The Vampire That Wasn't, Vampirism not working in Skyrim Options

[SubRosa]

I have been doing the Dawnguard questline with my current run of January. A few days ago I got to the point where you enter the Soul Cairn. I had forgotten that you had to be either partially soul-trapped, or become a vampire to go there. I thought about it, and since her friend and mentor Blood Raven is a vampire, January decided to go that route as well. With an eye toward getting the cure once the questline was done.

Serana made her a vampire, all well and good. Or not. I could see the vampire powers in my active magic effects. But I thought it was supposed to change your eyes. It did not. Oh well, no big deal. Bonus for me I thought.

Today I created a mod that allows you to craft Artificial Potions of Blood out of filled grand soul gems. They work just like the regular ones, in that they take the place of feeding, but do less healing. January had been taking one a day to stave off the vampirism hunger.

Except today she went stage 4 and everyone started attacking her. I went back to my save before going outside and everyone going hostile, and tried using the console to add some of the regular potions of blood, thinking I had gone wrong somewhere with my modding. I drank 3 of those, went outside, and same thing, everyone attacked.

I went back to another, earlier save, and sneaked up on some people sleeping, and tried to feed. There was no option to do so.

Also, the necromantic healing spell was not working on January, even though it is supposed to work on undead characters.

So I did more digging online, and I found that sometimes when become a vampire, it does not quite take. Your race does not get changed. You can fix it with the player.setrace <race>RaceVampire command. (using whatever case race is correct for you character, like NordRaceVampire for a Nord.

Viola! That worked. January got her glowing vampire eyes. She could feed afterward, and both the types of potions of blood worked.

So if you playing a vanilla vampire and have this problem, this might fix it.

[SubRosa]

It is weird, she was a vampire, but not a vampire. It seems to be a relatively common bug, since I found the fix to use the setrace command in numerous places. You get the powers like the bonus to sneaking. The vampire lord power is there if you want to transform into one. You definitely go through the stages, because I could see the weakness to fire increasing every day as the stage went up. But you cannot feed, and your eyes don't change.

So somehow you are getting the powers, but your race is not changing. Because January was definitely not in the NordRaceVampire until I used the console command. There was even a visual effect after I did it, like I was becoming a vampire for the first time.

When you consider that this is the same game where the dragons were flying backwards for a while, it is really not that surprising.