Skyrim Quest bugs - spoilers inside!

Now I really have to start this thread, yes the patch is on it's way in a couple of weeks, but it's really becoming annoying.

I'll add later another bugged quests I found, however... This one is pain to see among misc quests:

Find the book Arcana Restored (questgiver Urag)

Where is the book?

Where does the quest fail?
Because of a bounty, I've cleared the book's location and picked the book up BEFORE I got the quest to find it. Now I can't finish the quest although the book is in my inventory and as it's a quest item - it can't be dropped!

Known workaround?
None. Seems I'll have to wait for the patch for this one.

Another three bugged ones:

- Go to Dorian in Solitude and pick up an item
Dorian is inside a ship, never exits it and when you talk to him inside the ship he keeps telling you "you're not supposed to be in here". Whichever item that might be, you can't pickpocket it!

- Speak to Greta about going to the Temple of Divines
She actually asks you to bring her Amulet of Talos, and when you do it, the quest doesn't resolve itself plus you keep the amulet in your inventory.

- Collect bounty from Skald
I'm seriously stunned by this as I've already collected the bounty (for killing a giant), but the line in misc quests is still displayed.



There are also 2 more bugged but they resolve themselves during the play:

- One is becoming a thane in imperial city with a house of 25.000, if you do 5 favors before asked to do them, the questlog is still displaying that and (5/5). There is a workaround, ofc, just give money to any beggar or perform another townsfolk quest and you'll get (6/5), means six of five, which will remove the line!

- Another one is the mass murderer quest, if you pay 2 coins for a tour BEFORE solving the first part of this quest, you won't be able to take that tour as the targeted house is locked 24/7. Later however, you get a clue and a task to talk to the man again, so this becomes possible although you'll have to give another 2 coins.



More will come if I find 'em.

Here's one:
Mass murder quest in Windhelm often won't start at all. No workaround just yet. Basically means you can't "complete" Windhelm - become a thane, buy a house, etc.

Maylander, I'm not sure if it's really a bug - try to visit the graveyard there during the night.

In any case, even I've solved that quest, I still didn't get the option to buy a house or become a thane there.

Yeah, I did. Many times. I've seen plenty of reports on it. It's a bug. Sometimes the event simply never triggers.

Another bug:
Number's Job in the Thieves Guild - normally a fairly straight forward quest that takes you to a random place to make changes in a ledger. Bugged if you get the one in Haelga's Bunkhouse. Can't be completed without using the console.

Thanks Maylander I appreciate your inputs. In the meantime I must admit I haven't got a nasty quest bug yet although I'm unsure if undroppable items you retrieve for Bard's college is a bug or a feature.

Found another one... It's thieves' guild related.

If you don't turn in all items you find during quests regularily, by the time you kill Mercer it'll all become probably bugged. What happens?

1. If you killed Mercer and return to pick up Honning brew decanter - no new quest is triggered.

2. If you have in your inventory East Empire Trading Map, there is a misc quest to return it to Drakster, now you kill Mercer and instead of giving the map to Drakster you go and pick up the Decanter, just picking the Decanter marks the quest - solved?! Yes, the quest where you need to give the map to a NPC, that one get solved. You don't receive a quest to bring the Decanter back.

Possible workaround? Dunno of one. Just a suggestion to all of players who are solving thieves' guild quests... Make sure you find a special 0 weight 0 price item during each guild quest and bring it back to thieves' guild BEFORE you kill Mercer.

Not sure if this is really a bug, but it's quest connected so I'm putting it in here.
Just finished thieves' guild, I'm now the guildmaster. As a reward I got an amulet called "Amulet of Articulation". Besides it's talk-out almost always effect, it has something no other amulet I've seen in the game has. This particular amulet has an armor value of 9 and it's category displayed is Light Armor?!

joxer said:

Maylander, I'm not sure if it's really a bug - try to visit the graveyard there during the night.

In any case, even I've solved that quest, I still didn't get the option to buy a house or become a thane there.

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I actually have the same problem, I went in and out of that city like 10 times and also used the wait function by the cemetery over and over for like a week, but no luck. It's gotta be a bug.

If you happen to start the mass murder quest but go on to liberate the city before you finish the quest, the crime scene will be gone and the quest can't be finished. Yes, bug material indeed.

joxer said:

Found another one… It's thieves' guild related.

Click to expand...

Thieves Guild is apparently buggy as fuck.
The end of the main questline is really, really glitchy.
At the end, after you listen to certain someone´s speech, certain other someone - - is supposed to talk with you, but that never triggered properly for me. Instead, that certain other someone spawned at the beginning and promptly left afterwards, leaving me in the chamber without means of interacting with anything and having to reload. Eventually I managed to get through it by some wait-for-an-hour antics, but after that the certain other someone never appeared in the location she was supposed to appear in.

During The Dainty Sload special quest, the contract giver wasn´t available at places he was supposed to be, instead he was leisurely strolling at the bottom of the sea . Since I couldn´t interact with him there, I had to spawn him via console so that I could finish the quest and consequently close up the whole Thieves Guild chapter.


Actually, the game is rather buggy in general.

One other bug I experienced which rendered the major questline unfinishable was during the Companions´ questline where conflict with one of the side quests occurred - one of the quests in their chain took place in the fortress which was also a destination for a miscellaneous quest I´ve received previously (obtaining a helm for one of the jarls) and haven´t finished yet and that prevented the Companions´ quest to trigger. I had to check the wiki for that one and to repair the situation I had to storm the fortress and obtain the helm without killing the mini-boss there, return the helm and then use console to start the glitched Companions´ quest.
Speaking of Companions, there are few special quests available after the main chain is finished and one of these glitched for me as well - it was a quest in which I had to return to the same location where their main questline ended, but when I did so, the quest got automatically finished without me doing anything and rendered the object needed to uninteractive in the process (thus if I wanted to use it afterwards I´d be SOL).
That one I fixed by reloading and taking a radiant quest from another guild member, afterwards it worked as it should.


There´s also quite a few glitches related to scripted events.
For example, in the beginning of the Mages Guild questline, during the initial tour, dragon appeared and broke the event in a way that the lesson which was supposed to take place afterwards didn´t happen, putting their whole main questline out of the picture (fixed by reloading till the event happened dragon-free).
A minor issue occurred right afterwards - once the lesson was finished and NPCs began to move to the other quest location I initiated dialogue with two of them and that broke their relocation. Luckily, it didn´t affect much, just the "now that you´re all here" speech was off, once dungeon was entered the two missing NPCs spawned there as they should.



On a different note, respawning has quite a few issues as well.
For example, ninroots in Blackreach respawned (but were unharvestable), a named NPC I killed as a part of one quest respawned after I´ve returned to the same dungeon to complete another quest, a note in the Labyrinthian´s exterior was also a victim of respawning mechanics and dragons respawned at certain locations (I think it´s only the locations marked with dragon heads) don´t yield a soul which may be a feature, but it doesn´t make much sense and when it happens it definitely seems like a bug.

I´d say respawning in general was handled in a very ham-fisted, lazy manner.

Aaaand I also got hit by the word wall bug (the "shout" theme plays, but no word gets highlighted). I could easily add the shout via console, but it still sucked because this occurred whicle I was hunting for shouts using Greybeards´ info and just adding the shout via console didn´t make the dude dispense other word walls´ locations, so I had to go the reload route since I wanted to keep receiving the hints (that specific wall remained bugged, though).


Also, while searching for a solution to the above mentioned Companions´ problem I bumped into a mention of a pretty major main quest bug - Season Unending has quite a few issues with Join the Stormcloaks/Imperials/Jagged Crown quests - if you plan to join one of these factions, better do the Join quest and the Jagged Crown one ASAP to avoid conflicts with the main questline.

The more I read about Skyrim, the more I'm glad I decided to wait awhile before playing it.

DeepO I've encountered many times that scripted NPCs get stuck on Lydia, hehe
But I didn't mentioned it in this thread as it's sidekick behavior bug. I did however wrote a few times that sidekick always tends to block narrow areas (doors) so I can't exit. Also sidekicks are blind to traps you avoid, they trigger those traps and most of the time it looks as the AI was set to trigger those traps intentionally. And in all scripted events, like following someone to a spot or an area, cretinous sidekick "deliberatley" tries to stop the scripted NPC from walking to the correct spot. Finally the sidekick while fighting tends to move between you and the enemy so you hit the sidekick instead of the enemy. With arrows, spells, weapons and even shouts. It really looks as if sidekicks AI was scripted as there is no friendly fire.
Although Lydia is a great asset in (some) fights, not to mention use of her as a pack mule, I'm honestly pondering a thought to retire her for good as she became more of annoyance than the real help.

Anyway, if I got you right, because of some bug I should do imperials or stormcloaks quest series completely before proceeding with the main questline, right?

JDR, the game is so huge that getting so many bugs in the initial release is expected. But I must say that most of quests are not bugged at all. If you're not playing the game, this thread looks as if the whole game is one huge bug, but it's not. I'd say from 10 quests, 9 are good and only 1 is bugged. And although bugged, most of such quests can be solved by a workaround or by just "neglecting" that part till it somehow solves itself over time.
It's still a great game, but without a patch I wouldn't vote for it as a GOTY since it has two polished games as competitors for that title (TW2 and DX:HR). The patch should be out soon.


Anyways another possible bug, I've finished the white phial quest ages ago, and I still haven't received a courier's note that triggers "Repairing the Phial" quest (I didn't even know such quests exists, however now I've seen a report where the "Repairing the Phial" quest is bugged with an item). Why I say it's just possible bug - because my alchemy is low and it's possible you can't get the second quest that involves alchemy with that skill low.

I haven't played through any of the lengthy quest lines yet, but I was pleasantly surprised when I thought I may have borked a simple dungeon quest.

Without knowledge of the quest, I entered the fort backwards and cleaned it out. When leaving I found the previous owner wanted me to clear it out and let him in. I just went back and closed and then reopened the gate. The quest giver arrived and I was able to complete the quest. I was happy that the design was resilient enough to handle this.

DeepO said:

Thieves Guild is apparently buggy as fuck.
The end of the main questline is really, really glitchy.
At the end, after you listen to certain someone´s speech, certain other someone -

Spoiler

Karliah

- is supposed to talk with you, but that never triggered properly for me. Instead, that certain other someone spawned at the beginning and promptly left afterwards, leaving me in the chamber without means of interacting with anything and having to reload. Eventually I managed to get through it by some wait-for-an-hour antics, but after that the certain other someone never appeared in the location she was supposed to appear in.

Click to expand...

I encountered another bug regarding the same person, and I had to revert to a very old save and redo something like 15 hours of progress. Once you're told to meet that person at a standing stone you must do so as soon possible, otherwise they disappear and the quest is impossible to start. I went away to do other things for several hours, only to find that when I wanted to start the quest there was no one there, and the last save that worked was from 15 hours ago.

^ Well, that sucks, that person has quite some issues, it seems.

joxer said:

Anyway, if I got you right, because of some bug I should do imperials or stormcloaks quest series completely before proceeding with the main questline, right?

Click to expand...

Doing Imperials/Stormcloaks completely very likely results in that potentially conflicting main quest segment being skipped entirely and that would be a bit pity since it´s a pretty cool event.
I think that just finishing the Join and Jagged Crown quests should be sufficient, but I can´t say that for sure.
In my playthrough I joined the Imperials, did the above mentioned two quests, plus two following quests and experienced no bugs in that main quest part.
Dunno if this would be the same on the Stormcloaks side.
Alternatively you could postpone joining these factions till after the event.



Also, just remembered another bug, though not quest related - followers´ carry weight is shifty.
After about 70 hours into the game I´ve noticed Lydia could carry a lot less stuff than before and googling the issue revealed that companions get a duplicated default item added into their invisible inventories upon each rejoining. Don´t know whether it´s some other item(s) for different companions or if it even happens to all of them, but inspecting Lydia´s invisible inventory via showinventory command revealed she was having 24 hunting bows in there .
After some time this may become an issue not only from the using-companions-as-pack-rats perspective, but one might also end up not being able to equip them with stuff.
On the other hand, followers´ carry limit can be bypassed entirely by using the "I need you to do something" dialogue command and pointing them to an item or a container .

I have enjoyed crash free game for quite a while now but when I enter Bonechill Passage (from both ends) game crashes almost as soon as it reloads. Never made it past the very first chamber. Thank Godess that Ancient's Ascent can also be reached by mountaineering!

zahratustra said:

I have enjoyed crash free game for quite a while now but when I enter Bonechill Passage (from both ends) game crashes almost as soon as it reloads. Never made it past the very first chamber. Thank Godess that Ancient's Ascent can also be reached by mountaineering!

Click to expand...

This is not a quest bug, but no matter as it's solvable - force your game into windowed mode while you're inside that passage, it won't crash then.

Finished Dark Brotherhood!

Why posting it in here? Because of a bug!

As you know, I'm one of lucky ones who solved the mass murder quests in Windhelm. Now what happens in Dark Brotherhood? One of contracts as a bonus reward has killing of a certain NPC (Nilsine Shatter-Shield). I didn't do it. Didn't want to do it. However, upon returning to the contract giver, she said thanks on killing Nilsine too and gave me the bonus?! Excuse me? But I didn't touch her!
Now where's the catch… I bet that the murderer killed that very same NPC previously in the game. For whatever reason I now can't remember who did he kill exactly, but since the game gave me a reward for a dead person I didn't kill… And dragons can't enter that area and kill townsfolk… Logically seems that it was "the butcher" who made me a bonus! In a way for all of you who can't get murder quests in Windhelm, please do check if you killed a NPC that was needed in a cutscene during Dark Brotherhood quests. For others, please don't do Dark Brotherhood quests before you solve the murdercase in Windhelm. Well at least till the patch that addresses quest bugs is out. As there is definetly some bug involving that Nilsine NPC.

Except that one, I didn't see any other bug anywhere with anything. For those who want to know about overlapping quests, and there are actually two of those, a spoiler:

Anyways, since I've killed the final target of the Dark Brotherhood series… Now… Only left are companions and imperials/stormcloaks. The main story I'm keeping for the last. Dunno what to do next… Some say companion quests are bugged… Maybe go with them next?