I usually wait a while to buy dlc so it will be (nearly) bug free when i buy it. Does this dlc have any major bugs?

The DLC is certainly playable, but there are places where it is rough. The Miraak battle is prone to going horribly wrong. You only need to search this forum to see the many threads discussing problems with this final battle. As for the concept of waiting for the DLC to be patched...as far as I am aware, no specific patches for DLC have ever been issued. There is the odd bug fix in additional DLC, for example the problem with the Alchemy lab in Breezehome that was caused by Dawnguard, seems to have been fixed by Hearthfire, but fixes like this are rare.

In general, you can complete the DLC, but just remember to save often and keep a number of saves (but less than 20) in case you notice something distinctly odd happening (in which case you can reload a previous save). Also, refer to the Gstaff's last post in the following thread, for ways to avoid some of the problems with the Miraak battle.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1426775-starting-dragonborn/

Provided you actually installed the game right (patch then DLC) and your game is running pretty good there are only a few small bugs, saving a fair bit will keep you playing if anything goes wrong and you have to go back. Your game struggles a bit (freezing, lagging, areas not loading properly, things not starting that should), you can clear the system cache and delete and reinstall everything to get a better running game, or just start a new character.

It will have just as many bugs no matter when you buy it, nothing is going to change, although with a few more memory and performance tweaks in later patches it would probably run better for those of us with characters who just eat up resources.

This is false. It's playable for some, while unplayable for others.

I never encountered any major problems, however I have heard of instances in which this was the case. Just be sure to save often.
The bugginess in the dlc isn't likely to change no matter how long you wait to buy it though. Sorry.

I can't get near one of the houses in the main city without the game crashing and I keep getting random freezes all the time. Probably the latter is due to the fact that my save files are now ~17MBs... [censored] [censored] [censored]!!!

The game can handle the large savefiles if it is running well enough, autosaving cannot handle the larger file size though which is why so many of us had to turn it off. My first character Braggen has save files of 21MB, second character Aussie's are 16MB with a huge journal list of things to do. True I have had to do the system cache clearing and reinstall twice now to keep playing Dragonborn with Braggen, but I can persist with the inconvenience of downloading everything all over again each month. Would be nice if Bethesda actually fixed their game to handle the extra demands of long running or over achiever type characters, but I am not holding my breath waiting for them to do something. If it comes to the worst I have a third character who's saves are only 7MB and he never has any problems, and I have a PS3
character.

And if the house you cannot get near is Severin Manor, stay off the path when approaching it, there is a glitch at the narrow point where the block walls are on the edges of the path, just as you approach the house. jump over the wall before then and just go over the ash to get to the door.

Yes, thanks about the tips, but I already know that Also, I read somewhere that you can go to the house through the path but by using the Whirlwind sprint. However, I still haven't tried it as I'm in the middle of one of the Book quests. Actually, last night after my earlier post, my 360 completely froze again during the boss fight in that quest

I am the luckiest player of this DLC ever:

I kind of breezed through it, accidentally getting to the main dude without even really realizing I was doing it. Then I just had some side stuff to wrap up.

I encountered none of the bugs with said dude, nor really any bad freezes or anything ( I limited/backed up saves by default, as well as turning off auto saving, which seemed to slow things down.)

The only bugs I encountered otherwise, were previous bugs which only become "bugs" in this expansion due to radiant quests. For instance, in the Alteration whatever final quest (or whatever the healing magic one is called), you get sent to highgate ruins (or you can get sent there.) I could never finish that stupid quest, since I'd previously killed the dragon priest there during the game (way back in the day.) The item you need for the alteration ritual quest is back behind the gate, in the room where that gate is only open if you JUST killed him (why it doesn't stay open from the EARLIER time, I don't know.) I tried the platter/plate bug thing to try to get through the wall, but it never worked for me ( it was a rather silly way to waste hours in the game....)

The reason I mention those previous bugs, is this:

You can be SENT THERE, by radiant quests. Like that Neloth guy could send you to get something which happens
to be behind that gate in highgate ruins as well (one of his staffs, I read from another forum post.) So then you are
SOL on getting more quests from him.

I did encounter some freezes here and there, but as I said limiting the number of saves and turning off auto saves seemed to have helped that.

My savefile is also a minimum size of like 21 meg, after playing this much.

Its amazing how much playing this cruddy, buggy xbox 360 game made me appreciate something
like Dragon's Dogma on the Xbox 360; It was weird to play a game where the savefile was
always 528 K bytes, or something, with no lockups/etc. I really enjoyed that game, post Skyrim
(well, post original skyrim, can't remember if I played dogma before/after Dawnguard or not.)
I'm glad I often backed up saves in that as well, since its getting a DLC in APRIL!!!@@
(though the one thing they DID do wrong was not add any "hooks", so its not a downloadable
"patch" but rather a digital download of pretty much the original game you already have with
the DLC worked in (like a "new" game in a way. However, you can play on from your saves
from Dragon's Dogma, with all loot/levels etc.)


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My previous play stopping bugs were things like entering my "main stash" house in Markarth. I had that bug for some time, kind of putting me off of the game. This was fixed when Dawnguard went in, because obvious not being able to enter that (or a lot of areas, that me and many other XBOX 360 players were stuck on after so many hours playing) would be something that might prevent them from receiving my $$$$$ for an expansion.

You can get in to the High Gate ruins area by taking a follower with you and getting in the back way, where the upper platform is in the room just after where Anska is. Whirlwind sprint over to the platform from the hill of rubble, your follower will rush around the usual way, teleport through the locked doors and meet you on the other side, get them to pull the chain and open the door for you. Save before getting up there, just in case you have to ask your follower to do something before you get up there, I do not remember having to do that, but some said they had to.