^ Topic.

First time I ever visited Riften after 250hrs and @ level 56. Did some sight seeing and talk to the folks, usual stuff. I meet this meat lady and she ask me for some help; I agreed.

After running around town for a bit and went to sleep. The next day, meat lady was murdered. "What a waste...", thats what they all said. Well, now that quest is gone.

Not sure if this is something dragon attacks, which I have seen folks got killed by it, but I also encountered random folks dying inside buildings for seemingly no reason....?

So is it a bug or feature???

Sounds like a bug to me, what I would like to see in future games is the possibility of NPCs dying but only if they had no quest attatched to them and randomly generated NPCs could move in to town in their place.

Thanks to dragons Riverwood is a ghost town. Random guards (respawned) and kids (invincible) are all that's left.

I'm not sure if this was intended. Maybe a few dying to encourage you to do the MQ. Problem is after the MQ the dragons still come. It never stops and if you visit a small village enough times ... well ...

I don't recall the meat lady in Riften every being killed? Did you find her body? Was she in the city? I've seen several dragon attack Riften outside the walls, but never inside them.

As long as they leave Alvor the blacksmith alone, all is good in my eyes.

Marise Aravel, the meat lady.

I make Mjoll murder Marise Aravel in every playthrough after I learned about it. If you drop something near them, Marise will go, Ooh I saw it first, I guess it's finders keepers. Mjoll will fight her for it. Mjoll always wins because battle axe > dagger.

Alvor died to a dragon in my first playthrough, it is safe to say Riverwood was never the same again.

Something similar happened to me. I had given a beggar in Windhelm money a couple of times. Then one day out of the blue I was looting the invisible chest in Dawnstar and a courier gives me his inheritance letter. I wondered if it was a glitch too.

here's how i get around dying npc's: i have my main character that is an all-powerful hybrid that will complete the mainquest, guilds and experience 'all' of skyrim's content. depending, on how i feel like playing that particular gaming session or moment, i will reload, use fast travel/carriages, exploit if warranted, whatever.

as well, when a dragon appears i lower the difficulty level to the easiest and reload if someone dies.

i save my strict rping for DiD characters: if npc's die, they're gone for good.

The only time thats happened to me is like someone said above, riverwood is a ghost town in my game, minus the invincible children and respawning town guards, dragons just virally respawn there, like non stop there's always a dragon all I need to do is kill the current one, fast travel out, fast travel back and boom, dragon slaughtering whats left.

That is one of the main reasons I will never play with dragons on another playthrough, that and the fact killing them becomes very tedious fairly quickly.