No Zytrons In Range

Bethesda, I love you guys. I love Skyrim. But it’s fucking buggy as shit, and it’s bugging the shit out of me. Mainly because I have the weird type of OCD that requires me to finish every quest in a RPG, and your bugs make it impossible to finish a lot of Skyrim quests.

Before we start, some basics:

1. I’m playing Skyrim on PC, the Steam distribution of the game.
2. These bugs are all from my second play-through. My first was actually quite a bit more buggy than this one.
3. This game was started before the November 30th patch, but the bugs still exist after the patch. (This may be normal. I know frequently patch fixes only apply to new games.)
4. This list is ridiculously incomplete. I’ll try to add to it as new bugs arise.

Beware! Spoilers below!

Stuck Quests:

• (Misc) “Go to Dorian in Solitude and pick up the item” – Dorian is inside a ship, doesn’t exit. When you go inside the ship to talk to him, he says only “you shouldn’t be in here” and doesn’t engage in conversation. (Edit: Managed to complete this quest; see Michael’s comment.)
• (Misc) “Return to Esbern” – Esbern has been broken most of this game (and most of my last play-through). He won’t engage me in conversation. I believe this quest is supposed to lead up to the potion Esbern gives you to help fight dragons, so I can’t get that buff this play-through. (And for those who have played through the main quest, no the state of the quest “Paarthurnax” doesn’t have anything to do with Esbern’s broken-ness… he’s busted either way.) (On another note, this is my second play-though, and Esbern has been ridiculously broken both times. It’s actually hard to tell when Esbern’s busted, because I have no idea how he’s supposed to work!) Guys, the NPCs required for the main quest are broken!
• (Misc) “Ask Esbern about dragon lairs” – Since Esbern’s busted, I can’t turn this one in, either.
• (Misc) “Visit the college of Winterhold” – Quest points to Nirya, who is standing in Winterhold (not in the college), and only has one dialog option which does not complete the quest.
• (Misc) “Investigate the Bards College” – Quest points to Viarmo, who has two dialog options, neither of which complete the quest.
• (Misc) “Disrupt the skooma operation” – Quest points to a cave, Cragslane Cavern, where illegal dog fights were taking place. Every NPC in the cave is dead, but the quest isn’t marked as completed. If killing every single skooma dealer in the city doesn’t “disrupt the operation”, I don’t know what would!
• (Misc) “Kill the bandit leader at Broken Helm Hollow” – The objective pointer points to the wrong location.
• (Misc) “Purchase a house in Windhelm” – Apparently this quest cannot be completed after joining the Imperial faction, but remains in my quest log all the same. The steward says only that there has been some trouble and the house is not available.
• (Misc) “Speak to Verulus about the Hall of the Dead” – Verulus is dead.
• (Misc) “Collect bounty from Brina Merilis” – This is a weird one: this quest can’t be selected! As opposed to the Svidi quest, where it can be selected but there’s no objective arrow, this one simply can’t be selected at all. Weird.
• (Misc) “Assist the people of Haafinger (5/5)” – As you can see from the quest’s name, I’ve completed it by assisting 5 people in that region. And yet, the quest hasn’t been marked as completed, and nothing I do can complete it.

Weird Stuff:

• A character named only “Khajit” wearing orcish armor and attacking with magic attacked me for no apparent reason. He had no bounty notes on him, and nothing identifying what organization he was affiliated with. Maybe not a bug?
• My character got stuck mining a Corumdum Ore Vein for… well a very long time without actually producing any ore or gems. When I finally cancelled the ore mining, the rock face wasn’t mine-able anymore (but it also wasn’t depleted.)
• In a cut-scene as part of the main quest, Alduin is supposed to appear but didn’t. The other characters involved just stared dumbly in the direction he was supposed to show up for about 4-5 minutes before I gave up on it. I ended up having to re-load my game and start the cut-scene over again. Guys, the cut-scenes in the main quest are broken.
• Characters occasionally appear buck-naked (well, wearing underwear), when (I presume) they’re supposed to be clothed. One of these characters was the Courier.
• After the end of the civil war quest line, you’re instructed to destroy camps of the opposing faction as you come across them. Despite this, the commander of those camps are still set as non-killable, and so it’s impossible to actually clear the camps.
• After completing The Forsworn Conspiracy and escaping Cidna Mine, Markarth guards stay stuck in quest mode and won’t let you pay your bounty in the normal way. It gets worse – if you tell the guards to take you to Cidna Mine, they won’t. Instead they just immediately arrest you again and again. This bug makes Markarth practically inaccessible.
• The treasure that goes with Treasure Map X does not exist on my game. This drove me nuts, I spent something like a half-hour looking for it before Googling for a walkthrough… turns out it just doesn’t exist in my little Skyrim.
• Oghma Infinium disappeared after being read – this makes it impossible to achieve the “Oblivion Walker” achievement, as only 14 Daedric Artifacts exist in my game world. (There are 16 total; one of them, Skull of Corruption can be destroyed based on your choices during the quest.) Edit: Researching this some more, the book is supposed to disappear when you use it! But on the other hand, the UESP blog says “Using the book before acquiring all Daedric Artifacts will not break the Oblivion Walker achievement. It will still count toward the 15 required.” So obviously this is another bug. (Needless-to-say, using the console to add the item doesn’t work, as it marks that save game as “invalid for achievements”.)

Graphical Glitches:

• Khajit sideburns clip through helmets, which is hilarious:
  

Utterly Inexplicable Design Decisions:

• Unlike every other Elder Scrolls game, Hand-To-Hand is not a first-class skill. It has no perks, and it doesn’t contribute to leveling. Despite this, it’s got its own custom animations, it’s even used as a persuade option. So the game’s pretty bi-polar on this!
• Quest items cannot be dropped or stored in chests. Which is fine except… they also have weight! Sometimes they are quite heavy. This reduces the amount of items you can carry as your inventory is full of useless undroppable items. (Special bonus goes to dragon claws, where each dungeon requires a specific one, and figuring out which is quite a challenge when you’re holding 6-7 of them.) Especially egregious, because (correct me if I’m wrong) this wasn’t an issue in Oblivion.
• The guy who’s famous all over Skyrim for winning a war and personally killing a dozen dragons still gets attacked by bandits wearing hide armor. I know people didn’t like the auto-leveling NPCs in Oblivion, but this is ridiculous—better would be the bandits trying to bribe you to leave them alone, or simply running when you approach. Either would still give the player the desired sense of badass-ness.