Not stop but they will be significantly less.

Sums it up perfectly. I go to town to sell my junk, buy junk, craft, talk, get quests...

I DON'T expect every Fast Travel to town to be a nervous two minute while I check no idiot has gone at got themselves murderated by something I have NO control over.
Dragons are different. Even the harder dragons will usually focus on the biggest threat, i.e. you. And, once they land, they tend to be mincemeat for all the guard archers and me wailing on their faces. Not a small mob of hard-as NPCs that seem more interested in ruining my fun and shopping opportunities by killing off civilians who shouldn't be fighting them in the first place. End of.

Thanks for the response.

Currently, I'm sprinting through the Dawnguard questline at level 37 because dead townspeople annoy me. I must admit it does do something for the tone.

But... Riften is weird. And you can never fast travel to Dragon's reach.
In both cases, the fight starts across town. By the time you sprint there, people are dead.

Again, tone. But it annoys the crap out of me. It doesn't make me sad that the characters are dead and boil my blood against the vampires, it makes me have to reload through no fault of my own and boil my blood against Bethesda.

I'd like an encapsulated quest starter. Talk to this guy> Vampire attacks > Meet with Dawnguard. But I guess that's not too realistic.
I'd be happy with vampire spawn point tweaks. And levels if my new level 8 has the same problems these guys are having.


Quick question, will ending the quest as a vampire stop random attacks? Or must you join the Dawnguard?

I haven't had anyone in town die except vampires so far, but my characters where already at fairly high levels when I installed it.

I haven't played it with any of my low level guys yet, but I don't really care because those are basically just screw around builds anyway.

I can see how it would svck if your just starting out a new game though. Actually that's why I put off starting the MQ for so long.

The attacks on towns by vampires will usually stop after you finish the Dawnguard questline, you can still get attacks though by blocking out the sun, working on your vampire perks near a town, or doing some radiant missions. You will still get vampire attacks in the wilds, and the occasional random attack in an unwalled town. Your vampire lord character will still be attacked by the Dawnguard till you do the quest to kill the Dawnguard leaders. If your character is popular and the Dawnguard attack, the townspeople will get involved fighting them anyway, so could still get killed.

Rushing through the Dawnguard questline will make life easier if you hate town attacks, does not matter which side you are on, You can just avoid towns while doing it, they will not attack Winterhold if you only visit the college and never go to the town. You have to visit Dragon Bridge to find the Moth priest, but if they spawn it is a long way up the road, you can just rush up the road to meet them and avoid an attack on the settlement.

I think it should be patched so that the random vampire attacks are much less likely to happen and that they only start when you begin the Dawnguard questline, after you finish the quest where you choose to side with either Harkon or the Dawnguard. That way people who don't want to play the DLC yet, don't get forced to play it to end the random attacks. Its a simple fix.

What beth needs to do about the vamp attacks, is have all the shop keepers be essential to everyone but the player. That would solve a whole lot of problems with Vamp attacks.

Or just improve NPC AI so that shopkeepers don't punch vampire lords

You're right Xharon, NPC AI is the problem. It was funny the first times to see an old lady in her dress fighting an ancient dragon with bare hands, but now, with all these vampire raids, it's just a pain. In my opinion, travelers are the biggest danger since they can silentely kill people, not a big deal when all quests are done but not that funny when you start a new game with Dawnguard installed. Just for the record someone put a mod on Nexus that stops vampire attacks...

This, along with stuff like giving vampires stupid glowing eyes and multiple personality guards suddenly having two voices, is why I didn't buy it. Being on PC, there's the option to apply a mod, but I'm not buying something that needs a mod to combat a 'feature' that can wreck the core game, is totally ridiculous (why are vampires suddenly suicidal? And a sudden vampire invasion on top a civil war and dragon attacks is just daft) and forces the player towards doing the DLC questline asap on each playthrough, even if they fancy skipping it on that playthrough. I hate the way Bethesda have developed this habit of pushing and prodding the player towards questlines. It's bad enough with the guilds being rammed down your throat.
It's a shame, because weaving DLC into the core gameworld is in principle a good idea - but it shouldn't actively interfere with the core game - that's just shoddy game design.