How do you start the Dawnguard questline?

[JeremeW5257]

I've clocked in over 600 hours in this game and still have trouble with Steam (finding stuff). How do you start the Dawnguard questline? I just want the crossbows. I've traveled to Dawnstar...thinking that was a logical place to start and...nothing.

[xlcr]

After installing/activating the Dawnguard plugin; and, your character is level 10 or better,

you should start hearing rumors from city guards regarding the Dawnguard:

"Heard they're reforming the Dawnguard.

Vampire hunters or something, in the old fort near Riften.

Might consider joining up myself."

If this is the first you've heard of the Dawnguard, your map will be updated with the location of Fort Dawnguard,

and the quest will officially appear in your journal.

 

 

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dawnguard

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dawnguard_Quests

 

There are a few ways to start the first Dawnguard quest; so, look at the Dawnguard walkthru above..

(an Orc named Durak is one way to get a crossbow and bolts).

 

fyi, there are 4 different crossbow variants added by the Dawnguard plugin:

Name, ID, Weight, Value, Damage, Speed:

Crossbow - xx00801 14 120 19 1

Enhanced Crossbow - xx00f19e 15 200 19 1

Dwarven Crossbow - xx00b647 20 350 22 1

Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow - xx00f19f 21 550 22 1

Steel Bolt - xx000bb3 0 1 10 N/A

(enhanced versions ignore 50% of armor).

 

 

Edited August 4, 2012 by xlcr

[JeremeW5257]

My guards won't say anything except the same old stupid crap they always say. Nothing about vampires or anything new. I found the Dawnguard.esm in my data folder but no .esp file. Should there be one too?

[Blu02]

No, it's the esm-file and a bsa-file. Make sure it's activated in your mod-list, because Steam doesn't do this automatically after downloading the DLC. Or at least it didnt for me.

 

 

Also, lol @ went to Dawnstar :D But yeah, I had to check the uesp wiki on how to start the quests as well. Just talked to a random guard and got it started.

[JeremeW5257]

Thanks for the info. I guess Steam thinks everyone should just "know" how to do everything. Their site is definitely not user friendly. I guess it's too much trouble to put a "install now" or "active DLC after downloading" button...as long as they get their $20, that's all they really care about. Its funny...they seem to make it very easy to find the "pay now" button.

[Stemin]

Hmm. Steam actually did start them up for me, but maybe that's because I have no other mods installed? I was actually pretty disappointed because I loaded up my level 81.5 character and literally walked down the steps from Proudspire manor and a guard accosted me and was like, "Have you heard they're reforming the dawnguard" and boom, there the quest starts, map updated. I'm just thinking. Really? That's pretty cheesy.

[JeremeW5257]

One of my mods converts all the guards to female , so I originally thought that might be the problem, but I disabled it...fast traveled 10 times to make the vanilla male guards take effect, but they still won't say anything but the normal stuff.

[Blu02]

Weird. Well, you should at least be able to start it through console. According to UESP Wiki you should write this in console to start the first step in your diary;

 

setstage DLC1VQ01MiscObjective stage 10

[JeremeW5257]

I got it to work...it had nothing to do with the female guard mod. I reinstalled it, but noticed that the Dawnguard.esm box wasn't checked in my mod manager. As soon as I checked it and started the game, the first guard I talked to gave me the vampire speech...starting the quest.