It should be pointed out to the the radiant system can break main quests too because it may send you somewhere that's part of a main quest line before you're "supposed" to go there. They might have fixed this with the last patch but only time will tell.

Someone asked which quests have broken, let me just put it this way, all of them have broken for someone. I reported all of mine here and just had to give up on my first build after 150 hours of play because of it. I done talking about broken quests, I'm done arguing with f@n boys about how the game was released before it was ready and I did enough free testing for Bethesda. I've started a new chapter in my gaming life and it doesn't involve any of that crap.

Here's what I suggest; look at your first play through as a test. Play however you want do whatever you want see what breaks, learn the games quarks, just don't get too attached to that character. What you really need to do is learn how to play the game, and I'm not talking about not fast traveling or regular sleeping habits or any of that sillyness. Just realize that if you go places you haven't been sent to on a quest you run the risk of of breaking a main questline. Imagine you are playing a Nord warrior and the companions quest breaks, it's pretty much game over and after 150 hours you might be a tad upset. Use the UESPwiki whatever you do.

All that being said this game is amazing and is the best gaming experience I've ever had hands down. Hope you enjoy, cheers.

The wiki isn't complete yet, but you can always look there to find out if a location is connected to a quest or how a broken quest can be fixed. There's great information to be found there.

So I guess playtesters didn't explore then. Otherwise they would have noticed that it's buggy.

It annoys me when I pick up something and my guy somehow knows who/where/what it is for. It should only be a quest item once the quest has started, so you could pick stuff up, it still weighs it's normal weight (quest items weigh 0, regardless of it's lies), then if you happen upon a guy who happens to want a bit of the loot you happened upon, you can give him it.
Yes I can see people selling the stuff then later finding out they needed it, well, as someone above said, if it seems out of the ordinary or has a name (as opposed to generic terms like iron dagger), store it somewhere for later. Less clogged up inventory, no broken quests. Basically remove the "pick it up" bit of the script, and replace it with "marker points to artifact" for example, see what I mean.
Why does Bethesda protect players from selling needed gear (excluding thieves guild armour, keep it, you need it), yet allow players to break so many quests in the process of collecting the gear that they protected you from dropping?
I say do it the way above and if a player does something stupid, it's not the games fault. At this point it is the games fault, cos the player probably has played a couple hours or so before he realises that he just broke an entire guild questline.

Maybe even just a little "quest" marker on the inventory screen, like where stolen appears now, still allow it to be dropped though, but it's less likely to be sold if it's marked as quest. Then it really is a matter of players stupidity if it breaks.

Not all quest items are weightless. I have one active in which I need to collect 24 items of 0.5 each. Very annoying. There must be a console command to remove them or remove the quest item flag. I am going to fiddle with that.

You could, but its no fun if you know everything beforehand. After all, isn't exploration about discovering the unknown? Besides, the root cause of an issue may be something that is only remotely related to the quest, so you will have to read up a lot of stuff including potential spoilers. But I did check the wiki to get the console codes for fixing the broken quests.

Anyway, I have started with my second character and I know the pitfalls to avoid. In my experience most Beth games give you a lot of frustration in the first play through.

Dungeons are perfectly fine to go into whenever you want. The only advice I would give is if you find something unique, as in named, you keep it somewhere safe. Someone is bound to ask for it later. Plus, there are undocumented collector quests where you find all the uniques or artifacts.

Although it's already been said, keep in mind that if you pick up a quest item that you're not on a quest for, you're stuck with it until you complete the specific quest. My first character ended up lugging around the Ceremonial War Axe forever as well as a pick-pocketed war horn from Ilith the Fair. About 12-14 pounds worth of carry weight I really didn't want.

On PC - go for it.
On console - be careful you will break something eventually and can't fix it.

I cleaned out one random dungeon only to have it show up as a quest the next day. When I returned, the dungeon was empty except for the person I was supposed to rescue who was inside a cage my char had already picked the lock on.

Pretty dumb, if you ask me, that she'd be waiting there for me.

I'd say explore now, quest later (when the bugs have been fixed). That's how I'm playing my current game after running into the bugs previously.

Thing is, there was a random chance that the game would have sent you to that dungeon. Well, most of the time. But, if you had waited 73 hours, then the enemies probably would have respawned.

Its not just picking up unique items that break quest. Sometimes killing a certain character in the dungeon will also break a related quest. Two such places that I found are:

Without giving any spoilers, I was sent to a particular cave on a miscellaneous quest to meet a specific named NPC. Later during a faction questline, I was sent to that same cave to find a certain object and the same crew and the same named NPC was still there even though they logically shouldn't have been involved in the faction questline I was pursuing. But in general, I'm just going to take the approach that if I feel like exploring a location, I'm going to do it and if it affects some quest later, then so be it.

I have this to add to my previous note.

I picked up 7 quest items while dungeon crawling. When you get back to your "base," you'll discover they are quest items, and you cannot sell them, nor put them in your chest. You can discover it earlier if, when you pick them up, you try to drop it - doesn't work.

I have yet to find a dungeon quest that's broken, 3 characters doing different things, over 270 hours.

I have one broken quest, which is outside a dungeon, and for some reason I can't fix it with the command console (yes I know how to do it, and yes, I'm on the PC).

Like I said earlier, I found 3 dungeons that are connected to quests, and the game will not let you enter those dungeons. It will tell you there's a key required - that means quest - or something similar.

So, again, go have fun, and don't worry about it. If this is your first character, the odds are good that you'll play a number of others later, or maybe concurrently like I do - the freedom to play how/when/where you want is the greatest part of this game. Also, there's no guarantee that you won't have broken quests, or maybe will have some, so why let that stop you.

Good luck.

spoiler thread

Interesting.

While I'd prefer to avoid spoilers by visiting the wiki site, I'd rather not find out too late that I broke a quest by going somewhere too soon. The smallest details sometimes convince me to delete characters and start all over.

Hopefully these potentially broken quests get pached asap.

...had I known that then...

Even so, I had no desire to fight them all again. Not much point in that. I just found it funny that she was hanging out in an unlocked cage, waiting for rescue!

I've actually stopped random dungeon looting entirely now. The number of times I end up killing a Quest NPC early, and the problems it causes, are too much of a risk. Often the rest of the dungeon respawns by the time you pick up a quest, but the vital NPC remains dead, resulting in the Quest deadstating.

This is especially problematic with The Companions Radiant Quests. I've lost count of the times where I've been sent to kill a beastie, only to find it still dead from days ago, when it had attacked me as I walked past that location while I was wandering the wilds.

I really wish Bethesda would fix those.

you can fix that easy using the comand to resurrect that NPC for Radiant quest, the only problem i got in dungeons so far was during one of the Companion quest that send me to kill a dude i find a dead body that start a random quest and that broken it bc you need to speak with the NPC that give the quest first, similar to the bug on Riften to beacome Thane

had one dungeon with first one quest then get another quest to the same dungeon, it was not reset so I just used the backdoor and accessed the boss loot chest who was empty except the quest object.

Another one was funny, cleared a fort, inn over the wall, out thought an secret backdoor, here I run into a guy who want me to clear the fort for him so I run back and open the gate and get the reward.

Radiant Story is supposed to fix all this for "Radiant Storied" quests. This is one of the main reasons why Bethesda put Radiant Story in the game.
If the thing works as preached by Bethesda, then you should be fine. I seriously doubt Radiant Story works properly though, considering all broken and crappy technical things there already are in this game.

Does it fix it? Idk. I can't play the game since my game is visually unplayable due to mountain flicker.

The way I play new TES games is: do everything the first time around! Explore, explore, explore... you will learn about the bugs later on and then avoid doing the same "mistake" the 2nd time around. There are no major issues and the Wiki, plus the forums here are very helpful in sorting out which is an actual bug or you just forgot a step in completing a quest. I only happened across 4 or 5 quests (small, non-essential side quests) that I couldn't complete, because I picked up the quest item during my explorations.


With my 2nd and now 3rd character, I am more aware of the few things that could bug out, and I am more selective with my quest lines.

So, don't worry about it! Have fun and go out explore the wonderful world of Skyrim!

The respawning DOES work. By and large. But sometimes the Boss of the area does not respawn, with the other enemy NPCs. Which leads to quest deadstating. It's a risk you take.