Nice on Bethesda!
You tell us in your trailer how we can either fight the Vampires or darken the sun but what can we really do?
Darken the sun for some time by using some bloodcursed arrows.
Am I the only one who is really annoyed by this?

Not really , I sort of expected this and I am glad that they did this that way, while Beyhesda has many flaws they never made in their games one cannonical version and if at the end of dawnguard they would make so that sun have gone pernamently dark this woudl be a hard thing to go around in next dlc and next Elder scroll game

It's a good choice for their sake but the only reason why I joined the Vampires was because that was part of my whole roleplaying strategy, but now?
Now it makes no sense to be a vampire.
Meh, I'll just keep making new arrows

it darkens the sun for 12 hours, that's a whole day of sunshine, just go to shops and stock up on elven arrows then get serana to curse them. I have over 150 of them in my inventory that are unused at this point. Whats the big deal?

What you just said is the big deal.
Bethesda should sometimes just grow some balls

I'm not sure I see the problem either. I was quite happy with it. Each day I can take action to blot out the sun and the effect is quite impressive too.

Criminy, mine just flat out doesn't work, at all, ever.

Some people can't get it to work, and a lot of people just plain don't use it.

It doesnt serve all that much use unless you don't have any enhanced equipment, and it does more harm than good sometimes. Once you block out the sun the vampires come out again and attack cities.

Some people only do it because serana keeps complaining.

I think OP originally thought that the sun would have been blotched out for good...although that would put a terrible disadvantage toward humans lore wise..skyrim would lose humans, then what would you feed on?

As others have said the sun is not the same as our sun. It is not a star, it is I believe a hole in the sky that the realm of the divines shines through? Don't take my word on it but pretty much the sun is a hole leaking magic and there was a time where the sun was blocked. Life continued.

If the sun did function that way and you wern't just blocking out rays, when you shoot the arrow and take the sun out for 12 hours everything would freeze to death anyways.

This

I thought the sun-darkening was an excellent effect - and 12 hours is a ton of time, plus you can trigger it as much as you want - just shoot an arrow.
I think if the sun was permanently blackened, it would ruin the game (and kill all the NPCs due to vampire attacks).

As a normal player I'd agree but as a roleplaying vampire dude (hurr durr) I disagree.
The fact that you don't take damage from walking in the sun makes it even worse

Actually, this raises a point. The sun and the stars aren't holes to the Divine's realm, the Divines just circle Nirn as planets, basically, but they're holes to Aetherius, an outer realm where all magic comes from. Shouldn't magic spells be technically weakened when the sun is blotted out? How would that benefit the vampires at all? Most of their strength comes from magic.

sunburn

Well, okay, they wouldn't broil in the daylight, but they'd be significantly weaker. At least, I think. I'm not 100% when it comes to TES lore and the like.

Look at the older games

I don't know what you mean. I know you took damage in Oblivion, but I don't see how that has anything to do with a lack of connection to Aetherius making magic weaker. I'm just saying a theory, here.

I ment that the darkening would benefit them because what do you think is more important :
Strong magical powers
Or
The ability to leave your "house" whenever you want

That's true.

Why are vampires burned by magica leaking from Aetherius via the Magnus/sun hole? The stars are also leaking magica. So I would think that the net effect of all that Aetherius leakage would be problematic for them even at night; especially given how radiant the Tamriel night sky is.

You're doing a significantly weakened version of the prophecy; of course it only lasts until sunset.

Hestla sells bunches of 200 elven arrows after the questline, so it's not even that difficult to acquire the materials. Serana can follow you and give you arrows wherever you are.


You would tire of the blotted red sun after a while. Then you would complain that you can't change it back.

I love being able to blot out the sun, even though I sided with the Dawnguard. It creates a nice atmosphere, like the Oblivion gates, and it's nice to get random Vampire attacks occasionally too. I wouldn't want it to be like that forever, though. Maybe the OP would be happier if you could shoot a bloodcursed arrow to make it forever dark, then shoot a sun arrow into it to revert to before. You could probably get a modder to do that for you, I guess.

It's not a big deal. By that point, you can probably afford to get a few thousand elven arrows, and then turn them into Bloodcursed ones. Just shoot at the sun once a day, bippity boppity boo, it turns dark. Takes only a second and leaves room for choice if you want to leave the sun around for a while.

Up until Dawnguard's release, Bethesda kept using the tagline that we could "end the tyranny of the sun". When the game came out, we were once again bottlenecked and forced into being the hero and instead we were given this half assed bow that only blocks out the sun when you shoot directly at it. Good luck finding it on a cloudy day, good luck using it at early morning when you suddenly realize you're exposed but can't find the sun at 6AM. Why is bethesda so averse to actual consequences with advantages and drawbacks? They're so afraid to let us make choices that have an impact on the game world, to the point where we instead get these half-baked choices that shoehorn us all into the same role. I wanted to play as an evil vampire who wanted to rampage the land of Skyrim and assert my dominance. I wanted to cause an apocalypse. So what if it's non-canon in the next game? Better yet, why not have it said that another hero returned the sun between the this game and the next? Or have the hero in the next game bring it back early on in the story? Bethesda just refuses to be creative with this stuff and instead insists that we all do the same thing with the same weak consequences. In their attempt not to let OUR choices limit us, they're allowing their game design to limit us. What sense does that make? If I wanted to block out the sun and betray Serana, they should have let me. I was SO confused when I was talking to Serana's mother and I had no choice but to go along with her, either because it was the "good" thing or because I cared about Serana, but my character didn't care about either! So once again I'm forced to be the hero for a bunch of npcs who will still treat me like jerks after I accomplish my quest. So in the end, I'm allowed to become a vampire lord even if I played as Dawnguard, but I'm not allowed to do the main thing we were all hyped about? (Don't believe we were hyped about permanently blocking the sun? Check the forums days before the dlc came out). It's
just so cheap and there's no reason they couldn't have gone all the way with it. I can't believe I got svcked into bethesda's hype again. I was defending this dlc to the death until it actually came out, when I realized the cold hard truth.