Do vampires only raid places where the player character is present? I ask because I'm pretty sure I've read on here several times that to avoid quest-givers and other NPCs being killed just stay away from cities/towns whilst doing the Dawnguard questline, so I assumed they only attack places you're at.

I'm thinking they attack anywhere, even if the player isn't present. I say this because I started a new game and after following Hadvar back to Riverwood the first thing I did was clear out Bleak Falls Barrow for the golden claw and dragonstone. By this time it was about 10pm in-game so I found a bedroll and slept inside the Barrow until morning. When I woke up I went right back to Riverwood and tried to do the fake letter to Camilla quest but Faendal was nowhere to be found. He's disappeared from the game. Not in Riverwood, not in his house and no corpse anywhere.

So I went to Whiterun and killed a dragon and blabla, slept for another night and in the morning went back to Riverwood. Faendal is still nowhere to be found and now Sven is dead next to a cart. I wasn't in Riverwood at night at all, I never slept there at night I slept first in Bleak Falls and then the next night in Whiterun, so it was obviously attacked while I wasn't there.

Which is completely ridiculous. The way I play the game, I never fast travel, I roleplay, I don't like to rush, so if the Dawnguard quest begins at level 10, that means vampires are going to be attacking NPC's, including quest-giving ones until I'm level 10, then they're going to be attacking places all throughout the quest which will take me a while to do... Why the hell does this expansion destroy vanilla content? That makes no bloody sense to me whatsoever.

It's a huge problem, the fact that this DLC is not optional if you want the NPC's to live. It's completely ridiculous and probably the biggest factor as to why I don't have the DLC installed. As much as I like Serana and Ancient Falmer Armor, it's not worth losing all my non essential NPC's and even worse, shopkeepers.

Vampire attacks DO NOT happen when your not around. You the player must be in the same world cell for them to spawn.

Correct however the attack could be outside your line of sight, say you fast travel to an town and then run out of it, at the same time vampires spawn behind you.
Sometimes you run into fights in progress in the wilderness or even dead wolfs and similar for the same reason.

After I sided with the Volkihar and finished Dawnguard the Vampire raids stopped, they actually stopped when I sided with the Volkihar then again I didn't stop doing the DLC quests to do vanilla quests like most people do so I was never near any towns.

Don't they just atttack when you fast travel to a town, or in the middle of the night?

i am wondering if this isn't just a glitch
Vampire attacks as far i know only starts when the Dawnguard quest kicks in and that quest only start when you hit level 10; so makes me wonder who killed Sven ,
also Vampire attcjs only happen in the cell you are in when you trigger them, tho yes they can be out of line of sight, fast traveling is one of the triggers

They spawn when you first arrive, so if you check there is nothing when you arrive you are safe till you come out of a building. They can spawn when you come out of any door in the town as well. So each time you re-enter that area you have to check if anything else appeared. Once you get an attack, for that day you can roam around that town and nothing else will appear. Entering the cell triggers the attack, fast travelling has nothing to do with triggering the attacks. You walk to the town though, chances are the vampires would have got there before you and all you will find is dead bodies. The vampires spawn when you get near the town, they can attack and you never even entered the town. So fast travelling is going to get you there faster, and you will be near where most attacks occur.

It is kind funny that I never see vampire raid during dawnguard event.


However

So vampires only attack where the player is and they only start attacking at level 10. So how come after finishing Bleak Falls Barrow and running straight back to Riverwood at level 5, Faendal has disappeared? I've played Skyrim for over 180 hours and I've started a lot of new games during that time, a LOT. I'm one of those people who gets to level 10 and starts a new game because I don't like the way I did this or that, but that's for another thread. The point I'm making is that Faendal does not disappear, he never leaves Riverwood, which means he was dead when I got back there at level 5 and I couldn't find the body. In all my time playing Skyrim he and Sven have never, ever died, but my first game of Dawnguard and they're both dead under mysterious circumstances before I reach level 8.

Now, the fake letter quest is a tiny one, inconsequential, but that's not the [censored] point. It could just as easily have been Lucan who died, then I'd have the golden claw stuck in my inventory and one less shopkeeper in a game that already has very few shopkeepers. They may be little quests but they add to the atmosphere of the game. Like when you do the fake letter quest and you know that you've always got a friend in Sven/Faendal who you can just go to for help if you ever need it, and the rest of the time they're going about their lives being a bard or chopping wood. That's great. Now they're dead and I'm going to have to restart.

That's the crux of the problem. Skyrim merchants have finite money, you can't sell to one merchant like you could in Oblivion, there's no infinite money in Skyrim. Thus when a Vamp kills a shop keeper, it's a huge deal and gamebreaking too.

How Beth didn't test this idea out before releasing Dawnguard is crazy.

It's really not that bad.
It's actually a bit underwhelming.

I read somewhere that the attacks can start as early as level 8, but I've never heard of them starting at level 5. But yeah, everytime you fast travel to a city you have to make sure there are no vamp attacks there before leaving, otherwise you can miss them. It's not so bad in Whiterun as they usually spawn right in front of you, but in other cities such as Solitude or Riften they can spawn far enough for you not to notice, and you might innocently exit through the gates not noticing the carnage going on. Sometimes they don't even spawn immediately, but have a 10-second lag or so, which only adds to the danger. I can't imagine a vamp attack in Riverwood going unnoticed, though, although I've never seen exactly where the vamps spawn there.

Edit:

According to the UESP, "Upon arriving in Riverwood with Hadvar at the start of a new game, Faendal may be dead somewhere in town for no apparent reason. This means the quest A Lovely Letter cannot be started, and Faendal cannot be recruited as a follower."

This isn't a Dawnguard problem them, just bad luck.

And Sven? He was dead too once I returned to Riverwood, even though when I left (at level 5) he was alive playing music at the inn.

But as I understand it, the structure of the game cells means they can include areas that aren't visible to you at that time. I've never bought Dawnguard, but I have experienced a couple of very rare occasions when NPCs have died when I was nowhere near them. For example, I had NPCs die in Kolskeggr (sp?) mine when I wasn't in it. I know this was because I'd cleared it earlier, the miners went back to work and the forsworn repawned. Except I never entered the mine after clearing it. I just got courier's letters telling me NPCs were dead. I am geussing I entered an area that shared a cell with the mine and the game decided they died. I think this is what happens with vampire attacks where the player is not present when they occur.

I'm not sure what dies quicker? The NPC's or my faith in Bethesda. Listening to their fans? Yeah right..

I have to agree. I don't see how this feature got out of testing. Beth must've never tested this feature. Terrible, absolutely terrible.

I started a new character a couple of days ago, and picked up a modded in bow I had forgotten about...being an OP bow, it got me to level 18 before I hit the front door of bleak falls barrow. So, by the time I ran into 1st dragon I was a fully buffed up archer, with no other skills...

Off I doddle to High Hrothgar, trying to avoid all the big bad nasties that were way tougher than my guy, do the first part, then fast traveled to Ivarstead. From Whiterun to Ivarstead, after I did BFB, all the guards were telling me about the reforming of the Dawnguard, but I had no sight or sound of vamps.

Back at Ivarstead after coming down the mountain (using FT), I decided to go into the tavern and spend the night there...as soon as I stepped out of the tavern in the morning, I stepped into a full on high level vampire raid, which wasted nearly everyone in the streets, Lydia, my horse, and was about to take me down except that the game ctd'. I attempted to reconstruct the event with FRAPS on to record it, but when I tried it was simply a peaceful morning in Ivarstead.

Now, my previous experience with DG was with a high level character who had done pretty much everything in the vanilla game, and was being saved to try the dlc...I only had a couple of attacks on towns in that game, and they were at Whiterun, and one at Riften, and nothing major.

I think the problem with DG is that either the trigger of vamp raids kick in too early, or are simply too lethal for the variation of character builds possible around those first 10 to 20 character levels. Once they start, you simply have to deal with the dlc, regardless of how you want to progress your game. For example, you can put off the civil war questline, you can put off the dragon questline, or avoid some of the more damaging aspects of it particularly seeing that dragon attacks on the smaller towns don't tend to kill off fairly critical npc's, and are fairly rare or uncommon. But a high level vamp attack on a town can do some pretty serious damage, and a few of them can really lower the resident count. So you either have to become a vamp, or become a vamp hunter, end of story....or live in the forests like some itinerant tramp.

That's my biggest problem with Dawnguard besides the Dragon Scroll. The fact that you are pretty much forced to play Dawnguard and it's absolutely ridiculous. I never was forced to play Shivering Isles, Knights Of the Nine, The Pitt in Fallout 3, Point Lookout, Mothership Zeta, etc but Dawnguard no I have to play it otherwise I'll eventually run out of NPC's including shopkeepers.

Would be nice if the vampires stopped attacking somebody that was submitting (Sometimes they do while most of the time they just kill the NPC). That way we could have the vampire attacks and not lose NPC's.

The simple solution is to just make NPC's (except Guards) run away and for them just to target the guards and player only. NPC's running away is scripted into the game. Look at the wizard challenger radiant quest. NPCS run way and do not get involved, guards only get involved and help if you decline to fight. That is the sort of thing we are asking for. The way it is now is just rushed and broken.

I've found Faendal dead twice during my time playing Skyrim. Once i found him dead just as i entered Riverwood at level 1, just after exiting Helgen, so i know for a fact vampires weren't involved. As is the Beth tradition, npcs sometimes just randomly glitch or die.

Yes.

Faendal, and other NPCs, have been dying in Riverwood since the game came out. I just don't think that town is safe. I never saw any evidence of an attack in a town that I had not been out in at night when Dawngaurd was active. I don't know when the game considers night to be, but if you were in Riverwood at say 8 PM, then left the town, you could have triggered the Vampire attack, but missed out on all the fun as you left the cell.

I never understood vampire's launching a full force assault on the gates of a major city, aren't they supposed to be stealthy or something?

Bit of an update from my earlier post...that character of mine is now level 24, and apart from that crashed raid at Ivarstead, I haven't had one vamp raid, not one random vamp encounter, not one thing to do with vampires, except for every guard in Skyrim bleating to me about the vampire menace and wanting to join the Dawnguard...even what's his name the next to useless boss of the whiterun guards. In my current game, the DG would have more members than the Imperial Legion.

In fact, I've only had three dragon fights as well, and two of those were scripted...and I've only seen one other dragon.

I would also say that this game's Skyrim is so peacefull it's almost comatose...and it's not as if I've been skill grinding.