I finally got around to playing Dawnguard this week. Overall I thought it was good and kept me interested, and I enjoyed it for the most part. So this isn't a rant about hating it or anything. But if I'm honest, there were some issues with it that left me feeling unsatisfied.


*The initial quest marker to begin the main quest line sent me to the wrong location, and there wasn't a HUD/compass marker for it at all, whatsoever. I finally had to enter an unrelated generic cave and exit again for the marker to show up at all.

*Babysitting the central NPC character, who I won't name so as not to spoil anything, seemed to suffer even more from pathfinding and outright vanishing issues than normal in Skyrim. And telling them to "wait here" only worked temporarily. Eventually they would show up wherever I was again.

*The Vampire Lord form felt considerably underpowered compared to my vanilla level 51 character, and having to abandon the quest line to go level up its new perk tree to make it useful relative to my normal persona felt intuitively wrong from a roleplaying perspective given I was knee deep in an epic life and death adventure. I wanted to use it straight away, and it wasn't really viable against high level enemies. (Or when it was, it wasn't as useful as my normal char.)

*The new regions the game adds, while beautiful and very interesting to explore, felt sort of generic and empty for such large-ish areas.

*The story gives the impression that you have more choices to make than a simple either/or proposition, but you ultimately don't, and it felt a bit anticlimactic.

*You cannot marry (or in Hearthfire hire as a steward) the aforementioned central NPC, despite some intimations to the contrary in dialogue in my opinion.

*During one quest branch, an action contrary to previous player choice is forced on you arbitrarily as part of the plot, despite that directly contradicting the actions and sentiments on the part of NPCs forcing you to take said action prior to that. It is a problem which could have been alleviated by literally one additional line of dialogue, without changing a single other thing, yet that wasn't done. I can't really elaborate without spoilers, so I won't.

*Compared to Shivering Isles or Bloodmoon, and contrary to Bethesda's previous statements that they planned to release only DLC of that caliber for Skyrim, Dawnstar feels rather insubstantial overall.

*The central lasting change to the world based on your choices is a temporary and highly contrived one, which can be undone and redone at our liesure. On the one hand, the freedom is, as always, great. But it was semi-implied that it would be permanent and change the world (especially for vampires.)

Overall though, Dawnguard added a nice new chunk of content, a few new nice items (although by the high level you're expected to play it at, you almost certainly already have better,) and a few very lore-heavy and past-game-reminiscent segments that are extremely satisfying for any hardcoe TES aficionado. I'm glad they made it, and I don't regret buying it, so please don't take this as a bash. Just some hopefully constructive criticism.

The only time the Vampire Lord form would be a downgrade is if you abused the hell out of Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy.

I do agree with all your other points though.

Well, my level 51 Bretron can destroy almost any enemy in two-three dual wielded Incinerate or Thunderbolt spells. Whereas in Vampire Lord form, it takes hit, after hit, after hit, after hit... ad nauseum. The only upside is the additional health, seemingly. Mind you though, I'm talking about an un-leveled vamp perk tree. Which is why I said it feels underpowered unless I go off and level it, which feels like something I wouldn't do at that point in the game and storyline.

Now, if I had become a vamp outside of Dawnguard, and leveled up gradually by feeding on animals, then more robuts enemies, etc. I'm sure I'd feel incredibly baddass. But as I only became a vamp in Dawnguard, in the thick of the quest, the intuitive tendency is to turn right then and there and use it in the quest dungeons, which for my character has been totally unfeasible. Especially against high level Falmer.

I didn't abuse smithing or enchanting. In fact, I'm intetionally wearing only Dwemer armor as my character is meant to be a magically inclined scholar of Dwemer antiquities which I call an "Arcanologist" (Get it? Lol. Dumb, I know, but I like it.) I do have modest magic cost reduction enchants on that armor, but I never used any of the exploits or loops.

I thought DG was very good, but a bit underwhelming in some parts espically the ending. I agree, very anti clamtic. Since it's the first DLC, for Skyrim, at least it was no Horse Armour and Bethesda is still learning what it can and can't do on Skyrim. So hopefully the next DLC that is more like DG will be better.

Me I enjoyed the dlc but I can say I was a bit disappointed with the ending.

I loved this DLC, but the ending...I wanted Harkon and Isran fist fight each other...

It works best when you roleplay the whole game from the start as a vampire, or a vampire hunter in the case of the DG. If you have a character who is set in a roleplay from before DG was announced I can understand if you have issues with believability. Would an arcanologist become a vampire? You have to ask yourself that.

Idid it with my high level Altmer mage as a test run first - she breezed through it on master difficulty and did the college ritual spells which I'd saved.

Next I rolled a Bosmer thief and did the Dawnguard sid alongside the Thieve's Guild and main quest. That's where I noticed the benefits off Dawnguard adding to Skyrim. I'm currently playing a Breton vampire and doing the Dark Brotherhood questline too - again it is adding to Skyrim as a whole.

I really enjoy it and think it's a great addition.

I hadn't planned on installing DG any time soon, especially while I'm still experimenting with Oblivion's Vampirism (learning the ins and outs), but after playing an hour with a new character (as part of testing a new Mage build idea I had)

I got infected. Rather than gulp down a Cure Disease potion, I decided to install DG.

So far, I'm with the OP, feeling a tad underwhelmed, especially with the hit-after-hit-after-hit mechanic for the VL form. It has some nice upsides, especially the speed of the flying (!) and a few other perks, but for serious combat, uh, no.

Granted, I've not gotten all of the perk tree yet, and I'm still a low-level character (started at level 3 (not gonna do THAT again!)), but the inability to do a lot of things I normally do in combat as a VL just doens't make the form overly appealing.

Right now, I've just spent 4 hours trying to navigate around the very confusing Forgotten Vale, and I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through, from what the game wikis report. I'm thankful for Serena, because without her, I'd have died dozens of times.

Entertaining? Yes. Worth it? Yes. Tad underwhelming? Yes. Challenging? Especially to low-level Mages!

At least it's a challenge!

7/10 Not bad but not as brilliant as hoped for, again too many glitches prevent a higher rating in my opinion but worth the money, next time though Bethesda take twice as long over it and make it better.

It was entertaining but I agree, it wasn't as good as it could have been, and some things in it were kind of misleading or poorly thought out.

I was, am, and will be totally underwhelmed, and do you want to know why? Because the inept assbags at Bethesda cannot seem to get their junk together to release this game for the PS3.

They have taken our money, smiled at us while looking us in the eyes, and pissed in our collective faces.

Yeah; I am underwhelmed; yeah, I am pissed; yeah, I think that Bethesda is ruining their own reputation; and yes, I expect more out of a gaming company besides giving under the table hand-jobs to Microsoft. We all claim to admit that ethics exist. Why doesn't Bethesda sack up and enact some ethics?

Haha don't worry, we all got bugs on the other systems too

Some people have yet to even be able to play the DLC past half way due to bugs, but I'm sure you'd at least like the chance to try and get halfway

Yeah it was kind of underwhelming, the stuff you get in Dawnguard is pretty nice though, mainly the crossbows and Dragonbone weapons.

I'm about to do the last quest on the Vampire side, and I can honesty say I've not encountered any major bugs, just a few graphical glitches, one of which occasioned a reload. Either I've been lucky, or my cautious nature has saved me a load of trouble.

I haven't heard/seen any vampire attacks on towns, probably for two reasons:

1.) I started the quest-line at level 3, so I hadn't befriended anyone other than the fine folks at the CoW. (Was infected while leaving Saarthal to report back to the Archmage, no less...)

2.) I haven't entered any towns, tho' I sorely need to. The merchants at Castle Volkihar just don't carry enough gold, nor items that I need.

I think I've been extremely fortunate in that regard, and hopefully, I won't run into any attacks once I start re-entering towns. I'm looking forward to resuming the CoW quest-line as a VL, and I'm going to savage Ancano when the time comes. His blood is mine!

I personally find the storyline very good; better than most of the guild quests at least. What I actually like most about this expansion is the crossbow. My character is an archer, and I spent a lot of time going into dungeons just blasting fools with my enhanced Dwarven crossbow. Granted, that's not what I paid 20 euros for, but it's good to know that I still use one of the expansion's features nearly everytime I play Skyrim.

8.5/10

Well, my character is sort of an insane made genius type, so I felt he would become a vampire just to have the experience. (Think Deviath Fyr in Morrowind.) But then the natural inclination is to use this newfound power in the service of the quest you're on. Not to go off and level it up outside of that gradually so that it can be useful. So I just ended up using my vanilla char form, since it was more viable in combat. That said, now that the quest is over, there's no reason not to pursue leveling it up. But I think I will save that for my psychopathic serial killer char.

Also, I forgot about the Crossbow. That I will concede is an awesome and long overdue addition to the game imo.

The crossbow is the main positive thing in dawnguard to me lol

That and arrow smithing

So not the story itself, not the new VL form, but the addition of weapons that could have arguably been added for the vanilla game

I give the dlc an 8/10. The ending was anticlimatic, but the last 2 boss battles (The one in the Vale and Castle) had me on the edge of my seat. None of the vanilla quests except maybe the Ancano fight, had me strategize beforehand. The scenery was beautiful, I got a new in depth yet annoying follower in Serana. Harkon and the other npc's were cool as well. The only issues I had was the less blood you drink, the stronger you get thing. The whole point of being a vampire imo, is to feed on the living to fuel your dark powers. Not the other way around. And revisiting dungeons I had already gone through. Also starting at level 10 requirement was annoying.

Does anyone know how it is at level 1?

So yeah, 8/10.

Yes, Serena is extremely annoying in some of her habits. such as the countless ashpiles and her walking back and forth between the player and with whomever he was conversing. Bleh.

As for the level 10 requirement, that only applies to hearing about the DG. I became infected at level 3 near the ending of the Saarthal quest, on my way to see the Archmage. Immediately installed DG, read on one of the game wikis where to find the place, and made a bee-line for it.

That was a mistake. Level 10 would have been a lot better, because at level 3, you're weak as a Skeever baby, especially in the sunlight. If it wasn't for Serena, I would have died countless times by the time I was able to really fight as a Mage. The whole thing was a constant battle, and it was worth it.

Nice castle. Could be better and bigger, and the location svcks, but it's still a nice place with... strange... folk. Well, being a part of the CoW fits right in!

So it's best to start at level 10 then. Thanks for the info.

I thought the Soul Cairn and Forgotten Vale were awesome and I really enjoyed exploring them. At the end I realized that if the Faction quests werent included, I would have liked it just the same. Arrow smithing, crossbows, Dawnguard weapons and armor, Dragonbone weapons, better dragons are what made the DLC, not the factions or the quests.