While performing the "Cure for Vampirism" quest I am unable to give Melisande the Bloodgrass ingredient. She just repeats that I should get some if I happen to be in oblivion. But I have tones of it, fresh from Oblivion!

I should add that I'm playing from the PS3 version of the Game Of The Year (GOTY) edition. Best I can tell from peoples discussions is that it seems to be related to the presence of the Shimmering Isles Expansion, something I don't get a choice about since it's all part of the one disc.

I've tried things like giving her all the ingredient in order, which I heard was suggested by Bethesda. Giving her the Bloodgrass at the same time as giving her the 5 stones. Getting fresh Bloodgrass from Oblivion. Dropping them and picking them up again. Throwing them at her in frustration. And so on...

I have searched all over the place for a solution to this but find many anecdotes that don't work or have some bad side-effects or are not doable on the PS3. Also getting reports of Bethesda's apparently ignoring the issue. The only suggestion I saw that apparently came from Bethesda was either to do it before finishing the main quest which is nonsense on face value, but regardless of that I'm no where near finishing; alternatively they said just restart the game! Yea after a couple hundred hours of time put into a character I don't think I'd be so ready to so flippantly start again. Also it was said that the game can be completed without finishing this quest. Well I have to respond by saying, 'have you even tried playing this game for more than a few hours as a vampire? It's frustrating to no end, I'm so sick of either burning to death when I fail to plan my movements to coincide with night-time only or get trapped in some place where I can't activate the wait dialogue, which can get nasty if you're trespassing to escape the burning sunlight'. Additionally this individual said that there was to be no more work on the game by the company; this seemed to be confirmed by other sources. I will repeat that I can't confirm that it actually was a Bethesda rep who said that.

Bethesda please address this issue, I doubt it would be that hard for you to create a small patch made available through the PS3 DLC Network. After days of replaying from a backup trying various theories to fix or get around this I am so disheartened I no longer feel like playing what was my favourite game. I love Bethesda's games but will no longer play any of them or purchase any more until I receive an update/patch for this. I hate not finishing a game, but one thing worse is a game not allowing me to finish.

Again, Bethesda, please help and redeem my now lost loyalty... Cheers,.

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Addition! I neglected to try the German workaround. So I tried it just now, despite people saying it doesn't work. For me it did, so Bethesda, for me at least, gets off easy. But unquestionably my faith in the company has been shattered. More care needs to be made to keep people effected by shortfalls in their products happy.

The German workaround only works on the European release of the game AFAIK.

It is also a very buggy workaround. If you are partway through the SI quests you will now find that they are broken.

You should be fine if you never entered the Isles before using the workaround though, and should be able to work around the bugs if you hadn't progressed as far as the quest "A Better Mousetrap"