I really like this add-on albeit for the glitches/bugs I keep on experiencing and the new vampire raid mechanic.

I understand that gamesas is trying to make the vampire threat seem more palpable by introducing these vampire and death hound raids and they do succeed.. however in not a good way at all.

So far I haven't had a problem with vampires killing any NPCs other than guards.. which I don't mind at all. However I cannot say the same when I encounter three to four death hounds attacking and slaying merchants and misc. quest-givers inside cities and towns. I find it baffling that death hounds are a larger threat to the life of NPCs than dragons and a civil war. For example, after playing vanilla Skyrim for six months (hundreds of hours) I've only ever received one letter of inheritance from a NPC. In the past three days after downloading Dawnguard I have already recieved thirteen. Bethesda really needs to change the rate at which these attacks occur and the ferocity at which they occur or else every city and town is going to be severely lacking in population. In my current game, Riften, Whiterun, Windhelm and Morthal are ghost towns.

All the outdoor merchants in Windhelm, Whiterun and Riften are now deceased. I cannot purchase horses from Markarth or Windhelm because the horse-sellers are dead. I cannot purchase Vigilance because the guy who sells him is dead. The aforementioned cities feel like ghost towns thus ruining my immersion. I loved what Bethesda did to Skyrim to make the cities feel more alive and vibrant than in any previous TES entry.. but with this new mechanic they have depopulated and made cities duller. These attacks have made the game broken to me.

If they could only patch the game to make these attacks less lethal, less frequent, didn't target merchants or only enable these massacres once the sun was blotted out I would probably like it.. but as it is now I hate it. I believe it is necessary for the player to feel the presence of a vampire threat and yadda-yadda but they need to tone it down. It seems to me now that vampires are more of a danger to the people of Skyrim than dragons, civil war, daedra and even bandit raids... which is a little overdoing it.

Please Bethesda.. fix this.. I have several friends who share the same sentiment. These vampire raids are becoming to much of a pain in the ass then a joy to be had. They are killing the experience with me. Please tone them down just a little, I don't want an empty world by the time the next DLC is released.

Never thought it was a problem. Until just now, my girlfriend got a Revered dragon and two back to back vampire raids in Falkreath, It was less then 5 seconds from the Revered dragon to the vampires. And then less then 3 from the 1st vampire trio to the second.

Yhe vampires that attack are simple to kill just kill them and be done with it.

omg i lold so hard from your posts lol i get the raids very frequent as well but i end up killing them pretty quickly when i encouter them but i feel your pain in my belly i really do lol sorry

Well Shinobi, if you don't pay attention to the threads about this, then you must not realize that vampires do at times spawn at the far end of towns and if you're leaving when its happening and don't notice it, everyone in town can easily be slaughtered and you wouldn't know until you get a letter of inheritence or until you go back to that town and notice that said person is missing.

i wholeheartedly agree i may have only lost one named npc Wujeeta but i was close to solving the mystery involving her predicament and then as soon as i entered the city an angry mob of vampires and death hounds stormed the city. between me the town guard and my 2 atronachs i had it pretty well covered but a death hound that got away killed wujeeta and any hopes of my completing said quest. granted it was a minor quest but in a month or two or maybe even just a week i can see it becoming a big problem.

I had just walked into Whiterun and saw an attack on the other side of town. By the time I made it to the battle I had lost Belethor, Carlotta Valentia, and Adrianne Avenicci. I did take their keys and see if their places were worth looting before reloading a save though.

no no i pay attention to the threads i only lold at when i was reading i had the ok this is some legit stuff then bam everyone dies video image in my head thats y i lold funny stuff but i do understand that if u see me post on another forum ive also sayd that a city was wiped out before as well but i just shrugged it off as well to bad for that city cant save em all lol right

we have been complaining about this feature for a while now as it will break someones game. multiple threads about people complaining have been locked. as long as the attacks continue there will be no more shops, misc quests, or ordinary quests. bethesda doesnt seem to give a [censored] atm...

true so true all we can do is sit back a lol at the screen or finish the dawn guard quest line maybe it will stop maybe not lol

Your comment about the letter of inheritance reminds of one of my funny moments in skyrim, I killed some kid's mother out on a farm whom I had previously helped (the father was dead too, so now the kid is- well, kind of depressed!), then a few days later I received a letter and some gold from a courier about her death- so, essentially, she paid me for killing her! Hehe...

Edit: Actually, I really enjoy the vampire attacks in cities now- they add a bit of fun to the gameplay.

Edit: Sorry, double post.

13 inheritance letters? HOLY [censored]! since purchasing dawnguard i have recieved one letter, it was from markarth (keep in mind that i havent been anywhere near markarth since getting this dlc, the closest i may have been is dragontooth crater which is still too far away for vampires to raid markarth) i know other npc's in my game have been killed aswell. im not playing skyrim anymore, this one feature has killed the whole game...

finish the the questline still doesnt stop the attacks im not playing skyrim again, i love npc's being alive in my game (apart from nazeem)

I haven't had -- or noticed yet -- this problem in my game. I've run into two vampire raiding parties inside towns which I quickly dispatched, but they did kill an inn patron quite easily. This wouldn't be a problem if vampire raids don't thin the population overall, limit your training, carriage and market options, and of course kill quest givers. If so, they need to be made more precautionary and less like kamikazes.

IMO quest givers should not be able to die. That just gives you less gameplay and that makes no sense.

Ahahahahaha!

Thank God it's not on the PC yet.

I think the whole idea is that the vampire raids are SUPPOSED to kill lots of people just like the dragon attacks. Events such as these are kind of what they've been trying to gravitate towards since Oblivion, where there are conflicts where it just simply isn't possible to save everyone, creating realistic and dramatic sequences that occur in-game. But I think these attacks need to be toned down, though, considering the flaw that having recurring high-casualty attack events ultimately leave the game world devoid of people, since they have stated that they like making it possible for the player to "ghost town" the cities.

Yes, but the problem with that is, weren't relatives or people suppose to come in if the vendors die in the game? But there is no one to replace them.

Bethesda needs to realize this is a problem, and needs fixed asap!

It would be better if the cities were larger and had more vendors and npcs to begin with.

Well, I never said that what Bethesda did in regards to vampire attacks was a good idea in context to how Skyrim is set up. This is one of those instances where it seems that what they are trying to do in one area of of the game world isn't mixing too well with other things that they did. What it sounds like they are doing is trying to set it up so that there are these recurring epic battles that happen in these towns where an enemy or a group of enemies come in, guards begin defending, townsfolk die around you as you try to save as many people as possible, and all that, but the problem is that on the flip side, they are simultaneously trying to appeal to the people that love the idea of being able to turn all the cities and towns in the game into ghost towns. Yeah, there's a big problem here.

In other words, they seem to have set up events for the sole purpose of getting townsfolk killed in a game where townsfolk are never replaced. I mean, you can end up losing all the carriage drivers, horse merchants, inn keepers, merchants, trainers, basically anyone who isn't essential or protected. So yeah, they'll have to do something about this, like tone the events down for example, since it is ruining the game for people and is effectively punishing you for just playing the game.

The best solution in my eyes is an additional quest in which you have to persuade the jarls to allow dawnguard members to protect the gates of cities.. Then make people actually run from vampires and dragons when they attack.

If I remember correctly, the quests involving Wujeeta are necessary to be able to buy a house in Riften...unless you sided with the Imperials...

I don't want my cities to be epic warzones...except in the Civil War quest line...and well ya...we all know how that goes...

Just happended to me right now,I was randomly walking(mage char) and out of nowhere a vampire thrall OHK me. WTF.