Dragon attacks were annoying, but I at least felt like I had a fighting chance to keep npcs from dying. The vampire traveler thing is just not cool. In a game where you can easily sink 60 hours into a single playthrough trying to see most of the content this seems...well. Undesirable would be putting it mildly.

Bethesda, please, issue a fix for this. Preferably a "Revive NPCs" item or button that can be hit. If the PCs were replaced by other PCs populating the towns and shops, that'd be fine I suppose. Whatever. But they aren't, and this is mind bogglingly frustrating.

I don't know what meeting or team decided this would be cool. I know some players WANT to kill off their npcs, and hey, whatever floats their boat. But for the rest of us, loosing access to merchants/quest givers is really aggravating.

yea i hate it whenever a dragon comes i always try to run away from the town so no npcs die

I play on master, and this is not so much of an issue as npcs are a lot tougher. Anything remotely capable of killing them are Ancient dragons and up. And that's if you leave it rampaging around for too long.

60 hours a single playthrough? What game are you playing?

The problem isn't that they die, the problem is that they are stupid. Charging a Master Vampire with your bare hands when there are armed guards all around you ... stupid. All Bethesda needs to do is give them some realistic AI and this problem is fixed (along with many others).

"....... kungfu fighting. ....... fast as lightning."

I love the combat chickens...I had one chase a thief the other night. But after 1200 hours, my skyrim is rather unpopulated with dragon attacks and whatever.

@Jack I was being conservative. You could probably finish the main storyline and a few of the other major questlines in about 60 hours. I'm at seventy hours, level 30, and I've only really scratched the surface. There are huge chunks of my map that are vast and empty.

@Leburns Well, then there's the Vampire assasin thing that apparently sneaks into town as a non-hostile, creeps into someone's house, offs them, then slips off quietly into the night. I have yet to SEE that happen, but I have shown up to a town or two and discovered to my surprise that a few people were missing for no good reason.

Haven't heard of that, but I have seen the mysterious stranger wandering around Riften. But I was able to get him killed before he could hurt anyone.

What is no doubt happening is that an attack has occurred while you were in the town somewhere but you didn't know it. This is very possible in Solitude, Windhelm and to a lesser extent Whiterun. Riften is small enough that you will catch most, though not all of the attacks.

I think its that mysterious stranger you're talking about.

I've heard of a vampire that kills people in their sleep.

The difficulty level doesn't effect NPC health. Adrianne had 95 health whether you play novice or master. Aerin has 108 health regardless of your level or difficulty setting.

OTOH, depending on your level, vampires can range from 35 health for a vampire fledgling all the way up to 1226 health for a nightmaster vampire. That is more than 12x more health than Adrianne, who only asks for a fair chance. Adrianne, I have news for you, you don't stand any chance at all.

^This. Exactly.

And contrary to popular rumor, the Mysterious Traveler will not slip into homes and start offing people. I'll just quote http://www.gamespot.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/forum/mysterious-traveler-question-dawnguard-spoilers-maybe-63266307/guy.

"He's a random spawn in cities (walled and unwalled) just like vampire attack squads and dragons. If you keep reloading the cell, you can probably get him to show, but he's not a common sight. He walks around outside, doesn't enter any buildings, and only becomes hostile when approached by the player. He targets the player, but guards will make short work of him. Multiple people have confirmed this; no one has ever seen him enter an interior, much less turn hostile when the player isn't present.

He does not show up in random cities to kill people when you aren't around because he can't. Those cells aren't even loaded into your Xbox's memory. Some people had vampire raids that somehow got out of control, freaked out, and in a fit of posting somehow the rumor got started that the Mysterious Traveler was in ur game, killin ur d00dz... when in actuality he's just there to "surprise" the player.

People who have actually watched him have reported him just wandering around and never entering a building. Try forcing a spawn and see for yourself.

Plus, in order to program him to enter an unloaded interior cell, run a "check" to see if any killable actors were present, and automatically kill them would require an excessive amount of scripting on Beth's part. They'd be going out of their way to program something that works differently than everything else in the game... that would annoy lots of people.

You don't walk into town and find a bunch of a peeps dead from a dragon attack while you weren't there, and the vampire squads/traveler is no different."

The above is consistent with my testing whenever I've had the Mysterious Traveler show up in my game. He's not some door-to-door boogeyman.

Forget about the vampires, I just saw Adrianne die three times in a row from one bite by a death hound. First time I have my vampire weapons selected, but not readied. Next time I had them out and ready to go. Third time I used slow time and I still could not get from the gate to her workbench in time to stop that dog from biting her.

Finally, I just decided to wait until 6 PM when she is scheduled to be in her store. Finally, no one died.

Maybe if Adrianne were a Nord the death hound wouldn't have killed her in one bite. But Imperials have no elemental or magic resistance. I had no idea death hounds were so deadly.

Did you try Whirlwind Sprint?

Well, running this on a PC, not the memory squeezed xbox. (512 megs. Ha!) Although stuff DOES happen in other parts of the world that you aren't in. Bethesda has talked about how things occur in parts of the world when you arent there. I'm not a coder, so I can't comment knowledgeably about the subject.


I'm still upset npcs can be killed and don't repopulate.

But they take less damage from hits. It's works just the same way as if they were given more health and damage taken remained the same.

Besides the attacks only happen at night, and if you fast travel to the gate, the fight is confronted as soon as it happens anyway. They should be downed in few seconds.

It would be beyond stupid if they did respawn after getting killed. Permanent NPC deaths is one mechanic I wholeheartedly agree with.

On the other hand, I don't think named NPCs should line up to get themselves killed either. I'll just quote myself from another thread:

I play at master and saw Adrianne killed three times in a row from one bite by a death hound. The difficulty level does not effect anybody but the player. At master, the player takes twice as much damage and causes half as much. His/Her followers and other NPCs still cause as much damage, and take as much damage, as at novice level.

And no, attacks do not happen just at night. Indeed, for my game they only happen in Whiterun during the day because I only enter Whiterun during the day. This is why Adrianne got killed three times in a row. My only solution for that was to wait until 6 PM when she was in her shop having supper before entering the city.

There have been so many threads about this it's not funny, people can argue the good and the bad about this part of the DLC but I'm just wondering if there is so much dislike about this is there is a poll petitioning Beth. to get rid of it? After all there's one trying to get Beth. to change their minds about Serana with lots of takers.

Why do you only enter Whiterun during the day?

The assumption is that the Vamp attacks in any walled city occur mostly during the night. I did have one attack in Whiterun during the day, but it was overcast.

Because if you enter during the night you run the risk of losing most of your vendors, not only Adrianne, but Belethor and War-Bear as well.

But you enter the other cities at night?

Entering cities at night is the perfect way to get an attack by vampires. It should be totally avoided, if possible.