I'd love to see this stickied to see if the people of various gaming communities could also post their gamestate conditions that caused blood on ice to not begin and break their opportunity to purchase a home in windhelm.

I cannot purchase a home in windhelm until blood on ice is completed. My issue is I'm part of a select and small group that is prevented from the quest ever starting. The quest's item ID is MS11 according to the wiki entry http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Blood_on_the_Ice under the known bugs section at the bottom one repeating issue is that the quest just wont start for some people ever. The initial work around is to work through the stages, setstage MS11 0 will begin the quest normally, but again part of this bug is that console commands cannot force the quest either. The following is true in my playerspace:

Companions Cleared
Thane of All Holds but Windhelm
Destroyed Dark Brotherhood
Defeated Alduin
Joined Stormcloak Rebellion
Mages College Cleared
Thieves Guild not completed
Durring Peace Treaty Winterhold was surrendered to the empire and Markarth was attained by the rebellion
Several Daedric Artifacts Recovered.

However relevant these are to the solution is beyond me but if something popped as a result of these decisions I'd like that to be clear. I am unable to start this quest, and it's stopped my playtime dead.

Another gentlemen had a workaround for the force completion


from: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2246991

However in my case the say commands do not populate the home with the upgrades, so even with forcing I cannot begin, complete or even cheat the quest.

Blood on the Ice has numerous glitches and issues as a simple google search titled "Blood on the Ice Fixes" can yield

Other players encounter issues like:


Blood on the Ice is an essential quest for attaining real reward in the game, the level to which it is damaged is staggering, I would suggest to the 100's of posts I at least have seen that before a patch a quick fix is developed. As this is a game-breaker, you can never complete a task by any means, I'd call it the maximum of error. I hope the info I provided will be helpful, here are my other stats

Windows 7 Home
nVidia 560ti 285.62 Driver Group
i7 2600k processor 3.4 GHz (overclocked at times)
4 GB RAM
7200RPM HDD speed.
DX11

Steam Client version of Skyrim.

I hope a speedy conclusion can be reached, not being able to complete a task by any means has stopped me from continued play. I worked around issues like eyes not setting, and arrows unsticked by using the sixchange console command to reset my character, I'm no stranger to working around your game to play it and I don't really mind doing it, but I can't fix this guys, and after 12 hours of searching since my last play I can't find anyone else whose solved it.

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The second and less important issue lies in the Mages College and Bards College

Bards College
-On instrument quests like Finn's Lute I can turn in the item but it never leaves my inventory, or completes in journal

College of Winterhold
-Hanging Gardens cannot be turned in.
-I had acquired hanging gardens before the quest was in my book, I cannot turn in the book regardless of what I try, the game continues to point to the emptied chest in the game.
-Workarounds I tried:
Leaving the cave, removing the item from my inventory by console command in the hopes it would force spawn in the chest, it didn't
Storing the book in the chest letting it sit then re-taking it.
No quest ID to force conclusion that I've found yet.

Ideally need Blood on the Ice Fixed Pronto, but be aware of these other two.

I was hoping new patch would fix it. Its not in the bugfix notes at least.

This desperately needs a fix.

There is no way for the player to progress at all towards the objective, despite strides in the war.

Before I try it, I want to see if someone will try it with me who is also having issues starting this. there is a console command "saq" that starts all quests in the game possibly this might be a fix.

So never use the saq command, it will start everything.

More depressingly however, it still doesn't proc Blood on Ice.

i was able to fix this by doing it in this order: get to the point he wants you to buy the house to become thane(help 5/5 people in Eastmarch) then...

completequest ms11
completequest ms11b

setstage 000A7B33 10

it still all buggy

but you can get the house and the decorations

im part of the "lucky" ones, that cant get the "blood on the ice " quest started, done the imperial legion quests, done sidequests in windhelm itself, but it just doesnt trigger, i want that house lol

will try these workarounds and let you know, but im not a big fan screwing around with console commands to get quests done, seeing how buggy they are even on normal trigger...

I was also able to get the house to at least a somewhat acceptable level by performing the following:

Going to the Jarl of windhelm's assistant and clicking on him while in console then typing:

setstage 000A7B33 10

Then just typing the following two cmds to get the cleanup option and decoration buy options:

completequest ms11
completequest ms11b

Here's the important part, buy the blood cleanup option first, then go to the Hjerim house and use the console to delete the spider webs, strange fragments on the floor, overturned tables, chairs, bed upstairs etc., also when clicking on spider webs in the corner to cleanup you will sometimes select the mist which will be cleaned up as well. You have to be careful during the process so you don't delete walls, floors, etc. but with a little saving, click testing, re-loading, clicking in console again you'll start to see what values are for what items and get them all deleted properly.

If you don't know how to remove these items already you just need to click on them while the console is up and then type markfordelete. Once you save and reload, the objects will be deleted from the world.

After finishing the cleanup you can then buy the decorations and the house should be "mostly" functional. I say mostly because the lighting sometimes is still buggy and you'll get strange spots that say investigation:target but you can safely ignore those.

I'm enjoying the home even with some minor remaining bugs and hope this helps others do the same until it's fixed.

I get that it's a bug and I get that you cannot move forward to buy the house, but exactly how do you classify this as "game-breaking"? The oblivion magic animation slowdown bug was "game-breaking", but this in NO way breaks the game....the game is still fully playable, you just can't finish this particular quest. I am not trying to downplay the fact that it's a bug and needs to be reported and fixed, but the OPs level of urgency and borderline demands that this needs to be fixed "pronto" is kind of amusing....

I'm having the same issue. Quest isn't triggering at all. With another character I'd started the quest/saw the murder scene in the graveyard but was unable to question the witnesses to progress any further, so I just ignored it.

For this character where I can't start the quest at all, I've completed the Imperial Legion quests and retaken Windhelm; completed the Dark Brotherhood questline; and had previously broken into Calixto's house, stolen his key and opened the chest (pulled a spoiler on myself, oops.)