so i brought her to castle volk (heir something ) yet im still confronted with some old man telling me to get off the island or im a trespasser or something like that , and the gate is still locked ? why is it not open now i have brought serena form the cave ? ( awakening )

this is my first time and the wiki didn't mention any bugs...

what have i not done?

You have to talk to serana first then he will let you in

i have talked to serena...what option , run it through with me

on this particular character i did stumble upon the castle before i started the questline....i suppose this has got something to do with this

all that happens is we get to the jetty and serena says "that it up north" we go on the boat and we get up to the gate , ive talked to her about her home before we go , when we arrive and when are are at the gate but it makes no difference - old man scrounge still gets cranky because he hasn't had his juice , its almost funny if i wasn't angry that dawnguard is not working?

Well crap ok well what usually happens is you get off the boat run up the ramp and serana stops you and says "hey can we talk for a minute" then after that the watchman says lady seranas back open the gate. Have you tried reloading?

Or maybe we should just play the game for you...................

Unnecessary .

i have , i will attempt it again but this time ill let her do the talking , its like i said i suspect because i discovered the castle + went up to the watchman gate before i initiated the quesline it will not work properly

err....do you know the code that fast forwards the queststage to get past the gate ? if all else fails i will have to do that :L

There is a bug, that keeps the gate from opening.

What I've heard people mention is specifically, heading to the island before getting their in the story, initiates the bug. Some people get it anyways, but it seems like that one in particular is a definite trigger to make it more likely.

ok well i will try with another character and if the bug still initiates i guess i will have to wait for a fix ....

There is a console command that people use to get around this but I personally don't know how to get around it. I've seen people talking about it before when this situation had happened though.

ok , well if somebody could find it that would be so useful , but thanks for confirming it is a bug

You could try the console command setstage DLC1VQ02 5 and see if that lets you inside the castle.

If the gate doesn't open consolong up to the next stage won't help I don't think. I've tried that and all locked gates stay locked, I had that issue when trying to become a nightingale and Karliah or however her name is spelled, instead of unlocking the gate, wandered the land of skyrim for an eternity >_>

You could try using the movetoqt command, but the gate will still be locked in such a case most likely and after the questline is done you won't ever be able to go inside the castle again, assuming that the movetoqt command didn't just put you outside the gate.

You could also try downloading the unnofficial patch and reloading, that MAY fix it.

the one form the nexus ? yeah if my second character gets the bug that is what i am going to do next , then reinstall....then i will use console commands if i have to

i juts hope a patch comes out soon that fixes it , and to be honest this is just not good enough from the devs , you buys a game - you expect it to work - i am very disappointed but the community response has been great . thanks to all

There's one on steam as well, pick whichever if they're made by different people try em both xD

But uh, I've heard over and over again that patches for DLC is not something easy to do making it sound unlikely to happen.