So I signed in to the forum to see if other people were having this problem and sure enough I did a search and it seems to be pretty common. So rather than ask if anyone else is suffering from it, has anyone figured out any creative workarounds?

The problem is that vampire attacks are slaughtering people in all the towns -- often without me even seeing it happen. I've been playing with Dawnguard downloaded for about 10 hours and about a dozen named NPCs in Windhelm and Whiterun have already been killed in random vampire attacks (that i know of). I say this is game breaking because I'm pretty sure if I play 20 more hours there will be very few named NPCs left, which svcks so much of the lore, atmosphere, and radiant quests out of the game.

I don't know that I would have a problem with this if the deaths were at all avoidable, but it's always one of two scenarios, so I'm wondering if folks have workarounds for these:

1) I fast travel somewhere and an attack is underway almost immediately after I arrive. By the time I can even run in close enough to attack the vampire, one or two named shopkeepers have run in to attack him and are killed instantly in just one hit. In this case I just reload the last autosave and avoid going to that town for a few days. It's a frustrating workaround (in that it randomly forces to put off certain quests for long periods) but I then found out this doesn't work because...

2) Even after I started just reloading every time this happened, I periodically get couriers coming to me delivering inheritance letters for NPCs that died -- but I never even saw the vampire attack (I assume that's what it is) transpire. I'm guessing these attacks happened on the other side of town while I thought all was well? By the time I get these letters I've put in another hour or two of play so I can't really be expected to reload...

I know there were random dragon attacks in some cities and in about 150 hours of the vanilla game I did lose a few NPCs to those but never invisibly. The dragon deaths were preventable, these simply aren't, and that's the distinction that matters. Windhelm in particular is noticeably ghost town-y after just 10 hours of Dawnguard.

I'm assuming the smart folks at Bethesda will recognize this is gamebreaking and address it in the very next patch, but in the meantime does anyone have a creative workaround I haven't thought of? Otherwise I may just have to stop playing until the patch, which svcks, because I have been enjoying this DLC.

Not happening to me at all. I had one vampire incident early in my DG quest line when I fast traveled to Whiterun @ night, but we made short work of them & no NPCs died. All other vampire attacks were on me, in the wilderness. The courier with the inheritance note happens in the original game, not related to vampire attacks. For me in 2 play throughs, it's always been somebody @ Bards College leaving me an inheritance.

There is only one way I could think of on the PC side, when it comes out and that is to make them all essential..or scripted to run in their homes when a vampire attacks. For consoles, beth would have to think of something else.

I don't doubt it's not as severe for everyone; as far as I can tell the attacks are random so some people get the short straw. And hey, I'm all for consequences in games and such -- but only when they're in the player's control. Having the entire population of Skyrim gradually eliminated over the course of a few hours without any possibility of successfully intervening is broken, though. Not sure what it is that makes my game different from yours but it's really, really out of control in mine.

Anyway, best workaround I've thought of is just generally avoiding the cities for now, but all the fences are there except Enthir, and for some reason since Dawnguard was activated Enthir no longer has 4000 gold via the Thieves' Guild quest results, only like 900, so he's not very useful for selling. If anyone comes up with anything more creative I haven't I'd love to hear it.

Hopefully Bethesda will address this soon. I'm not suggesting there shouldn't be vampire attacks, but there's got to be a way to make them more manageable and less unavoidably destructive. The dragon attacks were way excessive too during the main quest but after I completed it they seemed to cool down and reach a happy equilibrium... or I was just lucky. I think it's a combination of frequency, AI behavior of vampires vs dragons, and most of all shopkeeper behavior vis a vis vampires vs dragons. In my recollection, most non-guard NPCs didn't run in to attack dragons.

Also, the vampires are much more powerful than any of the dragons but Legendary ones as far as I can tell. A townsperson can survive a fire breath attack, but these vampires are killing them all in one hit.

Could also be because I'm level 81 I'm in some encounter bracket where the vampires at this level are just too strong for the towns. Who knows. If it's not about the level, I can't imagine a new player with my luck starting with Skyrim+Dawnguard would actually be able to fully experience the full breadth of the game because there would be literally no townspeople left after about 30 or 40 hours.

EDIT: To be clear I am playing on 360 and have no intention of playing on PC so PC-only solutions aren't gonna help...

is there a way to make every villager essencial at once on pc?lol because if not that will take hours...x)

my workaround is to delete the dlc after i played it and going back to the save i had before i put it in
i rather like having people in my towns
not very happy with this dlc at all

Once I beat the DLC all random vampire and dawnguard attacks stopped, so I'd say avoid the main cities until then.

I am trying the following:

1) never fast travel to a city. Fast travel to the stables if they have one, or else a nearby feature and walk there. I started doing this with Riverwood before the DLC because of the frequency of dragon attacks. In that case I fast traveled to the Guardian stones and then rode the rest of the way there.

2) never enter a city during the night. Although the vamps will attack during the day, they should not be as powerful during the day. When I say never enter a city at night, this includes not coming out of a building during the night as well. That means if you are in a tavern or your house, stay in there until the sun comes up.

3) every time you enter a city rapidly scan/sprint around

None of this is gauranteed but it may help.

I entered Windhelm for the first time at level 15 and of course I get the usual 2 Nords accosting the Dunmer set piece, but then I heard someone scream for help so I ran off towards the market. I didn't find anything there, but later, as I headed up to the palace I found a dead vamp between the Palace and CandleHearth hall. I am SOOOOO lucky he didn't take out Silda. If he had I would have lost:

1) A pickpocket trainer
2) the only begger in Windhelm that can give me the gift of charity
3) and the possibility that the quest "Blood on the Ice" would no longer work.

All because as I walked into Windhelm an attack was occuring on the otherside of Candleheath Hall from me.

Another possibilty would be to unistall the DLC, play Skyrim until you don't need merchants/services/quest givers, then reinstall the DLC. I love the DLC. It was definitely worth the $20. Thank god, however, that I played it with a high level character that didn't really need to go to the cities.

there is a good fix, wait for bethesda to patch it, that is all we can do

So far I only noticed one named NPC death. I haven't traveled to all of the cites though. I hope things are ok. I completed the DLC last night.

Unfortunately, some are reporting attacks continuing after beating the DLC (not surprising since the DLC is hardly glitch-free), so that's not a guaranteed fix.

I'm afraid you will still be waiting, long after TES X is released.

An obvious workaround, as I didn't read through every post, is to simply save before entering a city or ensure you have "save on travel" activated for when you do fast travel.

Ahh I myself have had Vampire attacks before but they where vary easy to deal with, and I had finished the main questline and after that Ive hardly had any if not none Vampire attacks with in 10 hours of play time.

I'm testing a theory atm... been walking around with the chalice in my pocket for about 10-15 hours... just realized I've had zero attacks since getting it.
Correlation does not imply causation however so atm that means nothing.

But if I get no attacks in say, another 10 hours of play, I'll carry on with the quest and see if attacks resume.

Did you do this on the xbox360? How do you uninstall the dlc without deleting it? I'm experiencing the same problems. What's the fun when every city might turn in a ghost town? It just makes playing the game less fun.

After reading this thread (and the dozens of similar threads), I decided not to install DG because of the fact that shopkeepers tend to be suicidal when vampires appear (amongst other things and bugs). I then decided to take a look at what merchants are essential, and came with this list. (There's probably others I missed, but as the game wikis do not let you sort essentials by location or profession-type, one has to use the Mark-One Eyeball to find them.)

The vampires cannot touch the following:

1. Ri'saad the Khajiiti trader (Whiterun-Markarth route), who is the only essential Khajiiti.

2. The Ragged Flagon, which requires you to join the TG.

a. Vekel the man (bartender) is essential, and has 100 gold (ha...). Dirge (who is also essential) takes over for him if anything should happen to Vekel. Better than nothing.
b. Tonilia is essential, and has at least 1,000 gold.
c. After completing the "Special Jobs", there's a blacksmith, fletcher, apothecary, and armorer available.

You don't have to do the TG's main quest to get them, just do Delvin and Vex's side jobs, and once you complete the four "Special Jobs", you have untouchable merchants. Yes, the side jobs are a pain in the butt, but one can do them concurrently with other things.

3. College of Winterhold. Buncha mages, all essential, and most of them are merchants. With the proper perks, you can sell anything to them. (See Speech note below).

4. Babette in the DB, assuming you haven't destroyed the DB.

Speech note: There is something one can do to increase the range of goods you sell to any type of merchant and their gold capabilities: take the first four left-hand perks in the Speech tree, or even the sixth one (Master Trader). That's not really an option if you're low-mid level, but that's something higher-level characters can consider.

It's not a workaround, but something to help ameliorate frustration from losing shopkeepers. I do hope Bethy adjusts things, but if they don't... well, there's the above list.