New Game with DG installed. Level 9 - leaving bannered mare at 6:30 AM after completing Dragon Rising. Master Vampire and 3 Thralls attack front gate. Sprit to gate - using three reloads - and best scenario is Adrianne, Ulfberth, and Belethor dead. Great, three of four vendors in Whiterun gone after 5 hours of play. Who's having fun now that Whiterun is effectively a non-city for the next 200 hours. Ok, lets take carriage to Riften. Two Death Dogs attacking stable. Before I Jump off wall and run to stable the horse and both stable dudes are dead. So no horses available for sale of rthe next 200 hours either. Who's having fun now?!? Uninstall Dawnguard because it's a POS, reload a fourth time and head to Riften. Take a break to write Bethesda an e-mail and post to forum. Once here, I see that I am not the only one not enjoying this POS. I checked out 4 online reviews and none of them mentioned this extreme design screw-up because the review only covered installing DG, opening a save game with a level 20+ character and heading straight to DG quests. Did anyone play test this POS before they asked for my $20. If not, they're unprofessional. If yes, they're sadistic and stupid. No one would ship a game in this sorry state. I'm a longtime Bethesda fan - starting with Arena... This is disappointing beyond additional words ...

seems beth screwed up big time with its fans sigh sorry to hear bout your sad experience

Perhaps, you should just not go out in the cities at night until you're a decent level, not that you should have to limit yourself like that, but even then, it's not like any stores or things are open at 6:30am, and not to be nasty, but I have a hard time believing traders rushed to the gate, considering one is in his house constantly, and the other two are out from like 8:30am - 9:00pm ....

I haven't noticed anyone die in mine... Only one vampire attack in my 30 hours played in this DLC. It was two death hounds and a blooded vampire. They killed a miner. I wasn't too broken up about it.....

Wow. I'm really sorry that you had such a bad and frustrating experience.

^{*looks at watch*}...wait for it....

However!
I've finished the vampire side of the DLC in a slow 25-30 or so hours, and only a hand full of times did I notice vampires attacking a city I was visiting. When they did they only got as far as the front gate, and the guards were more than capable of handling them. Even against a Master Vampire. But in that case it was 2 v 1 + me...but I digress.

As a Vamp I know that I was attacked at nearly every cross roads by a pack of Dawnguard, and if I was near an external village that always multiplied by 1 dragon + 4 random hunters + 4 guards/soldiers + x villagers + the occasional couple of random wild animals. No joke. Serana saved my bacon more times than I can count. I'm now looking forward to see how the Dawnguard run through will turn out for me, but I'm currently leveling another toon from ground up for that.

I know none of what I just said helps, and if anything just frustrates your situation more. But for what it's worth, my perspective is that Beth's "random reality" always enriches my play through, even if it something happens that frustrates whatever current plans I may have. Those "WTF WAS THAT!?" moments are priceless to me. I would actually prefer to enter Whiterun one day and see a sea of vampires rauaging the city. That would be interesting and fun.
Think of the moral dilemma! As a Vampire Lord do I come to their aid or kick up my boots and watch the chaos?

=)

Cheer up!...could be worse...

I like your attitude. Yes it adds something to the frenetic rush to finish off the Vampire threat when you side with the Dawnguard especially when you watch a favored NPC get blasted. Maybe they'll add some new towns on the next patch or DLC to make up for all the dead ones.

Wouldn't that make it worse though since (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong) the enemies spawning level-scale with the player? That'd result in even higher level vampires and enemies spawning

They do scale to the player, but when you're at a decent level, your skills far surpass the skills of the vampires, and you can wipe them out, plus the guards will be able too, though even in my new saves, the guards have trashed the vampires, and myself alone, in places like Riverwood, n' I play on Master, I think some people just over exaggerate what happens with these attacks....

I do agree that its a bit irritating... especially when they kill off some of the merchants. I usually just reload myself to prepare to take on the attack. Its kind of crazy that these attacks seem to occur so often with lower level characters though- it seems a bit unfair. Does adjusting the difficulty reduce the amount of attacks?

I have to admit though... I do kind of like these new events. I just wished that they happened a little less

I have a similar problem in Riften where the street sellers are all "disappearing". No fights, no corpses just no vendors. Only Balimund is left so I don't give much for his chances.

He said he left the Bannered Mare at 6:30 AM...6:30 AM means morning and sunlight...sunlight should mean no vampire attacks...apparently vampires do not know what the time 6:30 AM means...do you?

Yes, especially if you like to play on Master difficulty...

I have been much more lucky then some of you. Playing through all of Dawnguard plus side quest and more after about 30 hours I only had 2 vampires attack a city and no one was killed luckly. It seems to be random with this issue, some have problems, others don't.

It has been theorized that there is a bug with the random generator that causes repeated attacks. I once had three attacks in the same night (same city) while I was doing thieves guild quests.

Wow, I need to be more careful in cities then, maybe saving before going in one just in case. Don't want to lose citizens, even thou most don't do much. Losing merchants would be a big pain. luckly on my archer I have the theives guild to sell my stuff in. Still I don't want to feel lonely in an empty town.

I still don't see how Beth thought this was a good idea in first place. It would be cool if they couldn't kill citizens. In the end there should only be random events outside of cities.

I have more problems with my npc's dying from dragons. The vampires seem a much more minor threat than the ancient dragons flying around eating people.

MAny many many people whined about the cities being to safe, and now that they arent people whine about that, f'ing ridiculous.

another reason I have a hard time believing him..... Not to discredit what he's saying, but I remake characters all the time, and it's never happened to me, and when vampire attacks have, they've been destroyed, and I'm not calling myself the TES god, Skyrim is my first one, didn't like the others, till recently after Skyrim.....

Why didn't they take advantage of the vampire dynamic, if a merchant gets attacked by one he doesn't die but for some strange reason just starts trading at night when the sun goes down, and also offers better deals on whares to the more anaemic type people? They could have then introduced a quest plot line to cure the merchants, or townspeople for that matter of their affliction.

I guess that would have added a lot more time to the development though.

I had vamp attacks in the day time. I was on a werewolf rampage trying to level up for the achievement. I saw NPCs joining in to defend the city. Some even came out of their houses to fight me. At that point it didn't matter since I wasn't going to keep that save anyway. But when I got back into my main game I did find one merchant dead (Birna), I think it was in Winterhold. Her store is now closed. I haven't checked all of the cities yet but I hope that she was the only casualty.

Ive had one, ONE vamp attack when I level 12 in over 20 hours of DG play. And it was pathetic with the gaurds in Whiterun cutting down a vampire and his thralls in seconds. No-one has died and ive been in and out of all the towns many times. New character for 1.6 & dawngaurd.

Still dont see what the problem is tbh.

Thanks for all the responses. I understand that you can play DG without significant issue IF you play Dawnguard. I want to play a new game from Level 1 with DG content installed. For those in disbelief, try thinking. I completed dragon rising, met Redguards at gate, went to palace, went to inn - spoke to Redguard woman, back to palace and spoke with prisoner, and back to inn, slept, and left about 6:30. That's three times the city cell loaded. Two of merchants were probably dead before I left inn at 6:30. Level has nothing to do with lethality of this attack - being higher level makes it worse for town folk. This behavior is totally against the open world / sandbox design that defined the Elder Scrolls franchise. Every npc on the game plays a role in the players experience, virtually none are there for visual effect only. It is unacceptable for an exploratory game like Skyrim to kill off NPCs in this manner. And the game I want to play is Skyrim with add- on content. Which is what Bethesda claimed when they took my $20. If Bethesda returns my $20, I'll stop complaining. I already deleted the content because it svcks as currently implemented.

We all suffer from it. True vampire fans suffer from big, nasty yellow eyes and no stage 4 attacks while NPC's get killed.

There are those that have huge problem with those random events. Traders and quest givers dieing in one city overnight. It seems there is a bug for some. Stop attacking those people.

I sympathize with your experience. I think I'm one of the lucky ones because after completing DG I have had only one city vampire attack during the quest line and nothing but random DG attacks in the wilderness thereafter. I do see how even small amounts of these attacks pose a very real problem in the long run. I played MW and OB characters for years, in fact TES is about the only games I still like playing because of its open world. Given a long enough timeline vampire attacks will eventually kill some quest you want to play. I think vamp attacks are like that Steven King movie the Langolers slowly devouring reality. I really hope they update it with at least a work around like "vamp attacks only happen at night".... Maybe this is a covert plan to force us all to become PC players so mods will fix it

1. Vampires should only attack at night.
2. The NPC's should run away from them, only guards should take the aggro.
3. Put few Dawnguard soldiers into more crowded cities.

4. Fix this random event if its bugged.
5. The Elder Scrolls games are not about vampires so they should not dominate the game and the lore.