When I first went into Solitude and saw the execution I took his amulet of Talos.

I did that before I got the quest related to that. That meant that I could not remove the amulet and if any more would have been picked up the extras could not have been removed either.

Thankfully I was able to enter a code which meant that I was able to complete the quest and make the amulet removable.

on my nord warrior, i did absolutely nothing but explore/dungeon craw and i NEVER quested until i explored like 90% of the game area, did like 100 dungeons, and i never broke a single quest, so i don't know what people who claim that to be true are referring to..

I took his amulet early, I had no issue dropping it or dropping others I got. I got this amulet on the first day the game came out.

That is strange.

Maybe it is hit or miss whether you get the bug. I know that with me I could not as it was classed as a quest item, and because I had picked it up before I was intended the quest had become bugged, and I have seen it mentioned that it has happened to others as well (which was how I was able to get the codes to resolve the problem)

It is not that common, but it does happen. If you clear out Driftshade Santuary, for instance, and then try to advance in the Companions questline to Purity of Revenge without waiting 30 days for Driftshade to reset, you may have problems. The 1.4 patch notes had a cryptic reference to this bug, so maybe they fixed it.

Break the game? No don't think so.
Mess up some quests? Yes.

Depends on how you define "break the game." The problem with the Purity of Revenge quest because of the conflict with Driftshade Sanctuary stops the companions questline cold and leaves Jorvaskar a complete mess with you being unable to have any meaningful interactions with any of the companions. No more redient quests, no training, no nothing. That might be considered gamebreaking for some. Hopefully this got fixed by the 1.4 patch. There is a cryptic patch note on it but I have not seen any confirmation on the UESP site about it yet.

Specifically: Scroll for Anska as it relates to Alteration Ritual Spell.

There's a dragonpriest in Highgate Ruin. When you wander into the dungeon you find Anska and do the quest. You then end up at a dragonpriest and of course, take his mask. When you do that, the gates at the back of the throne ruin open up and you loot it. They don't open any other way than by defeating the dragonpriest and subsequently taking his mask.

Now, when your Alteration reaches 90 you can do the Ritual Alteration quest for Tolfdir. The problem is, he sends you to Highgate Ruin, where indeed, all the Draugr have respawned but the dragonpriest and his mask have not. This means the gates at the back of the throne room don't open. And the problem with that is that you need to get a very specific knife behind the gates---which don't open.

2. Doing the Civil War quest before the Companions quest breaks the entire Companion line. This occurs because you're given a quest to intimidate a certain person in Whiterun. The problem is that his house has been destroyed and he no longer exists. This renders the entire Companions line kaput.

3. There's a bug that occurs somewhere in relation to something else that breaks the MQ. I wish I could be more specific than that but I can't determine where it actually occurred. After defeating the dragone with Delphine you're supposed to be prompted with "The Cornered Rat" quest, but if you've done some certain thing, the quest never prompts and you can never complete the MQ.

This happened to me after I'd finished the DB, the TG in its entirety, Civil War, Mages College, and became Thane of 4 of the 5 major locations. I'd also done several different side/dungeon/Daedric quests. So I can't say where along the line the MQ became un-doable.

I'd recommend completing nothing more than the Companions and College quests before going all the way through the MQ. There absolutely are things you can do in Skyrim that will break not just one line but the most central questline of the entire game.

Of course if you're on PC it's not that bad; but if you're on console you're completely boned.

If you are on a PC it is very hard to completely break things. Just go to the bugs forum and you’ll be told how to get around the issue. I am very unlucky in this respect and out of maybe 30ish bugged quests I only encountered two minor misc quests that I couldn’t fix with the console.

I'd be surprised if this actually breaks the companions questline, since the companions intimidation quest is radient and you can choose to do one of the other radient companions quests in order to advance the companions questline.


EDIT: As Bacillus points out below, if you have already taken the intimidation quest, then you cannot get another radient companions quest. You would need to reload a prior save and get a different redient quest from a different member of the companions in order to advance the questline.


It's a lot easier to fix broken quests on the PC, that's for sure, but a lot of broken quests can be salvaged on PS3 and Xbox if you have a recent save and follow the instructions for fixing the particular quest on the UESP.

One more piece of advice for explorers, especially those on PS3 or Xbox. If you find anything that seems unusual or unique, don't sell it or loose it. There are some items in the game that are not tagged as quest items that are very necessary and if you loose them or sell them you could be very sorry about it later.

What happens with Purity of Revenge? How does it break the Companion's Guild?

It absolutely does. Because they won't give you another job to do until you complete it. That was like 20 or so levels ago so if I get a chance I'll go back tonight and see if it's still the case. I also looked this bug up online and it definately exists. But like I said, I'll check it out next time I play. It didn't work 10 levels later but that's the last time I checked.



I don't know about PS3 but I learned the hardway to begin deleting old saves with Xbox. When I wanted to re-do the Thalmor Embassy Quest in order to try and get prompted for A Cornered Rat, I found that the game had 3 very recent saves (all within in-game hours) and then the most recent one was 4 levels prior; no way I was gonna back that far.

P.S. In regard to what you said about gamebreaking, I agree. When my robes-only wearing mage couldn't get the Dragonskin spell, it effectively ended the character as a pure mage. To me that breaks the game. I then had to begin training like hell in light armor, which in turn caused me to use perks I would have otherwise used on the magicka trees, which in turn made my character less effective in combat as his levels increased. I think he's at level 62 now and had made up the difference, but I had to evolve him into a character I didn't really want.

Why would you want to delete old saves? That would hinder the chance to reload old saves to fix bugs.

thanks i feel much better now
did have one quest break so far and used the console, took me ages to figure it out (im an idiot)

The problem is that Purity of Revenge conflicts with a misc quest you get from the Jarl of Winterhold. They both send you to Driftshade, so if you have the Winterhold quest in your quest log, it conflicts with Purity and Purity won't initiate. Another way this problem can occur is If you have cleaned out Driftshade and it has been less than 30 days, then Purity might not initiate. If Purity does not initiate then Jorrvasker is a mess This effectively stops the companions until you figure out a way to get Purity to initiate.

Not true. Alftand is not in any way locked before the main quest. Sarethal is. It is not due to entering the dungeon due to a glitch. The problem is that the door to the Animunculory which is deep inside Alftand is not locked when it should be. The player has no way of knowing that they shouldn't click on that door ahead of time. Many quests have built in safety features that prevent the player from activating them early, Alftand did not. This is a programming oversight, not operator error. I didn't bypass anything, I entered an open dungeon on the world map and explored it. I clicked on a door which I had no way of knowing was associated with a quest, it wasn't locked, but passing through that door broke the dungeon.

I do nothing but dungeon crawl; it's a compulsion. It's why I have maybe 2 missions on the main quest that I've completed...so far haven't broken anything. Not saying it doesn't happen. Just hasn't happened to me yet..

I have some NPCs missing

but I don't think its because I explored every inch of the map XD

and its on one character (I think it is a recent mod i dl)

You are right! If you already have a quest in your log from one of the companions to intimidate someone who no longer exists, then you won't be able to get another radient quest from a different member of the companions because they will tell you you are already doing work for so and so. If that is the case then, yeah, you are hosed.

Unless, of course, you have a save from prior to the time you took the intimidation quest. If you did, you could reload that save and go talk with a different member of the companions for work and hopefully get a different radient quest. There are something like seven different radient quests available and you only have to do one of them to advance the questline. But I hear you on not wanting to replay several hours, or in your case 20 levels.

I got lucky when the companions questline bugged out on me. I had a manual save from an hour before, so I did not have to redo much and the bug was immediately obvious, so I stopped, checked the UESP and other online sources for the solution and proceeded from there.