Description

This mod is an ESP replacer that alters several elements of Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod to make being a vampire more fun for casual play, improve compatibility, and fix bugs.

Nekhanimal's mod is great, but there are some elements that I consider to be too extreme and annoying. For a player who wishes to hardcore roleplay as a vampire, that's awesome (pun intended), but for someone looking to just have casual fun, it can be extremely harsh.

Below are the listed changes:

1. The Violent Feed ability is unlocked from the start. You no longer need to level up your Vampirism to 55 (Adult) to unlock this ability and can feed on corpses, conscious NPCs, and animals immediately. There are also no more willpower requirements for using this ability at any level. Violent Feed can now be used on animal corpses. In the original version, this ability could only be used on living animals. Additionally, feeding on rats is fully satisfies player hunger and levels them up, just like feeding on any other animal. In the original, rats only reset the hunger timer, and nothing else. Its odd that a sheep or a mudcrab can fully satisfy a vampire, but a rat the size of a dog cannot? Now there is no distinction.

2. It takes longer to become hungry.
-Level 1 (Fledgling) requires blood after 12 hours
-Level 25 (Caitiff) requires blood after 16 hours
-Level 55 (Adult) requires blood after 20 hours
-Level 90 (Mature) requires blood after 24 hours
-Level 130 (Elder) requires blood every 36 hours
-Level 175 (Ancient) requires blood every 48 hours
-Level 250 (Antediluvian) requires blood every 96 hours

3. All innate sun damage based on vampire level has been removed. Only hunger makes you susceptible to sun damage.
-Well fed = no sun damage
-Hungry = changed from 4 sun damage to 1 sun damage
-Famished and Ethereal hunger stages are unaltered from their values of 8 and 16 respectively. You now have more time to find a meal, and multiple methods with which to feed yourself when transitioning from Hungry stage to Famished stage. There are many opportunities to find blood before the sun becomes extremely deadly. I think this is balanced.

4. The ability to satisfy your hunger by feeding on animals, corpses, and blood bottles is never taken away from you as you level your vampirism past 130. Now, vampires at any level can engage in all methods of feeding. Though all methods of feeding will always satisfy your hunger, some of these methods will stop leveling up your vampirism earlier than they did in the original version. The brutal sun damage and hunger requirements in the original version balance out a lot of things in the mod, and since this mod makes those features much more forgiving, some things need to be altered to balance them out.

Below is a list of changes to the way feeding works:
-Level 1 (Fledgling) - All methods of feeding level up vampirism (vanilla sleep feeding, Violent Feed used on living NPCs, Violent Feed used on corpses, blood bottles, Violent Feed used on animals)
-Level 25 (Caitiff) - From this age onward, feeding on animals will no longer level up vampirism. In the original, animals leveled up vampirism up to age 175.
-Level 55 (Adult) - From this age onward, blood bottles will no longer level up vampirism. In the original, blood bottles leveled up vampirism up to age 130.
-Level 130 (Elder) - Like the original, corpses cannot be fed on passed this age. Only vanilla sleep feeding and Violent Feed used on living NPCs will level up vamiprism.
-Level 175 (Ancient) - Only vanilla sleep feeding and Violent Feed used on living NPCs will level up vampirism.
-Level 250 (Antediluvian) - No methods of feeding will level up vampirism passed this age. This is a change from the original, in which you actually could continue to age beyond this level, just the mod would stop displaying your level when you fed, so it seemed like you stopped aging. The scripts have now been altered to actually stop the level from genuinely increasing once 250 has been reached.

5. Fatigue loss for using Violent Feed has been greatly decreased so that new characters don't collapse every time they try to use the ability.
-Feeding on a non-combatant NPC is changed from -100 fatigue loss to -40
-Failing to feed on a combatant NPC is changed from -150 to -80
-Successfully feeding on a combatant NPC is changed from -120 to -55.
-Feeding on an animal is changed from -250 to -55

6. Stat loss at Famished and Ethereal stages has been lessened or removed so that new characters don't become permanently disabled or die from entering the next hunger stage.
-Famished: drain fatigue changed from 65 to 25, and drain health 25 has been removed.
-Ethereal: drain strength from 200 to 50, Drain agility changed from 200 to 40, drain fatigue from 60 to 40, and drain health 60 has been removed. This stat loss should be enough to leave the player with extremely low fatigue, but not so low that they are disabled.

7. The player no longer automatically enters ethereal stage when jailed. While this idea was good on paper, because it allows for a stealthy jailbreak, it does not work in execution.
For example: It makes it impossible to complete the Two Sides of the Coin quest normally, because you must allow yourself to be jailed to be able to speak to Jorundr, but if you are in ethereal form he will refuse to speak to you.
Another example: serving your sentence while in prison may result in you being released during the daytime in ethereal form. At worst: you die immediately from sunlight. At best: every NPC you pass by tries to kill you, and your means to defend yourself are decreased.

8. This is more personal preference. The transformation key for Sanguine Aviation (unlocked at level 175 Ancient) has been changed from G to T. I already used the G key for something, and the T key was unused.
If you wish to map the button yourself:
-Open up scripts VampireScriptNew and VampireFlightScript in the construction set. Search for any instance of "IsKeyPressed2 20" and change the "20" to any code you wish from the following link: https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/DirectX_Scancodes_And_How_To_Use_Them

9. Killing vampires will no longer result in your being outcast from vampire society. There are several quests in Oblivion that require you to kill vampires.
There are also many mods out there that add dungeons with vampire enemies in them.
Sometimes vampires will just want to kill you, and you cannot get them to yield.
Killing too many vampires during any of these situations may result in your being outcast from vampire society, even if you were only defending yourself,
and I don't like missing out on content. Now you don't need to choose between maintaining your status in vampire society, or finishing quests/mods.
Feeding on vampires too many times will still result in your being outcast from vampire society,
and feeding on Matriarch/Patriarchs will still result in being immediately expelled from vampire society.
Killing or feeding on members of the Bloodworks or Barren Cave vampire clans will still anger them and cause them to permanently become your enemy.

10. Other vampires/undead will require Vampiric Senses to be toggled on before they will acknowledge the player as an ally, at ALL vampire levels.
In the original version, once the player reaches level 130 (Elder), they no longer need to activate their Vampiric Senses in order for other vampires/undead to acknowledge them as an ally. They will always be friendly to the player unless provoked.
Why did I change this? Because originally, once you hit level 130, undead enemies will NEVER again attack you unless provoked.
This trivializes many encounters and ruins a lot of exciting battles. See that room full of skeletons? They will completely ignore you unless you attack them first. Even if you kill a skeleton right in front of the other skeletons, they won't care about their fallen brother. They will only care if you attack them individually.
Now that Vampiric Senses are ALWAYS required in order for other vampires/undead to view you as an ally, the player can always CHOOSE whether or not these dungeons encounters will be peaceful or a battle.
If you want the dungeon to play out as it normally should in vanilla Oblivion, proceed through it with Vampiric Senses turned off.
If you want to peacefully interact with the vampires/undead and explore the dungeon as their friend, proceed through it with Vampiric Senses turned on.
In the original version, this choice was taken away from the play once they reached 130 (Elder). Now, it is always available.

11. "Potion of Vampiric Badassery" has had its name changed to "Ancient Vampire Potion".
"Potion of Epic Failure" has had its name changed to "Failed Ancient Vampire Potion".
The "Ultimate Final Epic Vampirism" effect name on the Vampire Heart item has been changed to "Final Transformation."
The "Newtonian Defiance" effect name has been changed to "Vampiric Grace". Not a cringe name, but the reference to a real life person bothers me.
Many of the old names were very... late 2000s-early 2010s teenager internet humor.
Nekhanimal was in their late teens when they created the initial version of this mod, so its understandable, but doesn't make the old names any less cringe.

12. Thanks to slowpard, the coffin sleeping script has been modified to allow for more compatibility with other mods.
In order to sleep in a coffin, the player must activate it after having removed all the items from it. There are mods that add invisible token items to containers for various reasons. The original version of this mod would still count those invisible tokens as real items, and so would never register the coffins as empty, thus never letting the player sleep in coffins. The coffin sleeping script has been modified to ignore invisible tokens, allowing for more compatibility.
If you couldn't sleep in coffins before, you might be able to now!

13. The player will no longer get locked out of the "Bring a vampire mage a copy of Immortal Blood", "Kill two NPCs for a vampire barbarian", and "Bring a Vampire Matriarch/Patriarch ingredients to make an ancient vampire potion" miniquests if they do not complete them within 3 days or if the NPC dies.
That's right. In the original version of NAVM, if the player took on a quest for a generic vampire NPC and did not complete that task before the cell the NPC was in resets in 3 days (or that NPC dies), they would never be able to complete that quest.
This was due to the way that the dialogue conditions and scripting worked.
An invisible necklace would be placed on the NPC to mark them as the quest giver and a global variable would switch.
Due to the variable switch, once that NPC spawned out, no NPC would ever again be able to get equipped with the invisible necklace and get marked as the quest giver.
I don't know if this was an oversight or if it was done on purpose, but it sucked, and I have seen users in the comments section of the original mod saying that they can no longer find the quest giver, upon returning to the dungeon where they first met them.
The dialogue conditions and scripting have been changed to allow any NPC to count as quest giver, once the quest has started.
If a vampire mage in one dungeon asks for a copy of Immortal Blood, you can drop the book off at a different vampire mage in a different dungeon and it will still count as quest completion. Same thing for the vampire barbarian mini quest and ancient vampire potion mini quest.
If you try to complete a quest using a different NPC than the first one that gave you the mini quest, the quest related dialogue options might not show up the first time you speak to the different NPC. Simply close out the dialogue menu and speak the the NPC a second time and the options to speak about the quest will appear.

14. Unnecessary vanilla edits have been removed and changes from Unofficial Oblivion Patch - UOP have been added in.
- A completely unnecessary edit to tf11sewermanholescript has been removed.
- This is actually an unnecessary addition, but it feels cleaner in my mind. The original vanilla vampire script is canceled out by NAVM with a "return" command placed early in its script, so that NAVM's own script can be used in its place. I have carried over all of UOP's changes to said script into NAVM's canceled out version of the vanilla script. Completely unnecessary addition, but it just feels good for me knowing that the changes are there, even if the script is canceled out.
- Lord Lovidicus had some of his stats (other than aggression and energy) changed for no reason. They have been returned to normal. UOP changes to him (minus the addition of checking the "no low-level processing" flag) have been carried over.
- There was an edit to the Strong Potion of Charisma's stats that was completely unecessary.
- UOP's fix to Origin of the Grey Prince quest stage 115 that removes quest item status from Lord Lovidicus' journal if Agronak dies before the quest is complete has been added.
- UOP's addition of "immune to silence" to Hunter's Sight (NAVM changes this to "Vampiric Senses") has been added.
- NAVM originally made edits to the vanilla Nether Lich visual effect's values. This altered version of the visual effect has been given its own record, and the edits to the vanilla values have been removed.
- NAVM originally placed a script related to Lord Lovidicus on the vanilla "Old Wooden Door" record. This meant that this script would fire off when ANY "Old Wooden Door" in the entire game is activated. Thanks to slowpard, this script has been removed from the vanilla record and now fires off only once in Crowhaven (as it was meant to) via some function and event handler magic.

15. Reflect damage and reflect spell abilities on Elder, Ancient, and Antediluvian have been removed entirely. Shield ability on Well Fed hunger status has been lowered from 4 to 3. Shield ability on Antediluvian has been lowered from 10 to 7. Nighttime and daytime health regen abilities have been removed entirely. Why? Its the balancing issues I mentioned earlier in this description. The brutal sun damage and hunger requirements in the original version balance out a lot of things in the mod, and since this mod makes those features much more forgiving, some things need to be altered to balance them out.

17. Hypnotizing NPCs into ignoring your vampirism now requires a minimum of 50 illusion skill, in ADDITION to being vampire level 25 (Caitiff). In the original version, all you needed to be was vampire level 25 and never again would you need to worry about an NPC being scared of your vampirism (except guards, who you cannot hypnotize until your vampire level is 90). I don't like that the ability to bypass this issue is given so early to the player in their career as a vampire, so now the player has to work some more for it. HOWEVER, if you level up your vampirism to 130, the 50 illusion skill requirement will be waived and you can hypnotize whoever you want without any additional requirements.

18. A new item will be added to the player's inventory upon becoming a vampire: Display Vampire Blood Potency. Simply click on this item and a window will appear displaying the level/age of your character. In the original version, the only way to see what level your vampirism was was by feeding when hungry. Now you can check whenever you wish. For now, it is NOT a quest item, so if you lose it, its gone. I did this out of consideration for players that do not want an unremovable item in their inventory forever. However, if enough players wish for it to be a quest item, I will change it to be one, and will set it so that the quest item status is removed upon reaching level 250. Give me your thoughts in the comments section of this mod!

19. Changes have been made to "Sanguine Aviation", the flight ability that you gain as an Ancient Vampire (175) to make the experience less janky:
- I don't know if it was due to another mod in my loadout, or if Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod was always like this, but if your agility is high enough, in the original version of this mod it was possible to unsheathe your weapon and attack your flying form and kill yourself while flying. This is because when you fly, your character is merely made invisible through the use of Set Actor Alpha. The player is still there, just invisible and with some controls disabled. Attack controls are not disabled, however, and the player can still attack and kill the Imp that is supposed to be the representation of their transformed self. If the imp dies, the player dies. Attacking the imp even starts the combat music. Thankfully, this is no longer possible. Using Setghost 1 on the Imp, I have made it immune to player attacks, so you can swing your weapon as much as you want while transformed and not need to worry about this immersion breaking oversight. This has the side effect of making the imp also immune to damage from enemies, but this doesn't matter much, as the player is still present (just invisible) and can take damage.
- Talking about damage and death, the scripts have been revised to make death while transformed not look like a janky mess. In the original version, if either the player or the imp died while flying, the player's transformed state would remain locked in the air, bouncing up and down in an idle animation, while the death music plays. No transformation back to your human form, no falling to the ground. Nothing. Now, if the player dies while transformed, they will return to their original form and fall to the ground.
- To help hide the fact that the player is still present, but invisible, while transformed, voices will be muted while transformed. So taking damage while transformed or performing power attacks while transformed will no longer result in the player's human grunts being heard.
- The original mod liked to display message boxes almost every single time you land while transformed, and will also display other boxes mid flight. Now all of these message boxes will display only as messages in the corner of the screen, allowing for uninterrupted gameplay.

**VERY IMPORTANT FOR ANY IN PROGRESS GAMES**
If you are already a vampire and also using the original version of Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod, some of the above changes will not take effect until you level up to the next age of vampirism. Abilities and factors are added/updated every time you level up to the next age.
For example: If you are already a fledgling vampire (level 1), you will not receive the Violent Feed ability until you age up to Caitiff (level 25).
This also applies to vampire hunger:
If you are already a fledgling vampire (level 1), your hunger will not slow down from 8 hours to 12 until you age up to Caitiff (level 25).
- The changes made to vampiric senses will take place once vampiric senses are turned off. So if they are already off in your save, toggle them on, then off again, and the changes will take place.
- Changes made to the shield value for well fed will take effect once your character becomes hungry and returns to well fed.
- Changes made to nighttime/daytime regen abilities will update once the game changes from day to night, or night to day.
- Changes to Antediluvian shield will only take place if you type in the console: player.removespell XX0020B3. The ability will be immediately re-added upon removal with updated shield values.
- Changes to reflect damage/reflect spell may become stuck on your character if you are already Elder, Ancient, or Antediluvian. To remedy this, I recommend installing Stats Checker to see your Reflect Damage/Reflect Spell values. Remove all equipment from your character that has Reflect effects applied and then check your stats. If it is still listing that you have positive Reflect Damage/Reflect Spell stats, type in your console: player.setavc 59 -(Reflect Damage number) & player.setavc 53 -(Reflect Spell number)

Requirements:
This mode only replaces the .ESP of the original, so all other original files are required.

Installation:
1. Download the original Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod
2. Download Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod - EASY MODE - ESP Replacer, unzip the file, and drop the folder titled "data" in your Oblivion directory.
3. Confirm any messages asking to overwrite any files.

Conflicts/Issues:
1. If you use Interact Animations, set "set LDAQuest.disablecontrols to 1" in the .ini, or else it will prevent you from sleeping in coffins. Even then, you will only be able to activate coffin sleeping if you enter third person mode and crouch. There may be a combination of settings in the .ini that will allow you to activate coffin sleeping while standing and in first person, but I haven't tried figuring it out yet.
Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod disables control when the character interacts with an empty coffin to allow the message box to appear that allows the player to choose to sleep. Interact Animations enables control for the player hundreds of times every frame, which interrupts the coffin sleeping script and thus prevents the player from ever getting the chance to sleep in coffins.
To mitigate this issue entirely, either the author of Interact Animations will need to do some heavy optimization for their scripts, which I doubt, or the coffin sleeping script of this mod will need to be reworked, which is not something I am smart enough to do.

2. I have not tested this mod with other vampire overhauls, and I do not recommend doing so. I can confirm that this mod works with StarX Vampire death Improved Extended Edition, however.

3. I have seen reports of features of this mod not working if loaded before Wrye Bash's bashed patch and/or Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul. I load this mod after both of those and both mods have worked fine for me for over 100 hours (minus the aforementioned coffin sleeping issue).
MOO's vampire settings in its .ini file also seem to work fine alongside Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod as well.
I have tested both MOO's vampire NPC sun damage and passive healing settings alongside NAVM and they seem to work as they should.

4. As of version 2.0, this mod will fully recognize Vampire Matriarchs/Patriarchs added by mods such as Variant Vagabonds and Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul.
There is no longer any need to set "MOO.ini_add_vampires" to 0 in MOO's .ini. You can safely set it to "set MOO.ini_add_vampires to 1".
This was achieved by editing Nekhanimals Awesome Vampire Mod's dialogue and script checks to treat any vampire with a confidence level of 100 as a Matriarch/Patriarch.
This has the side effect of causing this mod to also treat some non-Matriarch/Patriarch vampires as Matriarchs/Patriarchs.
There is a small handful of quest specific vampire NPCs in Oblivion who have a confidence level of 100. If you feed upon these vampires,
this mod will react as if you have just fed on a Matriarch/Patriarch and immediately expel you from vampire society, while also providing any benefits that feeding on a Matriarch/Patriarch offers.
Just avoid feeding on these NPCs, though if you are one who likes to feed on other vampires, you probably don't care about whether or not you are expelled from vampire society anyway.
Obviously this also extends to any other vampires with a confidence level of 100 that are added by other mods.

5. If you use Combat Additions, SET LDQuest.DodgeFade to 0 IN THE .INI!!! If you do not have this set to "0", you will experience visual glitches when activating your "Sanguine Aviation" ability that you gain as an Ancient Vampire (175). If LDQuest.DodgeFade is set to 1 or greater, Combat Additions will reset the player character's transparency multiple times on every frame. This will interrupt the transformation animation and instead of your character model being replaced with a demon model, you will end up seeing both your human form and demon form flying through the air together on screen simultaneously.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
I highly recommend using Vampire Race Disabler to completely remove the aging and discoloration from your character's face, and to avoid any face resetting bugs. There is a version of this in Oblivion Reloaded Combined(ORC), but when I use it the skin tone of my character's face changes, so I recommend disabling that feature in Oblivion Reloaded Combined(ORC) and using Vampire Race Disabler instead.

Special Thanks:
1. Nekhanimal for creating the great original version of this mod. All credit goes to them, because otherwise this would not exist. I have merely modified their work.
2. Maskar for giving me tips on how to make this mod compatible with Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul and other mods
3. slowpard for helping me troubleshoot conflicts with other mods, for fixing the invisible token/coffin sleeping conflict issue, moving the script off of the vanilla Old Wooden Door record, and helping me brainstorm ways to stop the mini-quests from getting soft locked.