Hello everyone,

I’ve put a lot of hours into Skyrim, just over 530 with my main character, Dawngaurd has taken over 50 of those hours. I think it is an outstanding dlc that improves on an already astonishing game. However, since downloading Dawnguard my Skyrim adventuring has been met with extreme frustration. The problems I’ve encountered are as follows:

• Extreme lag. Mainly in the Vampire Lord form and werewolf. The lag ultimately resulted in a crash.

• Irregular behaviour on load screens, i.e. crashing and long waiting times.

• Cannot re-enter the Soul Cairn after finishing the main quest. Tried it has a vampire, werewolf and a burly Nord and I just started to sizzle like a piece of bacon.

• The option “Come with me” for Serena is no longer available. I can only be turned into a vampire or have some blood arrows. I think this could be related to the above fault because Serena was with me when I couldn’t re-enter the Soul Cairn. I told her to bugger off and she said something about meeting me at a cave!? Anyhoo, when I got back to castle Dawnguard there was only the aforementioned options… no “Come with me”.

• Problem with the shield bashing perk. Started with not working at all and then when it did work it was delayed by around 3 seconds. Furthermore, it led to an interesting effect whereby no one could go near me without being shield bashed. I could be standing perfectly still and someone, whether friend or foe, would get knocked on their backside. I could also just run or walk into people and animals without my shield raised and they’d get knocked down. Only way to stop it was to unequip the shield. This could be related to the Dawnguard Rune Shield only.

• Another interesting fault is the ability to absorb a dragon soul with one hit. It happened with a Legendary Dragon, difficulty on master and I had the Dawnguard Rune Axe equipped. The dragon flew away while it started to burn up, I absorbed it’s soul and then watched a skeleton dragon fly around and attack some nearby Draugr.

One more thing. I’d like to thank Lord Harkon for making me into Vampire Lord. I truly feel like a Lion among sheep… especially when I’m floating through a dungeon stalking a lowly group of bandits only to reach an impasse because I’m too f’in big to fit through the door! I can float, fly and transform into a flock of bats but crouching or bobbing my head is just too difficult.

Has anyone else had any similar problems?

Cheers

Yeah there are quite a bit of frame drops. And not fitting through the door makes sense i don't know why is this a bad thing.

Because you frequently have to transform back and forth from your human to vampire lord forms, forcing you to have to watch the same animation over and over and breaking flow.

The design decision to make werewolves and vampire lords too big to fit through many of the pathways you'll find in game is positively batty.

Yeah, being to big to fit through nearly every door you come across is borderline [censored]. Especially so considering how clunky and unresponsive the transformation sequence can be!

Werewolf transformation isn't laggy for me except sound delay, vampire lord was laggy during transforming into/back out of one, and as for laggy areas I spend over a couple hours under the castle on the way to the Soul Cairn portal. Might of been the constant breaking out animation of all those gargoyles though.

I see what you did there.