It would be much more interesting, but still challenging, if we actually could train the guards and build up city reinforcements. That way we'd feel like we're affecting the world and actually doing something to fix the problem, rather than mindlesly slaying vamps for eternity. I honestly think that would be much more fun, while maintaining the challenge we all want

It's peculiar that vampires would assail civilians at any rate. I could apprehend slaughtering a militia, but why would they obliterate their own cattle?

From a rather reasoned estimation: a preferable ameliorate would be to allow this random encounter to be in a fortuitous municipal once a sennight.
Likewise, for the leeches to solely raid the guardsman premises, but for those to have in kind a garrison of dawnguard reinforcements against undead.

One who sides with the volkihar should be able to harness Harkon's forces to extinguish these thin-bloods. Be a Molag Bal and [censored] them from behind!

The fact that your rebuttal was implying that we're generally complaining about random attacks and that we'd prefer it to be removed as a counter is a straw man argument. Anyway, how would someone deal with the situation of fast travelling to Dragonsreach, dealing with a quest inside then exiting to Whiterun.

If you don't check the main gate you don't know you're under attack, and since you don't enter through the main gate due to fast travelling there is no turn around and resolve the situation is there?


I didn't mind the feature until it got over-exhaustive. There needs to be either a quest/level requirement before these start happening, there is no way in hell you can defend yourself against these armed with Iron Equipment, seriously attempt to burn down a Master Vampire with flames and despite his so called "weakness" it'll take you a good few minutes.

The Thin-Bloods are akin to Savages who only thirst but do not think so that is why they blindly charge into a city and also why they attack the Player even when he is a Vamp

Did you have a Thesaurus on hand when you made that post?

Anyone knows if they attack during the day also or only at night?

Maybe it's just luck of the draw ? I've been playing Dawnguard since 1pm yesterday and have only had 3 random attacks by vampires in a town, every time I was able to drop them before they did too much damage. My toon is Lv.81 and I play on master and have yet to loose an entire town to a vampire attack. Perhaps it's like dragon attacks, you have people who will have two or more attacking at the same time, then you have people who will have 1 or 2 attacking at the same time, then you have people who say that they have never had a dragon attack a town. So maybe, just maybe you guys who are having a hard time are the ones that seem to have a greater chance to get these encounters, I fall in the group that have it happen sometimes and then there's the group that only get attacked in the wild.

As I've been saying all along. It's all in the random queue for the game. Everyone's rate of attack will be slightly different, but based off of the exact same algorithm.

Right, just seems that some have a greater " chance " of getting these random encounters. If your really having a hard time dealing with vampires in a town / city then just pause the game and slap it down in Novice, deal with the vampires and then reset to the difficulty of your liking. IMO, I think it's great, adds a sense of urgency to the game. Along with adding difficulty that's a much needed thing in Skyrim ( in my opinion ).

That's dumb!!

all quest givers and shop owners should be marked as essential. It svcks going into town then having a shop not being opened. We need those places to be there for magic potions or health potions or what have you.

Yeah, a feature that makes all NPC's essential while the vampire attack would be something at least. I can't say enough how much i hate this feature.

Like I said, it's more if an annoyance / tedium factor than a difficulty one for me. They could have handled these attacks in a much more interesting way. Like I said before:


It would be much more interesting, but still challenging, if we actually could train the guards and build up city reinforcements. That way we'd feel like we're affecting the world and actually doing something to fix the problem, rather than mindlesly slaying vamps for eternity. I honestly think that would be much more fun, while maintaining the challenge we all want. That would be much more fun to me

One person did mention that they left meeko in riften. Perhaps leaving a follower/pet in a cell means it is kept active?

I see where you're coming from but I hate essential characters. YOU should at least be able to kill them

Being able to break the MQ, kill people etc is about giving the player the ability to make this/allow this to happen. Having vampires spawn - from what I'm hearing - some distance from the player and killing NPCs before the player can do anything about it is subjecting the player to situations they have no real control over. This is just bad game design - you don't take control out of the hands of the player and start killing off characters randomly while they may not be able to do anything about it and it hasn't occurred due to in-game choices.

I'm also hearing that despite the apparent choice of sides, the end result is the same anyway. So it sounds like Bethesda having again opted for linearity and not giving real choice and consequence, they've instead opted for random NPC slaughter the player may not be able to stop through no choice of their own other than installing the DLC. And apparently these attacks carry on forever no matter what you do. This is not good. As a PC player, Dawnguard is sounding like a seriously unappealing purchase (youtube walkthroughs don't look good enough to risk a vampire apocalypse in towns for). I thank Microsoft for sparing me the temptation of an impulse buy on day 1.

As the Arch-mage of the College, leader of the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood, I would think that I would be able to dispatch some people from all those factions to act as sentries to deal with this so I wouldn't have to...

Seriously though, as others have said, for me it's more of an annoyance for me. Seems to be a lot more frequent for me than dragon attacks, which happen VERY rarely in walled cities. I can dispatch them quick enough, as I expect them to be there, and actually haven't lost an NPC yet. I just don't like the regularity with which it happens. The frequency of the attacks should definitely be reduced in at least the walled cities to make it at least even to the dragon attacks.

I've seen a Vampire attack in Markarth as well as in Riften. One person died in Markarth but noone died in Riften. Hopefully it doesn't get worse, but this thread has me sligthly worried...

CAREFUL what you wish for and/or suggest.
As I've said before, I think it's just a fact of programming that it's far easier for them to tweak the base game rather than attempt to patch a DLC. They COULD patch and mark people as essential, but that sounds equally as annoying...

I agree, I am very much against essential NPCs. I really like how New Vegas did it, where it was the player's responsibility to know the implications of their actions when they killed a quest NPC

If they insist on it happening, the vampires should be set to a scale NPCs can handle. If they scale with the player, then that means at higher levels they will massacre everyone. And that is a really dumb thing to have happening by design.

And that's the key point. YOUR choice, YOU face the consequences of YOUR choice. Something Bethesda seem eternally unable to grasp.

I honestly think people are reading into this way too much. It's obviously overboard. They obviously had a deadline. I'm sure a patch will fix this, but will not remove it. Otherwise the threat of a vampire invasion, then later in the story when it get's worse (if you opt to side with the vampires....which makes no sense. You side with the bad guy...kill the towns people...then complain. Sounds like it's working as intended. Don't want people to die? Don't be a bad guy! That dude is obviously bad), would be pretty pointless.

It would be like Oblivion. Where all those Daedra that were supposed to be invading? But they didn't anything until you just so happened to walk by an Oblivion gate. Pointless. It also took away from the "oh crap! invasion!" type feel. Ho-Hum is where I'm getting at.

I'd still say this needs to stay in or this turns into a pointless DLC story line wise. Fix the execution a little bit perhaps, but I wouldn't remove it...or we'll just have another bad guy full of empty promises of "I'm going to send bad guys after you and the people of Skyrim!"...but doing nothing. You just do whatever until progress the story. You'll get attacked, but it's all scripted.

This game needs less predictable stuff and more spontaneity. Less foot dragging, and more excitement IMO. It's what set it apart from the other TES games. Roll with it. Action Role playing game. Downplay it, and wont be catering to Skyrims strengths, IMO. Keep it exciting.

This is all my opinion...

Random Bandits didn't attack cities or things like this. The closest thing I can think of like this is the Ghost Town Gunfight quest and the random fiends that get slaughtered trying to attack Fort Mccarran or other NCR areas around New Vegas. Sometimes random merchants also get killed by enemies, but thats no big deal either, since all of the NPCs mentioned (Minus the named ones in Ghost Town Gunfight, which is a quest so it doesn't necessarily count) are generic and respawn.

Yeah. I hate essential characters, but it only worked in New Vegas because there were very few random attacks on cities. Your companions were essential (unless in hardcoe mode). I think instead of any character being essential they should make it sonthat only YOU can kill certain characters. Also, when someone gets killed by a vampire on the other end of town, that has nothing to do with the player, so it has nothing to do with player choice or freedom or consequence, unless you count reloading as a "feature" and a "player choice".