I will hand it to Bethesda that they're generally good at NOT making major parts of the game unavailable to you due to decisons made earlier in the game. To date my only gripe was not being able to complete the Daedric Artifact achievement, seeing as I chose not to kill the NPC who helped me aquire Mehrune's Razor. I love achievements, but I prefer not to look at the achievement list when starting a new game. I don't want to be constantly thinking "Oh I need to do this" or "I need to collect these"... I would rather just play the game and see what achievements pop, and later on I can "mop up" any remaining achievements... It seems that way of thinking means I have to go and start a new character and play through ALL the Daedric quests again if I am to get 100% achievements. As annoying as that is I suppose it could be worse.

However, they certainly went on to drop the ball again with Hearthfire and I find myself, an achievement hunter and long-time Elder Scrolls fan, majorly disgruntled that I will now have to start a new character to not only get all Daedric artifacts but also buy three plots of land and build three houses if I am to get 100% achievements. This is because you cannot build a house in Falkreath if you've completed a certain Dark Brotherhood quest.

Bethesda knows that many of us like to retain our characters, and that with quests fast running out, we'll complete whichever ones remain to squeeze the most fun out of the game... I was tentative in killing the guy in the Jarl's longhouse in Falkreath for the DB but my logic was that there was not much else in the game to be ruined by this action... And I was right... Until Heathfire was released and I find myself unable to attain another TWO achievements without a long and boringly-familiar grind through the game from a save game from Janurary, or possibly starting a whole new character.

ALL Bethesda had to do was change some of the code so that we could purchase the plots of land regardless of the DB quests. They must have known gamers with 500+ hour characters were eager for more achievements and eager to KEEP USING THEIR SAME CHARACTER, yet did not factor this in when making Hearthfire... Before we even bought the DLC we were unwittingly being blocked from completing a huge chunk of it with our beloved original characters.

Please, voice your desire for a patch that allows players to purchase a plot in Falkreath regardless of the DB quests. I am no coder but I don't see how this could be the slightest bit hard to achieve. I don't care about voice commands, I just want to be able to complete the DLC using the same character I have been using since the very start. Is that too much to ask?

Seriously, why bother putting achievements in your DLC if you're going to force a good portion of people to abandon their current characters to complete them?

Rant over, I guess...

I agree with you 100% that bethesda should fix this

i always make an achievement character, all i use it for is achievements i only do the things that aquire achiements
then i make my play the game character


but yes it should be fixed

I don't think it should be fixed at all. There should be consequences for your actions. This is one of them (unless you finish the civil war on the side of the stormcloaks, then you can get it just fine, I believe).

If you killed the housecarl in secret, there should be NO consequences. If there are no witnesses, then how does the Jarl know to hate the Dovahkiin?

The DLC is broken because of an existing bug and shame on Bethesda to not take that into account and fix. It's nothing new to them.

IF you were caught in the act, then yes, that's the game's slap to your hand and then your problem to figure out. (Take the side of the Stormcloaks and the Jarl and Steward will be replaced).

The same happened with the Bosmer that own the hunting supplies shop in Whiterun... I took out my target whilst hidden, no witnesses, and now the shopkeeper hates me... At least he still barters with me.

I knew somebody would play Devil's advocate like DeanG, but I think it's more fair for the consequences to be revealed soon after the action is taken, not months down the track and after we pay money. DLC that we purchase should not be affected by our hitherto actions, it's just a rude face-slap otherwise.

Braggen is an imperial, he killed the housecarl doing the DB quest. He had no trouble buying land. He also knocked off a Thane in Solitude for her clothes, certainly he gets a hostile reception in the Blue Palace, but still could buy the upgrade for Proudspire. He gets a hostile reception from the steward in Windhelm as well, but it never prevented him getting anything. I am not so sure people are not just using this as an excuse not to bother looking for some other cause for why they cannot buy the land from the steward. There were always glitches in becoming Thane of Falkreath, nothing has changed. If you could get past the problem before I see no reason why you cannot do it now.

Yeah, brilliant post mate, just how many other people in Falkreath can I speak to? Shall I go and speak to the Blacksmith and see if he'll sell me land? Perhaps go and change my outfit and see if that changes the Jarl's opinion of me?

How ridiculous, If nobody in the Jarl's Longhouse has any new dialogue options, there can be NO WAY of purchasing land in Falkreath.

1.) I killed the Falkreath Housecarl
2.) I bought Hearthfire
3.) I wasn't Thane, I wasn't friends with the Jarl, I got no letter to see the Jarl
4.) I traveled to Falkreath under my own power
5.) I did two quests for the Jarl
6.) Jarl said: "Hey you can live in my hold!" (paraphrase)

And now for the single most important step in this process:

7.) I bought the land from the STEWARD of Falkreath

STEWARD.

Not Housecarl. Not Jarl. Not butler. Not blacksmith.

STEWARD.

And then *only* (only!!!!!) because I befriended the Jarl by doing work *for* the Jarl. In my case, I had to bring him mead and then kill some bandits.

We know this already, the problem occurs when you kill the Housecarl when you ALREADY ARE Thane, this causes the glitch because apart from the generic radiance quests you can get from the Jarl or the Steward you can not redo the old quests to bring him mead and kill bandits

Kinda OT but if you missed out on Mehrunes Razor, you can still get the achievement if you acquire both of Hircine's artefacts.

Granite Devil, Perhaps you missed much of what I mentioned in my earlier post... I explained how I was fast running out of quests to do, meaning I did every side quest for every person in every town and became Thane of every town. Therefore it is pretty useless to tell somebody in my predicament that I simply have to do a couple of side quests, or that I need to speak to the Steward, because NOBODY in the longhouse will present me with new dialogue options (My mentioning of the Blacksmith was Sarcasm) and there are no quests left to do. It's a bug, bug bug bug.

As for Hircine's artifacts, I assume there is no way of getting both 300 hours after choosing one of them? =)