• Spoilers
• Subraces
• Vampire

Vampire

One of the mightier undead creatures, the Vampire is an awe-inspiring sight. Yet this mighty creature has a serious weakness: the bright rays of sun are its bane, and it will need to flee the surface to the deep recesses of the earth until the sun finally sets. Darkness, on the other hand, only makes the Vampire stronger.

As undead, the Vampire has a firm hold on its life force and resists nether attacks. The Vampire also resists cold and poison based attacks. It is, however, susceptible to its perpetual hunger for fresh blood, which can only be satiated by sucking the blood from a nearby monster, which is the Vampire's special power.

It should be noted that the vampires are so sensitive to daylight that even certain artifact light items which are filled with daylight will hurt them if they try to wield the items. Fortunately, the vampires do not really need these items, since they radiate an aura of 'dark light' of their own. Light resistance will, in any case, protect the vampire from the adverse effects of sunlight.

A vampire character begins the game with:

• Some scrolls of satisfy hunger
• Some scrolls of darkness
• Some torches

A vampire character gains the following intrinsics as s/he levels:

• Level 4: Vampire Feed attack (Melee ability that generates food)
• Level 1: Light vulnerability (Light damages them at the rate of 1hp / turn)
• Level 1: Light, 1 radius (A vampire is always considered to have a light source)
• Level X: Resist Nether
• Level X: Resist Life Drain
• Level X: Resist Poison
• Level X: Resist Cold

Discussion

Vampires emit an inherent range one light, which is quite useful to read scrolls when you don't have a light source. They may be harmed by artifact light sources, including the Phial of Galadriel, but the Phial of Undeath will not harm you with light. (It will, however, harm you in other ways.)

Being harmed by sunlight is a problem until you get a source of light resistance. Until then, use control-T to find out what the game time is. Once it is nighttime, it is safe to get leave the dungeons for the wilderness or town surface.

Vampires have no modifiers to luck.

Vampires are a choice of some mage players who want extra HP but no magic penalty.

They're sometimes healed while feeding.

Bandobras: At least in 2.3.0 CVS, humans can become vampires at character creation. On the other hand I testes this extensively, and I'm sure one cannot become vampire by gaining normal corruptions (my thunderlord would be very happy to gain it, but no luck). Another way of becoming a vampire is currently commented out in the source code. :<

ErisDiscordia: Since we're being spoily here, let's say it straight out: Deathwatch, near the bottom of the Orc Caves, contains guaranteed artifact gloves that provide light resistance. This dungeon is just a few hours for Bree, and so vampires should strongly consider visiting it as soon as it's survivable (basically first thing after the Barrow Downs).

Obviously, an alternative to waiting until night is to use one's supply of scrolls of darkness. This costs a lot of food, and obviously you can't hunt for food very effectively in the wilderness in the daytime until you have light resistance (or an alternative -- see below), so be sure to stock up on scrolls of satisfy hunger if you need to travel the wilderness and your only protection from light-death is scrolls of darkness.

Note that there are junkarts of darkness, and that thaumaturgists, if they get lucky, can get pure-dark spells. Both of these amount to an infinite supply of scrolls of darkness, making things like finding early god quests much less annoying. Also, I presume a Dark Hound pet sicced on some silly wilderness creature could breathe darkness.