i read in a few posts that you can break quests if you explore too much or clear out certain dungeons. i also read that if you clear out a quest dungeon before taking the quest, that the dungeon will respawn everything needed when you do take the quest

so which one is it? im paranoid

i use a 1 day respawn timer and some dungeons respawn while others do not. why is this?

dont think so, not on PC anyway

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dungeon_Quests

These are the only ones you need quests for, it's quite hard to break quests by exploring in this game contrary to what people say.

Many quests start in dungeons or just outside the doors of dungeons, so if you don't explore you will miss out on them.

There are just a few quests which might get bugged if you clear them out before the quest. One is Cragslane Cavern with the pit wolf cages outside it near Riften. Don't enter it until you have the quest from the jarl of Riften.

I've not had a quest break because I've went into that area before. Though I to have read that other people have.

Now the one thing I do, is try to not pick up items that maybe quest related, but even if I do pick them up and can't drop them, I've later run into the quest giver and you usually end up saying something like "oh this item" and then they get the item. Their probasbly are exceptions though.

If you find named items, or other items that seems "misplaced" like a book with a specific name locate dinside a container you might want to google it forst to see if it is a quest iem. Some items are quest items but on PC you cannot break the game as you can use console commands to sort quests out. On consoles I would google items I am not sure is not related to quests.

Some people really try to make a big thing out of this, but in reality the issue isn't as big as some people want it to be.

It is very easy to break quests on the console by exploring some dungeon and picking up a quest item, before you get the quest. This will cause the quest to be un-startable in many cases. This happened with all 3 bard college quests lol. Dont explore without looking online what you are getting into. It really svcks.

This happened to me with my 'Explorer' character. The idea was he would clear everything he found (which he did), then go back and do quests for people. Well several quests ended up broken due to this.

Now my current character will not go anywhere unless instructed by a quest to do so. She'll find a location, so it's marked on the map, but she leaves it alone.

I HATE having to play this way, but having to use a wiki to determine if I should enter some place all the time gets old.

I have never worried about it. i just played. i never noticed any problems in prepatch and I heard all possible quests breaks were fixed in 1.4.

Really, just play. People shouldnt worry so much about this. Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind were designed for people who just want to explore first and foremost. And if you lose one quest, so what? there`s a like a hundred more to sink your teeth into not to mention the radiant stuff.

Well, I did clear one dungeon, and then later I got the quest for the same dungeon, so I fast traveled back, and the entire dungeon was cleared except for one or two guys, who were characters in the quest I am talking about.

This!

Where did you hear this? I had two break just last week. Found some guys body and now the wife won't send me on the quest to find her man, and the Riften skooma hideout is still broken if cleared early.

Spoilers in links:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Flight_or_Fight

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Supply_and_Demand

They are not broken, just cancelled. it`s realistic. y`know if in real life you found a woman`s purse with her favourite earrings and then bumped into the very woman looking for those earrings, you have instantly `cancelled` that quest she might`ve sent you on to look for them for a tenner! Or if she died then it`s cancelled.

It`s the same here. The quests are designed so that IF you find the object or the situation `cures` itself before the quest began then the quest is cancelled, life goes on.

It`s not broken at all. Just cancelled, go do the next one. Relax, that`s life.

Well, no. With the missing man you actually are given a quest in your log. But it doesn't tell you where to go. If (by using the wiki) you do actually find the woman she will not mention the missing husband at all. Broken quest, that remains in your log forever.

This is just one of many. Note I didn't have a real problem with it until I played my explorer character and as he cleared everything and then went back to do quests. If the game is played normally you may hit one or two of these, but that's it.

If you could remove these quests from the log, then it wouldn't be as big of a deal. If I have a broken quest, I don't want to be forever reminded about it. As I aim for 100% completion, I don't want that quest that I was unable to complete, haunting me till the end of time, or as long as this playthrough lasts.

Before I enter any dungeon, or after I receive a quest, I look it up on wiki. I'd rather do without, but I have my laptop next to me as I'm playing on xbox 360, so it's not a huge inconvenience.

Yes. You absolutely can break the game by exploring. I entered Alftand while exploring. Tried to go through the door to the Animonculory and fell through the worldspace and landed on the catwalk outside the dungeon. I didn't think anything of it, and just went about my business. Many hours and about 20 levels later the mainquest led me through Alftand. When you try to get through the door to the Animonculory you fall for a long time through a white mist and land at the bottom of the dungeon. There are many parts of the world missing, and the game crashes to desktop soon after you arrive. The dungeon was completely corrupted and it's in the save game data. I wound up deleting a level 45 character because there was no way to proceed. This may have been fixed in the 1.4 patch, but I have never dared enter Alftand until the mainquest tells me to go there. I found another quest where the Steward in Riften told me to kill a bandit leader in a certain cave. I went there, did so, and found a secret room with a body in it. When I clicked on it, I was told to tell so and so what happened to her husband. You cannot. If you don't get her quest before you find the body, you can never complete the quest. This doesn't break the game, but does break the quest. Bethesda has been fixing some of these problems, but it is entirely possible that you will find something they haven't found yet. It pays to save before entering a dungeon, and if something really odd happens, don't continue on, it might bite you later.

@LostScout: Picking dust out of fans inside your PC helps, too. You might just have a hardware problem there.

No. I regularly clean out dustbunnies, and my PC doesn't have problems with lock-ups and freezes. I have gone back with another character, with the mainquest, and the dungeon is flawless. It happens because there was nothing to prevent me from opening that door, but you aren't supposed to be able to go through that door until the mainquest opens it. In previous Elder scrolls games you could be knocked out of the world space by a moving trap, and you might land in water at the bottom of the dungeon. Sometimes you were able to climb back into the dungeon. You didn't break the dungeon because the game didn't save changes to the worldspace of that dungeon. As modders are finding out with oddities in the construction set, Skyrim does some things a little bit differently.
edit- other players have encountered the same problem as I did, in the same place, there was a thread on it in the pc issues forum. The one thing we had in common was that we had explored that dungeon before the mainquest.

Defnitely save often and keep saves for a reasonable while
I haven't had any broken quests yet but I had real trouble getting to be Thane of Winterhold. Had to reload and do the same quests in a different order to manage it (and the jarl is still offering me a quest I've already done if I ask him for work but fortunately theres plenty of other questgivers who aren't bugged).

Most of the broken quests such as Cragslane Cavern and Purity of Revenge can be fixed through a work around, even on the PS3 and Xbox (much easier on a PC with console commands). If you run into an obviously broken quest like when Purity of Revenge won't start, just look the quest up on the UESP site and there will probably be a recommended solution to get on with your game. I had a big problem with Purity of Revenge that stopped my companions questline cold, but the solution recommended on UESP worked and I got on with the game.

Don't pick up any named instruments or you cannot complete the bard collage. Or don't buy furniture before you talk to the jarl again or you will never be claimed thane. Two events that exploring/purchasing will break the quests and make them incomplete for entirety.

That has nothing to do with you entering the dungeon early. However, you are not supposed to go into that dungeon until the game unlocks the door, so if you glitch yourself in, who knows what you are going to break. Then again, they locked the door for a reason.

Out of the 26 or so dungeons that are permanently tied to a quest, only about 5 or 6 of them should be avoided until the NPC tells you to go there. They even patched out most of those issues. The rest of the quest dungeons, the quest starts when you show up. The list linked above can tell you which of the few dungeons you want to avoid. The balance of the other 150 dungeons are free and clear to explore when ever you want.

There were a couple of quests that got messed up by finding the items early, but that has been addressed in patch 1.3 and 1.4. Quest items that can not be dropped is still to be addressed, but that is another issue and does not break the quests.

I roleplay as a bandit/treasure hunter, so killing other bandits and taking their loot is a big part of what I do. I clear out almost every dungeon I see - quest related or not - and it hasn't given me any trouble at all.

Played nearly 300 hours on my first character and just explored as I went and I didn't really notice anything broken. I ended up going back to a few places after I had already done them but things had respawned and the quests were not broken. I think to be safe you could check the Wiki but for the most part this is not an issue. I'm not saying it doesn't, or can't, happen but I never experienced it in my play through. What I may have missed I'll probably hit on my second or third character so I don't really care anyway.

Yeah on consoles that is. Something about the scripts that Todd Howard mentioned during an interview.

Kinda of svcks though. I mean .. Skyrim is about adventure, exploring. Then to .. do all that just to break the god dam game.