Guards, Merchants and everyone that can be killed are being taken out by vampires. I'm told ths happens on the original versions too but why wasn't it fixed in this one? At least patch it to make merchants essential (unkillable) or something. Give us the option to disable Dawnguard if you have to. Half the people in Whiterun just died including Belathor and Adrian, the best merchants. I know I can reload but it keeps happening. I can't play only to come back finding the most important NPCs dead again and again. Please fix this.

That's just how the game was designed. And everyone finds it frustrating.


There are mods (even on PS4) that can help. Otherwise, try not to fast travel to the town, but instead pick a nearby location outside of the town (like the stables.) That seems to make it less likely that valuable NPCs will get attacked.

Mods disable trophies though and I was going to platinum it. Iv'e tried that but I just find a new dead body in town every time. If Bethesda doesn't fix it then they lost me. I won't buy broken games from them again. It svcks because they were my favorite devs.

They're not going to fix it as it is "a feature". The mechanism works as intended. The problem is the suicidal AI.

People have been complaining about it ever since Dawnguard was originally released and absolutely nothing has been done to stop NPCs killing themselves. So don't expect a fix now either.

If in town, stay indoors between 9pm and 6 AM. If going to town make sure you arrive early enough to get indoors before 9 PM. It's a real pain if encumbered and all you can do is a slow plod. It's really a pain for thieves who can't go out at night. And the stables or area surrounding a city isn't safe either. You have to stay out of the surrounding area or when you get to town in the morning the vampires will still be there. For Whiterun I camp at either of the watchtowers until 6 am before walking to Whiterun.

This is grabbing the fork by the pointy end and complaining it does not work.

These people are dying because the Dawnguard DLC causes Vampire Attacks to happen at dawn or dusk.

The game is playing as it has been designed to.

You CAN avoid the Vampire attacks by not entering them or leaving around Dawn or Dusk.

So you want to go to Whiterun and it's 6AM? Press the big touch pad in the middle of your PS4 controller and select WAIT.

Enter the town after 9 or 10 and you'll be fine.

Be careful about sleeping in a town and waking up at Dawn and then stumbling accross a Vampire attack at the entrance.

Hope that helps.

If Belethor dies Ysolda takes over his store, which I consider a blessing. Adrianne is a bigger loss because you have to go indoors to trade with her widower. They were both killed in my game and the blacksmith was closed forever more, which was annoying.

ITS NOT BROKEN


So it doesn't need fixing.


I am in a minority with this.....but just for once I agree with Bethesda


Whats the point of having a "vampire menace" If the vampires are not dangerous menace


People kinda demand spoon fed easiness with everything these days......the vamps don't always kill your best npcs.....its luck of the draw as to whether the guards stop them inside the gates and you do what you can to help.


AND.....if you are a reloader style player......where's the beef?


I belong to the Dead is Dead crew.....no reloads....I should be complaining louder than most.....but I don't


Vampires are doing what they are meant to......killing the innocent and being hard to kill.


As others have said......there are mods to shut them down.....and if you are really stuck just drop to Novice play while you kill the bloodsvckers in town.........easy!

Vampires should be dangerous to our characters, not to NPCs. There are too few NPCs in the game as it is. I don't want the game killing them off. That's my job.

However, I agree with you that this is not broken. There is nothing to fix here. Bethesda, for whatever reason, decided it would be a fun idea to allow the game itself to kill off NPCs. Hopefully, whoever thought this was a good idea has been demoted to janitor and they never, ever, ever do it again.

I have to disagree.....that's illogical


Vampires that only want to feed on the player character?


You may as well say ALL npcs should not hurt each other.


How about when you befriend a city npc.....then run foul of the law and your new friend helps then get killed by the guards? Stop that too?


Sorry but stopping vamps killing npcs as a general principle does not make sense.


Getting npcs to run away from the danger.....THAT makes sense

Stopping vamps going through city gates (villages are stuffed)...... THAT makes sense (guards are not meant to let them in)

But just saying vamps should not kill npcs because the player doesn't like it is daft and egocentric.....Skyrim is a living world...it is not meant to be tailored to make everything lovely and cosy just for the player.

Imo...of course


Well done Bethesda for trying to stick to principles of realistic behavoir (in this regard).

I hear what you're saying OP, I hate the feature too. Fortunately there are mods to stop it, but if you care about achievements/trophies then you're kinda stuck. My advice would be to hit lvl 10 then bash out the Dawnguard quest line as fast as you can, that should stop the vampire attacks in towns.

Yeah, Rick wouldn't know a good map if you rolled it up and hit him upside the head with it... (that's a joke buddy) but he's right here.

It's "Cheers Syndrome".

"You wanna go where the people know, people are all the same".

Vampires are dangerous and it's right they should be able to kill NPC's.

Annoying and frustrating that they can kill vendors but right all the same.

I don't understand why they didn't program someone to take their place. That would have resolved the main issue of the trader not being present.

I think the point is until Dawnguard was made compulsory people had the choice of letting their favourites npc's get slaughered by vampires or not by not installing it, since SE that choice has been taken away from you. Thats what gets under people's skin.

Most of the them do have replacements if something happens to the originals Ysolda takes over from Belethor, etc, but if she bites the dust too you're out of luck.

Actually, what's illogical is the whole "vampire menace" concept. Why would vampires be attacking townsfolk at all? It is completely illogical for vampires to want to go out and randomly destroy their food source (simply feeding does not harm the host and vampires are equipped with the means to do this stealthily). Stopping vampires from randomly attacking townsfolk makes the most sense to me to fix a poorly conceived and artificially contrived plot device.

grr, thanks Azrael, not I have the cheers them stuck in my head

yeah, would have been nice if the game would occasionally auto-gen an NPC to take over shops whos owner passed

because of Harkons twisted logic

But the vampires attacking towns are not Harkon's vampires. They cannot take lord form and Harkon even says they are not of his clan. He's got some explanation for why these other vampires are attacking towns but it made no logical sense and my google fu is failing so I cannot find the exact line of dialog.

If the vampires finish your job instead of yourself, you just do your job bad!

At least, that is the way a manager would see it. After the Dilbert-Principle, some become managers because they are to stupid to work as janitor.

As others have said...don't enter, leave or travel around a town dusk to dawn ( or there about) .

Leave the Alik'r warriors at the gate to Whiterun, at least til after you have done Dawnguard...or forever if you aren't going to.

Have no choice...had to hit town after dark... leave your follower at the spawn point ( have them wait) .. they will up to 3 days.

I feel this is one of the few consequences In the game... IF your PC never goes into a town ( same cell)...No NPC dies.. therefor "you" are responsible for their death. People griped about choices and consequences...

That's a good question: WTF are these vampire think they doing?

As far as I can see, they just act like on an amok-run.

The sub-question is, if someone is wearing vampire-armor, must he have contact to a clan or even castle volkihar in the past? Or is it just an optical simplification?

My theory is: It is just simplification. They are mostly bandits, who did turn into vampires by fighting with them. Now they reached stage 4 and just go attacking everything. After this theory, the vampire-thralls are just other members of the bandit-gang. The vampire-death-dogs are not really fitting. Perhaps they took them after killing the former owners.

That requires that Harkons men are not that smart and skilled at doing their job. Otherwise, that explains why he want you to join his group.

In my brain-cinema:

Lord Harkon: There is an important mission. Since you two are the most smartest in this castle, I want you two to do it!

The dovahkiin: We two?

Lord Harkon: You and this peace of bread.

Stables can sometimes still be too close.

---------------

I am with Rick and Vampires should attack and kill NPC's and such. That is supposed to be one of the selling points of the DLC of why we fight.

The main issue is with some of the vendors especially the smiths are quite often outside at the times of attacks and quite often their AI is suicidal. It should be the guards that fight.

What I would like to see is that some generic people can take over some of the shops and smiths.

I would also like to see bandits and such raiding towns and cities as well. Maybe some thieves from the thieves guild trying to rob places and such. hopefully for the next game.

Remind me again why the vampires are attacking random towns folk?

Why are they wantonly destroying their food supply for no apparent reason?? I am not arguing the gameplay issue here of creating a situation where players are forced to deal with the new questline right away, just wondering if anyone can provide a logical explanation for why the vampires would want to destroy all the cities and towns in the game.

So far the only thing I have heard is that Harkon and the vampires attacking towns are insane. Is that the best reason anyone can come up with?

The whole premise reminds me of the Bust of Lathassa Indarys quest from Oblivion that was completely nonsensical.

I would argue they are dying because the AI isn't smart enough to run from a powerful attacker. It happens outside of Riften when a dragon attacks the stables area. It's the exact opposite of that live action commercial they ran years ago, when all the townsfolk are running from the dragon, and the dragonborn is the only one running towards it.

I personally don't mind the vampire attacks; I just wish they would adjust the AI for the townsfolks, so they wouldn't rush in to fight.

Maybe to strike fear. Maybe they want to lessen the amount of people to make it easier for them to take over and control and to farm.

I am not a Vampire and I have never played as a Vampire in any Bethesda game.

This was a poorly thought out idea. The vampire suicide attacks on towns make no sense whatsoever. There's nothing to gain by doing this and it brings attention to their kind which is a big negative. Vampires should be keeping a low profile because it's what's best for their survival. A better way to show the vampire threat would have been to have the player investigate attacks on the roads and locations outside of the main cities.

That would be a good idea. The guards and inn keepers would talk of people travelling at night disappearing at some location. A marker would be placed on your map and if you travelled to that spot on the road at night you would find a vampire band. Much better than city attacks.