I like your comment involving attacks arent a bug but attacks are bugged. Nice comment. id give u two thumbs up if i could. Anyways, i was just saying that it really doesnt sound like a bug. Did you know it was gonna be bugged? Dont say that you didnt expect that sort of bug because i ex[ected bugs and they werent to bad. so yeah not too sure what you mean there.

What I mean is I find it hard to believe Bethesda designed the vampire attacks in such a way as to intentionally kill many of the limited number of named NPCs unless the player character devotes all their attention to the DLC immediately and sometimes even when they do. Unless that was how the design was intended to be implemented, it is bugged.

As a reminder, I do not own Dawnguard and have never played it. I look forward to buying it when the price comes down, as is my custom with all games. That said, if when I install it my characters, new and old, must constantly be redirecting all their resources in an effort to save NPCs with such poor AI as to be essentially suicidal, I will quickly install a mod to correct the problem.

What I do not understand is the desire by some on this board to bend over backwards in an attempt to construe any flaw in the game or its design as being merely the misunderstandings or poor skills of amateur players. If you have any respect for Bethesda and their work you won't gloss over things that are detrimental to the gaming experience. Again, it is not a slight against the developer to point out an area needing attention, and by pretending those areas don't exist you are not only removing the, admittedly small, chance that it will be addressed with a patch, but more importantly, you are guaranteeing they will not even take it into consideration when developing their next game. Be respectful, but be honest.

Also I'd like to say that if we let PC mods fix every broken thing for Skyrim, then X-BOX and PS3 people are going to be forgotten about.

Attack mechanism itself works correctly, but attacks are bugged as Bethesda apparently never tested them with high level characters. If you have like post 50 character, vampires have been scaled so high compared to town npcs that they can kill one town npc in few seconds. If you run from other side of town to the gate vampires have plenty of time to kill several npcs while you are still running. And I cannot be babysitting entire town all the time.

I remember someone suggesting in another thread -"Guard with Staff" - that chucking a lot of high level weapons about town for NPCs to pick up could forearm them against vampire attacks.

I'm on PS3, so obviously cannot comment on the efficacy of this. Has anyone else tried it?

If it works, and some PS3 release date were announced; I think I'd immediately empty the Honeyside storage chest and dump everything sharp and shiny into the marketplace - then buy the DLC. If it doesn't work I'd rather just hang onto my loot.

I don't think that works. You need to reverse pickpocket.

My level 44 character, the guards destroy even Master Vampires before it can even wound a guard. Try SkyRe, that greatly powers up city guards, makes them a more Oblivion-like killing machines.

Yeah and you'd have to spend time in a town to get weapons strong and ready to compensate. So while making the weapons able to hold of vampires vampires may attack xD

Unless you're somewhere you don't care about using the smith

Why wouldn't Beth add a realistic approach like death? Seems perfectly fine to me....I could swear I've heard the "NPC's don't die!" argument a millions times. Then when they do...

then why can't bethesda add a realistic approach like, birth? And aging?

People can come in and replace shop keepers if shop keepers can die. Immortal children should be good for something.

You failed to protect your shopkeepers you deserve to have to travel to the next town to buy and sell. Comes back to why bother defending in the first place if there are no consequences. They want you to get involved in the town attacks.

And the weapons you give your NPC's do not have to be that powerful, a Vampire Lord can easily have an almost unlimited amount of Dawnguard weapons to reverse pickpocket onto NPC's, although I never trusted any with a crossbow. My Dawnguard character was quite disgusted with the lack of weapons around the fort (she never used them herself), she used mainly silver swords for everyone (she had a lot of them) which could not be improved. They seemed just as effective against vampires as the improved Dawnguard weapons. The third character has the pickpocketing prowess of an elephant with the hiccups, and no fancy weapons to hand out anyway. But anything is better than a knife or just bare hands. Not having any attacks yet he has not had to worry about it, but he will not be improving his pickpocketing skills just to foil a few vampires. So he will have to try something different. Chickening out altogether and avoiding towns is probably what he will end up doing, but he will have a go at defending just to see how it works out.

who said anything about me failing?

I'm talking about other people, not myself

Yea, I wish I could've seen that fight. I can't get that many to come after me when I use the NPCs for a little stress relief.

Meh, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:People#Whiterun_People, though I'd imagine most of the deaths were generic guards.

I had the same problem, the blacksmith in Whiterun died as a result I can no longer use that shop as it is permanently closed.

Can I ask something how hard are the vampires that attack the town. Cause Beth fixing the vampires attcking towns seems unlikely but the one they do could they atleast lower the vampires level to that of the towns folk NPCs. Making them easier and less chance of NPCs dieing.

If they did that there would be no reason for the attacks to even happen since the NPCs for the most part are all level 1-10.

I know but seen as poeple are calling attacks on the towns a problem I thought that lowering the level might help keep NPCs alive, they could balance it out with more than 4-5 I think is the number of vampires that attack town to 10-15 although that might cause lag cause of alot of NPCs in one place at a time.

I'm surprised anybody bought Dawnguard seeing as how the main game is a bug filled mess.... gamers never learn. Thus the BS continues. Even if your game performed alright, there should still be principles.

I just experienced the vampire attack for the first time and I have had the dlc since it first came out. In my opinion its fine as long as the whole town isn't killed I could always just go sell stuff to someone else sure I can see the inconvenience in having to fast travel to another town and back but like I said in my opinion im fine with it as long as the whole town is not empty.

Sorry, but that's the most absurd solution I've ever read. So that's the best you can think in order not to have massacres in towns? Just stop visiting them until you beat the DLC?

I never thought Bethesda defenders would be SO blind...

We aren't blind, we are just offering solutions...such as mine and several others which was to fast travel to the stables (if ft is your thing) and then do a quick sweep around the inside gate area...that tends to give you the jump on the vamps, or at least be in the right place at the right time, more or less. That's an 'in-game' solution.

The other option is a 'gameplay' solution, similar to this: Last session I was riding from rorikstead to whiterun, doing my usual 'keep the roads clear' patrol, and crossed a crest and ran into a huge melee...3 highish level vamps and their conjurations, Ri-saad and his caravan, Maiq (cowering) and two followers of Stendarr and a mercenary. Between all of them, and me and Serana, at the end the only survivors were me, Serana, my horse, Maiq and Ri-saad. As much as it was an excellent melee that made me all warm and fuzzy, I didn't want to lose Ri-saad's people, so sadly I had to reload and miss out on it...that's 'gameplay', where I made a choice to correct a bad situation so that I could enjoy the game a bit longer.

Vampire attack? Your a Dawnguard?
I never stay too long in city, and Dawnguard attack me only during my travels(for now), their not a big problem.

Vampire attacks don't occur if you side with the vampires?

The difficulty of the attacks is scaled to your level, where the shopkeepers and NPC's in towns are not.

So lets say you're lvl 50. The vampires are going to be around your level in power, where the shop keeper may be lvl 5.

This creates a situation where an idiot shop keeper with 150 health runs in with his fist trying to kill the vampire with well over 1000 HP and with higher damage potential


They do, I don't quite understand what the guy was trying to say. But they definitely do occur, the vampries attacking don't associate with the Volkihar Court it seems. But because of that I don't understand why beating the quest line is supposed to keep the attacks from occuring.

But maybe he was talking about the assassin vampire that roams around the cities, that I think only occurs if you're dawnguard. Just like how dawnguard attacks only happen randomly if you're a vampire.
I'm sure that when playing dawnguard the vampires will randomly spawn near you to attack.

At least on my copy, vampire attacks occur regardless attacking the town, but the assassin doesn't show



The attacks aren't very bad typically unless you're unlucky enough to be bugged with the larger scale vampire attacks (bugs do happen and even the so called Bethesda defenders can't deny that)

They can be bad if at a high level and in a larger area like winterhold where you wouldn't even know the very high level vampires are massacring the townsfolk.

If you so happen to be bugged with the worse vampire attacks, you may also run into the bug where the vampire attacks do not end at the end of the DGMQ.

If that happens you'r SoL especially on a console cause it will never end and that idea of staying away from towns would just become most of your game experience throughout the main quests and everything.

Majority of players should be fine unless something I typed ends up being their situation.