It's been way too long since I last posted (Computer got nuked by Spywere) but I'm back and I've been waiting too long to express my issues with Dawnguard. I have 5 issues with Dawnguard that pretty much turned me off from the vampire hunting/feasting affair and I doubt I'll be coming back to the DLC unless I create a character for the sole purpose of feasting as a Vampire Lord or a Vampire Hunter. I'll try to keep Spoilers to an absolute minimum.


5. The Vampire Lord is absolutely useless and a gimic

The Vampire Lord is a worthless gimic. The fact that you are forced into 3rd person mode really kills the immersion and the perk trees for it are bad. Not to mention the bug issues that occur with said feature such as not being able to walk into a door.

4. Illusion of Choice between Dawnguard and Harkon's crew

Unlike Shivering Isles where you got clear choices between the two houses you don't really have that with Dawnguard. Serana sticks with you regardless of what faction you choose, Crossbows and Vampire Lord is really the only main choice between the two factions. This I have a problem with because I would like clear choices between the two such as specific weapons/armor for choosing a particular side. I would want my choices to matter unfortunately that doesn't happen with Dawnguard.

3. Bugs, Bugs, and more Bugs.

I swear did Beth kill the Orkin dude because Dawnguard is litered with Bugs and don't get me started on what Beth's doing with the PS3 version of Dawnguard, completely unacceptable although that's a different discusion for a different time. There's also a huge bug that's involved with number 1 on my list

1A. Radiant Vampire Attacks in walled cities.

This one is absolutely terrible, I don't know who's idea it was to add this feature but this is a terrible decision. It's great in theory but there's one small problem, NPC's in Skyrim are weak. Obviously that happened because of Oblivion's overuse of Level Scaling and it doesn't help that said NPC's don't wear any [censored] armor. Merchants are the worst especially adrienne in Whiterun. There's two major problems that occur because of that, merchants don't respawn and they have finite gold. Unless your with the College or The Thieves Guild you will probably run out of merchants or be down a good amount of merchants. This is probably the easiest problem to solve, just make all the merchants essential to everyone but the player.


There's also one last big issue I have with Radiant Vampire Attacks in walled cities. It basically forces you to do Dawnguard, we've never have an Elder Scrolls game that forced you to do a DLC if you installed it. This would be like Sheogorath giving you visions that you must save Shivering Isles from the Greymarch before you even step through his portal and it occurs every 24 hours. That is just terrible, I would like to have Crossbows without deciding this little Vampire War or breaking my main quest which I will get too with Point 1.

1. The Dragon Scroll

This one is beyond the pale bad. This is the item that we need to get in the main quest and we also have to get it for Dawnguard. If you get the item before you get to that point in the main quest it breaks the game badly. I don't understand why they couldn't use a different item. This is basically equivilent to getting the Great Welkynd Stone in Oblivion but I have to give it to Haskill so that he can use the energy from the stone to power up the Staff of Sheogorath. The problem is that also breaks the main quest for Oblivion if I get the Stone before I'm suppose too.

In Summary the Random Vampire Attacks are the biggest issue, a complete lack of common sense on Beth's part I mean Merchants have Finite money but on a fundamental level the Dragon Scroll, an item that you have to get in the main quest that is also required for Dawnguard, that really bothers me. Hopefully that's not a trend for the upcoming DLC's, I mean what's next, The Horn of Jurgen because a midden needs the horn to get rid of a rock.

I agree with some of your points. A lot of the Vampire Lord abilities are just reskinned spells and shouts. You're also right there is no real choice in the DLC quest line. Dawnguard or Volkihar in the end you're forced to go against Harkon.

Not to mention Serana as well. She sticks with you regardless of which side you choose.

Well, I majorly disagree with the first point at least. You might as well call the Werewolf form 'just a gimmick' or weapons 'just different types of sticks' or the like. This all comes down to opinion and, in my opinion, I liked the Vampire Lord form. It's much more useable than Werewolf form (at least if you don't get Hircine's ring, at any rate...) and has some very neat abilities. I took one character from scratch to the end of the DLC quest as a Vampire Lord, and still use the hell out of it. I've not run into any bugs with it, since I wouldn't call not fitting through a clearly too-small door a bug. I just swap forms, walk through, and if I really want to change back. No big deal.

I'd also kind of disagree with point 4. While the start was, yes, a little unclear, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think someone learned a lesson from the main game intro, where the Stormcloaks you meet are all in the same boat as you, while the Imperials are *trying to cut your freaking head off*. Whereas in Dawnguard you get to see both sides a bit more clearly first, before making your pick. And I, at least, felt the two were pretty distinct. Others mileage may vary. C'est la vie.

Bugs...well. Yeah. No argument just on principle. I have my own plethora of gripes about Hearthfire, so live and let live on that one.


The last two, though? Uhm...Yeah. Big yeah. Big hell yes I agree the HELL out of this. I should not have to feel like Fast Travel is a dangerous option rather than the convenience it is. That annoys the hell out of me. I can live with it happening in the wilds, no problem. But in cities? Sorry for liking having named NPCs still alive in case having them die breaks stuff, or I have no one left to sell junk to. People harp on about how 'more realistic it is'...this is SKYRIM. It's a fantasy world with dragons and the ability to put a full sized shovel into a small satchel. What you call 'realistic' I call 'frustrating and un-fun BS'. Heaven forbid people have that opinion, though...

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't even end up USING the Dragon Elder Scroll in Dawnguard. You use the Sun and the Blood ones...but NOT the Dragon one. Which means....there's NO point to getting it. I....it...wuh? I didn't realise that until my second play through recently (on the DG side this time). And now it's a serious case of 'Wait, why the hell did I just have to do that?' I mean, sure it's nice to get Blackreach all unlocked, and I was up to that stage in the MQ this time anyway....but seriously? Wut?

I can live with that. It's the 'sticks' part I don't like. When she finally didn't follow me after opening the portal to Soul Cairn, I spent a good few days running around doing other stuff. ANYTHING to be free of little Miss 'Doesn't get the point of being sneaky whatso-bloody-ever'.

Playing a Stealth character with her around is annoying, when she attacks everything pretty much at the first sign of movement...

I just finished the extension with the Dawnguard's faction, so i write here my personnal worse issues with it.

- Radiant secondary quests : like i said in an other thread, that system is really bad, pretty boring, it gives nothing good to the overall extension and game and also, just artificially enlarge the extension's length. I really think Beth should give up with that radiant stuff which is TERRIBLE.

- Killings with vamps in cities : i agree with you, i think too it's a terrible idea and i made a thread too about that issue, so on my game : Belethor, Arcadia, Adrianne, Heimskr, Alvor and his wife etc... are dead. I'm seriously pissed of with that issue, my game is completely destroyed right now. Also, this point litteraly forces you to play the extension.

- The dragon scroll : i agree with you about that point, i think it's awkward and a bad choice, can easily lead to confusion in the circumstances.

- Sometimes, too many elements in the narrative of quests...

I feel that the Vampire Lord could've been a lot better then what we had right now. I do agree that Dawnguard starts out better and overall is a better questline then what main game Skyrim offers, although the choices for both groups is very similar if not the same throughout.

so do you meant to tell me my game is broken because i have the dragon elderscroll already???an have not done the main quest with the actual elder scroll in it yet form the main game??. if so how do i fix it i do not want to start again. if its broken to the point i cant continue in the main quest il im demanding a refund as its essentially a faulty product.
can someone please let me know if im screwed already basically
thanks.

I had the main quest scroll in my inventory (I finished the main quest and never sold it to the Orc) prior to installing Dawnguard and I had no issues with the main quest.

I'm not 100% sure but I believe the issue comes up if you sell the orc the scroll before you get to that point in the quest. The fact that you even have to get it as a main quest item for Dawnguard is really stupid. I don't know why Beth couldn't have come up with a different dwemer dungeon and have you find a different scroll in that dungeon. You could've also expanded the lore on the Falmer as well in addition to having that scroll in the dungeon.

Which is broken? the core games Main quest? no. You can get the Dragon Scroll at anytime, you could do it straight out of Helgen if you can somehow survive the Falmer it won't have any negative consequences on the main quest. If you sold the scroll to Urag gro-Shub then you can buy it back for Dawnguards main quest.
So your saying already having the dragon scroll breaks Dawnguard's main quest because it doesn't effect the main game's questline.

you forgot to mention how anticlimactic the ending of the game was, and how it feels like theres still more to do xD

Anywho for the bugs look up the unofficial dawnguard patch. It's on steam, helps alot.

I've heard a few people having an issue actually for whatever reason. It doesn't make much sense and seems kind of rare, but it does kind of mess with things.

Like how some actions can possibly keep dawnguard from progressing by creating random bugs. Just weird stuff.

So i really hope Beth will fix these killings because it's so annoying.

The random Radiant Vampire attacks on the city is probably one of the easier fixes IMO. Just make people like Adrienne and other important people essential to everyone but the player. Beth could do this in 1.8 with eaise although I severely doubt that they will go that route.

5. Disagree. This form is no more a gimic than the Werewolf. I rather enjoy the third person perspective. It was one of Skyrim's selling points for me, 3rd person in general. The perk tree seems underwhelming at first, I admit, but given time to learn the game play (not to imply that you didn't mind you) the perk tree works out really well. The bulky form isn't so much a 'bug' as it is -at most- a poor design choice, and -at least- a mild inconvenience. But then again this game is full of those

4. Agreed. I really did (and still do) enjoy the story line. I feel it was well told, I like the characters involved and how they're developed, and I liked the flow through the new areas and the mini-stories the missions pull you through. But you are correct, there isn't much diversity between the two factions, and they lead you to believe in the beginning that you'll be choosing sides. That creation of a false assumption was either poorly conceived, poorly executed, or a by-product of time constraints and a detail over looked. Either way, that is one point about the whole story that I didn't enjoy.

3. Agreed, but to me its expected that there would be bug. I don't find any of these bugs distracting or detracting from my happy-fun-time. Not saying that they should exists or shouldn't be fixed...just that by-and-large they don't bother me.

1A. Disagree. I rather enjoy my random vamp attacks in the city. Call me "sadomasochistic" but I love the tension and sometimes the feeling of dread that they bring. Also I do enjoy the drama when that NPC your fighting to save catches their death blow and for a moment you scream "http://nooooooooooooooo.com/" at the screen....and then reload.

1. Quote: ...

It is my understanding that on the Vampire side (since I've finished it now twice) that you'll never pick up the Dragon Scroll. So far on my first play-through on the Dawnguard side, I haven't had to pick it up, and I'm as the part where I gotta get swarmed by the Moths. So unless sometime after that point I'm going to be forced to pick it up....then I'm gonna have to say that at no point do you ever use the Dragon Scroll. Only the Blood and Sun scrolls.

Thanks for the spoiler.

Yeah, seriously this thread is way to unstable to be in "General Discussion". Should've been in the spoiler section b/c that was a huge spoiler.

lol I would have assumed it'd be obvious.

But since that is there, it is kind of pointless to pretend to be making choices. They're mirrored, which is a disappointment.