As a mage I want to join Mages Guild. Started with town Bravil and right away ran into a problem. Kud-Ei who is supposed to give me the recommendation quest raves on about a problem with Ardaline but quest log does not update for a quest. Kud-Ei also does not mention a staff. When I talk to him again he tells me that I have potions for charm spells and have I spoken to Varon Vamori yet.
But I neither have charm spells from him nor does a conversation with Varon Vamori result in anything at all (charmed him up to 82) because no 'staff' subject is even in conversation.

I tried the solution listed in a walkthrough, i.e. to type in setstage number in Console. This does something but it starts with that I have received charm scrolls and must talk to Varon. But talking to Varon still has no results.

Talking to Kud-Ei brings nothing because he will not give recommendation until I have solved the Ardaline problem, but the idiot has not given me the quest.

So straight at beginning of playing this game, I am doomed with not even being able to join the mages guild because I will never get the recommendation from this guy.

btw I especially avoided quest Through a Nightmare Darkly as I had read in a walkthrough. but then after all the hassle mentioned, I thought maybe I should do that quest. So I did the whole quest but that did not yield any result either.

Then I went back a day to a save game and did a whole lot of stuff again and started fresh in Bravil but same happened as per above.

Can a mage live without being a member of the mages guild in this game?
Are there more lousy bugs like this in Oblivion?

1. Kud-Ei is a "she."

2. You have to scroll down, when talking with her, to get to all the dialog choices. You need to talk about all three topics: Ardaline, Varon Vamori, and Mage's Staff.

Really, as far as I know, the only bug with this quest is the problem with the Nightmare Darkly thing, and it sounds like you're avoiding that. And on the PC, you should really have installed the Unofficial Patch, which fixes that anyway.

Uh, you're already a member of the guild, right? You actually joined...

Thanks but I did scroll down the whole conversation and 'Mage's staff' never comes up, honestly

Also, I installed the unofficial patch but then my game would not work any more (would not launch) so I 'un-ticked' it on mod manager because otherwise I could not play the game at all
I have other mods in my mod manager and they all work fine.

Oh yes ok I am a member and joined but there must be a point to getting all those recommendations so I guess I will have to miss out on all of that.

In conversation topics:

Did you activate,

Mage's Staff (yes, you said you did, just listing all possibilities)
Varon
Ardaline
Recommendation

Sometimes, the game glitches for me, and I will start a conversation topic, and they will tell me whatever they are supposed to tell me, and the quest doesn't update. So I re-ask. If all else fails, reload a save prior to talking to Kud-Ei, and that should do it. You absolutely need all recommendations before continuing on as a mage.

EDIT: guess I didn't read well enough, ninja'ed.

if you put in the UOP,did you run BOSS afterward?im not sure load position will matter so much as to kill your game but try it and see if that works for ya.

Yes, I'm suspecting a mod conflict of some kind, too.