Okay so I followed the advice of a few of the posters here, entering cities in the daytime.

Well when I got to Windhelm it was night, so I waited a few hours, went inside and dead bodies laying around: Arivanya, Ulundil, Idesa Sadri, 1 death hound, 1 windhelm guard, 1 master vampire found so far (there might be more corpses)

This was my first time visiting Windhelm on this level 10 character. The dead bodies were laying around behind the inn, so it was close enough for me to hear the combat if there was any and see the hostiles on my compass.

So what am I doing wrong? I'd prefer to get into Windhelm without my NPCs being wiped out. Any advice?

Using the Wait function?

Was it the first time you've entered Windhelm since installing Dawnguard?

As for vampire attacks, they can happen at any time - there's different types though: 1) The traveler, and 2) the levelled vampire (who may or may not have thralls).

Yep stood outside the gates and waited til noon.



First time on any character yep.

Just retried this a bunch of times from earlier saves. No matter what I do there's always a random attack in Windhelm. Maybe it's scripted? Btw when I say random, sometimes it's a master vampire + thralls, sometimes dogs etc.

bethesda, you have turned skyrim into a vampire apocalypse. good job -.-

I mean the actual "wait x hours" interface... peeps say fast travel can up the chances of an attack, I suspect the game treats "wait" the same way.
While the timer counts down and you're locked in the UI stuff is happening around you (albeit at a much higher speed) that's the point when the vamps slipped in I bet.

Yes, but he waited outside Windhelm, not inside.

I don't think anyone's positive about whether the attacks happen until you actually enter an area (which seems to be the case with dragon attacks). The fact that the dead bodies were there upon entering Windhelm the first time since installing Dawnguard seems rather troublesome.

I think will have to wait for it to be available on creation kit before we can properly work out the mechanics.

True, but fast travel dumps you outside a city too so I reckon if FT does increase chances of attack then you just have to be in the cell/zone/area/whatever for attacks to happen... it's not good tbh, I mean the act of simply happening to walk past a city on your way elsewhere could trigger an attack inside the city?
How can we possibly know that's happening if we are outside?

Troublesome is putting it lightly, it's utterly crazy imo.

That said, we still really don't know enough about how this "feature" works... as Creeper said, we need the pc kids and their skills to take the thing apart and find out.
That's another reason the Microsoft exclusivity deal svcks for everybody.

svcks for you. As it's turned out, if Bethesda don't address this everybody else knows what they're letting themselves in for. If they do, we won't be subjected to it.
God bless Microsoft bribes.

svcks for everybody because the first big trumpeted dlc for Skyrim is, tbh, a bit of a disaster and you "won't be subjected to it", ie: you won't play it... that svcks no?

Wouldn't you rather be playing Skyrim's first "big" dlc instead of avoiding it because it's full of issues?

If PC players had gotten it at the same time, their ability to look inside the games guts may have produced workarounds and reasons for issues, they could have at least shed some light on the "rules" of the mechanics for players on all platforms... Nevermind the fact that pc/ps3 players who still intend to purchase still have to wait a month to even play (and given how badly ps3 users have been stung by Skyrim in general, I shudder to think what calamity may befall them when they install DG).

While it does svck most for xbox users atm... it still svcks rather a lot for everyone else too... at moments like this, inter-platform nose thumbing helps nobody, hm?

Community ftw... *sigh*

I wasn't meaning to nose-thumb - I was being flippant.

Really, this situation should have had Bethesda very anxious to deliver top-notch DLC - two out of three platforms have to wait and in the meantime they're seeing what everyone is saying and can watch playthroughs on youtube. They're not buying it on day 1 out of excitement without knowing what it's really like - they may buy on day 1 of their release, but they've had plenty of time to find out what they want about it. This should in theory make Bethesda try very hard to deliver a totally top-notch product that has PS3 and PC champing at the bit to get their hands on it after hearing the X-boxers rave about it. Instead they've managed to unleash a huge issue which you observe is on a platform where the users can't even see what exactly is happening. And it's not helping Bethesda haven't even said anything about it yet. Even if they fix it soon, they've created a sort of 'Dawnguard cloud' on the net.

I would recommend when you enter any town wait before doing anything to see if it is safe. For Windhelm wait by the Candlehearth Hall to see if anything is following. Every time you come out a door, rush for that main entrance, if after a short while nothing happens it should hopefully be safe. Just remember to check.

Some of my attacks were in the daytime and the fast travel thing never helped either.

This, unfortunately is not going to work. My first time entering Windhelm (level 15) I heard some screaming and ran off towards the market. I didn't find anything there, but later, as I walked up to the palace, I found a dead vamp between the Palace and Candle Hearth Hall. In other words, even if I had run in the right direction, there was an entire building between me and where the attack was taking place.

Now imagine Silda the Unseen had died in that attack, since that area is where she normally hangs out.

1) I would have lost a pickpocket trainer and been forced to join the Thieves Guild.
2) I would have lost Windhelm's only begger and so lost access to the Gift of Charity there.
3) The "Blood on the Ice" quest would probably be broken and unfinishable.

My solution is a compromise between those who want all their quest givers/service providers to die and those who don't:

Make all quest givers/service providers essential until the player himself marks them as non-essential. Marking them as non-essential can be done by the addition of a dialogue option such as "Are you worried those vampires might attack here next?" By choosing this option, it would change the npc from essential to non-essential. With this option, those who want the "realism" of the threat posed by vampires would still be able to have killable npcs by simply selecting this dialogue option with each of them. Those who do not want their service providers/quest givers killed would also be happy becaue the npc could no longer die.

That's a brilliant idea.....I wonder how hard that'd be to program in????

I doubt the programming would be difficult at all. What would be difficult would be coming up with the voice actors needed to give a response (which everyone would expect). That would be time consuming and expensive.

Edit: On second thought, I suppose the NPC could just respond with a grunt. One generic male grunt, one generic female grunt and your done.

Very true.

That lack of any word from the powers that be concerns me the most, combined with the general consensus that the dlc actually getting any sort of fix or patch will be nothing short of a miracle, makes me suspect that Dawnguard will simply be left to flounder as the "failed" dlc and Beth will move on to the next one... hopefully with lessons learned.

I mean, this thing even had a beta (unusual for dlc, particularly on consoles) which seems to have achieved precisely nothing...

I do hope of course I'm utterly wrong and a patch full of fixes and tweaks is being assembled as we speak... but I ain't holding my breath, patches for dlc are by all accounts rarer than unicorn spit.
Besides, DG has other issues, things that will never be changed... ill concieved features like breaking vampire feeding cycles etc which are not bugs.

Of course... I'm still playing it anyway lol.

Your other comments are belied by this closer. I love the add-on. I will continue to play it. I don't want to uninstall it. I will find some way around this problem. But this better not go into a GOTY edition unless this problem is fixed, because people who purchase such a version will not get to experience all there is to do in Skyrim because their quest givers will all be dead.

Exactly, not least because I coughed up twenty smackers in good faith.
I'll squeeze every drop of content there is to be had out of the thing fo sho yo.

Very good point about the goty edition... in fact that little wrinkle may actually be enough of a threat to sales to compel Beth to act.