This quest won't even start for me at all, there is never anyone in the graveyard, no guards, no dead bodies, no witnesses, no crime scene.

Hm, perhaps you need to be a Stormcloak for the quest chain to initiate, and the crime scene to show up in the graveyard?

I am having the same problem too where the quest will not start. I have done all Stormcloak quests, Windhelm quests, and talked to everyone I can the woman just wont die in the graveyard. I am half tempted to kill her myself. After doing a lot of searching on different sights and it seems that this is a common issue for some people. It appears to be a bug that can only be fixed with a patch or possibly by restarting the game with a new character. Not sure of any console commands to initiate the quest and setstage commands only work if you have the quest. Hopefully we will see a patch for this game relatively soon to fix this as well as some of the other bugs. If I figure anything out in the meantime Ill post here.

I read somewhere that the body will be there, the 4th time you enter Windhelm. If you don't go to the graveyard, it bugs out and will lock you out.
I find it a bit odd though, that the NPC will still be alive in the Candlehearth Hall if you miss it, so I'm not sure if that's what is actually causing people not getting the quest.

I am sort of doubting that if you don't see it the fourth time, she resurrects like nothing happened. I think it's just bugged for certain people. It won't trigger for me either (and I've seen this happen for numerous people online), and I've talked to everyone in town, done quests there, joined the Stormcloaks and have gone through their quest chain, etc. Been in and out of there dozens of times, entered at various points of the day. I wonder if it has something to do with meeting Calixto and doing his tour on my very first time in Windhelm, before I even knew the quest existed. No idea though, and it's very frustrating.

For some reason Viola does not even appear in my game i have seriously been searching for her for 4 or 5 hours already.. any other way to finish the quest iam even willing to cheat her back into the game if thats possible!

Does anyone know Blood on the Ice's quest id? There's a console command to manually start a quest - "StartQuest" - but typing "StartQuest 'Blood on the Ice'" doesn't work, as it doesn't recognize Blood on the Ice.

Id for the Quest is MS11b but I have tried startquest MS11b and it has not worked. Even tried doing the command Help MS11b 0 and it gave me a lot of options for the quest id but still nothing has worked.

Someone here needs to tell you... bumping your own thread is typically a BIG NO NO on forums and is an almost sure-fire way to get you banned on 99% of forum sites on the internet, it's usually against the forum rules on most sites, too.

i got same problem :/ quest wont trigger at all... tried everything

The questid might also just be "MS11", and the console lists a long, hex code for it too. Perhaps the hex code has to be used rather than the MS11 quest id?

Either way, I've been unable to figure out a console command to start it. "StartQuest" didn't seem to do anything for me as well, but there are a bunch of other console commands that show up if you type "help quest" related to quests, so there might still be a command that'll work for getting it started.

One of the console commands, for example, showed me all of the objects, and my current status on them, for the questline. Considering I didn't have the quest, it showed "Dormant" for every objective. I could not figure out how to set any, like the first, to active.

But if anyone could figure out a console command that seems to do something...

Edit - Something else interesting is if you do "help ms11 1" you see some stuff related to the quest, the global variables listed are what's interesting - it seems to record how many times you have been to Windhelm, and something about "Followupday" which for me is stuck at 0.00

so... now we just need to try and maybe set the days you enter to 3 as its the 4'th time you enter that triggers the event. so what do we type to change a global variable? tried alot of things but didnt seem to work
anyone know?

I might have an solution for you guys that cannot trigger the quest.
I am not claiming this to be the best soultion, i just know that i was able to trigger a quest yesterday which i was stuck on.
I have not tried this solution for the quest you guys are having problem with here.


***** Save game before giving this solution a try *****

Open up console, run the command: setstage MS11b 1 (setstage [questid] [stage])
What this should do is that it should complete the first stage of the quest, i dont remember exactly what stage this is.
It should also start the quest for you as it completes the first stage.

I repeat: i am not certain this will help you out. im just trying to help.

Edit:
I dont know if ms11b or ms11 is the correct quest id. Give both a try.

I also cannot initiate this quest. I tried "help ms11 3" (3 to see global settings), and I too have 0.0 value for Follow Up Day. I have been to Windhelm 22 times according to the other global value.

Any of you console command junkies know of way to get this started?

I did some detective work and created another character to test the follow up day theory. I was able to get the quest to start and typed Help MS11 3. Follow up day is at 0.00 as well so that value has no factor over the quest being initiated. Sorry to have the bad news.

Well that takes a way one possible variable. Thanks for posting this information.

On a side note: Is the only way around the bug to start a new character? (Presumably if that works) Or has anyone discovered a way to get it started?

bump

i am very away of it being a no no but your also talking about a forum that is moving it 3-4 pages back in a matter of minutes and will never get a answer if people dont see it either way im convinced at this point that it is a bug and will have to wait for a patch at least for the 360 as there is no console to try and force a start of the quest

It's such a hard quest.. Their is a necklace underneath the papers inside the house.. But after that I got lost..

I can't get the graveyard scene to show up either. I am level 34 and have done the entire Ulfric line of quests. according to the variables I have entered Windhelm 40 times, 20 Of those are probably just me trying to get the murder to trigger.

doing startquest or setstage on any of the MS11/MS11b stages does absolutely nothing visible in town. The console accepts the command, but nothing happens, no quests added, no difference in NPCs.

exactly the same, anyone have a solution..?

I'm having the exact same problem. I thought it might be a case of having played a little too much tonight, but, lo and behold, I am not the only one having trouble with this quest.

You cannot start this quest if you

Bumpy so yall see my answer...Your welcome in advance....XD

You will find that most of the people here with this problem havn't done any dark bortherhood quests. So thanks for helping. but it's not a cure.