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Event Build: The Bloodflow Connoisseur

Tags: #Vampire  #Game:OB  #Type:Build  #Specialization:Stealth  #Event:Revival 
  • May 6, 2015

    This idea of a character depending on leeching the strength of his enemies to power himself was lingering in my mind for some time. With this build I have found out that it can be quite overpowered if played right, but I wanted it to be balanced, more roleplay based.

     

    The Bloodflow Connoisseur


    Have you ever heard about clan of vampires from Summerset Isles? No? That is because they do not exist. Not anymore. Almost extinct. Almost. And why? Because we hunt other vampires and they hunt us in exchange. They are like animals, always hungry and looking for more food. If they continue this way, mortals will turn against every vampire in Tamriel. It will be a witch-hunt. And we can't allow that.

     

    Race: Altmer (I know, again)

    Birthsign: Mage

    Skills: Restoration, Conjuration, Acrobatics, Athletics, Sneak, Block, Speechcraft

    Specialization: Stealth

    Primary Attributes: Intelligence and Willpower

    Secondary Attributes: Speed and Personality

    Equipment: Silver Sword or Fine Steel Sword (Absorb Health), Black and Burgundy Outfit (Fortify Magicka) Boots of Bloody Bounding

    Quests: Dark Brotherhood, Order of the Virtuous Blood, Mage's Guild

     

    Skills

    Restoration: This is the most important skill for this character because it is used for both offensive and defensive means in combat. Because restoration is the slowest skill to level any available gold should be spent on Restoration training. The idea behind this character is absorbing power of his opponents and I have accomplished that with Absorb Stat, Skill andFortify Stat, Skill. Spellmaking will be really important here to fully exploit these spells.

    Conjuration: When I was looking for an Intelligence based skill, Conjuration wasn't my first choice, but then it just happened. This character is Altmer and kind of a vampire aristocrat. A Character likethis should have some cannon fodder and because he doesn't have any kind of armor, Bound Gauntletsand Bound Boots will provide some AR.

    Acrobatics, Athletics: Being a vampire boosts these skills and I think that higher speed and agility should belong to vampire. With restoration the speed will be really tremendous, because one of the abilities I used is used to drain those Skills (You’re only absorbing athletics, fortifying the other. Sorry to be nit-picky :P) and Speed from enemy. Athletics and Speed directly enhance your movement speed, so at later levels I went over 100. I was even faster than Black horse which is by far the fastest creature in Oblivion. Or really close behind the Unicorn.

    Block: You will be using Blade a lot actually, but the reason why I didn't go for the skill itself is that I wanted to slow down the leveling and because I didn't need Blade abilities (Those from advancements in Skill) because they just add some power attacks. This vampire is more of a sword swordsman. A fencer, so power attacks weren't crucial for me. But Block perks are pretty useful, starting with the Apprentice one which prevents loss of fatigue while blocking.

    Sneak, Speechcraft: This clan of vampires is somehow similar to Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order in their ability to hide in sunlight and pretend to be simple mortals. The best way to obtain power in Cyrodiil is by obtaining the populace’s support.

     

    Conjuration and Restoration: Two Sides of One Coin 

    So I chose to build this character around Restoration. In Oblivion Restoration can be used offensively and defensively. While leaning more towards the defensive side of combat, make no mistake, Absorb spells are really powerful. Restoration has only oneform of direct damage and that is Absorb Health, so it doesn't have as many offensive spells as Destruction, but it has its own advantages.

    There are three similar spells in Oblivion and they are Drain, Damage and Absorb. Of those three) Absorb is the most powerful because it steals stats and skills from your enemy and gives them to you. I´ll use Magicka as an example. Drain Magicka just damages the Magicka of your enemy, Damage Magicka will lower their maximum Magicka, so it works the same way as Drain with a slight difference: your enemy has to use Restore Magicka to have full Magicka again. Absorb takes those Magicka Points from your enemy and gives them to you. And it works the same way with Attributes and Skills. Just imagine combining all three effects together. For me it was way too powerful, so I chose Conjuration as a secondary school.

    I think that I should point out that with spellmaking you can use only one Absorb Attribute and Absorb Skill by spell. That means that you can't absorb Strength and Endurance with one spell, so I decided to complement my Absorbs with Fortify spells. I know this is weird because there are items that Absorb more than one Attribute, but Spellmaking works only this way. Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't cast one Absorb spell and then cast another.

    In Skyrim, Restoration has Turn Undead spells, but in Oblivion these fall under Conjuration. So I thought that these two skills would supplement each other pretty well. And they did. Summons work as cannon fodder and the Turn Undead spell is pretty much a must for Vampire Hunter.

     

    Roleplay

     

    This character is a Vampire aristocrat and he believes that feral vampires are the real enemy to his kind. Too much feeding and mortals will notice and a witch-hunt will begin. And there aren't that many vampires to fight back against whole nations. So this clan of vampires work as enforcers for their own kind. That is why I chose to do Order of Virtuous Blood. I really enjoyed the irony while I was doing that quest.A vampire is hired to kill a vampire inside an order of vampire hunters...I'll just stop here, or it will get confusing.

    I always thought that this clan is somehow similar to the Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order in that there aren't many members but they hold some political power. So doing the Mage's Guild and Dark Brotherhood questlinescan give you some influence.

    Getting access to the Arcane University is a must. You will be relying on Spellmaking a lot, as well as enchanting. Creating complicated spells with more than one effect is really magicka expensive so you will need to enchant almost every single item you have with Fortify Magicka. There is some debate on whether the Fortify Magicka enchantment is better than the Fortify Intelligence so I'll tell you right now that you should always choose Fortify Magicka. Intelligence doesn't do anything other than giving you more magicka, but in terms of enchanting, Fortify Magicka enchant will give you more magicka than the Intelligence enchant.

    I would advise to stay as a Stage 1 vampire so as not to suffer from Sun Damage. You are a hunter that hides in plain sight of his prey. If you want to drink blood, find some sleeping noble or someone like that. Trust me, you don't want to drink beggars. They taste horrible.

     

    Being a Vampire 

    Because there is no Vampire build in this group I decided to explain in depth how the vampirism works in Oblivion.

    Let's start with contracting vampirism. The easiest way is to obtain the Porphyric Hemophilia from Vicente Valtieri in Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, but the fastest is to fight some vampires. But becauseAltmer have 75% disease resistance, it can be quite difficult, so Vicente Valtieri is your best bet. It takes three in-game days until the disease will take effect. To turn into vampire you have to sleep after those three days.

    Vampirisim has 4 stages and to get the other stages, you have to sleep or wait. That means that you can pretty much stay on Stage 1 if you don't sleep or wait. This way you don't have to drink blood, but my opinion is that it takes away from roleplaying as a vampire. What can I say, I just love drinking blood. Now to the stages themselves. The longeryou go without drinking blood the stronger your Attributes and Abilities will be, but you will be more susceptive to Sun Damage and it can influence your relationships with mortals. Let's take a look at the stages in more detail.

     

    Stage 1: 0-24 in-game hours. You will gain a +5bonus to Acrobatics, Athletics, Destruction, Hand to Hand, Illusion, Mysticism and Sneak. You will also get a +5 bonus to Strength, Willpower and Speed. You will have 20% Weakness to Fire, 5% Resist Normal Weapons and 0 Sunlight Damage. Also you will get The Hunter's Sight Lesser Power that grants you Night Eye and Detect Life 100 ft for 30 seconds.

    Stage 2: 24-48 hours. You will gain +10 bonus to the Skills and Attributes I mentioned before. You will have 30% Weakness to Fire, 10% Resist Normal Weapons and 1 Sunlight damage/sec. You will get the Vampire's Seduction Greater Power that grants you Charm 50pts on touch once per day.

    Stage 3: 48-72 hours. +15 bonus to Skills and Attributes. 40% Weakness to Fire, 15% Resist Normal Weapons, 4 Sunlight Damage/sec. You will get the Reign of Terror Greater Power that grants you Silence 20ft + Demoralize up to lvl 6 for 60 seconds.

    Stage 4: 72+ hours. +20 bonus to Skills and Attributes. 50% Weakness to Fire, 20% Resist Normal Weapons, 8 Sunlight Damage/sec. You will get the Embrace of Shadows Greater Power that grants you Night Eye for 90 seconds + Invisibility for 180 seconds. Plus most NPCs will be hostile to you or refuse to speak with you at all.

     

    Combat 

    I won't be listing every possible spell I used, only those made by myself. I think that I don't have to explain when to use Summon and Turn Undead spells. As for summons I would advise some undead, they just fit vampire characters. As for healing, I restricted myself only to Absorb Health. In my head, I was usingsome twisted form of the restoration school. Black Magic if you want. Ripping the blood right from your enemies with magic to empower yourself Sounds cool right?

    Barter in Blood: Absorb Strength, Absorb Blade, Fortify Endurance, Fortify Block - Curse used against melee enemies. It augments your ability to fight at close range using your sword. Try to block most of the power attacks and if your health drops low, Absorb Health is your best option.

     

     

     

     

    Consume Spirit: Absorb Intelligence, Absorb Conjuration, Fortify Willpower, Fortify Restoration - Curse used against spellcasters. Most of the mages you meet are Conjurers or Necromancers, so Absorb Conjuration will make their summons cost much more while yours cost less. Because you don't have any ranged means you will have to get close. Summoning a zombie will get your enemy a target to focus on while you get close with your touch spells and your blade.

     

     

     

    Mortify: Absorb Speed, Absorb Athletics, Fortify Agility, Fortify Acrobatics - Curse used against archers and animals mostly. This spell will make you lightning fast, but you have to get to your enemy first. When you do, it is so easy to dodge their attacks in a...flash.

     

     

     

     

     Feast of Blood: Absorb Health, Absorb Fatigue, Fortify Health, Fortify Fatigue, Fortify Magicka – This is the ultimate power. This spell is everything that this character is about. Using the life force of your enemies to strengthen yourself by ripping their blood from their bodies and consuming it. I advise using Consume Spirit to lessen the cost of this spell.

     

     

     

     

     Repay in Kind: Absorb Health, Bound Boots, Bound Gauntlets, Resist Magic, Turn Undead – Really great ability when you are dealing with your kind. Gives you some bonus armor,resistance against magic plus making vampires run in fear when they recognize the one and ultimate vampire hunter. Other than that, this is good against every undead.

     

     

     

     

    Mark of the VampireFortify Agility, Fortify Sneak, Resist Fire, Resist Normal Weapons – Signature spell of the Bloodflow Connoisseur. I decided to use this as a universal buff for all situations. The most important is Resist Fire. Being an Altmer vampire means that fire spells will eat away at your health really fast. This will more or less counter it. And Resist Normal Weapons is a form of defense because I was running around with almost 0 AR. This spell will reduce damage incoming from ranged and melee unenchanted weapons. Animal attacks do not count towards this.

     

     

     

     

    The End

     I would like to thank Kael for his help with my grammar and of course, don´t forget to check my other builds.

  • May 10, 2015
    I quite like this, usually I hate Oblivion builds, but this one might cause me to find my oblivion, dust it off and play it, +1
  • May 11, 2015

    Thanks, Seeks. If you dust off your Oblivion don´t forget to tell about your adventures 

  • Member
    May 11, 2015

    Awesome Karver, where did you find this awesome artwork? Did you go on some site, or just search up, vampire or dark lord or the like on Google Images?

  • May 11, 2015

    Sorin Markov, mate. It is Sorin freakin Markov. If you don´t know who that is, you might wanna check Magic Gathering. Awesome character.

    And I found those pics on google. Actually, one or two of these images were used by Mason on his Nemesis. I think that from there I got to Sorin Markov.

  • May 11, 2015
    This might be the best classics build I've read so far.
  • May 11, 2015

    Whoa. Thanks, Curse. That means a lot to me. I guess I´ll have to try harder to make something better.

  • Member
    May 11, 2015

    Oh, its a MtG character, I've never really played MtG,have a few cards, but he looks badass.

  • September 7, 2015

    Guys, is it just me or those pictures don´t appear at all?

  • September 7, 2015
    Dang, this be real good.