i went to a town to business with a shop keeper. i saw her body at the fast travel point. far from her shop, she lives in the same building where her shop is. i can't understand why she was at the spot she was killed.

Adrianne is easily killed by vampires.

Sometimes the NPCs don't stay in their shop, for example I quite often enter Whiterun to find Adrianne or Ufberth walking back from the market/Bannered Mare area, even though I don't remember ever encountering them there myself (maybe Ufberth in the Mare once or twice?) It makes sense that they wouldn't spend all their time in their house/shop, though. Belethor often seems to be wandering around in the evenings when I arrive, too.

Townsfolk gotta get their drink on too. And vampires are dikes like that.

Vampires love making a mess of cities and killing NPC's. If you want the towns and cities to be safe, Gotta finish up dawnguard.

I think there aren't enough. Dethroning Balgruuf for treason isn't sufficient.

Death is part of life. I like that they can be killed during attacks.

That's the problem with Skyrim, these days...

*ducks*

My current character was mostly ignoring the Dawnguard stuff until a bunch of vampires showed up in Riften - HER city and killed one of HER guards and one of HER citizens (Aerin - not a great loss, tbh, little stalker) and now she is MAD. Straight off to Fort Dawnguard, she went. The one that really annoys me is sometimes if I spend the night in the Bannered Mare, I come out in the morning, vampires are attacking by the gates and by the time I sprint over there, half the city's dead...

And the worst thing is that Nazeem is the only one who doesn't try to fight.

There's too few. It's a land riven by civil war facing the literal apocalypse. Some of the happy vibes that fuelled Oblivion's cartoon paint job were still floating around the office when they wrote the script.

Yeah, pretty much. I get annoyed when a character I like/find useful dies (and I pretty much always try to avoid letting Adrianne die for reasons I can't quite put my finger on) but for the most part I turn it into part of my character's 'development', so to speak, like the time my first character saw Faendal (her first friend in Skyrim!) bitten in two (artistic licence...) by a dragon, she went from 'ugh, horrid scary flying thing, kill or be killed' to 'YOU MUST ALL DIE!' (Admittedly I still didn't really touch the MQ beyond Way of the Voice for another few characters, but from then on she went in, guns blazing, to any dragon fight, rather than desperately hoping not to die.

Vampire attacks are triggered by directly fast traveling to a city. The standard approach is to never fast travel anywhere near the city/settlement you want to visit, between 8pm and 8am. Instead, fast travel to a location (any will do) that's far enough from there and wait it out.

Whoever plays on PC, should check out http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28235/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23906/?, if he/she hasn't done so yet. The first sends the civilians running away when faced with a vampire and the other makes them do the same, when a dragon shows up.

Those two mods greatly help with civilian deaths. There's still some NPCs who'll rush in with a dagger, but most will flee. The exception I've noticed is vampires in Riften. Pretty much everybody will attack(besides Mjoll for some reason) and it's nearly impossible to get a sword swing in without hitting a friendly.

The civilian and merchant deaths that happen at the hands of vampires and dragons adds to the realism of the game.

I have a game where alll the cart vendors in Solitude have been killed by Vampires.

One character, I was so upset about Adrianne being killed, I changed my build/role play just to avenge her.

Social Darwinism.It's the world's way of getting rid of Leeroy Jenkinssessess, which happens to be 99% of Skyrim. Gotta keep Alduin fed somehow.

pfft there's not enough deaths imo as there's too many essential NPC's and most of them just happen to be the one's that you want to kill the most

I just wish that some npcs would NOT try to fight.

Vampire attacks could happen to anyone. People get attacked and they have to fight or die. Being unarmed and unarmored, its usually die.

Whacking great fire-breathing dragon lands in the middle of town, npcs should *run*. Here's a hint; you are wearing clothing; you are unarmed; you are dinner. You are crunchy and good with ketchup and your clothing makes for good floss.The armored and armed guards will deal with it. The wandering adventurer wearing full ebony/daedric/dragonscale/dragonbone armor armed with [possibly enchanted] ebony/daedric/dragonbone weapons will deal with it.

Oh I totally agree. When a master vampire and it's thrall attack Whiterun, Carlotta has no reason to unsheathe her dagger, being that a few guards and Adrienne are taking care of the problem, along with myself for that matter. The guards......definately! Adrienne......she's a blacksmith so she can defend herself. Carlotta.......um no.

Who cares about a dead NPC? Especially one as annoying as Adrianne. Skyrim deals with this issue nicely though as the the shop owner offers some dialogue on her death.

I could deal with the NPCs (even the recklessly overoptimistic ones) fighting if they would let me, the aforementioned badass, get closer to the vampires once I show up, or at least not keep jumping in front of my blade (and costing me 40 septims a time...)

I've never had an issue with Vampires after the 1st encounter if I don't start the Dawnguard quest. I do agree that it's complete and utter BS because the majority of characters like Adrianne don't level scale. That means they get easily killed by a Master Vampire. It's still a terrible design flaw, the Vampires should only start attacking after you entered Fort Dawnguard for the 1st time.

Stop fast travelling.

But then why would the Dawnguard have reformed? And what motivation (other than basic 'vampires are horrid' stuff) could your character have for going there when they've got a bunch of other important stuff to do?

If you're on PC, though, you can use the Timing is Everything mod and set it not to start vampire attacks until a fairly high level and go to FD before you get to that point.

If a Character I find essential to me dies, mostly merchants, I'll reload a save if it's possible to save them. I usually just let anyone else die. Unless I know there is a quest for them I need to do, then I make exceptions. Nothing worse than having an NPC killed off, then realizing later he has an important quest for you, or takes part in a later quest and it's forever bugged.

If we had an abundance of NPCs, then some dieing would not be an issue for me. The world is underpopulated as it stands now, and the NPCs are not replaced by the game. I know life means some people die each day, but this is a game, and mechanics and atmosphere need to be maintained. The Dawnguard attacks were not well thought out due to game mechanics, and I will explain that in the following paragraph. It is a problem for me if the game is killing off content when I can't or am not doing anything about it. Those are not consequences to my actions, it is just irritating.

The reason the DG attacks are problematical is where and when they occur. NPCs are on a schedule in this game and a large number of them leave the gates of the city in the Morning and return around 6PM to 8PM game time, then you have the NPCs that leave the city about the same time to go home. Here is why this is a problem, the NPCs do not do all this movement behind the scenes, but are rather spawned at those times to make the walk if you happen to show up in the cell at that time. So, your in your house in the early evening, and you leave, or you arrive at the city in the early evening, the NPCs that are commuting are spawned either near the gates or heading to the gates. The NPCs can spawn even after the time they are supposed to walk home, so they can be there late. Dump some high level vampires in the mix and you get Carnage During the Commute. None of this is under my control, beyond picking and choosing when to be outside. And, I would not know to be careful about when to arrive unless I metagamed and knew what was going to happen before it happened.

The game causes more NPCs to be killed than if the Vampires showed up at say midnight, which makes more sense to me, or they scripted the NPCs to run away and hide as some mods do.