Hi,

I've recently re-started the game - after previously playing through the main quest with no bugs - and have immediately hit a weird bug. The Golden Claw part of the main quest simply won't start up. I go into the trader in Riverwood, but he doesn't have the dialog option to start the quest, and niether does his sister. And if I go up to Bleak Falls Barrow, Arvel the Swift is dead in the spiderweb and isn't carrying the claw or the diary.

I've deactivated all my mods, checked my Skyrim installation with Steam - no difference. I've also tried force-starting the quest with 'SetStage MS13 12' in the console - the quest will start, but Arvel is still dead.

I suppose I could frogmarch the game through the quest by using setstage and adding the neccessary quest items with play.additem commands, but the fact will remain that a main quest is somehow broken, and another part of the game could be even more broken.

As a last resort, I suppose I could uninstall completely and then reinstall - the quest worked fine the first time I played.

Has anyone seen anything like this before, and/or know a simple fix? I can't find anything through google.

Thanks.

Have you tried a new character with no mods selected?

i had the same bug myself caused by the "Wars in Skyrim" MOD you will have to start a new game with the mod deactivated
as soon as you have the Claw you can Re-Install Wars & play on

NOTE: There are problems with Wars in Skyrim & the current Patch version of Skyrim Check info Here http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=6176

Crap I did the same thing, I found out that it was that mod too, i just used TCL to go through the locked door though and I'm just gonna ignore that quest lol.

Many thanks Deep Thought. It was Wars in Skyrim that was causing it - and now I'm happily past the Golden Claw quest.

Thanks again.

Wish I had of checked here earlier. Was pulling my hair out when I decided to restart my game and spent two days making new characters and having him be dead every time. Aside from this quest I haven't had any problems with WIS or any of it's little addons with the current patch version. Finally made it through BB with the golden claw and hope I don't have any other dead quests like that. lemme know if you guys find any others.