Dawnguard is finally on the PC, and it's pretty good, overhauling the way that vampires work in Skyrim, as well as giving you a hefty chunk of story content to work through. As ever, modders are only a step behind Bethesda, and there's already an impressive haul to augment and enhance your Dawnguard experience. We've rounded up the best so far, so let's mod Dawnguard!
XCE - Dawnguard Edition
Hey purty, purty.
XCE - Dawnguard Edition is an expansion of the already brilliant XCE mod for Skyrim that makes everyone look just a little bit prettier. Not only does it do the same for all the characters in Dawnguard, it also offers an overhaul for all the vampire faces, as well as any other spoiler-ific races that might pop up at any point in the DLC. It's not even worth debating about this one, as it only offers improvements, and doesn't have any drawbacks that I can see. It's just a straight up texture swap for the most part, increasing detail and removing blurry faces. Win-win.
Revamped Vampire Lord v1.05Download XCE - Dawnguard Edition
Now that's a Vampire Lord.
As useful as XCE is, it's not exactly the most exciting mod to come lurching out of the night to suck the trepidation from your veins. You want something that's actually going to fiddle with the numbers, give you change you can believe in, something that will downright transform the experience of playing Skyrim with Dawnguard installed. Fear not, because that's where Revamped Vampire Lord v1.05 swoops in. Geared almost exclusively to playing at higher difficulties, where the Vampire Lord really struggles, it's mostly just a straight up buff across the spectrum for all of the Vampire Lord's abilities. Important note: this mod doesn't enhance all vampires in Skyrim, only the player. So if you sign on with the Dawnguard, you're not going to be facing utterly insane damage outputs from the mutt-faced Vampire Royalty. It also decreases the Vampire Lord's size ever so slightly so that he doesn't bang his head quite so much in dungeons.
Crossbows Revamped 1.8Download Revamped Vampire Lord v1.05
Our vampire-killing weapon of choice.
Dawnguard isn't just about vampires. Well, it is, but you don't have to like them. You can take the fight to the undead bloodsuckers and tear them down from the inside (on an organizational level) by teaming up with the Dawnguard. And the best way to kill a vampire is from very far away with a very fast bit of wood. Which is why Dawnguard also comes with crossbows, and why Crossbows Revamped 1.8 exists. Already. Rather than keeping the crossbow exclusive to soldiers of the Dawnguard, Crossbows Revamped spreads the weapon across Skyrim. So crossbows can now be found in the hands of vagabonds and bandits, all of the people who you might expect to fancy something with that much punch. The mod also increases crossbow damage, making them a far more formidable weapon.
Download Crossbows Revamped 1.8