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Monday 12 November 2012

Skyrim: A mage's retirement


Here I am, disguising myself as a creepy witch (posing with dead bodies of which you nicked the hat is okay if you're supposed to be a creepy witch). I look scary as hell. What I don't know yet is that the fun after the masquerade isn't going to last very long.

I had been zapping around very happily, falling in love with the amazingly strong lightning skill that jumps from target to target. If stuff would really get too hard, I'd place ice runes and sneak around while the enemies would look for me and step in them. I also played around a bit with fire walls and let them walk through that. I'm not sure how stupid you have to be to allow yourself to be kited through a wall of fire, but it worked.


I socialized with fellow mages of the guild and ended up being their guild master. After a lot of magic adventures, I bought a plot in Riften and settled down. No more adventures for me. Just quiet work in my own lovely vegetable garden (it came with me very own grain shovel!) and endless conversations with Lydia at the kitchen table ("I will follow you to the very end, my thane.").

If only it had been like this.


In (virtual) reality, Ravanel was happy with her house, but didn't have any plans of settling down. She dumped all her stuff in it and went on to the next adventure: the main quest that runs through the whole game. Only, there was no next adventure. During my time at the mage's guild, the NPCs leading it had miraculously disappeared. They were not at Riften. They were not in Riverwood. They were not at the Foresworn place in the west where I had to go. In fact, each time I neared the Forsworn place (it didn't matter from which side), my game instantly crashed.

After a long search on the internet, I found I had encountered a known bug with the main story. There was no way to fix it. The only option was to load an older save game and play everything over. Even that was no option for Ravanel: I did not have any save game from before the bug. I could still do whatever I want in game, apart from continuing the main quest. Sadly enough, continuing the main quest was the only thing I had planned for Ravanel after having completed everything at the mage's guild.

I know it's just a game, and I know that I still have huntress Ravereth to play (although she is nowhere near as far with the main quest), but I'm feeling pretty sad right now. So far I've encountered some bugs, but I was always able to find a workaround. I think it's pretty bad that they release a game with such major bugs in the first place, and it's even worse that they don't try to fix it or offer any solutions. I will probably play a bit with Ravereth in the future, but don't feel very motivated right now by not being able to play my favourite character.


Above: endless conversations with Lydia ("I will follow you to the very end, my thane!"). Sigh.

10 comments :

  1. Ack! Sorry to hear about that. :/

    But hopefully it won't be the end of your mage's story in Skyrim just yet. If a bug is that bad that you can't continue one of the main quests they will probably fix it. Or maybe even the unnoficial patch might take care of it? Well, assuming you are not using it yet. @_@

    Out of curiosity, what was the bug that is preventing you from continuing on the main quest?

    ~Rakuno

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    1. I don't have very much hope that they'll actually look into this. The game is already there for quite a while, and only some people get this bug (it's not there for everyone). Apparently something can go wrong in the game files at a specific place in this quest.

      I added a link to the only source of people experiencing the same bug (although it's misunderstood by someone on the first page) to my post. As I said, I can't get to the area (Karthspire) where I need to meet up with Delphine and Esborn. It's not that I can't enter some door or something - the game actually crashes in the landscape if I get near. It does so no matter if I come from the north, south, west etc. The whole area is just bugged.

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    2. Just read the thread you linked too and indeed it seems unlikely Bethesda is going to fix it considering how old it is. I thought it was a recent bug and since it affects the main quest it had a better chance to be fixed than a side one. Guess not. :/

      Also, apologies for the stupidity of my first comment. That is what I get from reading a post late one night and then commenting on it the next day. /sigh

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    3. That wasn't a stupid comment! I'm really happy with all the kind words. :)

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  2. Tragic! :( I second Rakuno's hope that there will someday be a fix for your exile from the Forsworn place. I haven't played Skyrim, but from what I know of the game, you really do develop a very personal/unique story and playstyle - based on which things you do, whom you talk to, etc. Thus, backtracking (or even worse, starting over) and trying to accomplish the same exact character seems almost impossible. Not like LotRO where you just roll another toon and level them up again. Such a shame.

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    1. Skyrim is not such a personal story as, say, Mass Effect. It doesn't have loads of choices in what to do in quests, but it does have a big random factor in which creatures or events you run into when etc. I could do everything all over again on my mage (I guess it's like leveling another toon in LotRO), but I'm very grind-resistant and the thought only already makes me feel tired.

      Thanks (both) for the kind words. I hope I didn't rant/moan too much.

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  3. Can you use the console commands to spawn them in somewhere? Or perhaps port yourself inside the forsworn place since you're crashing as you approach it?

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    1. I have no idea how I would be able to spawn them, and even if I would be able to, I still wouldn't be able to follow them, for my computer crashes as soon as I come near to the place I need to go with them. I've never been to the place before so I can't port there and it doesn't really show on my map, but if you read the thread, the people with the exact same problem did try, and their computer also crashed while porting.

      Thanks for the suggestions, though.

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    2. EDIT: So sorry for all the deleted comments, I really need an edit function. I was designating things with greater/less than signs and the page did NOT like that. So I had to delete and turn into brackets.

      Basically I'm suggesting typing in commands or as some call it "cheating" to get past a terrible bug caused by a broken game. You absolutely CAN salvage your character you've put so much time into, and I'd like to inform how. Since you don't know how to spawn people in using the in-game console and misunderstood what I meant by porting, here's how you do it spelled out:

      First, a page on what the Console is http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console_Commands. The Console is a little in game window you input commands into, all of which are listed in the page I just linked.

      I don't recall the quest you're on, but it sounds like from what you're saying you'll have to follow some NPCs to a place. So this may not work, but I'd say it should be your first step. If the NPC you're trying to find exists, you can type in "player.moveto [ActorID]" into the console where ActorID is a code specific to the NPC you're trying to get to. That code oughta be on UESP wiki by just searching for the NPC. If the NPC is just gone that won't work, so you can spawn in a copy of that NPC by typing and entering the code "player.placeatme [ActorID]"

      By port I meant use the CoC command, short for center on cell. If the area surrounding the interior location you need to get to is borked, sometimes bypassing it will work. The command in the console would be "CoC [cellname]" and again cellname oughta be found on the wiki by searching for whatever the location is.

      Finally, if porting to where you need to go or trying to spawn in clones of your missing NPCs doesn't work, you can try auto-completing the quest by using a command. Can't really screw up your save any more than it already is, right? "Movetoqt [questID]" (short for move to quest target), "setstage [questID] [stage #]" which can fast forward you to certain parts of a quest, and finally "completequest [questID]" are commands that might be able to kickstart your progress on this bugged quest and allow you to put this broken nonsense behind you and to further continue exploring Tamriel on your character.

      All of the commands I listed & their descriptions are in the url I gave you, if I didn't explain a detail well enough.

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    3. No worries for the deleted comments. If there was a way to make you edit comments I'd do it, but I haven't found the option within Blogger yet

      I'm really honoured that you wrote such a long explanation just for me! You are right: at this point it doesn't matter much if I screw up save games, because this bug is so annoying that I won't play my character as it is anyway. It's a hard life loving games but not being a computer nerd! ;) But I'm learning on my way.

      I'll try to fix this today together with Tiger. Thanks so much for the help, I finally have some hope that we can fix this one way or another. :)

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