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Posted by: SubRosa Mar 19 2023, 05:47 AM

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.

Posted by: Renee Mar 19 2023, 11:59 AM

Yeesh, that sounds nuts. Well at least you were able to fix it. Because yeah, if you've got Dawnguard running, Stage 4 vampirism isn't supposed to make a difference when it comes to being around citizens/mortals. NPCs won't attack unless you turn into a Vampire Lord.

I actually used to disable Dawnguard in Mycharonna's game because of this. I wanted vampirism to be the same as it was in Oblivion because it adds tension. Well anyway, good you were able to fix that.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 19 2023, 01:07 PM

Wait a moment. If she wasn’t a vampire, then why did everyone attack? There has to be a faction issue as well, right?

Or can you be a Stage 4 Nord?

Posted by: Renee Mar 19 2023, 04:52 PM

Good point, ghastley. I also find it odd that they'd attack at Stage 4 while Dawnguard is activated. It's like the vanilla vampire stuff was noticed but the Dawnguard material wasn't.

Freeking Skyrim, man...

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 19 2023, 08:11 PM

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.

Posted by: ghastley Mar 19 2023, 08:40 PM

I suspect that Serana was the source of it all. If I am remembering it all correctly, she is a Nord rather than a NordVampire, which may have been to stop her getting constantly attacked. So this bug may only exist for female Nords, as they would be the only race needing special quirks.

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 19 2023, 09:03 PM

I did a little more digging right now. I think I see the problem.

Vampirism is controlled by separate entities in Skyrim. There is the vampire race, which in turn confers things like the keyword Vampire and ActorTypeUndead, and the glowing eyes. I found recently when I created my own little vampire mod to play Blood Raven that just giving yourself the keyword Vampire (and nothing else), unlocks the feeding options, and prompts the NPC dialogue remarking about your white skin, or having a bad look in your eyes. With Blood Raven all I did was give her the two keywords and some magical abilities like waterbreathing, disease resistance, and so forth.

But Vamprirism is also controlled by a quest called PlayerVampireQuest. I am looking at it right now, and it has a script which handles the vampirism stages and faction membership.

So what appears to be happening is that the vampire quest starts, and with it the stages. But the VampireRace never changes, so you don't get the eyes, or the keywords, and thusly the ability to feed.

Posted by: Lena Wolf Mar 20 2023, 01:38 AM

Yes, it's called a Breton.