It's a game killer alright. I got Dawnguard a couple of weeks ago, having already played the base-game for 170+ hours, got two chars up to lvl 50. Now at this level the vamps that attack aren't just two-hit dead guys. They're 'master-vampires' that slaughter everything they see. Although guards can hold their own against there buggers, civvies rushing the menace are usually instantly fried by AoE-attacks and/or summoned things. This lost me half the population of Whiterun once. And has, in the last 70 hours of gameplay lost me just about the entire Solitode market-square, one NPC at a time. I played 170 HOURS without one dragon killing an NPC. And then in the first 20 hours of playing with Dawnguard I lose entire populations on multiple occasions (reloading is tiresome) and other populations are slowly drained over time. Now while I like the vamp-attacks in the wild, I really think that towns should be safezones. Also: Resurrecting a character doesn't help. They'll simply have vanished by the next time you get back to town. That's how I lost Belethor, anyway. Really hoping this Vampire Repellent Amulet mod works... And someone should really add some "safe town" or "anti town vamp" or "immortal NPC" mods to the Steam Workshop, as there's nothing like that in there.
