The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Catch-All

My Dawnguard game seems to be bugged. Going to spoiler box since I'm talking about the "plot".

Spoiler:

Things seem to work fine until Serena shows up at Dawnguard HQ. I talk to her and Isron and they decide I need to find a Moth Priest.

Serena starts saying something like "If you want to come along it will have to be just me and you, no one else." So I dismiss my follower and try to talk to her again, but she just keeps repeating the same thing. No option to get her to follow me or me to follow her. (Then she wanders downstairs and starts to shovel coal into the smelter, which seemed really odd too.)

OK, I say, I'll just do this on my own. I go to Winterhold then Dragon's Bridge (which gets attacked by vampires when I arrive and half the town gets wiped out in seconds. Oops.) I go to the cave where the Moth Priest is being held and free him. So far, so good.

I tell the Moth Priest to go to the Dawnguard castle and leave the cave, at which point the Moth Priest attacks me. Huh? I defeat him (he's unkillable) and try to talk to him but he keeps thanking me for rescuing him. I try to leave and he stands up and attacks again. After two or three rounds of this I try to fast travel away and it lets me even though the combat music is still playing. Whatever.

I go to the castle and go inside. The Priest is there ahead of me and he immediately attacks Isron and Serena. Eventually he takes a knee again and Isron tells me to talk to him. The Priest (still on his knee) asks for the scroll and it appears in his hands (along with his weapon) but he just stays in the "taking a knee" animation and nothing happens.

I can wander around the castle all I want and nothing changes. If I leave and come back in then the whole sequence repeats with him attacking, getting defeated then taking the scroll and sitting there.

I'd just ignore the whole quest except the vampire attacks are getting annoying. (The merchant square in Riften got depopulated in an earlier vampire attack; it's starting to be a problem.)

I've thought about disabling the module but I'm not sure what that would break at this point. Anyone know the console command to force the quest to advance?

How far back do your saves go? Can you still try to get Serena to come with you? I think I had a similar problem there and I had to exit and reenter the area to get things working.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

I used fast travel for the first 40 hours or so, then stopped for 40 hours or so, then started playing Dawnguard.

There are several times in that questline where you have to go all the way from the bottom right of the map (past Riften quite a ways) all the way up to the far left of the map (past Markarth quite a ways), no thank you.

Eh, walk to Riften, buy a cart to Markarth, and walk the rest of the way. There's no reason you have to walk through all the holds in between.

Scratched wrote:
Kamakazi010654 wrote:

I used fast travel for the first 40 hours or so, then stopped for 40 hours or so, then started playing Dawnguard.

There are several times in that questline where you have to go all the way from the bottom right of the map (past Riften quite a ways) all the way up to the far left of the map (past Markarth quite a ways), no thank you.

That's kind of what I'm thinking of, the game itself seems to go out of it's way to bounce you around a lot. Besides the thane help-5-people-in-each-city quests there doesn't seem to be a lot that's local, even the radiant quests are fairly far-flung.

To use a point of comparison, at the end of an act in The Witcher 2, I feel I know the area, I know the landmarks, the roads, and I can get to a location without the map. I don't know the area around any of the towns in Skyrim much at all.

A nice compromise is to never use fast travel, but still allow yourself to hire carriages. That way you can still fast-travel between major cities, and walk everywhere else. I've been playing this way for quite a while now and I highly recommend it.

Use fast travel when you really want to be somewhere. If you are ending a session and want to get to a town to turn in a quest or three, fast travel. Or if you have a ton of loot.

But usually you really don't have to be anywhere. Walking through the world is a joy. Even if you have been through an area dozens of times, there's still something cool/awesome/fun to see. Traversing the entire map from end to end is just so much fun. for faster travel, I recommend body surfing the rivers (assuming they flow the same way you are going). Use Become Ethereal when dealing with falls. It really is a great way to go and most of the main towns are on or close by rivers.

tanstaafl wrote:

My Dawnguard game seems to be bugged. Going to spoiler box since I'm talking about the "plot".

Spoiler:

Things seem to work fine until Serena shows up at Dawnguard HQ. I talk to her and Isron and they decide I need to find a Moth Priest.

Serena starts saying something like "If you want to come along it will have to be just me and you, no one else." So I dismiss my follower and try to talk to her again, but she just keeps repeating the same thing. No option to get her to follow me or me to follow her. (Then she wanders downstairs and starts to shovel coal into the smelter, which seemed really odd too.)

OK, I say, I'll just do this on my own. I go to Winterhold then Dragon's Bridge (which gets attacked by vampires when I arrive and half the town gets wiped out in seconds. Oops.) I go to the cave where the Moth Priest is being held and free him. So far, so good.

I tell the Moth Priest to go to the Dawnguard castle and leave the cave, at which point the Moth Priest attacks me. Huh? I defeat him (he's unkillable) and try to talk to him but he keeps thanking me for rescuing him. I try to leave and he stands up and attacks again. After two or three rounds of this I try to fast travel away and it lets me even though the combat music is still playing. Whatever.

I go to the castle and go inside. The Priest is there ahead of me and he immediately attacks Isron and Serena. Eventually he takes a knee again and Isron tells me to talk to him. The Priest (still on his knee) asks for the scroll and it appears in his hands (along with his weapon) but he just stays in the "taking a knee" animation and nothing happens.

I can wander around the castle all I want and nothing changes. If I leave and come back in then the whole sequence repeats with him attacking, getting defeated then taking the scroll and sitting there.

I'd just ignore the whole quest except the vampire attacks are getting annoying. (The merchant square in Riften got depopulated in an earlier vampire attack; it's starting to be a problem.)

I've thought about disabling the module but I'm not sure what that would break at this point. Anyone know the console command to force the quest to advance?

Wow, holy crap that's completely different to how it played out for me. But I think I can see where it got bugged!

Spoiler:

I went to Dragon's Bridge and the town was fine but the imperials and moth priest had already left. I went south of the bridge and found them all dead and the moth priest captured by the vampires.

I then went to that cave but they were doing some sort of ritual on him and once I rescued him he was hostile to me after a moment or two - not immediately. I kept attacking and eventually he submitted and surrendered. Turns out he was being made into a vampire thrall through the ritual.

So, I'm guessing there are two possibilities:

- You need to fight him to beat his "thrallness".
- You need to go back to the cave and rescue him again as he needs to turn into a thrall in order to get that plot point done.

I wonder if you talked to him too quickly and he didn't have time to "turn bad" as it were...

It's cool that the quests aren't static though! (If it's meant to behave like that.)

I had a similar start to that:

Spoiler:

... but I was successful in getting Serana to follow me after dismissing Lydia. Strangely, I instantly then asked Lydia to follow me, and off the three of us trotted. It did get a bit overpowered though, and I hardly even got to kill the few monesters we encountered before I sent Lydia home for hogging all the action..

Bu yeah, the Moth priest does attack you when y ou first rescue him, bu I would say it's most certainly bugged out if you've gotten all the way back to Fort Dawnguard and he's still hostile. There are console commands to advance individual quests to a new 'stage', but who knows how this would end up if you can't even get Serana to follow you.

setstage <quest ID> <stage #> is the console command. Some more information can be found here that lists some bugs, the first one begin very similar to yours:

To quote:

"If Dexion is outside of the magic barrier when you first see him, or if you manage to speak with him and tell him to meet you at Fort Dawnguard before he becomes hostile towards you, he ends up becoming permanently hostile after that point."

It also lists some ways to advance the quest.

Good luck.

omnipherous - Yeah, your quote seems to describe the problem. I dropped the barrier and talked to him; he didn't become hostile until after I left the cave.

I've got a save back where I first talked to Isron and Serena; guess I'll revert to that one. Thanks.

Duoae - Actually my game wasn't that different, I just dropped a step.

Spoiler:

When I got to Dragon's Bridge I started to talk to someone (the woodcutter) and saw I had dialog options about the Moth Priest and something about some angry people, but before I could actually select anything the vampires attacked and he and several other villagers were killed. Once the battle was over I had trouble finding anyone left alive to talk to but eventually found a guard who directed me across the bridge to the south where I found the ambushed wagon and the note directing me to the cave.

In the cave I stealth arrowed the two vampires outside the barrier, got the control stone and shut the barrier down, then stealth arrowed the vampire who had been inside the barrier. I then dropped down and talked to the priest and told him to meet me at the fort. He never became hostile until after I left the cave.

So, sorry. Not really different after all.

My bedroom intruder returned!
IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/576723637287701538/73F1C8D10BAA8B4BF3756DB78647E24834F6034A/)
If he shows up again he's getting an arrow in the face. I'm sure Falkreath Hold must have some sort of Castle Doctrine law on the books.

muttonchop wrote:

If he shows up again he's getting an arrow in the kn

Gravey wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

If he shows up again he's getting an arrow in the kn

*giggles* You know, I started a new character the other, and was disappointed when I didn't hear that line for an entire hour. Almost missed it!

I dont know what mod did it but Lydia doesnt give me the surly " im sworn to carry your burdens" anymore, Now she says a variety of things like " yes my liege" and only reverts to the old grumpy tone answer when her weight limit is nearly reached. Maybe it was in the Community unofficial patch - USKP ? I dont have any dialogue mods or things that change lydia.

Heh, a Lydia patch was the first mod I installed. I really like Lydia and that line was just so out of character.

Brownypoints wrote:

I dont know what mod did it but Lydia doesnt give me the surly " im sworn to carry your burdens" anymore, Now she says a variety of things like " yes my liege" and only reverts to the old grumpy tone answer when her weight limit is nearly reached. Maybe it was in the Community unofficial patch - USKP ? I dont have any dialogue mods or things that change lydia.

It was Dawnguard, that's where they added a bunch of new dialogue to all the Housecarls. I rarely hear Lydia say she's sworn to carry my burdens anymore, most common is "yes, my thane?"

ahrezmendi wrote:
Brownypoints wrote:

I dont know what mod did it but Lydia doesnt give me the surly " im sworn to carry your burdens" anymore, Now she says a variety of things like " yes my liege" and only reverts to the old grumpy tone answer when her weight limit is nearly reached. Maybe it was in the Community unofficial patch - USKP ? I dont have any dialogue mods or things that change lydia.

It was Dawnguard, that's where they added a bunch of new dialogue to all the Housecarls. I rarely hear Lydia say she's sworn to carry my burdens anymore, most common is "yes, my thane?"

Bah, beat me to it, phone was being weird with this website again.

I don't think I've let Lydia out of the house yet. Iona for lyfe suckaz.

wordsmythe wrote:

I don't think I've let Lydia out of the house yet.

Neither have I. And then I didn't tell her I moved either.

Gravey wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I don't think I've let Lydia out of the house yet.

Neither have I. And then I didn't tell her I moved either.

I sacrificed her to Boethiah. Let's see her carry THAT burden.

ruhk wrote:
Gravey wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I don't think I've let Lydia out of the house yet.

Neither have I. And then I didn't tell her I moved either.

I sacrificed her to Boethiah. Let's see her carry THAT burden.

I think I may cry. I always take that smarmy mage bastard from Riften.

Boethiah demands double-post!

wordsmythe wrote:

I don't think I've let Lydia out of the house yet. Iona for lyfe suckaz.

I adventured with Lydia, but I married Iona.

So... this happened:
IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/576723637307162025/7CC4AFA1D9CFE44B0B8189A8B644AFE47857FEE0/)
For some reason my companion started floating around with her legs sort of bent up behind her. Occasionally she'd kick her legs and wave her arms like she was treading water. I left the inn and she's still stuck like that, floating around in the air. It's a little unnerving.

Some new screenies.

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540694840351248159/77D068F68B2C9038D1D24D68CB2D5B5299ABA5C3/)

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540694840351252622/2E89E787C72C6D98BF779400019B430646DCB4D2/)

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540694840351265253/FB94D90ADB674BEA0B57F3B637867408533111CC/)

I've picked up another random creature effect on my character, a dark blue fog/smoke swirling around me. Seems like I might need to go through the list of all creature effects ("help fx" in console) to catch it, as it's not a common one like the frost atonach or steam centurion that affects most people when the bug strikes. I can get rid of it temporarily, but it comes back when I change first/third person view perspective.

Man, imbiginjapan, those are gorgeous. I can't wait to get my new vid card.

I bonked the main quest on the head today. It seemed pretty straightforward and simple really, not a lot of meat on the bone. And now back to the other zillion things to do in the game.

If I go to install Nexus Mod Manager, BOSS, and SKSE to start installing mods that way, should I unsubscribe to the mods via Steam workshop? Or does everything play nicely together?

Michael wrote:

If I go to install Nexus Mod Manager, BOSS, and SKSE to start installing mods that way, should I unsubscribe to the mods via Steam workshop? Or does everything play nicely together?

Unsubscribe.

ZaneRockfist wrote:
Michael wrote:

If I go to install Nexus Mod Manager, BOSS, and SKSE to start installing mods that way, should I unsubscribe to the mods via Steam workshop? Or does everything play nicely together?

Unsubscribe.

+1. Technically they play fine together, but when you start to get into the double or triple digits of mods running, you'll want to have them all managed in one place for easy diagnosing of conflicts. It's really hard to diagnose conflicts between mods downloaded from Nexus and mods downloaded via Workshop.