But you enter the other cities at night?

For Riften I prefer to enter around 2 AM. That way most of the city is in their homes. If you come in during the day, the vampires spawn right at the market and it is nearly impossible to get at them because the NPCs swarm them so thickly. I lost Aerin and Nura Snow-Shod during one such attack (about 10 AM).

Do you have to start the Dawnguard questline for this to happen, or just simply have it installed?

Just having it installed.

What? So they just keep attacking til everyone is dead?

What you do is turn the DLC off, do whatever you want, then when you are ready to run straight through the DLC and nothing else, turn it on and go for it. Just avoid using FT to go directly to any city or town, and only enter them during the mid-day, and you should be fine.

So Beth designed the expansion to work independently from the main game? That goes against their motto and the holy grail of the Elder Scrolls series. Go wherever you want, do whatever you want, be whoever you want. The vanilla game should be played with the expansion turned off? What if I want to go back and forth to the new castles, or just get a crossbow?

I had tried to do a reverse pickpocketing on npc's but they never seem to equip the weapons or armor i put in their inventory, dose this actually work?

So Beth designed the expansion to work independently from the main game? That goes against their motto and the holy grail of the Elder Scrolls series. Go wherever you want, do whatever you want, be whoever you want. The vanilla game should be played with the expansion turned off? What if I want to go back and forth to the new castles, or just get a crossbow?

Feel free to play it their way, and have all your NPC's in each city killed off. No one is stopping you.

So if I install Dawnguard and don't stop the attacks all my cities will be void except for essentials?

Feel free to play it their way, and have all your NPC's in each city killed off. No one is stopping you.

I had started a new game with Dawnguard active... I have played more than 100 hours since then, I'm level 34 now. In these 100+ hours I've lost exactly 2 NPCs because of vampires. And I for sure didn't do any reverse pickpocketing, I didn't checked the time when I wanted to visit a city or a village and I have no mods which change stats of any npcs or anything like that. I've lost a lot more npcs to dragons, thats for sure. Also, these attacks aren't that often... maybe every third time when I visit a town at night. The guards handle these groups of 3 vampires (or only one vampire in the case of the mysterious traveller) fine for me, most of the time they are dead before my companion or I even reach them. And the way skyrim works, there are no vampire attacks to anyone if you aren't nearby so I have no clue how "your vampires" could clean out complete towns at all. So... are these attacks getting a lot harder on a higher player level or are you guys just a little overreacting here?

Personal opinion and a side note: even IF these vampires would kill complete cities... come on... there must be a reason for the player to urgently solve that problem. And therefor they need to be dangerous and do something the player don't like that much - like killing nice people. Personally, that "defend these people or do the quest or just live with the fact, that some npcs may die" choice is fine for me in that case. I wish that this civil war questline would work the same way. Pausing a war so that nothing happens at all until I have spoken to a npc? Really? Uhm... yeah

It all depends on circumstances there could be a attack and you might not lose a single npc, but there can be a attack on town and two or more npc will be killed in one attack, i had attack were i was in riverwood and 3 vampires and 2 death hounds attacked i lost like 2-3 people that time bc npcs keep attacking them with their fists

I am doing with Dawnguard what I do with the MQ - I finish everything else first, that way, there's no real risk of dragons (or vampires) taking out important NPCs, moreover, when I get to the MQ, I am focused exclusively on dragons. When the DLC dropped, I was done with everything in Skyrim, so I attended exclusively to the DG stuff, and only lost 2 named NPCs (that I'm aware of) to vampire attacks: Ghorza (who had a broken invest option anyway (and was replaced by her assisstant, who let me invest)) and Umlaug (?). And when you're done with the DLC's MQ, the vampire spawns end anyway.
In my new, from-scratch game now, I'm holding off on the DLC (i.e., not even loading it) until after I've done everything (as is my preference). I might even load and complete the DLC before doing the MQ, but I don't know for sure.

I am doing with Dawnguard what I do with the MQ - I finish everything else first, that way, there's no real risk of dragons (or vampires) taking out important NPCs, moreover, when I get to the MQ, I am focused exclusively on dragons. When the DLC dropped, I was done with everything in Skyrim, so I attended exclusively to the DG stuff, and only lost 2 named NPCs (that I'm aware of) to vampire attacks: Ghorza (who had a broken invest option anyway (and was replaced by her assisstant, who let me invest)) and Umlaug (?). And when you're done with the DLC's MQ, the vampire spawns end anyway.
In my new, from-scratch game now, I'm holding off on the DLC (i.e., not even loading it) until after I've done everything (as is my preference). I might even load and complete the DLC before doing the MQ, but I don't know for sure.

I had tried to do a reverse pickpocketing on npc's but they never seem to equip the weapons or armor i put in their inventory, dose this actually work?

So Beth designed the expansion to work independently from the main game?

And when you're done with the DLC's MQ, the vampire spawns end anyway.

No.

This thread says otherwise.

thats for sure is one way to do it, but i think Bethesda should do something about it (its not that npc are getting killed but how they get killed when they should be running away from ancient dragon or vampire master they attack them with hands or iron daggers and get killed then they almost never get replaced that not too realistic) off course there are ways around it like you mentioned but that should not be how we should be playing the game. npcs should be programed differently and some new one should respawn in their place if they are killed

...I recall hearing posters saying the spawns didn't end.

This thread says otherwise.

The key problem with all the NPCs being killed is that they vast majority of the nonleveled NPCs seem to have non-zero Confidence values. Meaning... they suddenly have the urge to go at that dragon or master vampire with their *fists* or that pathetic little iron dagger that almost everyone seems to have.

I'd like some clarity on this then. I didn't get any vampire respawns in my game once I'd finished the DLC MQ, but maybe not enough time elapsed for the respawn to trigger - I wasn't monitoring it - and I'd like to think they do stop, but you're right about seeing conflicting reports on this.

Anyone?