My latest character (male Nord warrior) I decided to make an explorer. Generally he is just looking around his surroundings and clearing every location he can find. I have never seen the map so cluttered before.

Anyway last night I found another side-quest that basically gets screwed up if you find the location before getting the quest. I keep finding these and when the quests will not complete I search the wiki and I find that the quest is bugged if you clear the location before getting the quests. One unfortunately is the smuggler quest in Riften so no house there for me I guess. The Hagraven’s sister’s quest. The missing husband quests. Probably more but I just can’t think of them off the top of my head.

I am considering restarting everything and playing again only this time never entering anyplace unless quested to go there. Course the problem with this is there are some quests that start by entering a cave or tomb, so those I would never get doing it this way. I suppose I could try to exhaust every quest I could possibly find from quest givers and then go to the locations left.

Just bugs me that Bethesda never considered that someone might enter these locations before being given a quest to do so when formatting the quest. And of course they are not going to fix any bugs like this since they are not game-breaking so users will have to make the unofficial patch to fix them (sorry console users).

While I can fix most of these with the console I would prefer not to, so my question is, in your opinion, what is the safest way to adventure in Skyrim to avoid the many quest bugs out there?

Most of those quests have easy work arounds.

The smuggler quest in Riften you are talking about.. is it the one that takes place in Cragslane Cavern? If so let me know, I know of a solution.

Just post more info on the locations and quests.

Spoilers:



Yeah Cragslane Cavern. I know that if you go away for a time the cave will reset and you can kill three more bandits, repeat this and after you kill a total of 7 the quest should end. Problem is I have traveled around and waited 45 game days and the cave is not resetting. Also I only killed 2 when I went in the first time, so I think the game thinks there's supposed to be another guy in there, but there isn't so he must have fallen through the cracks and now can't be found or killed, thus the cavern never clears, thus the cavern never resets, thus I can never go back and kill more bandits, thus I can't finish the quest, thus I can't finish helping the Jarl, thus I can never get the house.

The 'Flight or Fight' quest is just bugged for me and I can never finish it without a console command.

Killing the Hagraven Petra is bugged because I killed her before she was named and part of the quest, so now she is just a hagraven body laying there with a quest marker on top of her.

I know there a console commands to fix and I know there are some work arounds, but I really shouldn't have to do that.

In Cragslane cavern you need to kill a total of seven bandits for the quest to finish, so the easiest way is to just use resurrect command on a dead bandit in there, that should work. I would try it on the bandit chief just to make sure.

Well the chief fell behind the large chest and disappeared. There is still a bandit laying dead in the narrow passage I'll try that on him I guess. But again, I'm not sure what a console user would be able to do other than start over and lose a character that they might have had 100+ hours into.

when you was wondering around and exploring waiting for it to reset you may find you where stilll in a close proximity to the cell, cells reset after you havnt stepped inside them or near them for 30 days.

have you tried waiting for 30days at say Markarth, the other side of the map? that should force the respawn properly, if this is what youve done then all i can say is they will eventually respawn you just need to have faith.

Some places never respawn.

I had to go back to a dungeon I cleared when I first started the game to find a Stone of Barenziah that I missed. When I got there I totally expected to have to clear my way to it.

The place was empty still and all the weapons from the guys I had killed roughly 400 hours ago are still lying there. But no enemies.

I've made a game out of exploring as much as possible, without ever going into many caves or indoor areas (unless there's a quest). By "game", I mean trying to avoid having them even registering on my map. lol..