But aren't there loads of quest NPCs? Most of them seem to be involved in some way or other to a quest.

At the moment, I see limiting the attacks to outside cities as the answer most likely to appease both sides. Unwalled places liek Riverwood would still be vulnerable, but that would make sense, as what would stop the vamps going there?

You cannot kill the essential NPC's you need for the main questlines, the rest are just extras to make the game easier, give you some extra dialogue or give you a few tiny quests to do, they get killed they are hardly a great loss. But you could have a great time trying to keep them alive.

Isn't annoying at all..it made the game better,more immersive and less boring

And in the case you can always reload a previous save

Simple solution make it so that Vampsonly attack guards and or only you the player can kill vendors which means other NPCs can't kill vendors only you can. IDK, doesn't happen to me I just play with the Dawnguard and it stops after beating it on their side.

I knew some people were terrible at this game, but dang, this guy must be using a wifi connection from the short bus.

I know what you mean is so annoying. They need to fix this ASAP. Im at a decent level and have no problem dealing with them. But killing the merchants is another thing.

Why is this sort of thing the standard response from those who insist that random, incessant NPC-killing is somehow not a massive change to the entire character of this game? Skyrim is a very easy game; it's no achievement whatsoever to be "good" at it, and there's absolutely nothing in the post you're referring to to suggest that the poster was "terrible;" on the contrary, the poster appeared to be doing everything reasonably possible to keep the idiot NPCs from being instakilled by vampires many times more powerful than them.

Maybe it is true that babysitting NPCs in this way does add some genuine challenge into the game, but it's not the sort of challenge I want from Skyrim. I want the actual fights against enemies (like vampires) to be challenging. As it is, the vampires are as absurdly easy to dispatch as anything else in the game, just not before they one-shot a bunch of random people without you even realizing it or being able to do anything about it (unless you spend tons of time scouring every civilian area you enter to make sure no attacks are taking place somewhere way off-screen).

To deal with these attacks, players have the choice of either making every trip to (or near) a city into a major event (which gets very old very fast), or play the game normally and suffer the long-term consequences of a slow dwindling of the civilian population (something that pretty much everyone agrees was far too small to begin with). Those consequences include a drastic change in the atmosphere of towns (from lively places of admittedly repetitive dialogue to eerie emptiness), quests getting broken or never offered in the first place, merchants going extinct, quest items getting stuck in one's inventory, etc., all of which make the game more annoying in some way (e.g. by forcing one to fast travel to far distant towns just to offload items) or drastically change the game play experience (through removing or breaking side quests).

That's a very significant change from the "do what you want, when you want" style of vanilla Skyrim. Knowing that NPCs in a given town might die at any time, in a manner such that you might not even notice until much later in the game, induces players to stick to a single city/settlement and do all the available quests in that area before moving elsewhere.

It seems to have stopped for me after i completed DG

Well you actually bother to do what Bethesda laid out in the main game and go do the main questline and a few of the others, you get exactly the same response. You get dragons killing your NPC's, unless you actually make some effort to kill them or avoid them. All they have done is provide something slightly more challenging by having vampire attacks as random events. Yes the main game is watered down so everyone can do their own thing. The DLC is specifically tailored for those who played the main game and want more of a challenge. The vampires are pretty easy to kill, it is easy to work out where they will spawn and what you do to cause it. But you ignore that or cannot be bothered taking precautions, you will end up with a harder game since you will lose your NPC's. I doubt those doing all the moaning got any more attacks than those who never had a problem, they just failed for whatever reason to do anything to prevent it or deal with it.

You buy a game and cannot master it, it does not mean the developer is going to give you a simplified version your limited capabilities can handle. They already provided an easily changeable difficulty level for those who cannot handle a bit of pressure, and the Dawnguard questline does not take that long to complete. The only locations with NPC's you need to visit are the Mages College, where the random events are turned off while doing Dawnguard, and Dragon Bridge, where your welcoming party will spawn a long way up the road and you can just run up to them and kill them before any NPC's even notice them, many will not even get a random event for Dragon Bridge. So they made it dead easy to complete the Dawnguard questline if you really cannot be bothered accepting their challenge to defend the towns. But you ignore the obvious and obliviously think you can just go do whatever while in the midst of a war, especially if you were foolish enough to go join a side, you accept the consequences. Bethesda gave you enough options.

You can start a new character, stay away from the Dawnguard and enjoy the main game without town attacks. Even higher level characters who never completed the main quest or many of the other questlines can stay away from the Dwanguard and not have town attacks. Even most players who join the Dawnguard or the Vampires are not going to get that many attacks so they are hardly that big of a problem for most players, and a lot of those who do get the attacks are capable of killing a few vampires quick enough.

And the DLC is an optional add-on so they are hardly forcing you to play it.

My point exactly. You can choose to deal with the vampire attacks via approaching game play in a very narrow, specific way, through "work[ing] out where they will spawn and what you do to cause it" and then, well, endlessly babysitting your NPCs every single time you go near a town. If you do not choose to drastically alter your play style and become an endlessly spawn-monitoring NPC babysitter, then "you will end up with a harder game since you will lose your NPC's."

I disagree that this new dynamic makes the game any "more of a challenge;" as you note, the "vampires are pretty easy to kill" regardless of difficulty setting. What is challenging is keeping them from one-shotting your pathetically weak townspeople.... again something that is not affected by difficulty setting (since difficulty setting only affects the player, not the NPCs). You can always just let your NPCs slowly die off, but this doesn't really make the game any "harder" --- just a lot more lifeless. But you have to choose one or the other..... or, you can, as you say, always choose to not play the DLC.

Somehow I think that the designers didn't quite intend for things to be that way, because if they had, they'd probably have done a lot more (or indeed, anything at all) to highlight the "hardcoe" or "challenging" nature of the DLC, or make it so that Dawnguard could only be started once you were high level and all finished with the non-essential NPCs. Instead, they allow you to start the questline at level 10, and do absolutely nothing to highlight the profound, world-altering danger that the vampire threat presents---they just use the same exact vague language about a "great threat" that they used for dragons and the civil war (neither of which turn out to be particularly threatening to your game world; yes, dragons can kill NPCs too, but as countless people have pointed out, the big difference there is that it's possible to notice that a dragon is killing your NPCs without having to learn, memorize, and repeatedly check spawn points throughout a town every single time you enter or exit a building).

This whole situation makes me wonder what it will be like for someone new to play the GOTYE when it comes out, especially considering at this rate they'll probably add 2 or more new mobs attacking towns as well in future DLC. So "Mr./Ms. new player" walks out of the cave for the first time and wanders off into the wilderness to do some power leveling and explore dungeons, then walks into town for the first time around level 10 and "BAM!" vampires and 3 other mobs swarm him and the entire town, rauaging everything in their path before they knew what hit them. Once the dust clears they go to sell all the loot they got while exploring only to find that the only merchant left alive is the alchemist, so they break the immersion to reload their last save and prepare for the onslaught they had no idea was coming.

Not saying that is what it will be like, it's obviously an exaggeration, but I do know it will be a very different experience starting the GOTYE than it was for someone starting Skyrim on 11/11/11.

Is the random attack thing only happening to people who join the Dawnguard? I joined the vampires, I've been attacked 3 times at random by Dawnguard solider's but they all happened outside city walls.

Endlessly babysitting NPC's? Takes a few minutes each time you enter a town, or come out of a door in a town, and once you finish the Dawnguard questline the town attacks stop. You could avoid it if your character is low enough in level or never bothered doing much by simply not starting the Dawnguard questline. Or you could avoid it by spending a very quick 5 odd hours rushing through the Dawnguard questline. You can revisit all the areas and do your exploring later if you really are in a hurry. But you do not have to babysit anyone if you do not visit the towns. And if you did not want to play the DLC questline why buy Dawnguard in the first place?


The vampire attacks on towns can happen to both Vampire and Dawnguard members. The vampires seem to get it a lot less though. The random attacks by Dawnguard happen probably until you do the side quest to destroy the Dawnguard and I shall soon find out if the random attacks by vampires still happen in the wild, since Aussie has just finished and is wondering why the victor did not get to freely take the castle goodies. Went back to the Soul Cairn to see if the lady of the house can solve that problem. But I would still expect to get attacks by vampires in the wild same as all the other random events it is possible to be afflicted with, hopefully not as frequently as before the Dawnguard quest was finished.

Yeah, I know - the guy I was responding to was saying that any NPC with a quest shouldn't be killable by the vampires. So my point was really that this would just make thr whole town unkillable... which would be silly. I'm basically agreeing with you.

Attacks vary among games. Some people get the attacks lessened or stopped after the DG MQ, others still have them in force. The player pretty much (if they are having too much trouble) needs to train combat skills in the beginning, possibly before starting down the DG questline, to make sure they're bulked up enough to fight the vamps off later. Or finish the questline quickly and hope the attacks stop.

The only thing that would lessen the attacks effects would be if the devs revamped it in the way that NPC's would run but I don't see that happening soon (or possibly ever until the GOTY comes out) or that, as someone previously stated, the PC trains guards against vampires (I'm sure that will never happen).

Some NPC's run from Dragons, they still die, I doubt it would be any different with vampires. Easier to kill something that turns its back and runs.

Sure, it kinda svcks that I can only buy horses in Markarth now, since all the other stable owners are dead from dragon attacks. But what REALLY svcks about it is how lifeless those areas seem now. I guess nobody else in all of Skyrim wants to sell horses in Windhelm? Maybe they're afraid of being killed by dragons too...

In the best of all worlds, I would have named NPCs that have some kind of semi-essential function be replaced at some point by another newly-generated NPC that filled the same role, upon their death. That way, even if I can't save the smith and his wife in Dawnstar from a dragon attack, I don't feel compelled to keep reloading the game just so I can prevent Dawnstar from becoming a ghost town. I can keep on playing, knowing that at some point in the future (maybe a month or so, in-game) someone new will come along to fill their roles and keep the world attractive enough to keep on exploring.

In another thread of mine, Gstaff told me that the vampire attacks were not a glitch and should stop after finishing the Dawnguard MQ. Of course, this begs the question: Why are some people getting the attacks even when they finish it?

Blacking out the sun post DG = Vampire Attack.
Doing vampire side quests post DG = Vampire Attack

You have to be proactive in gaming for them or else they simply do not show up post DG.

He put that message in for the sole purpose of trolling...and you felt for it. Good job. And I disagree, they're quite easy to kill before they kill an npc. Just pay attention when its dark. And in whiterun, don't fast travel to dragonsreach, and if you leave dragonsreach, and its dark, immediately fast travel to the main gates instead of trying to run there. Works everytime.

NPC killing IS out of control - I just can't help myself when I'm in Vampire Lord form. Everybody just looks so... tasty.

Oh... you're talking about the random attacks. Yeah, whatever, I don't care.

Maybe they are confused about what attacks are going to stop, only the attacks on the towns will stop when you finish the Dawnguard questline, the random attacks outside of towns could load like any other random event, you just would not get them as much. Neither of my characters who finished the main DLC questline has had any further attacks inside or outside of towns. And if someone still wants to go doing some daft thing like playing around with bloodcursed arrows, it is conceivable they could still cause an attack on a town, since the vampires will come out to play most likely. My present character never even bothered getting bloodcursed arrows, Aussie had no interest in them, and my first character wasted no time throwing the things into a display case along with the Sunhallowed ones and the bow. But it would not surprise me if there was a way to continue the vampire mayhem. None of my characters are going to be interested, and my third character is likely to be breaking the speed record for getting through the Dawnguard questline. I am not even interested in seeing how woefully he goes at defending NPC's.

Yes, that's pretty much what Gstaff said when I asked him to clarify. He also mentioned that the attacks on towns can occasionally be triggered by doing radiant quests for the Dawnguard or Volkhiar, so it might be a good idea to stay away from those quests at all costs.

Braggen has done a few radiant quests for the vampires after the main quest was over and nothing nasty turned up in any town. Aussie is in the process of starting them. I am in truth not really that enthusiastic about radiant quests anyway, although Braggen getting a chance to wipe out the Dawnguard and hopefully see an end to their meddling in his affairs would be nice. It is starting to get tiresome having them following him all over the place. Aussie and Braggen will eventually get through the radiant quests, the third character is probably not going to bother unless it looks appealing trying to do radiant quests for both sides with the same character. Braggen eventually runs out of interesting radiant quests he will probably cure himself and see how many vampires at that castle are classed as essential.

You don't actually wipe out the Dawnguard even if you kill the leaders- they just keep coming after you anyway. Besides, I know that several of the Radiant quests are glitched, with Vingalmo's quests being affected particularly badly. As far as I know, all of the vampires in the castle are considered essential, but feel free to double-check.