Since a Blood Altar is pretty much mandatory for every modern-age blood mage, we've got all those fat, stagnant and "safety first" blood mages.
Now. I do not want to blame them, for some people, a nice, warm, shiny home is the high of life.

But there might be some more adventurous sorts.

I personally would want both "styles" to be fully compatible and maybe variable while the personal orientation would be chosen early in the game.

A nomadic blood mage would use life essence found "on the road" for various purposes and has a different type of soul network (that would be smaller and have (rapidly) decaying LP [and, if combined with the previously suggested hard mode, without penalties to a filled-to-the-brink or empty soul network]) or, generally speaking, prevent or discourage stockpiling LP or rather encouraging a "life on the move" and maybe even exclude the concept of a LP storage for some mechanics altogether.

LP can be gained by:

• soaking up in-world life essence (from killing living mobs) or swimming in pools of life essence

• sacrificing your own life essence as is already a known method of killing yourself

Rituals for the nomadic blood mage would be smaller/have less components/easier to set up and cost less LP (because LP is at a premium) and/or use up puddles of life essence in the surrounding area (and some of your own life force) to power it (consuming all the puddles, of course).

Sigils could be "filled" with blood to satisfy their consumption for some time.

Potion effects to temporarily increase/decrease consumption as well as allow the use of powerful effects and rituals (You just killed a whole village and have now the life essence required to summon that tasty diamond-filled meteor to turn said village into a nice, big crater).

More concepts will be added for questions that are unanswered :P