[SOLVED] Dark Brotherhood seriously bugged

[Deathbydestiny]

I've never done the Dark Brotherhood quest before until now on any character, it never really fit with them but I decided this time to see it on a new play through.

I had not realized what a bug filled mess this questline was! I'll go into detail as much as I can. The only mod affecting it is USLEEP so I can't imagine it being a conflict aside from The Cutting Room Floor possibly doing something to the delayed burial quest. I don’t want to post in the bug tracker yet since I just want to confirm these issues and go from there

 

1. Starting the quest was fine until I got to the Falkreath entrance. I said the password and it just teleported me into the sanctuary instead of opening the door. I don't know if that's normal? Because it seemed to bypass many things. Astrid was still hooded which apparently isn’t supposed to happen and kept saying the same thing over and over which was telling me where the sanctuary was. I go down further and see all the other members standing around doing nothing, I try to talk to Nazir and he tells me to talk to Astrid. The word wall didn’t work either.

To fix this I left the sanctuary and came back, it updated my quest at this point and all was well. Supposedly after you talk to Astrid at this point you can go down and see the other members talking but this scene didn’t trigger either, they just all walked off from the central room and sandboxed.

 

2. I completed my first 3 contracts and then got sent to kill Alain Dufont. I went ahead and did that but when I did kill him the quest arrow was still pointing to him and I did not get any update. To fix this I setstage db03 40 and continued on to kill Nilsine Shatter-Shield which worked fine.

 

3. Back at the sanctuary, Cicero is supposedly here now. I get the quest to talk to the Night Mother and do that part. I leave the coffin, and Cicero is supposed to be outside to talk to me but the quest marker just points at the ground. I look around and he is no where to be found. I looked around the internet and found this fix:

prid 0001E64A

enable

This enables Cicero, for some reason he wasn’t
 

4. All goes smooth until I finish Breaching Security and turn it in. At this point I’m flagged as committing a crime against the Brotherhood and have to pay a fine. I figure it’s just 500g and continue on.

 

5. I start The Cure for Madness. I get to the Dawnstar sanctuary and yet again it teleports me in, which breaks things. Such as the guardians stuck in the walls and not moving or attacking, this also happens to the Udefrykte. I finally get stuck at a gate and can’t proceed. So I go out and back in the sanctuary. The guardians attack as normal and so does the Udefrykte. I get to the end where Cicero is supposed to be but yet again he is missing.

 

At this point I am stuck, I don’t know any code to fix this. So I’m posting this hoping for a fix.

[lmstearn]

Something is very wrong if you just got teleported inside. After giving the password, the door is supposed to open.

Innocence Lost definitely went without a hitch and is logged as completed?

Try a reload of a save before entering the cell with the DB Sanctuary. Same?

Everything else up to this point okay? No other stalled quests or bad cell loads?

[Deathbydestiny]

Innocence Lost was fine, I went back a few times and even redid Innocence Lost and still the same result with the door. No real big issues like this so far in my game, I would go so far as to say in all my time playing I have never experienced it get this bad.

 

Though I will say I did not go back far enough to a point before innocence lost first started, it was always at the Kill Grelod part. I spent a bit of time playing elsewhere before I actually did that so going back that far for me would hurt but at this point I'm willing to take the hit. Then again, it might not be worth it just to find out its all messed up again.

Edit: I went back and restarted proper before Innocence Lost was even started, I pushed through that and got to the black door and it still teleported me in. At this point I don't know what to say, something in my load order is affecting this quest. I checked with TES5EDIT, nothing is editing it except USLEEP, nothing is effecting it's scripts except USLEEP. I don't want to point the finger, but I don't know know enough about modding the game to suggest otherwise.

[Deathbydestiny]

So I have an update of sorts, I'm not entirely sure what it means though.

As a means to test, I used Alternate start and used the Dark Brotherhood start. This went well! It started everything off perfectly. Astrid was fine, the little starting scene with all the members played out. The Word wall work.

I did my first contracts and return to the sanctuary to see Cicero in a scene with Astrid! I am stunned at this point because I believe I have narrowed the issue down a little bit from this. Something is going on with how the quest is started, something to do with the teleporting from the black door or perhaps more. I don't know enough about modding the game to know where to look right now, perhaps one of the more seasoned modders here would know?

[lmstearn]

It actually looks like the DB quest was broken originally. Other quests might be broken as well. Something wrong with the Story Manager data in the save. Reloading a save in-game and carrying on with that save can cause these issues.

Use the console sqs <DB01> or sqs <DB02> etc. to view the stages

Were there many mods in the original save?

[Deathbydestiny]

So this isn't a mod issue then, just an issue with how saves work in the game? Finding where this broke would be crazy, I may as well start over at this point and hope for the best and consider that reloading in game is a bad thing. Unless this is somehow fixable? What's the best practice to avoid this again?

Yes the game is heavily modded.

Here is the output from Conskrybe

	sqs db01
		Stage 0: 0 
		Stage 5: 0 
		Stage 20: 1 
		Stage 30: 1 
		Stage 200: 1 
		Stage 255: 1 
	sqs db02
		Stage 0: 0 
		Stage 10: 1  (Item 0, Item 1)
		Stage 30: 1 
		Stage 40: 1 
		Stage 50: 1  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2)
		Stage 200: 1 
		Stage 220: 0  (Item 0, Item 1)
		Stage 255: 1 
	sqs db03
		Stage 0: 0  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3)
		Stage 5: 0 
		Stage 10: 1 
		Stage 20: 1 
		Stage 25: 0 
		Stage 30: 0 
		Stage 31: 0 
		Stage 35: 0 
		Stage 40: 1 
		Stage 50: 1  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2)
		Stage 200: 1 
		Stage 255: 1 
	sqs db04
		Stage 0: 0  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4)
		Stage 1: 1 
		Stage 10: 1 
		Stage 20: 1 
		Stage 30: 1 
		Stage 40: 1 
		Stage 50: 1 
		Stage 200: 1 
		Stage 255: 1 
	sqs db05
		Stage 0: 0  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3)
		Stage 10: 1  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3)
		Stage 20: 1 
		Stage 200: 1  (Item 0, Item 1)
		Stage 255: 1 
	sqs db06
		Stage 0: 0  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3)
		Stage 5: 1 
		Stage 10: 1 
		Stage 20: 0 
		Stage 30: 1  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2)
		Stage 200: 1 
		Stage 255: 1 
	sqs db07
		Stage 0: 0  (Item 0, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4)
		Stage 10: 1 
		Stage 15: 1 
		Stage 17: 0 
		Stage 19: 1 
		Stage 20: 1  (Item 0, Item 1)
		Stage 25: 0 
		Stage 30: 0  (Item 0, Item 1)
		Stage 40: 0 
		Stage 50: 0 
		Stage 60: 0 
		Stage 200: 0 
		Stage 255: 0 

 

[lmstearn]

10 hours ago, Deathbydestiny said:

So this isn't a mod issue then, just an issue with how saves work in the game? Finding where this broke would be crazy, I may as well start over at this point and hope for the best and consider that reloading in game is a bad thing. Unless this is somehow fixable? What's the best practice to avoid this again?

Can't tell if it is a mod issue. All the quests are all flagged as completed. Does that display in the quest list on Steam? Is there anything in the LO that changes the way quests start?

Might be an interesting exercise for a script. Run it on load to capture all quest stages and produce a diff report at the end of the session. Or there are mods like these, but not sure if they can handle bugged quests.

 

[Deathbydestiny]

What do you mean by quest list in Steam? Like achievements? It did give me achievements if that's what you mean. There are 2 mods in my LO that change how certain quests start Timing is Everything and Thieves Guild Requirements, Neither of them touch the Dark Brotherhood aside from the world encounter with the assassin.

[lmstearn]

Yeah, for DB05 you have an achievement for that already? But that's a quest that's not started yet and is flagged as complete in the list above. What does the journal say?

[Deathbydestiny]

Ya it gave me that one. The journal says I completed all steps. Based on my console out put it says it never started properly?

[lmstearn]

The output says DB05 is completed, but it hasn't actually started given this is the first time you entered the sanctuary. The quest where you first talk to Astrid is DB02a. What's the output for that?

It looks like the entire questline is broken. You could try loading the "Kill Grelod" save and resetting any DB quests after DB02, but that may not help. Then use something like SAM to edit the Steam achievement if desired.

 

[Deathbydestiny]

I made the decision at this point to restart my game from scratch, there were other minor issues with it I can solve now by doing this. I think it's for the best. Thank you for your help though, and a possible reason as to why it happened. I'm just going to to be careful with how I save the game from this point on. Is there anything else I should consider before I start fresh? I know I will be starting the questline sooner than I did before.

[lmstearn]

Nothing I can think of. If I were to put money on it, it's a mod, but with Skyrim you can never be 100% sure.

Aside: Can mods be hacked? Another scenario might be Daddy gives the keys to his mod page to Bubba while he's away and Bubba wants to include some extra little scripts in there just for fun - or revenge - or to help?!

 

[Deathbydestiny]

What makes you think that though? I understand that by starting over I may incur this again but I want to know your thoughts on it.

[lmstearn]

Well hacked mods are rare, and we soon know about them, but errors and wild edits are a different beast altogether.

The mod which ruined my game was this one. It had wild edits that unintentionally interfered with "Blood on the Ice", probably about the worst quest to mess with. No amount of tinkering ever repaired it.

[Deathbydestiny]

Wild edits, I see. I've been through with TES5EDIT and have found no edits to the quests, dialog. or anything else related to the starting of these quests. though I could have missed something I'm sure. The only thing modifying them is USLEEP which I will assume is not hacked or otherwise This is why I was leaning more towards your idea of save corruption.

[lmstearn]

XEdit doesn't tell the whole story when it comes to scripts. I can write a script sending all the inhabitants of Skyrim to WIDeadBodyCleanupCell which might be activated by a lever in Labyrinthian or somesuch. XEdit will know about the lever and any of the script properties, but not what the script does. A "heuristic" text search of the script directory will uncover any oddities, and to make it regex based is a bit involved but something I might look at in the future.

To cloud the issue even further, a mod author can supplant a problem script with a fixed one, but if you have used the bad one in your game and taken damage from it, you'll never know it came from him unless he 'fesses up and declares it.

[Deathbydestiny]

Ahh I see your point. I won't discount the possibility of course. On an unrelated side note, I have been crashing consistently between the Guardian Stones and Riverwood on my new game. I spent a whole day trying to figure this out

Tracked it down to being a video memory related issue and somehow fixed it with ENBoost. Back to playing again, hoping for the best.

[Deathbydestiny]

On 2017-04-13 at 11:03 AM, lmstearn said:

XEdit doesn't tell the whole story when it comes to scripts. I can write a script sending all the inhabitants of Skyrim to WIDeadBodyCleanupCell which might be activated by a lever in Labyrinthian or somesuch. XEdit will know about the lever and any of the script properties, but not what the script does. A "heuristic" text search of the script directory will uncover any oddities, and to make it regex based is a bit involved but something I might look at in the future.

To cloud the issue even further, a mod author can supplant a problem script with a fixed one, but if you have used the bad one in your game and taken damage from it, you'll never know it came from him unless he 'fesses up and declares it.

Welp, New game and I went straight to start the Dark Brotherhood to see if it would work. Bad news is that it's the same old again.

At this point I'd say you're right Imstearn.

But I didn't do anything except start the normal way and set up all my MCM stuff and then at the first chance I got I went to test it out. Something is stopping this quest from starting properly. LAL starts it it's own way and it's fine after that, so I'd say that's where I need to look.

[Deathbydestiny]

I found the problem! It was a SKSE plugin called Don't Push Me.

It's not worth keeping this for what it does compared to what it breaks.

[lmstearn]

Oh, okay, wow!

Nothing about the DB on the description page- supposed to be a simple mod and all? Glad you worked it out at any rate.