ok i REALLY hope there's a way to fix this because i accepted the quest like 15 hours of play ago and i have just been putting it off but...

basically where the guy has you do the stealing / planting the ring while he distracts everyone....only they never go away, its been 15 hours like is said and everyone is still in their same spots crowed around him day and night never moving.

and to top it off when i went to the bar down there in the sewers...he wasn't there, HES not leaving his stall


please tell me there is a fix for this i dont want my main character to be ruined

really no one has had this problem?

Did you try to "Re-Pickpocket" the ring?

he no longer has it, the whole very first part i have done, im on the one where he sends you to the sewers...its like the game is stuck on the first part tho hes at the stall day and night so i cant get him to the damn sewers so i can complete the quest

guess im screwed lol

Its not just you... it happened to me to bro. its sooo [censored] up. I'm just hoping they will release a patch for it soon. if not then we have to pretty much skip the thrive guild quests...

bethesda patching bugs lol

Happened to me too, I just waited until he started walking, follow him until he gets to the Flagon...Ta-da!

ill try that when i get home, i did time skip to random hours of the day night and he was always sitting there tho lol

tried it, sat there for like 25 mins he never moved

Try punching a guard? Basically you normally have 3 options to get past that quest. You can succeed, you can stand there and not do anything (and he gives up since the theives' guild is just desperate for new blood - using the "wait" function to pass time breaks this and its obviously not working for you), or you get caught and tossed in jail briefly and he invites you because you tried and like I said they're desperate (stash your stolen goods and stuff first). That only works if the quest is still active though.

lol what would that do

Maybe, but normally a player would tend to get caught while trying to plant or remove the ring. So I'd actually suggest grabbing it back out of the lockbox and pickpocketting it back on to the guy you got it from, then trying to pickpocket them again until you fail.

Upon being released from jail you SHOULD be able to talk to him and proceed despite failing the objective. Also you don't screw over a decent working stiff.

I'm guessing all your autosaves are eaten up from hitting the wait button right? Are you on PC or console?

console and ya i did it, completed it, then got the quest to meet him in the sewers and i was like meh ill do this latter so i go and do other crap....15 hours of game time later im like hey ill go do thief's guide...why are they all still sitting in the same spot...went to sewer...hes not there, i go back up hes still there....f...


but ya the rings not there, guy doesn't have, it no one has it (checked everyone) so ya.....any suggestions? lol

Yeah if the quest is flagged as completed then what I suggested won't work. Unfortunately I can't think of any way to reset those NPCs when they're stuck like that. In some cities (ones which are central to certain missions) simply progressing the civial war to those events will work in a lot of cases - but Riften is not one of those 3 possible cities so there does not appear to be a work-around on consoles at the moment.

I could explain the problem but I'm not sure that will help - it may at least help you avoid similar sorts of glitches in the future (until they're patched - this one will be a relatively simple fix compared to some other bugs at least.)

During scripted scenes like that - particularly scripted crowd scenes - the NPCs normal behavior, dialog, etc. are replaced with temporary aliases that tell them to do what they're told and not get out of line. Basically the quest shuts off their brains so they don't do things like... walk off to get dinner or start chatting with each other in the middle of the scene. The problem is the command that reverts them back to their normal non-animatronic selves runs after the scene is completely played out (the arrest, the crowd reaction, etc.). The quest though tells you you're done as soon as you complete all the objectives. Leaving, waiting, and sometimes even trying to talk to an NPC between the quest completed message and the scene finishing interupts the script that's supposed to run a command like this:

clearquestaliases TG00SP

On the PC you can just enter that code. In some cities other quests can end up clearing it up by basically forcing the stuck NPCs into a different scene and then not getting bugged into that one. Unfortunately I can't think of one that would do that for Riften NPCs.

I hope this doesn't kill you're desire to keep playing - even if you restart. Something that probably should be the first suggestion in ANY Elder scrolls game is that you should create seperate saves every so often (don't need to keep all of them but autosaves will write over each other too fast to save you in a lot of cases.) Also, at least until they patch this glitch, be sure to let scenes that don't demand immediate action play out before poking the NPCs or leaving. If they seem to be wonky for a long while after scenes like that (5 minutes real time or more is usually a stuck scenes), presume they've glitched.

The good news is that a fix for this could be made retroactive. Those aliases I mentioned - the stand in brains for the NPCs while they're in the scene - include things like their responses when you do try to talk to them. All they need to do is add a line or two of scripting to that response where it checks to see if the quest is complete; if it is then it executes that command and kicks them out of dummy mode. They could even add it so it makes that check under certain conditions when walking into the Sunken Flagon people (ie - if player has completed the frame-job but not met Brynolf in flagon then upon loading that room it executes that line once then turns itself off.) Simple fix that could be retroactive but I wouldn't suggest waiting for it to keep playing.

This has happened to me as well. I've tried every tip I have found to remedy it but to no avail. So I guess that unless they patch it I'm screwed. It's really aggravating.

Same thing happened to me. I wasn't even trying to join the guild, but I had to talk to Brynjolf for another quest, but was forced to do this one because he refused to talk to me about anything else.

Then, it bugs out, with him standing there hawking his wares, a crowd of people standing around, but no ring for me to take and plant.

I used a console command to disperse the crowd, but Brynjolf still stood there, bugged out. Ended up having to just advance the quest with setstage, but man, how annoying, especially for console players with no access to the developer console.

So the reason you didn't reload and earlier save was....

Did you plant the correct ring on the right person?

Did you get a quest update once the ring was planted?

I've done this quests a couple times and this has never happened to me.