it up and enter the tomb. Once inside, you’ll learn the history of the first vampire (I won’t spoil the plot). Once that’s done, you’ll take a nice relaxing bath in a massive pool of blood. Delicious!
Now you’ll notice your skill bar will have new active vampire abilities, giving you time to view and play with your newfound abilities for a bit. You’ll need to roam the dungeon and kill 10 NPCs around the area. I highly suggest playing with your skills in combat to learn first hand what they do, as written explanations only go so far. After you’ve finished striking fear in the poor lost souls in the cave, return to the quest giver and complete your journey to stalking the night. It should be noted that you will lose the vampiric abilities you had while on the quest, after completing your quest. You will have to gain experience as a Vampire to progress through the skill line to unlock the powers and passives again after you’ve finalized the quest.
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How Vampirism Works (Stages and Feeding)
Now that you’ve become one with the Night Matron, you’ll start your life as a fledgling Vampire. With this comes the ability to feed on Non Player Characters (NPC’s) to sate your thirst for blood. In order to feed on an NPC, you must enter sneak and go up to an enemy’s behind and synergize (the default key is X) to commence your feast. Feeding pushes you back a stage of Vampirism, and resets the duration in which is needed to progress to the next stage. Keep in mind that if you use this on civilians or neutral NPCs, you will incur a bounty and will be hunted by the law!
There are four stages of Vampirism; the first being the least significant (appearance, bonuses, etc.) and the last holding the most drastic changes. You progress through the various stages based on the amount of time you haven’t fed.
Each stage will take 6 hours to progress to the next stage, but casting your Vampiric abilities will shorten the time it takes by 30 minutes per cast.
Here are the various stages and what you can expect;
Vampirism Stage One
Take 0% more Fire damage
Health regenerates 0% slower
Vampire abilities cost 0% less
Your skin will be slightly pale in appearance.
Vampirism Stage Two
Take 15% more Fire damage
Health regenerates 25% slower
Vampire abilities cost 7% less
Your eyes will start to redden.
Vampirism Stage Three:
Still 20% more damage from fire
Health regenerates 50% slower
Vampire abilities cost 14% less
Your eyes will be completely blood shot.
Vampirism Stage Four:
Still 25% more damage from fire
Health regenerates 75% slower
Vampire abilities cost 21% less
Your eyes will appear infected, veins will bulge from your face, and your skin tone will appear reddish-grey. (yuck)
Stage 1 is there for players who want to be a Vampire, but are headed into content where the advantages are outweighed by the disadvantages. End game PvE has a lot of fire damage that can spell disaster for you if you enter with Stage 4, so make sure to feed before you do so. Stage 4 really shines in PvP however, despite taking that extra damage. Here are some ways to alleviate the weaknesses if you’re dead set on staying Stage 4:
- 25% more damage to fire – Elemental Defender will decrease incoming Fire damage by 25% with 100 points spent. This will even out your weakness to Fire, but you’ll still take more damage to it compared to other players. Dunmer’s also have a passive that innately increases your Flame resistance. Higher Spell Resistance can also lower the damage, as well as unique Flame Resistance enchants on jewelry.
- Health Regeneration 75% – If you’re not a tank, Health Regen isn’t a big deal in combat anyways. The loss is noticeable but it’s not going to get you killed most of the time. You can buffer up your Regeneration by using special stats or sets, such as Troll King.
- Instead of needing Health regen to buffer you back up, you’ll be able to use skills like Drain Essence or Devouring Swarm.
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Vampire Skill Line
Ever wanted a 75% damage reduction ability, a health drain, or a massive AoE damage ability? Great, you’ll get them with the Vampire skill line. These abilities and major passives aren’t available to start so you’ll have to wade through leveling, but here’s what you can expect as you progress through the skill line.
Ultimate
- Bat Swarm (AoE DoT) – A somewhat expensive ultimate, coming in at 200 Ultimate. Keep in mind this will lessen the farther we’ve progressed in Stages, down to 158 cost! It deals Magic damage for a short 5 second window, but packs quite a punch.
- Devouring Swarm – Gains a heal component, healing us for the same amount of listed tooltip damage per second. This is our go to morph if we plan on fighting multiple people while we’re outnumbered.
- Clouding Swarm – Grants Invisibility. While this doesn’t seem like much, it can make hitting you a lot harder. On top of this, it’ll activate any passive bonuses from Racials or Classes that trigger when invisible, offering some nice damage!
Active Abilities
- Drain Essence (Single Target DoT) – This channeled abilitiy stuns the target for 3 seconds; dealing minor Magic damage per second, and healing for 20% of your missing Health each second. Good for keeping enemies locked in place or getting some health back.
- Invigorating Drain – Also grants 2 Ultimate each second. Perfect for getting up another Devouring Swarm!
- Accelerating Drain – Grants us Minor Expedition after we finish the cast, increasing Movement Speed by 10% for 17 whole seconds. More fun than effective, so I usually don’t take this morph.
- Mist Form (Self Buff) – This reduces all damage taken by 75%, but prevents us from being healed during the duration and disables our Magicka Recovery. Also makes us immune to Crowd Control and Movement Impairing effects. Use this skill to shrug off high burst damage and move around unhindered. You can also block to cancel the effect. Just don’t get too zealous casting this! Health Regeneration also ignores the healing prevention.
- Elusive Mist – Adds Major Expedition for the duration, allowing you to move 30% faster. Really helps skate along to Line of Sight areas and choke points to turn on the enemy!
- Baleful Mist – Deals Magic damage to nearby enemies. The damage is rather lack luster, so I don’t suggest taking this one.
Passives
- Savage Feeding – Sets an enemy off balance and stunned for 4 seconds after feeding. Enables the Exploiter Passive from the Ritual tree, and enables for a follow up Heavy Attack to knock them over.
- Supernatural Recovery – Increases our Magicka AND Stamina Recovery by 10% IF we are Stage 2 or higher.
- Blood Ritual – Allows you to turn another player into a Vampire every 7 days. It’s a good way to help guildies or make some cash, get it.
- Undeath – Reduces damage taken by UP to 33%, takes effect when we are at 50% Health or lower IF we are Stage 3 or higher. This gets stronger the lower % Health we’re at, making us a hard target to kill.
- Unnatural Resistance – Reduces the Health Recovery loss from Stage 2-4. Helps us get a little bit extra Health regen, not too shabby.
- Dark Stalker – Reduces time to enter Stealth by 50% at nighttime and reduces Movement Speed penalty while crouched by 50% IF we are Stage 4.
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Curing Vampirism
If at any time you decide you no longer wish to be an immortal, you may head to the Mage’s Guild of the final faction zones and speak with the Priest of Arkay there. He will request a minor donation (around 600 gold) to work his magics. Once you confirm your donation and hand over the goods, he’ll make quick work of your disease and you’ll be back to a normal mortal in no time. You are free to become infected and cure yourself as many times as you want, as long as you have access to a bite and the donation fee! Here are the listed areas to cure;
Aldmeri Dominion (AD)– Reapers March – Mage’s Guild
Daggerfall Covenant (DC) – Bangkorai – Mage’s Guild
Ebonheart Pact (EP) – The Rift – Mage’s Guild
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