» Sun Nov 18, 2012 3:35 pm To start Dawnguard, head to Whiterun or any of the other major cities. You’ll meet a Dawnguard recruiter who is saying that they need help from people to fight the growing threat of vampires. He then adds Castle Dawnguard to your map and you need to make your way out there. Although you start the expansion by joining the Dawnguard, don’t feel like the game has made your decision for you. You get an opportunity to join the vampires and turn against the Dawnguard.
The expansion adds four “major” new locations – Castle Dawnguard, Castle Volkihar, the Soul Cairn, and a new valley to the northwest of the game. All of them are great locations, with the exception of the Soul Cairn. The Soul Cairn is an interesting new place, but it’s very difficult to get oriented in it. The Soul Cairn is, without spoiling too much, a plane of Oblivion where souls go after they’ve been used up in a Soul Gem. It’s a very dark, forboding, and depressing place to be. There’s some interesting quests and loot, but unfortunately there are no visible and discernible landmarks there, so it can be difficult to find your way around there. It would have been nice if Bethesda added a designated world map for it like they did with Shivering Isles. If you look around the Soul Cairn for awhile there’s a really great easter egg character, whom you might remember from Morrowind as well, and it’s a fantastic and creative way to bring back some old memories of past Elder Scrolls games.
There are a few new weapons and weapon types like dragon bone weapons, but the one that everyone is talking about is crossbows – and for good reason. Crossbows are a great new addition to the game. If you’re an archery class, they will be amazing. My archery skill was at 91, and after I upgraded my crossbow at a smith, I was doing about 81 damage with mine before I enchanted it to do additional damage. If I have one piece of advice, horde crossbow bolts as much as you can. If you become a vampire, they’re a little more difficult to find. You’ll occasionally get ambushed by Dawnguard, and you can resupply off them, but the bolts can be a little scarce. You won’t have to be near as careful with them if you stick with the Dawnguard, but that’s my advice.
The leveling system for being either a Vampire Lord or a Werewolf is great. Something that frightened me before I played the new DLC was that I have a pretty high level character. I fully expected that the new perk trees would be added alongside all the other perk trees in the skills menu and I would have to decide each time I leveled up if I would put a perk into archery, smithing, or my new Vampire Lord perk tree. Fortunately, that’s not the case. When you are in combat in either vampire or werewolf form, you level up only that form. Each time you drain the life out of someone as a vampire, for example, you put experience towards the next allowable perk in your Vampire Lord perk tree. You can only access that perk tree while you are in that form, as well. That form has its own perk tree, combat style, and skillset of powers. Also, playing as a Vampire Lord is fun. I mean really fun. You can fight on the ground and swipe with your claws like a werewolf (I could be wrong, but it felt like I was just as powerful with melee as the werewolf), or hover above the ground and rain down death on your enemies and drain their life. When you sprint, you actually flap your “wings” on your back and sort of fly above the ground. You really pick up a lot of speed when you do this. You’re going what seems to be about as fast as a horse. This makes for some really great fun out on the open plains of Skyrim for just terrorizing giants, bandits, deer, and goats. I couldn’t help but go completely grand-theft-auto in Vampire Lord form a few times, just running around killing as much as I could. It’s really that much fun.
Dawnguard has some great side-quests as well. There’s one in particular you MUST play. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the Dwemer and what happened to them, look for a book as you play calledThe Atherium Wars. Once you read it, it will start a new quest for you that really explains a lot of Dwemer history.
In addition to new locations, quests, powers, and gameplay styles, you also gain a few different followers. As a vampire, you gain a follower named Serana. She is one of the most interesting and well-written characters I’ve seen in Skyrim so far. Surprisingly, you cannot marry her, although the game alludes strongly in dialogue options that it might be an option.
Conclusion
Dawnguard is great. It’s large (I’ve spent about 20 hours in it so far) and it will definitely keep you busy in Skyrim again. Let’s face it, though – even if it were terrible, we would still all buy it just because it’s more Skyrim. If you’re on the fence about buying it, let me give you a little nudge: buy it. There are new shouts, new abilities, new quests, more achievement points, and MUCH more gameplay. Dawnguard will keep us busy until the next batch of DLC comes out, and I’m already hungry for more.
8.5/10
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