I find the vampires are serious business, even with me level 57 character.
That may be because he's a sneaky thief. And the vampires tend to always spot him first and run straight towards him. They're the only type of enemy who kills him, frequently.

How could he defeat them, without using magic? I know they are vulnerable to fire, but I don't want to use spells (for the sake of roleplaying). The bow is pretty useless at close range, and although swords do work somewhat, my char doesn't have a very high one-handed skill nor does he intend to level that up (for the sake of roleplaying)

Serana follows me, but she never helps much. I think her drain life spells hardly accomplishes anything, except a few reddish bubbles on the screen.

Please help?

Does Enchanting count? Vampires are vulnerable to Turn Undead, so if you had a bow/sword enchanted with that, you could easily crowd control them

I chop off their heads with my giant battle axe.

I can only turn undead up to level 9 or so (not concentrating on the arcane arts ...) so I am not sure it would help?

My problem is, I play dawnguard with a friend of mine. She likes vampires, so I promised I wouldn't do DG quests without her, so she could follow the whole dawnguard plot.

I play Skyrim a lot more often than she comes for a visit. So I have DG installed but I rarely play DG quests. I have only done the first 2 quests (recently met Serana's mother). I don't want to/can't rush DG, and I don't want to rebuild my char either.

What skill do I need to up/perk (?!) in order to turn undead higher than level 9?

The vampires do take an awful lot of time

Oh and I'm on PC, so if there is a mod that could help, I'll gladly use it. I just don't want to spend hundreds of hours fighting boring vampires when I can avoid it.

What's your primary weapon, and do you use shouts? Couple of things that I found worked well when I had Vampires terrorizing towns:
Marcurio. He can be the mage you're not and range them down with shock and fire spells. His AI is excellent and he uses Fire on mobs that are weak to it. He also has a high Sneak skill and makes a great partner for a sneaky character. He will also never get in the way of your ranged attacks.
If you are sneaky you could use the Aura Whisper shout, sneak and do sniping attacks with a bow. Their sneak detection is very good, but it's still possible to out-sneak them. Add a paralysis poison to your bow and you are home free. Make sure you have Muffle in some way. If you have a follower you need to give them a pair of boots with a Muffle enchantment so they won't give away your position when you're sneaking. I also use Muffle enchanted boots on myself, but you can get the effect with perks in the Sneak tree, if you don't want to enchant anything (enchanting a follower's boots is the only way to give them 100% Muffle on one item, though). Lightweight gear and perks/Steed Stone that make your gear weightless will also help you to avoid the Vampires detecting you.

Some things I had to have ready when Vampires were attacking towns, were my fire enchanted weapon already poisoned with a paralysis poison and the Slow Time shout so I could get to the Vampires and paralyze them before they killed anyone.
Don't let them surprise you. If you are a sneaky character you should always know who's around before they know about you. Aura Whisper works for me, and it's not straight magic if you are avoiding spells.

Edit: Restoration is what you need to get higher Turn Undead spells, but Enchanting would be what you'd need to put the effect on a bow. In my experience, at high levels the Turn Undead enchantments you can apply will never be high enough to work on the Vampires. It's only useful at lower levels.

My go to method for vamps is invisibility pots and then assassinations or a disappearing act. If im high up I'll shout them off the edge if i can. If i run out of invis pots or just don't feel like waiting for them to lose interest I turn to my paralyzed bow and poisons.

crossbows

Your primary weapon is your NPC's, give them some decent vampire killing weapons and some health potions and they will do a good job of keeping the weaker vampires busy, probably even kill them. The guards and NPC's managed just fine with some attacks, and both my characters were high level.

A sneaky character should have no trouble reverse pickpocketing stuff on NPC's. Both my characters were archers, both usually used a normal ebony (Aussie) or daedric (Braggen) bow, no enchanted weapons, no poisons, no shouts, no spells they took the vampires out before they got close. If they lost too much health they used a potion, but being such chickens they usually lost no health, it was keeping the NPC's alive that was the challenge. You had to get rid of the vampires quickly.

..hard to hit with. They need some distraction and this is where your followers come in. Otherwise.. enjoy blowing though hundreds of bolts cause NPCs don't stay still.

Yes if you can get rid of them quickly ("Traveler") it's not that bad. I can do it with my bow.

But if several vampires spawn (ie. Volkihar Vampire) it's not that easy, not even with my high level archer. It's too dangerous to hit innocent NPCs in the brawl (been there, done that, reloaded). Taking good aim takes time.

I can fight the vampires (it just takes too long), but I don't enjoy it, it gets old very fast, and I don't want to spend like 1/5 of the game protecting townspeople from Vampires. That's not what Skyrim is about.

The vampire attacks really svck because they happen way too often. I get 1-2 per hour of play. It turns the game into vampire slaying.
Is there a mod that reduces the frequency??

Reverse pickpocket? I read about that a lot, but none of the NPCs or followers I tried it on ever actually used the weapons or health potions I gave them :/

I have Serana as a follower, and I think she svcks. She never kills enemies, her drain life spell hardly does any damage. I would choose a different follower (a melee type) but I don't dare to dismiss her because I read that sometimes you can't take her back, which makes it impossible to complete Dawnguard. (?!)

The crossbows .. I admit I can't handle them, and my bow does a lot more damage anyway.

Poison won't work. I have poisons that deal some hundred HPs worth of damage, but the vampires are immune to poisons. I use up about 20 health potions and 1 cure disease potion (because I always contract that stupid vampire disease) in a vampire fight and I get a fight ever 30-60 mins.

Finally set Etienne's photo as my avatar. Poor guy, keeps dying all the time from vampire attacks lol

Is it true that silver weapons are more effective against vampires? How much damage would they do?
Or can anyone recommend a good mod that turns down the frequency of their attacks?

Can fix that bug via the console. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Serana

Cold steel, they dont like it up em.......................

Does your roleplay allow the bow to be enchanted? How about using potions? I play as a dawnguard character and came up with a way to take them out quickly. I use fire and shock enchanted bow and use fortify marksman potion when there are other NPC's around. I also use resist shock, resist fire, resist frost, and resist magic potions or apparels. I have the archery perk that allows you to move quickly with the bow drawn. I drink my potions, draw the bow, run at them and fire the bow at point blank range. When you are trying to protect NPC's, it's got to be a one or two hit kill. Carry lots of cure disease potions. I get infected every other fight.

If vamps are killing your character regularly it is probably because of their magic. You need magic resist, not just elemental. Elemental resist will not protect from drain life spells. If you are premitted to use enchanting, I would enchant some magic resist items. Also consider doing the Mara quest and taking some perks in the alteration tree. I see lots of people focus on protection from physical damage (smithing, high level armor, etc.) without bothering to protect themselves from magic.

Oh, the best way:

use Auriel's Bow and Sunhallowed Arrows best thing to kill vampire

Yeah, but you have to complete all but the last of the Dawnguard main quests before you get it. There's a lot of vampires between there and where the OP is at.

"Do you know what happens when you shoot a vampire with a fire ball?"

The same thing that happens to everything else...

^This!
Another thing you can do to get Magic Resist is take the Lord's Stone. If you do the Mara quest, take the Lord's Stone and get the 3 Alteration perks you have 70% Magic Resist without needing to enchant anything - although you'd need to get your Alteration to level 70 to take all 3 of those perks.

OP, I don't know of any mods, but I'm sure there would be some. Silver weapons cannot be improved through Smithing, so I find their extra damage pointless, and I think they are more a weapon against werewolves, but not sure. The Dawnguard axes and war hammers have extra damage against Vampires as well, but not sure about the crossbows.

Edit: Silver Swords are supposed to be better against undead, and plain crossbows don't have the same effect against Vampires that Dawnguard axes and war hammers do according to their tooltips.

Thanks, I guess you guys are right, I need to up my magic resistance. I will try that route! For some reason I didn't put enough emphasis on my char's protection. Maybe because he's an archer. He isn't used to taking damage

Thanks a lot for your thoughts! One or two hit kills, hmmm, my archery level is 100 and I'm far from that with the vampires. They're just too damn strong.

Carry Hawk Feathers instead. Cure disease potion weighs .5; Hawk Feathers weigh .1

Find a silver weapon and enchant it with +fire damage.


Any fire related spells, enchants and shouts work well against vampires.

I've played Skyrim for about 2 hours today. I went to Morthal to do the Movarth Piquine quest. I was attacked by the Vampire Traveler 3 times - during one and the same night! I had to enter several buildings to advance the quest, and every other time, tadaa, Traveler walks the road. Kinda ironic, knowing that Morthal DOES have a little vampire problem, don't you think?

However - although your tips did help and I could finish him off quicker than I used to, I'm really fed up now. I'll go browse the Nexus to find some mod that fixes this "feature". I'd call it a bug. I like the attacks, but not ALL the freaking time.

Do they happen so often for you guys as well? Three times during one night, same town?

I've finished Dawnguard and now only get the Dawnguard attacking me (and ultimately others) in towns. I only saw the Traveler once. One way to stop them spawning in towns is just to never visit a town at night until after you finish the questline. And you need to be careful where and when you arrive when fast traveling. You may just need to get your friend to come over for long enough to finish the questline. Explain to her that it's a matter of life and death.