So I'm on my 3rd attempt with the same [censored] character.

The first time it only took me until the 20s in levels to realize that Bethesda actually hadn't fixed Blood on the Ice and that I couldn't buy Hjerim. But because I definitely enjoy losing dozens of hours having to remake characters, so that was a great thing to happen!

Then I remade the character, did a few quests, and tried to do Blood on the Ice again after patch 1.6 dropped and it was fixed... again. Well you know what? It was still [censored] broken. YAY another restart. I was so thrilled. And yeah, I did it perfectly by following every guide in existence to getting it NOT to break, repeatedly.

Remake number 3, character remade; no [censored]ting around this time. I went straight to BOTI and completed it to insure that I could get Hjerim when the time came (wouldn't you know it... I repeated the same thing character 2 did and it worked on one single attempt; how logical). Success! After much excessive (fun fun fun!) work gathering funds to buy Hjerim, I managed to purchase it. Looked like everything was finally going to go well... And then I realized I was playing an Elder Scrolls game.

A game where you'd have to be the luckiest person in the world to make the silly assumption that you could spend your money on the game, play it, and not spend more time dealing with [censored] than you spend actually playing.

So now here I am, level 52, working my way through my Dark Brotherhood questline (again) after having completed the Thieves Guild questline already. And you know what? Shadowmere won't spawn. Nope, not at all. No, he isn't dead. No, I don't already own a horse. No he didn't show up at any of the other stables, and yes I did try reloading (14 times... I counted). I do have these really exciting and entertaining [censored] bubbles to stare at though.

You know, maybe it's not just me. Maybe everyone has to restart their character 10 times as a [censored] rite of passage to play the [censored] game. Well, no thanks.

So I just wanted to write you a personal thank you note, Bethesda. I'm really enjoying all of this [censored] nonsense.


Signed,
Bad "FIX YOUR [censored] GAME" Teddy

In what way was Blood on the Ice not working?

I'de say you got your moneys worth out of the game.

I had the Hjerim problem on my first character, no problems after that.

I also recently had the Shadowmere problem on my level 61 character, though it didn't really bother me.

Anyway, it's an extremely large game with alot of potential for bugs, and as you said, you shouldn't play a Bethesda game expecting it to be bug free.

It wouldn't trigger. At all. Not even the graveyard scene.

I even ran around to make sure all the characters necessary were alive.

Buy the house in solitude. Other wise forget about it untill its fixed for sure, I know how ya feel ive had the quest glitch for me many times. I just gave up.

are you guys serious...like really serious? so its Ok for Bethesda to have buggy games, and for this Customer to be stonewalled.


but bring up Obsidian and its a Travesty.

Look OP you're not gonna get any reliable help here from the looks of it, I think Tech support is better for you. also what system you're playing n stuff would be nice.

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, cause Blood on the Ice always started for me. As far as shadowmere is concerned, have you tried fast traveling? I had that same glitch with shadowmere, and fast traveling to a stable worked for me

Well that would be all fine and dandy if I wanted to throw all of my hard-earned (it's [censored] pathetic I have to say hard-earned instead of fun) roleplaying out the window. The character that apparently just isn't meant to exist has a brother that owns Proudspire Manor already. Annnd all the other houses are spoken for as well. Regardless, I already have my house. Now I want my [censored] horse, but it looks like a simple SPAWNING TRIGGER was a little too damn difficult to code properly -.-

poor baby

funny stuff aside, you may want to just buy another disc, since ive had those problems along with many other people(especially ones with blodd on the ice), and they WERE fixed with the patches
i know when i got my first copy of obliv, it was super buggy, but the disc had just been [censored] up in prepress or something
so i exchanged it and the new one worked fine and integrated patches like normal
maybe try that with your skyrim copy?
and might wanna watch the language and over-aggressive stuff unless you want a warning/ban

I fast traveled to every single one. Then went back to the Sanctuary to play with the lovely black bubbles.

The first time I had to restart the character, I was much more calm. Now after having over 100 hours go into... well... nothing, I'm no longer able to take such a tone. I really couldn't care less about a warning right now. Everything I said was DEFINITELY called for at this point.

Bug free? No never. That's asking too much.

But I shouldn't have to attempt the same character 3 [censored] times and have it fail miserably in some silly way EVERY TIME. Seriously, Shadowmere's presence should be almost wholely irrelevant to EVERY other event in the game barring Astrid's death seeing as he doesn't even exist anywhere. I could have probably wrote the part of the code that spawns Shadowmere myself and it wouldn't have such a ridiculous problem as to have him not spawn -at all-

Well, seeing as he usually spawns, it's obviously more complex that the code being written wrong, more things affect it.

Which would still mean the code itself was poorly written. An NPC with 0 impact on the game has no reason to have any sort of problematic entry into the game world given that a spawning trigger would have to occur beforehand to manifest the NPC before any event in the gaming world to have an impact on his existence. Like I said, his only link to the game world is Astrid (or rather, should be Astrid, seeing as she's the only method to acquire him in the first place). After a check is performed to show that Astrid is alive there shouldn't be any other issue.

IF Astrid "condition" = living AND Complete "Behold Shadowmere"
THEN Spawn (XXXXXXX code for Shadowmere) AT (XXXXXX location code for black pool)
ELSE Do Nothing/Kill Shadowmere (If instead of being created he was simply located "out of bounds" for example)

Or something along the lines of that in essential terminology. Anything else going on is unnecessary. And if for some reason the game thinks the person who has given me all of the quests up until this point is dead, well... I don't even know what to say -.-

You're right. A good person like me doesn't deserve to have to put up with so much BS to attempt to enjoy one of the games of one of his (formerly) favorite series.

What is the significance of owning Hjerim over any other house? That being said, a broken quest is (in my opinion) a worthy cause to complain about, but Shadowmere...really...a horse being lost is not that big of a deal.

He deserves to play it as much as you do and has every right to complain.

The significance is that in this here role playing game where my specific character's role entails owning Hjerim and Shadowmere, if I can't get both, well, my options are: restart the character for a 4th time (and probably have this crap keep happening), sue Bethesda (oh believe me, if I thought that would work...), or rant and rave about it and hope it gets fixed. 3 crappy options, but I picked the one least likely to piss me off further at the moment.

I had the Blood and Ice bug on my first two characters, but after it was patched, I never had the problem again.

Fair enough.

Your point is very valid.

Your delivery comes off as immature and whiny.

I think that OP is just blowing off steam: having problems with one house of one mount is hardly game-breaking.

It's certainly not okay that Skyrim has a number of irritating bugs (the worst that I've suffered from was the one in The Foresworn Conspiracy that makes the entire town of Markarth off limits!) but with such an ambitious game it's difficult not to forgive a few painful loose ends.

The other thing is that having to 'restart all over again' is only really a problem in a linear game. Yesterday I did the Guldaur Amulet quest for the first time; I've logged hundreds of hours over multiple characters, and this was just the first time that I happened to pursue that, despite having completed Under Saarthal about five times.

I agree. But being mature about things didn't fix anything the first time. So this time I tried whiny. Maybe next time I'll try less sarcastic and more angry. Who knows. I'm shooting in the dark here, but rest assured I've got plenty of ammo.

Well see it's not gamebreaking to you because however you're playing the game doesn't make it gamebreaking. For me? It's gamebreaking.

Now, if the main quest was broken on this particular character, I couldn't care less, but you might be upset about that.

And restarting all over again in a game where any random glitch could make you do it again... and again... and again, is definitely a problem. Furthermore, in order to get my necessary items back, I keep having to do the same quests again... and again... and again. I barely get any time to just play the game because of being too busy doing the same [censored] repeatedly as of late -.-