Dawnguard's pacing completely falls apart after Bloodline quest

[RiftenWanderer]

I'm on my third playthrough and I just hit that point in Dawnguard where you finish Bloodline and suddenly the quest log just... bloats. Like you get dumped into a bunch of radiant jobs and miscellaneous stuff and it loses all momentum. The main story just stops feeling like a story for like ten hours.

Compare that to the Dark Brotherhood where even the radiant contracts feel like they're building toward something. Dawnguard feels like it's spinning its wheels. You're supposed to be hunting Harkon but instead you're doing generic "kill vampires in X location" jobs that could be from any faction.

Does anyone else feel like the questline needed maybe one more main quest in the middle there to bridge the gap? Or am I just impatient. I want to keep going but it's hard to stay invested when the actual plot isn't moving.

 

[WhiterunModder]

You're not wrong about the pacing, but I think it's a bit different than the Dark Brotherhood comparison. DB radiant contracts feel purposeful because you're building a reputation and filling the Sanctuary - there's this underlying sense of restoration. Dawnguard's radiant jobs are just... busywork to raise your faction rank before the story lets you proceed.

That said, I don't think another main quest would've fixed it. The real issue is that Dawnguard gates the final stretch behind faction rank, which forces you to grind. A single extra quest wouldn't solve that problem - you'd still hit the same wall just a bit later.

What I usually do on replays is just spam a few of those radiant jobs to get the rank up, then skip ahead. Yeah it's artificial, but at least you're not pretending they matter. The finale after you get past that hump is actually pretty solid - way better pacing once you're back on the main story track. Just gotta accept that middle section is the cost of admission for the DLC.