This is something I never got any clear indication of from the patchnotes, and now that the patch has had a good amount of soak time with PC users, maybe the answers are now clear.

There were a lot of quest patches in the patchnotes relating to quests that got into a bad state and thus can't be completed (or sometimes, even started!) because of some unexpected game-state condition.

But does the "fix" actually get already-in-a-bad-state quests out of the bad state? Or does it just prevent the game from getting into these bad states, but if your save is already in a bad state the quest will continue to be unfinishable? Does it cure existing quest lockups, or just prevent future ones?


(I'm not a PC user myself, I'm a console user trying to figure out if there's any point cointinueing my character assuming the patch, when it arrives on consoles, will let me get the locked-up quests back on track or if I'm going to need to start a new character anyway and thus shouldn't keep investing effort into the current lost cause.)

I haven't noticed any broken quests, so I can't tell you if they've been fixed or meerly prevented from breaking.

I have had no problems with major quests either before or after the 1.4 patch. What I do have is a number of radiant quests given by the Jarls that cannot be completed and this is after 1.4. These are the "Kill the bandit leader at xyz" type of quests. I've had to use the console to clear these.

It differs per quest, on dependencies within/between quest stages.

It's a safe bet that starting a new game will resolve the listed solved quest issues for sure, and that fixes for the same quests are not guaranteed if it's already broken.

The same thing happened to me, the round nordic doors wouldn't work right so I buggered off from the quest and waited for the patch to fix em.But generaly though if you are still in the process of the quest when the patch is out leave the area and then return( load screens and such) got this tip when I was stuck and it worked for me.

More often than not it's probably prevention, if I had to guess.

If you don't activate a quest on a character that was made prior to the patch, the quest should not be broken when you start it.
Like with the bookshelves thing Beth fixed. Already affected bookshelves would remain broken, but shelves you never touched were good to use after the patch, regardless of if the the character was made befre the install

This is almost certainly the case, as what patches do is fix errant coding or scripting. As such the fixes prevent the problems from reoccuring, however ones that have already happened will remain so since they've already been triggered by the errant version. Now, if the problem is due to lack of a proper dialogue response then you will be able to continue, since that was what was holding things up to begin with.

In all cases future runs of the same quest will not experience the corrected issues, so it will be safe to do them on subsequent characters. Some aspects of Blood on the Ice will still be a bit wonky due to complex timing, though.

then you simply aren't playing the same game

I haven't noticed any broken quests since the first Thieve's Guild quest back before 1.2 or something. No problems since.

Most likely it's prevention. If you accidentally get pushed into the wrong quest stage at the wrong time, you can't really just be moved out because the game itself has no idea you are in the wrong stage.

The only bugged quest I've had in my game is with Greta and getting her to go to the Temple of the Divines. I was involved with it awhile ago, so I don't remember what happened, but the entry is still in my journal and no dialogue options exist to get it out. None of the issues with Blood on the Ice or any others. Lucky I guess?

the main quest is still broken

Its probably a bit of both depending on the quest and why it was bugged. Assuming that the quest system is set up similar to past games, quests have a certain numbered state internally. Your save game is only going to remember what state your quest is currently in. If the quest was broken because you just couldn't advance to the next state, this should be fixed ok once whatever problem is resolved. If you somehow got into a state and there is no way to advance it.... say somehow a critical NPC dropped through the floor for instance. Your save game will still have the NPC saved in an unreachable location. In which case, its not the actual quest that was broken, but the trigger for the next state is missing. In these cases, your old saves won't be fixed by a patch.