I've been toying with the idea of becoming a vampire for some time, not normally being the sort to enjoy such things.

Before I do that, I'd like input from experienced DG players.

Question: Is being a DG vampire honestly better than being a Vanilla vampire?

I've read the UESP Wiki page on Vampirism, and I can see the benefits of being a DG vampire, stats-wise and all. It's just all the complaints about town attacks, bugs galore, and issues with the VL form have made me leery of installing the DLC.

So it is really worth all the hassle, or should I just try out a vanilla vampire?

I played a vanilla vampire for 30 levels. It was good fun but it is nothing compared to the DG vampire Lord. Being a VL is one of the best things you can do in Skyrim, period. I'm not even going to spoil it for you by telling you what you should do as a VL, but when you do it you will see how awesomely well realised the form is.

I lost my lvl 30 vampire transfering saves between my HDD and the Xbox cloud, so I rerolled the character. I'm lvl 28 now, and he's been a stage 4 vampire since lvl 2. There are big changes to vampirism from vanilla that make it a lot more viable, but a little less tactical. NPC hostility is gone for stage 4 vampires so you don't have to feed unless you want regen and normal stats in the daytime. That makes it a lot less of a hassle.

Try a vanilla vampire if you think it might help, but it is only vampire lite compared to a DG vampire.

Okay, thanks for the advice, Joe.

I agree what Joe said 100%, i decided to become a vampire as of now, and I will be making a new charactor after i finnish with the tut, so I can have a non Vamp char and one to do al the main quests.

Cheers.

Not sure if a DG Vampire is any different than a regular vampire, other than maybe some differences in the Clan Powers. You can always load up a save, fork it, become a Vampire and see how you like it. If not, load the earlier save and play on.

As to the town attacks, those are easily manageable.

1. Never travel in or to a town or settlement at night. Your presence in the cell at night triggers the attacks so they won't happen if you are not out in the city at night.

2. If you need to Fast Travel to a town or settlement, then save first just in case you arrive after dark, then you can reload, and wait a bit before you travel.

3. If you want to have the town attacks, but minimize the death to NPCs you might need, then do this:

Be in the city, in an interior cell. Wait until 6PM, then wait again until 8 PM, then wait again until 10 PM. This will trigger the scripts that have the NPCs commute from work to home. You go out at 10 to play with the vampires. Once the NPCs are in their beds, then mostly what you have in the towns are generic guards so the attacks won't kill anyone you need.

That's extremely helpful info, CCNA. Thanks!

Vanilla vampire had too many drawbacks and not enough perks really. And you were stuck with only feeding on people who were sleeping.

It was very much possible to play, just incredibly inconvenient.

Dawnguard made the vampires more convenient pretty much lol

Although the drain spell still is horrible