Thought I'd post this here too. During the quest "Destroying the Dawnguard" I was able to dual-cast pacify everyone in Fort Dawnguard and buy Stendarr's Aura, Vampire's Bane, Sun Fire, and rent an armored troll.

What I did was pacify them during this quest, then talk to them. They will have the same dialogue as they have after killing Harkon on the DG side, then talk to them again (or just skip through their initial dialogue) to get options like "what have you got for sale" or "can you train me in ____?". Then you can interact with them until the spell wears off. To calrify, I was a vamp (stage 4 even) when I did this.

I first thought this might be the case when I pacified Isran right after siding with the Vamps and he offered Two-Handed training. But Sorine, Gunmar and Florentius aren't present in Fort Dawnguard if you side with the Vamps apparently, except during "Destroy the Dawnguard".

I decided to kill them all except Gunmar, since he offers trolls. So I frenzied them all from a dark corner and used Heal Other to keep Gunmar alive. Took a while and there were a few close calls, but Durok finally went down last. Now I won't have to pacify 10 people to get an armored troll.

Can you buy steel bolts off them like this as well?

Yes, both Sorine and Gunmar sell them. No enchanced/dwemer crossbow or dwemer bolts though.

Awesome! So you just have to keep the "Destroying the Dawnguard" quest open and never complete it, and you can do this as much as you want? Sounds like I just found (well, technically you!) a nice way to stock up on steel bolts.

Nice! Creative solution I like it. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for sharing!

Dang, I wanted to get in there and get me an enhanced dwemer crossbow.

It could be possible for DG Illusionists to accomplish something similar to get Heal Undead (Necromantic Healing is available in Dimhollow Crypt). And I'm checking something about getting dwemer crossbows, if only I could remember where Ruunvald is exactly.

Keep us posted if you do, I'm going to try to get in there and do what you described. Never played through the DG side of the DLC, hoping the trolls don't svck.

Wow I had no idea this hadn't been mentioned before. That was basically my initial strategy if I chose to be a pale wimp.

A while back someone brought this up. So my illusionist nightblade will have some crossbow bolts after all.

I'd just like to know if it's possible to complete the quest without killing every DG member. I haven't gotten that far into the Vampire side-quests yet to know what the requirements for it are, though. Do you have to wipe out every single DG member to complete it?

They're quite the formidable companions. However, I believe they cap at around level 40 or 50, so you may not see the same results at super high levels. I can confirm that at up to level 40 on Master difficulty, my armored trolls were destroying everything in their path, though.

I've never done the DG side but when you go in you have to kill like a dozen people, they've all got markers on their heads so I'm going to assume you have to kill them all.

Yeah, you cannot complete the quest without killing them all. So if you want to leave the quest on indefinite hold for steel bolts or trolls, you should do all the other vampire sidequests before killing Harkon, that way you can progress through them to get the rings and amulets.

EDIT: Okay, seems the entrance to Ruunvald doesn't even exist when on the vamp side, which is weird because the exit (requires key) is still there. Well, seems like there's no dwemer crossbows for vamps. I thought there might be because I remembered the people in Ruunvald dropping a bunch of dwemer crossbows on my DG character.

When I went through Ruunvald on my DG characters, the charmed Vigilants only dropped the basic Crossbows, but it's worth mentioning that I hadn't unlocked the Dwarven Crossbow through quests yet, so perhaps that's why? In any case, it seems like even if the Volkihar side had access to Ruunvald, they'd only see the basic Crossbows.

I did nothing but crossbow quests as soon as Sorine was recruited, until I got everything for them, so that may be it. I was also 81, so it might be leveled.

I thought this might be possible but I wasn't sure the one that sells the spells would be there. So thanks this is great news for me.

Urg, I don't use illusion.

Trying to get the spell high enough to actually pacify people without dumping the rest of my perk points is a pain.

Can you get the crossbow quests like this too? I'm regretting joining the vamps on my sneak character cause the crossbow is awesome

You could try using the Fortify Restoration exploit to make some really powerful Illusion potions.

As for the crossbow quests, pretty sure you can't get them this way. Sorine didn't have the dialogue option doing this, and when I visited Fort Dawnguard before the "Destroying the Dawnguard" she wasn't there.