I only just bought all of the current DLCs for Skyrim this weekend and was trying to get started with the Dawnguard quest line but almost immediately ran into an issue. I was on the way to see some guy at the Dawnguard castle as part of a quest, but I’m being attacked by every member of the Dawnguard I’ve run across, including the guy who I’m supposed to talk to. I can’t even kill this guy and his henchman, since they seem to be unkillable…I can beat them both down, but then they sit on the floor kneeling until they spring up and attack me again. I’ve tried to go back a bit to earlier saves I had from my old games, but ever time I get close to anyone from the Dawnguard it’s the same thing…I’m KOS apparently. So, I can’t even seem to get started on the question line. 
Any suggestions of what is the problem, and is there anything I can do about it besides rolling up a completely new character and playing the whole game from scratch again? Are there any settings or config files I can modify or change to reset whatever is making these guys attack me on sight? It’s weird, because they all start to talk to me, and then half way through talking to me they attack. The initial quest guy has actually started a conversation with me, and talked to me about joining the Dawnguard and fighting vampires or something, but about midway through he attacks anyway…and this is after I’ve said I want to join and do what I can.
From searching around, this may sometimes be caused by:
Having a bounty. Even a 5 gold bounty for accidentally stealing a loaf of bread in some distant hold can do it.
Wearing a piece of daedric armor
Having a follower
And, obviously, being a vampire (check your diseases and make sure you didn’t contract some vampiric disease I guess).
Woah…I have a full set of daedric armor, a daedric bow, and a pair of daedric daggers. Plus, my follower is equipped with full daedric armor, sword and shield.
As far as I know I don’t have a bounty on myself (is there a way to find that out)? The only thing I’ve ever done that was sort of bad was whack the emperor when I was doing the assassination quest line. I’m definitely not a vampire…my character is a werewolf, and I assume you can only be one of those two things.
It also seems like morphing into beast form and waiting for it to wear off MIGHT help if you’re a Werewolf.
I’m not sure how to check your bounty.
ETA: And taking off the armor while you talk to them should be sufficient. And you only need to tell your follower to wait in another loading area. You don’t need to be on a save where you never touched a piece of daedric nor had a follower.
ETA2: Funnily enough, one person mentioned that after 10-15 minutes of continuously beating down the ones that get tired after killing every other member, they suddenly decided to stop being hostile and talk to him again.
Well, I haven’t seen that…I’ve killed them both over and over again. The one time I got them to talk to me I beat them down, then went into stealth and waited until they calmed down, then snuck up on the quest guy and started talking. He talked to me for what I took as about half the conversation, then after I said I wanted to join and do what I could, he told me about some cave with reported vampires…then attacked me again.
I’ll try ditching the armor and weapons. I have an earlier save, so can simply run back to my house, drop off the armor for my dragon bone set and a different bow and secondary weapons and leave my follower there and see if that works. Hopefully it’s that, as it would suck if I have a bounty and no way to remove that (I assume) or if it’s some other glitch. I certainly didn’t turn into a werewolf, so unless they can detect that and hate werewolves as well as vampires it’s probably not that.
ETA: Probably better leave my horse behind too, since it’s the black demon one and that might be a problem as well.
You just have to go to every major city and talk to a guard. They should let you pay your fine.
Is this PC or console?
If PC, do you have the Dawnguard Unofficial Patch mod installed?
Cool thanks…I didn’t know that. And thanks for the info as well…appreciated! 
It’s PC…and, at least as far as I know I don’t have the Dawnguard patch mod loaded. I’ve got a number of patches that I loaded from Steam at one point or another, but that doesn’t strike a bell.
That might help. I’m not 100% that it covers this bug, but I remember reading something about it.
I’d definitely recommend you subscribe to all the appropriate unofficial patch mods. They fix hundreds of things Bethesda hasn’t gotten around to.
Just go to the workshop and look them up, then hit subscribe. Steam will download them for you. Sorry if you already know about mods, just in case.
Just make sure that you put them in the correct order in your data (from top to bottom): Unofficial Skyrimpatch -> Unofficial Dawnguard Patch -> Unofficial Hearth Fire Patch - > Unofficial dragon born patch.
One thing you might try is to get inside the castle and see if it triggers the normal scripted discussion. I’ve had something similar happen a few times with the Companions when coming back from the initiation quest; they are all hostile and attack me until I get to the initiation ceremony spot, then the ceremony triggers and afterwards the hostility is gone.
It’s in the crime tab under the statistics you can see in the options screen
I’ve added several mods with the Steam Workshop, but not the ones you mentioned. I’ll check them out however. I didn’t get a chance to try any of the suggestions here yet, but intend too as soon as I can pry away some time to do so. I really want to play the DLCs…I even got the house one, though I haven’t gotten the time to do more than start this weekend, and as noted as soon as I tried I was attacked on sight. Not that any of these guys had even a hope in hell of killing me, but it’s annoying that I can’t start the quest.
Yeah, I had the same thing happen to me, though I don’t remember how I got past it. That’s what made me think that if I could stealth up to the guy and start talking I might get past the hostility until I got the quest and joined the guard…and it seemed to work for a bit, until he suddenly started beating on me again.
Cool, I’ll check that out as well!!
Thanks everyone…appreciate it. Hopefully the DLCs will bring me back into the game. I had sort of hung it up after beating it over a year ago, but I really loved playing through it the first time, and I’m kind of wanting to play this sort of game, especially since there hasn’t been a new Fallout type game in a while.
Anyone have a link for Daedric affecting anyone’s reaction? All I can find is a post or two, not necessarily about Dawnguard, no semi-official/credible links. The one wiki says it affects intimidation, that’s it.
I don’t know if this will work but theoretically it should. First, uncheck/remove Dawnguard. Load your save, and ignore the popups that say something might’ve saved. Then save again, preferably with a fresh save. Quit, recheck Dawnguard, and load that last save. It might restart the mod. Any items you acquired from DG will be gone and quests restarted, but you can get them again. Otherwise, it sounds like a mod conflict maybe. Or an intended feature of a mod.
This problem is nothing compared to the intentional ways to make your life difficult in Morrowind, like werewolfing in public or wearing Indoril armor.
There is a combat mod that has this glitch, do you have any mods that change how you block?
Ah yes! Good times…