I have been trying to mostly avoid spoilers for this for a while and finally got back to playing Skyrim, now I have Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLCs.

So I have been steadily leveling a character, playing the original stuff... Last night I spoke to one guy in Riften, who mentioned the Dawnguard and that I should "check it out." Other than talking to him, I have not done anything else related to that quest. However, an hour or so later, while in Dawnstar to turn in a quest, I hear an NPC shout see the guards running, so I run too and it's a Vampire thrall, who was quickly put down by the guard. Cutting across the town, I saw another dead vampire thrall they must have missed.

So... how frequent are these attacks if I don't even start the questline by finding Dawnguard fort or whatever it is I am supposed to do? Will it just be a few random attacks here and there if I leave things status quo for now?

Probably not, you may find some towns depopulated before too long

If you have high level illusion, you could possibly lessen the damage they could potentially cause by using the Pacify spell. This assuming they will be affected by it.

I just finished DG yesterday. The reason I put off getting the DLC for so long was the potential for random vampire attacks in towns - but during my entire playthrough, there wasn't one vampire attack inside a town.

While playing DG, every time I fast travelled to Whiterun to drop off loot in Breezehome (or FT to any town), I immediately drew my weapons and scanned the area for vampires. Last night when I finished DG, it occurred to me that there hadn't been a single random attack and I felt like an idiot.

So just based on my experience, I'd say that once you start the DG MQ, the attacks will stop. But something tells me that my experience wasn't typical (and may have even been a bug).

I'm not worried about stopping it, and the one experience has been two vampire thralls in Dawnstar, one of which was apparently killed easily before I ever noticed, the second one, dispatched easily by the town guard while I was standing there.

I just want to know if they are going to escalate if I officially start the quest.

I'm sorry, I don't know. After I posted in your thread earlier, I checked some other recent threads about the attacks and it seems that I may be the only one who had the attacks completely stop after officially starting the quest (I probably should've read those before posting here ). From what I read, it wasn't clear if the attacks became more frequent after starting the MQ or not. Hopefully someone who knows the answer will post before you start the MQ. =)

In my experience they do come more often after you start the MQ.I found it safer to travel during the day.If you fast travel to a town at night you might want to save first.Alot of people reported losing important people like shop keepers to vampires.After the MQ is done you hardly ever have any ramdom attacks.At least I don't.

Okay, if I understand you correctly, you're asking about vampire attacks before and after you start the Dawnguard questline. I've played through the questline one and a half-times, and I have a character who has not started the quest (but is Level 30).

Frankly, I haven't seen a lot of difference in the attacks before and after starting the DG quest. Obviously, if you finish it they seem to go away. They seem to "escalate" regardless of whether or not you start the quest. At higher levels, there is usually one master vampire with two thralls, and with my level 30 character, if I don't stop what I'm doing and kill the master vampire, it'll take out one or more NPCs. Since they hit in cities, that can include some trainers and merchants you might need later. So be on your toes!

For some people, this is such a problem that they uncheck DG in the load order and keep it off until they're ready to start the quest. From what I gather, if you fast travel into the cities, it's much worse. Since I rarely fast travel into cities (if I have to FT, I take my horse and travel to the stables outside of town), I haven't noticed a significant problem.

I hope that helps (and without too manys spoilers).

thanks all, appreciate it. Have been running around and even fast traveled, but haven't seen any more vampire attacks and haven't started the actual quest yet by going to the fort. I even tried FT at night. Not complaining, I was just curious about the pacing.

The attacks on the towns are not actually anything to do with the Dawnguard questline, they are just an added incentive to try and get you to start the questline. if you have a high level over achiever who has done everything for a character, you could fight your own little war with all the attacks you will get. Most did not do everything and will not get that many attacks. You join the Dawnguard you can look forward to some extra challenges in defending towns, you join the vampires you should get it easier, but you will still get attacks on the towns.