I don't mind opening it on my first round; don't wanna spend eternity as a bloodsucker anyway

What's this? A music video in this vampire thread? Why, yes! Because you see, people make the argument that Avril is the true embodiment of Harley Quinn. But I say she is none other than Jeanette Voerman, co-owner of The Asylum down in Santa Monica. Change my mind


Avril Lavigne - Best damn thing


And yes, this is the only time I do this

I don’t really know anything about her, other than that she was into skater boys at one time. Is she supposed to be mental?

No, more like cool and stuff. I just think she looks so much like a real life Jeanette

Oh ok, gotcha

Khajiit has been in something of a vampire mood after creating his latest D&D character, so he started a new V:tM-B game!

After a wild night, Luna is reborn into undeath.

Luna watched her sire put to death, and awaits her fate.

The Prince spares Luna and she listens begrudgingly as he tells her what to do.

A Lopov in the night.

Cap’n Jack shows her the ropes.

Grabbing a quick bite!

After arriving at her Haven in Santa Monica, Luna goes to see the Prince’s agent, Mercurio, and finds him beat halfway to hell. He explains that he went to buy some explosives from a bunch of thugs in a nearby beach house and they double crossed him. They took his money and beat him, leaving him for dead. Luna agrees to help get the explosives and the money back and he gives her directions to the beach house. She also steals some morphine for his pain from the clinic across the street. Convenient!

This is neat. I never noticed before, but there is a large wolf watching on a cliff beyond the pier.

It flees if you get closer. Is this Beckett maybe?

Carnage at the pier

Oh! Khajiit is back at it again!



Yes; it's generally "accepted" amongst fans that it is indeed Beckett who keeps on eye on you here. Don't know if official sources has confirmed it but it's more or less established as facts, just as Cabbie is Cane himself.

Well, this should get you in the mood for your D&D groups next campaign!

It makes sense to me!


Oh I’m definitely feeling it! I think Saryn is going to be a lot of fun to play.

So is Luna a Gangrel? I tried playing one, but gave up about half way through. The fighting animations with Protean were just so slow and clumsy, I missed at least half of the time I attacked.

Wow, I never noticed the wolf watching from the heights over the pier.

She is a Gangrel! I’m thinking of choosing to focus more on Fortitude, animalism, and guns with a side of unarmed. I’ll try protean since I never have tried it before, and see how I fare with it.

With my first vampire, a Gangrel, I never used Protean or Fortitude, but I did use Animalism a lot. It becomes a very good complement to guns at high levels. I even remembered feeling ridicoulously overpowered later on.

There is a really high level Animalism power that gives you back more blood from its victims than it costs to use it. I forget the name. But in the later game it is a pretty effective ranged attack.

Yes, that's the one I spammed making me overly powerful. It's the one that sends out bats.

So how's it going then, mr Khajiit?

Restartitis kicked in, lol. I rerolled Luna. Kept Gangrel but chose a different background. Was doing the Ex-Cop one that gave her a free point in Intimidation and Firearms but caps your Stamina at 3, and went with the Pagan Priestess one that reprioritizes your attributes as Knowledges, Physical, and Social. I’ve decided with her to go almost purely unarmed and focus on Animalism and Fortitude (if I can afford it). We are currently about to go to Asylum and meet with “The Sisters” for the first time, having wiped out the thugs at the beachhouse and recovered the astrolite. We’ve also beaten the unholy crap out of an amputee serial killer, reunited Lily and E, learned that a guy bail bondsman Arthur Kilpatrick is looking for left Santa Monica to go downtown, and kept some werewolf blood from being tested by the clinic.

All in a good day's work

Or a few hours anyway

And now I reckon it's haunted house time. That thing works so well the first time around but everytime afterwards it's just another Monday for me if that makes sense. Wake me up when you come back with the pendant

With Bloodlines 2 no where in sight, there are a couple of other V:TM games in production to keep an eye on. One, Swansong, follows a Malkavian looking for a missing daughter, the other, called Blood Hunt looks to be a vamped up action game similar to Dishonored with some male/female character customization.

Here is an early trailer for Blood Hunt.

Swansong trailer.

Those both look really cool. Hopefully they will get finished and released.

So, has your new character come back from the Ocean hotel? Talk to me, Khajiit!

Negative. Actually about to start a new vampire rp in Skyrim!

Derp, I should’ve done more research on Bloodhunt. It’s a battle royale game.

Which is totally fine if you’re into that sort of thing, but not for me.

I guess that explains why it looked so action focused. I guess Fortnite and Pubg were so big for what, 5 minutes, that now everyone else wants to make a copy, including with vampires?

Right? Battle royale is a gaming fad that has already lost much of its former popularity. The vampire folks missed the wave.

I started a new VTMB game a few nights ago. I am having some weird issues however.

First off the game is microstuttering a lot all of a sudden. So far I have not been able to find any solution for it. I have tinkered with turning Gysnc on and off, V-sync on and off, etc... Turned of the high quality sounds and environmental effect. Turned off bump mapping. Nothing changes it. In fact, turning Gsync on makes it worse. I also noted that the game seems to have V-Sync hardcoded into it. As it always runs at 58 fps no matter what I do in my Nvidia settings.

My second issue just started today. The lighting just got weird. It is hard to explain. It is not darker over all, but the shadows, especially on people's faces, got a lot darker. Sometimes faces are nearly completely in darkness. When I look at the Shadows options, now I only see two to pick from, None and Simple. But before I had those as well as Complex and Soft.

Here is what it looks like

I have reinstalled the game a couple times now. While I was at it I updated my Unofficial Patch + to version 10.9 (before I had 10.8). I noticed a new Mod Launcher.exe. Using it allows you start the game and pick between the vanilla game and the UP. If I pick the vanilla version, the lighting looks fine. So I can only assume that the lighting issue is being caused by the UP.

Here is how the vanilla version looks



Edit: Solved. The issue here was a piece of advice I read meant to help with the microstuttering. It was to add a command line argument to force the game to run in direct x 7. I removed it, and voila! The weird shadow issue is gone.

Still have the microstutter though.

Microstuttering is annoying as.. Yeah. Don't have any idea what's causing it, though


Anyway, what clan did you roll with?

I tried playing a Toreador again, going the firearms route. But I just could not get enthusiastic about it, so I gave up after a few days. I have played all the clans now, and Toreador is the only one I just do not like. I liked the Gangrel, but could not finish that one because of how poorly the protean animations were.

So last night I rolled a new toon. This one is a Ventrue. Before I used a Yuki skin to replace the Ventrue character. This time I almost went with the vanilla appearance. But I experimented with using a mod that allows you play using Grout's Wife's appearance. So far I am liking it.

The noclip command is really sensitive with just a little tap sending you dozens of feet. So I looked in the config.cfg file, and found the command that controls the speed. I changed it to the following, and now it is a lot more manageable:

sv_noclipspeed "300"

I am back to Vtmb. I played a Ventrue for a bit, but got a hankering to try a Toreador run once more. They are the only clan I never played (well, I never finished by Gangrel game either, but I played one for a long while). This is my third time, and it finally stuck, since I am now in the endgame.

I am going with a gun run, rather than using melee weapons like I normally do. It was rough at first, as that .38 from the start of the game really sucks, and the Ithaca is not a lot better. But once I got Auspex and Celerity up higher, it started to work. The Warrens were a cakewalk in fact.

Now that I am near the end I really like the Desert Eagle. I think that is my favorite gun. Though the Steyr is obviously the best automatic. The only problem I have now is ammo. I went into the Hallowbrook with like five different guns, all full on ammo. Before I was half way through I was discarding guns because I had no ammo, and picking up other kinds of guns there because I could get a few more rounds in them. This is also the first game in which I am officially broke. I spend all my money buying ammo. Even with collecting from Confession between every main quest.

I really do not like Celerity though. It slows down the game too much. Especially going through doors. I have to hit the use key half a dozen times to get it to start opening, and then it takes forever. I usually try to go through too soon because I am impatient, get stuck, and have to start all over again when it then automatically shuts.

I used a mod to play as everyone's favorite Anarch

This feels like the Spider-Man meme of 3 Spideys all pointing at each other

At the tanning salon

I wondered what you were playing these days. Another vampire run it seems! Does that bright artificial light hurt like sunlight?

It did not do any damage at all. So apparently tanning beds are just fine for vampires.

I just finished Saoirse's game. So now I have played all the clans. I only never finished a Gangrel run.

Next I am thinking of doing another January run at VTMB. But this time with a highly customized clan. I am still going with a Brujah. But I am going to change the disciplines to Fortitude, Potence, and Auspex, since that is basically January as a superhero.

That is easy enough to do by editing the clandoc file. The hard part is if I do the tutorial. I want to do it. But the trouble is that it has a part where you have to use each of your disciplines, and it does not recognize changes you make to the clandoc file. It stores the disciplines you have to use somewhere else. I am not sure where. There is no tutorial quest file like for all the quests. I found Jack's tutorial dialogue file. It does reference a tutorial quest, and steps to advance it by. I did find a python file that might be where it all is. Not that I have any idea about how to even open it. Notepad++ can do it, but it is not doing it correctly, given all the little squares it displays in areas.

I am thinking of trying the tutorial and seeing if I can advance the quest via the console, copying and pasting from Jack's dialogue file. I suppose if that fails, what I can do is use the console to add in the vanilla disciplines to get past that point. Unfortunately there is no way to remove a discipline with the console. Not that I know of at least. I can either go the game with the disciplines and just not use them. Or I could finish the tutorial. Then start a new game and skip the tutorial. That way I get the tutorial experience, without actually doing it with the second version of the character.


Edit: I did find a way to remove a discipline entirely by using the console. If you do Vstats Sell {Discipline} #, with the # being one point higher than what you have, that removes it entirely from your character sheet. Looks like that is how I will go.

I never did get why everyone praised Celerity. Imho they did it wrong. It's supposed to make you feel fast but all it does is slow you down. Opening a door in Celerity should be like opening at normal speed since you are supposed to be moving fast which to me translates into opening doors fast. If I had it my way, using Celerity should have you operating as normal but everyone else being stuck in molasses.


And yeah, the .38 and Ithaca suck.

Celerity really frustrates me. Having to click on a door six times to get it to open, then waiting forever for it to move enough that I can get through it, just drove me nuts. I really don't like how they made it work.

In other news, I finished my January run, and started another with a Gangrel. Hopefully this time I will get through the entire game with it. That will mean I completed the game with every clan at least once.

I salute your diligence. I could never go get that stupid sarcophagus back to LaCroix again!

I finished out my Gangrel run last night. Now I have finished the game with every clan at least once.

This time out I got my Persuasion up to 10 by the endgame. Thanks to the UP Plus patch, it allows you to skip the two underground levels of the Chinatown temple. Instead you can talk to Yukie at the end of the above ground section, and she will open a portal that will take you straight to Ming-Xiao.

Then when you go to Ventrue tower you can talk to Chunk, and he will let you take the elevator straight to the roof, and the fight with the Sheriff. That one I have done before. I think with my very first character. It is a little tricky, because to get to that you cannot take the first persuasion option with Chunk, which is to tell him to think about whether his job is worth getting killed. You have to go a couple other levels in before the option to go the roof becomes available.

Now if only there was a fast track to get to the Nossie warrens, lol

Wow! I never knew you could skip the temple and Ventrue Tower like that!

The Unofficial Patch adds one. In the first level of the warrens it adds a door with a computer tied to it. Hack it to open the door, and it will skip almost all the Warrens. You still have to kill a couple of boss monsters though.

Oh sweet! Thanks for the tip!

I wonder if maxing Auspex has a noticable impact with regards to firearm damage? Or is it just accuracy?

Well it adds 3 points to your perception, which in turn raises your ranged skill. Higher ranged skills do equal to better acc. and increased damage. I wish I had a sauce for that besides my bad memory, but maybe one can be found on the interwebz.

I maxxed Auspex in my Toreador run, and it definitely increased my Ranged ability. I am not positive about how that in turn effects damage. I think it increases it, but I am not sure. But you should definitely raise you Auspex as high as it will go in a firearms build.

Valid for sure , but I always tend to spend my precious points towards Obfuscate and Dementia abilities. Along with other stuff like Range and so on, I have little left for Auspex. Another reason is I want to keep things as easy as possible in a fight, relying on Vision of Death and Bloodheal.


Yeah; I'm still toying with the idea of another playthrough as Malk, but when I think about the parts I don't like - EeeeeheeheEEHEehhhhhh....

Maybe with the mods that skip the sewer level?

Khajiit has been toying around with the idea beginning in earnest a Gangrel playthrough now that his PC is now at his actual abode.

I don't mind the sewers as such anymore. It's those annoying arm-monsters with their jump attacks and LaCroix's constant nagging about the sarcophagus

Those head monsters weren’t much of a problem for Brigitte during her play through. JaegerSpas was pretty good for dealing with them.

As for LaCroix, Khajiit just zones out when he mentions the Sarcophagus.

*Sighs*
You know, it is said that when someone starts talking about V:TM-B it creates an impulse in people to play the game. Like an elder feeling the beckoning of a Methuselah, Khajiit is certainly feeling the urge.