The newly released trailer for Skyrim's Dawngaurd DLC hopes to rile up gamers as Vampires return in all their glory. Gamers will now have the opportunity to not only slay vampires, but to become one.
Joining a vampire hunting gang called "Dragonborn" will quest players to hunt and slay Hakron, an evil vampire lord. Choosing to be a vampire gifts players with powers that will assist Hakron toward obtaining the elder scroll's power. As a vampire, players can summon gargoyle creatures, transform into a vampire at will, hovering with enhanced speed, and feast on victims on the fly. The more blood players suck from victims, the more they will increase their vampiric attributes and unlock a new perk tree.
Dawngaurd will offer roughly 15-20 hours of gameplay content along with new quests, weapons, and mounted combat. Dragonbone arsenals await, as well as the mighty crossbow, which allows customizable crossbow bolts for long range shooting.
The trailer reveals little more about the upcoming DLC. What we do know about vampires in Skyrim is that players can contract the vampirism disease during combat with vampires. If nothing is done to heal the disease, the player will eventually turn, gaining access to new powers.
A vampire's desire increases for blood over time. The longer you avoid feeding, the weaker you become, and the more grotesque your appearance. Players can work their way up from a Stage One to a Stage Four vampire, which gives perks like 100% ice resistance and invisibility. Some drawbacks include higher vulnerability to attacks from town citizens.
Among new vampire features, the 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' update 1.6 will come with a number of bug fixes as well.
Several bugs like General stability and memory optimizations, General AI pathfinding optimizations and bug fixes, crashes related to loading and saving games, have all been fixed. Other issues addressed were:
- ranged kill cams while killing a dragon,
- "The Break of Dawn" fixed a rare issue where Meridia's Beacon would disappear from player's inventory,
- shout buttons that would stop working properly if users mashed LB and RB during cooldown with Kinect.
Equestrians should also rejoice, as the Skyrim update will also include mounted combat. "The team at Bethesda Game Studios is excited to announce another new feature making its way into Skyrim... Mounted Combat! Like the recently added Kinect support (360) and new kill cameras, this highly-requested feature that was seen in the Skyrim Game Jam video is arriving for free," as posted on the Bethesda forum.
Players using PC will be able to download the 1.6 Beta Update on Steam. Gamers will have to simply have to opt in for the beta. Then, players will have to go to the Account tab in Settings and choose to change their beta participation option to include the 'Skyrim Beta'. Updates on other consoles have not been revealed yet.
As for the Dawngaurd release date, Bethesda announced that Xbox users will have first dibs on June 26th. Others will have to wait, possibly a month later for their DLC according to Game Director Todd Howard.
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