In the live show, me, Andrew, babbled incoherently about how to make a vampire character. It’s actually a really fun build so I thought I would outline the details in something other than stoner speak (ie text).

Character Generation:

You want a strong, fast and tough vampire because let’s face it, vampires are strong fast and tough. You should also consider making your character a little debonair as well. Put most of your points in strength, agility and endurance but toss a couple into luck and charisma as well. You’ll need luck later to get critical hits which will become essential for your survival.

Tag Skills:

Vampires can use guns I guess. They used them in Underworld and Blade sometimes used some cheap machine gun that shot silver bullets but if you really want to have fun with your vampire build, forgo guns altogether and Tag: Melee, Sneak and Lockpick. Vampires are sneaky sons-of-bitches. Vampires use swords. Swords spill blood in a way I can only assume is more pleasing to a vampire than frying some jack ass with a flame thrower or smashing the organs into the blood with shotgun blasts.

Perks:

(A full list of Perk definitions are available at the Fallout Wiki : here. )

If you are interested in making a suave vampire be sure to pick up Lady Killer or Black Widow. It adds a little extra character to your post-apocalyptic fiend.

Here are some essential perks:

Night Person, Cannibal and Hematophage (Drink blood to regain health). Both Night Person and Hemotophage have vampire images, so duh, you should have them and Cannibal let’s you eat people to regain health, which is awesome.

To increase your melee skills:

Finesse, Bloody Mess, Better Criticals, Ninja and Grim Reaper’s sprint.

To increase your survivability, in other words, how long you can take damage:

Toughness, Cyborg, and Adamantium Skeleton. Rationalize these roleplaywise however you want, but vampires should be unnaturally tougher than humans.

To increase your stealth, you are after all a child of the shadows:

Silent Running and Light Step. No vampire should ever be blowing off his own leg tripping over some raider’s shitty landmine.

Weapons:

The weapon I most recommend for your vampire is the Samurai Sword that you can get in the Mother Ship Zeta add on. I feel this is the single best melee weapon in the game even though the Shiskebab flaming sword out-damages it drastically. The Samurai Sword has an incredibly high durability compared to other melee weapons which means you will have to repair it much less. This is crucial as swords are uncommon items to find in the fallout universe. The Samurai Sword also has an extremely high critical damage output so when you sneak up behind enemies you can usually kill them in one hit. This sword also has a fairly low AP cost so that you can swing in far more often than other melee weapons. Plus, while a flaming sword is awesome, I think that most vampires would want their blood un-cauterized.

Early in the game you can grab a Chinese Officer’s sword from Jericho’s house in Megaton. This will hold you over awhile.

Style:

This is the most important part of playing a vampire character. You have to play them with style. Are you a stone cold evil blood sucker? Than take the Contract Killer perk and feast on your innocent victims.

Or, are you a vampire that tries to do right despite your own twisted nature? If so take the Lawbringer perk and only drink the blood of the wicked.

Your outfit should also be of some significant consideration. Forgo the clunky power armour that most melee characters use and instead simply pick out the coolest duds you can find. I wear either Vance’s jacket, Poplar’s Hood and Lucky Shades or the same combination but with the Merc Legend or Veteran gear. You will run faster and sneak better in this light apparel but it will also make you look awesome and provide a challenge for you as you will have to outmaneuver enemies. Using only melee and no to low armour makes the game a challenge from start to finish. You won’t survive unless you use your head and you’ll never reach a point where combat doesn’t make you tingle, even at level 30.

Other outfit options: Outcast Scribe’s robe and Poplar’s hood, Eulogy Jones’ suit, or any outfit that makes you look like a dope ass vampire.

Feeding:

Drag bodies into dark corners to feed as people will attack you if they see you feeding. Also, this seems more like what a vampire would do and is pretty fun, especially if you need to feed while in Caution or Danger. Try to regain as much of your health from feeding as possible. This will save you on Stimpaks and is more fitting with the build. You can take the Rad Absorption perk later in the game to offset any rads from feeding.

The most important thing to do is have fun so take time to admire your awesome character by using third person and VATS kills a lot. Also, never forget that as lame as other people think this is, if it’s awesome in your head while you’re playing, then you are sure as hell getting your money’s worth for the game.

-Andrew