So this quest was supposed to be fixed in the recent update, however i still cant start it, i have left windhelm and re-entered numerous times, is there anything im doing wrong??

Do you have to leave/enter through front gate or will fast travelling to the city/palace be enough?
Do you have to enter over differant days, or can you just keep leaving/entering all in one night?
I'm guessing you have to enter the city at night after the 4 times for there to be a group of people at the graveyard, but do you have to wait for a little bit or do they spawn there (does it take time for the people to walk to the graveyard?)

Also, i keep getting dialogue from the people in windhelm that goes like "first my wife now my daughters" and other dialogue that suggests the quest has started, but its not on my list at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, coz this is really starting to p!$$ me off....

I have the same problem.

Here you go guys this tells you how the quest goes and has some work arounds you can try. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Blood_on_the_Ice

So say i did one of the numerous things that can lock the quest, as i am playing on 360 i cant bring up console, so there is no way to make the quest available without a re-roll?

If you capture Windhelm for the Imperials before you start the quest, the witnesses will be around the corpse but the guard may not be (since the Windhelm guards have been replaced by Imperial Legion soldiers), making it impossible to start the quest. If this happens, it can be completed using the console command completequest MS11 and completequest MS11b

This is what ive done... brilliant.

i finished blood on the ice, and they wont let me buy the house, i talk to jorlief, but the dialog never comes up,
ive done countless side quests for the people of windhelm..no dice

it seems if the quest was already bugged out on you prior to 1.4 then you wont be able to complete it, but if you start a new character, or use a character thats never been to whinhelm prior to 1.4, the quest will work properly.

Obv not what i wanted to hear but ty anywya

the quest never worked on my first but always did on the others and that was before 1.4

Well what happened for me was. I got it to start by going there 4 times si talked to the windhelm guard an the three people standing there an that was it. So I thought my quest was bugged because I did the imperial quest after that. Now after that I found out you had to follow the blood trail to the house which I did.

Then I went an talked to jarlif or what ever his name is in the palace of kings an bought the house to get the key and I was able to finish the quest.

From what I have found is, you have to fast travel from other holds to the Windhelm stables and enter the gates from the stables at least 4 times. This should start the Blood On Ice quest.

AFTER completing Blood On Ice, you STILL must complete a few more missions before being given permission to buy Hjerim. You need to do the Horned Crown ( think that is what its called) quest, and the battle for Whiterun quest. There is one more that I cannot remember right now that must be done before the Jarl gives you the option to buy Hjerim. So that is at least THREE quests AFTER Blood On Ice before you can buy it.

its a new charater, post 1.4....i still cant purchace the house in windhelm, i guess its their "FIX" to just take out the option

if you completed blood on the ice, you need to do the civil war sidequests. If you joint the emperials, you wont be able to buy the house until the civil war is over. If you join the stormcloaks you'll be able to buy the house 1 mission after whiterun.

[edit in] dont do the civil war before blood on the ice is completed [end edit]

SPOILER SPOILER ALERT Join stormcloak rebellion, kick imperial ass, jarl of windhelm tells you you can buy house.

I did the civil war after I got it started by going to the murder scene. But maybe for some it don't work they it did for me.

1. Started the murder scene
2. Started the imperial quest line( which once you take over windhelm the guard who was there before won't be there).
3. Talked to jarlif in the palace of kings and bought the house
4. Opened the house with the key
5. Quest continued for blood on the ice with no problems

So I don't know I'm guessing it depends on how far ahead an what order. You do it in or what quest you already have done that bug out BOTI.

if you pass whiterun joining either side of the civil war its been known to keep blood on the ice from advancing properly.

Well then I guess it's the luck of the draw with it then lol.

As some folks are still running into issues, we're looking into the possibility of additional fixes in future updates.

This wasn't the case with me. I hadn't joined either side in the civil war.

I had an issue with this quest starting until just last night. After I discovered Svidi's whereabouts and then returned to Windhelm, the Blood on the Ice quest finally started. Mind you, I've spent so much time traveling back and forth from place to place and back to Windhelm (probably around 20+ times) to try and initiate the quest.

Now, I don't know if the "Discover Svidi's Whereabouts" quest has anything to do with holding up "Blood on the Ice" or not, but in my case this is what happened that finally allowed me to trigger the quest.

I hope this helps someone.

i am on the xbox.. the xbox does NOT separate your saves for new characters
as in oblivion it just keeps numbering them

since i could not get this quest started on my first character
i started a new one just to see if i could get it to work on that one
had a hard time starting a new one from scratch..
the game just would not advance when we got to the town etc etc etc
the characters just stayed in the cart
so i used a save that i had at the point from my original character
and it still took an hour to start a new character [so thats another issue]

anyway i walked to riverwood, then walked to whiterun
never talked to anyone in whiterun [ i did in riverwood]
took a coach to winterhelm.. entered the city
and the quest already had started.. i had never talked to anyone
and it was the first time i had entered the city i was like level 2?

my thinking is the game is thinking it started the quest for me at that point
on my original character


i have another xbox
so i started a character on the box
did the same thing.. but it did not start when i entered the city [windhelm] i had to do it
by talking to everyone, entering the city about 4 times etc then it too started
so this one did it the way it was suppose to

this was waaayy before the last patch

part of patch 1.4 does this to ensure that the blood on the ice quest fires off for people when they get to windhelm. There was a 50/50 if x amount of time passed, that the quest in windhelm wouldn't fire off at all. so to prevent this, they made it so that it would.

prior patch 1.4, it was common for the quest to start between the 2nd - 5th visit to windhelm if done early in the game, otherwise it may not even fire off as explained above.

If you got blood on the ice to fire off, and want to buy the house in windhelm later, or think you might, you should follow through the quest and complete it before doing other quests, as there are other things through out the game that will give you a 50/50 of it advancing or outright fail completely. if you imprison the wizard there's a second part to it that wont fire off till you've been out of the town for 24-48 hours, you can make that time pass quickly just fast traveling between windhelm and riverwood and back as fast travel treats this as a 1 day travel.

Perhaps in the next patch they can fix it for people who have completed both civil war and dark brotherhood quest lines. I shouldn't have to start over just because of a glitchy game.

Did you try to pick up one of the "Butcher Notes" read and take it, then go out towards the Hall in the center of town and speak with Viola. I couldn't advance until I read the letter and took it.

I have tried this and everything else and I can not get it to start at all.

Possibly. I had a bit of trouble with BOTI (part 1) but despite missing a step I was lucky enough to manage to pick it up by talking to the guard and following the trail of blood, quite what you can do if there is no guard by the the bloodied headstone after repeated visit I'm not sure.

I reckon that makes up for the all the times I have done what's needed, but not in the order Skyrim expects/demands, and come to a grinding halt Jarl bounties and the like (I think it was Embershard that I'd cleared out only to get it as a mission and all there was of the Bandit leader was the arrow showing where he would have been) and finding dead loved ones before I have been asked to look for them Lief(something).