So I've heard Dawnguard is only going to be for high level characters, this would usually be great news for me however just a month or so before it's release my save game has become unplayable. This means I've had to delete my level 53 character and will have to start again from scratch, I don't look forward to grinding levels just to be able to enjoy the DLC. What's most irritating is that I had amassed a huge sum of gold on my old save with which I was going to spend on training all my remaining skills up to 100 maxing out my skills. I'm really not looking forward to starting all over again, I just hope this time my save won't become unplayable when I reach the 300 hour mark again.

Has anyone managed to play for well over 300 hours and not experience game breaking lockups ? I should note that the save that ended up unplayable was created on 12/11/11, just a day after the release, do the new patches provide more stable games that don't bloat so easily ?

It svcks starting over but realistically that's what you would've done anyways. Sounds like you did just about everything.

According to gamespy you will only have to be level 10 to access the dlc.

I still refuse to give my high level player up. I don't care how unplayable it is.

I've made a whole new character and have already started leveling him up in preparation. And at 300 hours? Sorry the file got corrupted on ya, but starting a new character might be a bit more fun. At least for me it is.

I have played for well over 300 hours and have maxed out all my players skills. I have not experienced any problems beyond minor glitches and occasional game crashes

I had done a hell of a lot of stuff in that save. I'd really taken my time and enjoyed it, amassed a huge amount of unique items as well. It was a huge blow to lose it, I wish I hadn't deleted it now but I thought it best to just start again and get it over with.

How occasional are we talking though ?

Really ? That's a bit more comforting.

I'm using a lvl 58 character with 145ish hours on it. I'm really excited that it's for high level characters. I dominate everything even on Master since I have full enchanted Daedric that gives me 972 armor and a Daedric Greatsword with 330 damage.

As far as your problem though, can you load an older save? I'm sure losing a few hours is better than losing the whole character.

i deleted all my characters last week one at 43 the other at 30 something. been working on 2 new ones now for dawnguard.

No I only had the one save which I just kept overwriting. I've deleted it now anyway. Really they should have a warning in the manual about overwriting the one save all the time, I had no idea about the risks involved until I visited these forums.

My 200 hour plus character was level 56 or so when I started over because of the bug where NPCs weren't spawning and bugged quests. So when I registered for the beta I could only enter my current characters play time which is just over 100 hours. Over 140 now.

It is why I stopped playing Skyrim for a month because they pulled that Kinect bs instead of launching legit dlc. I was okay starting over because new dlc would go great with a new character so I had no problem doing so but once it was announced it was Kinect and we weren't getting DLC I just stopped playing Skyrim for awhile. Two reasons, Didn't want to burn through everything and secondly Kinect was just a lame trick.

I have two characters with over 300 hours devoted to them, one more than double that where I have almost every skill at 100, and all the quest lines completed, either one still plays fine. Although if I want to change while playing I might as well go make a cup of coffee and lunch while waiting. I usually just load one and stick with that one rather than change while playing. Of course there were glitches along the way with both, and I occasionally had to go back to an earlier save to get that far but my first character missed no quests and survived to fight another day. My second I was not so persistent and seem likely to miss a few small insignificant quests, unless the game somehow resets the problem after a while. I am not going back to fix anything this time. I started my second character to get the Oblivion Walker achievement and have already done that, now I am just doing the alternate for some of the things, to see what I missed out on the first time.

Why would you need to be a high level character to participate in Dawnguard? They never set levels on joining any other faction.

You don't have to have your character that leveled up dude. It's the same crap with Morrowind to Bloodmoon. They said the same thing at it was easy for me.

I think with a couple of levels and your good to go. Also if you play on Adept. Because those who would play it on Master would be probably hard.

I feel for you man losing a character with over 300 hours play that honestly svcks.

i had a character with around 230 hours and i started experiencing glitches and bugs and can honestly say starting a new character was the best thing i ever did as i got to go back and work out minor faults i had in my character so on a bright side at least you'll have something to do instead of dominating the whole of skyrim.

Why even play the expansion if there's nothing left in the vanilla game for you? I mean...what would the point be in buying a little newness for a game you seem to not want to play again?

If it was worth it to you to play on an 'old' character, it should be worth it to play the game again period.

I'd definitely try loading an earlier save if at all possible, having that much time invested in a character and then not being able to play for whatever reason would be irritating to anybody. I don't think you need to be a very high level character to access the DLC though. Although I think a well off character would be better to play while exploring this new Dawnguard content. As per usual these content drops are usually centered around adding on to existing playthroughs, so if you have a decent leveled character I think it would be a better experience than if you simply made (or were forced to make) a new character. Though I don't think you'll be denied access because of a new character creation. We shall see though.

Maybe you want to play on your old character that you like and love to play as? i still play on my level 57 Character,played over 270 hoours and planning to play on the same character when Dawnguard comes out,Then of course i will start new characters just do try the other side. joining the dawnguard with my first,then joining the vampires.

But GI did recommend a character around 30+ I think it was. It said it's not for early characters.

*equips novice mode*

Challenge Accepted

Since when did most Skyrim players pay any attention to what was recommended? I remember taking on a dragon priest and dragon at level 11, damn hard it was to win that fight, but not having a clue I was a tad under experienced for the match, and being too stubborn to quit I won in the end. If someone had said it was not a good Idea I still would have ignored them and done it anyway. It is just someone's opinion a level 30 or higher character would be best, not that it takes that long to get to level 30, but I am sure someone on a lower level could still start Dawnguard and probably finish it. That is not the developer setting restrictions on who can play it, that is just saying it might be a bit hard at a lower skill level. Seems to me some would prefer the extra challenge.

To play this game in its best possible condition is to start a new character when a new patch is released.
When the final patch is released I will delete all of my characters and make ny main characters and I will remake my characters so I can play them in something that does not bug out every so often.

It may not exactly be possible to do that if you can get one shotted by opponents. At low levels it is possible to grind out killing things like mammoths but it takes a long time, a rock and a lot of arrows. Just look at briarhearts. They can easily kill a level 50 player in a few shots.

Also I'm a player who doesn't like having multiple playthroughs. I prefer just having the one, making my decisions and living with them, regretting some and being happy with others. Like fighting for the Empire, I regretted that in the end and wished I had sided with the Stormcloaks, I didn't start a new game just to do this.