I remember reading something by Gstaff, that attacking him multiple times, too quickly or dealing too much damage to him fairly fast makes this bug apparent.

Just got to take it really slow.

I think that is a separate issue with that fight. The problem with this odd bug is that you absorb the soul instead of Miraak when he does go ethereal (regardless of if you one shot him into that phase or take 30 minutes punching him). The soul going into your character makes it so the script for the fight does not progress. I have not attacked the dragon, stayed far from it, tried killing all 3 dragons prior to Miraak and no matter what it will glitch out regardless of where I reload my game from (during the fight, before it, before entering his domain, etc). Just going to redo the entire dlc again and see if whatever caused the problem of Miraak not absorbing souls clears up.

Ok. For everyone who joins this thread:

The problem is that THE PLAYER IS ABSORBING THE DRAGONSOULS INSTEAD OF MIRAAK.

The solution Gstaff posted doesn't refer to this issue. (I tried it and it doesn't work)
Until now it seems there is no fix for this glitch.

Did someone affected already coherently PM Gstaff about it, and/or use the email form at support.gamesas.com? That could at least prompt a staffer to explore the issue and/or put a new workaround item on the support page.

I did this and got the canned response that we've all been reading already: do less/slower damage, and restart from earlier save point. This answer lead me to believe they either completely ignored, or didn't read, the details in my message.

That is the glitch I'm experiencing. I thought I was hitting him too 'hard' and so I started punching him instead of using my weapons from the Deathbrand quest. It still glitched. I went on youtube and people said up the difficulty. I put it on master just to see. I brought him down to the usual health (bare fisted) so he could absorb the first dragon soul and what do you know..I absorbed it. I really want to beat the DLC but I can't due to this bug. I'll test out some more options with the sidemissions. If I can't beat it, I might as well try for the black book achievement (which is glitched for me as well (have 6 books and no achievement) or the others .

I am suffering this glitch as well. As far as I can tell there are multiple variations, such as glitches were Miraak absorbs the dragon souls and remains ethereal, and the one you and I have were we just absorb the dragon soul and thus break his script that way. I've spent a good few hours trying to solve it and as far as I can tell its unfixable. I've tried all sorts from Difficulty swapping, stretching out the damage so the fight takes over an hour until he becomes ethereal...I've even tried glitching my way onto the side of the tower and entering sneak mode...All that happened was he healed himself to full whilst remaining Ethereal and still wouldn't come out of that blasted state!

I was able to finally complete the fight (overcoming the Miraak not absorbing souls bug) but I warn you that my solution is going to be a pain in the [censored]. I can say that it works though and worked for a couple others that suffered this bug and I shared it with. I went off the assumption that the common denominator we all share is that our patch was applied incorrectly (somehow) and the result was certain key scripts were messed up. Meaning, if you started Dragonborn and the dlc was showing as an Addon but the guy at Windhelm was missing and the cultist attacks never happened until you reapplied the patch the save you were using was then glitched. Meaning even after you were able to start Dragonborn after getting the patch to work properly and to spawn those npcs those scripts were messed up (like Miraak never showing up to steal dragon souls and thus at the end he bugs out and can not do it).

So the fix is this, you need to clean your save of Dragonborn dlc content and redo everything there. You do not need to go to a save from before starting it, you just need to be able to do the steps I will list below. (Note: If all your save slots are used up in Miraak's final fight/realm try using the book Waking Dreams to exit his realm so you can do these steps).

1.) Load up your save and collect any items you have stored on the island of Solstheim (if you do not, you will lose anything you have stored in a following step). Move anything you wish to keep (Dragonborn dlc items are the exception, those will disappear anyways in a moment) to Skyrim's mainland. Save your game in Skyrim and not Solstheim.

2.) Exit the game and clear the cache for your 360s hard drive and uninstall Dragonborn.

3.) Load Skyrim (without the Dragonborn dlc) and load up the save from step #1. The game will prompt you saying that content is now missing for this save and ask if you wish to continue, do it. When you load in any Dragonborn items will be gone, and your quest log will cleaned of anything having to do with the dlc. Save your game again (your save is now clean of anything having to do with Dragonborn but you still have any progress you made on your character in terms of working on skills and the like).

4.) Exit the game again and reinstall Dragonborn. Before you start the game again make sure that the title update is in place. When loading the game connected to Live it should prompt you if not, if so make sure to apply this. Also I read mention that some people saw that when looking under the System/Storage area of the 360 from the dashboard, there were multiple entries for the Skyrim game with the multiple entries saying title update. Not sure how that could happen but If this is the case, make sure those are deleted as when you start the game Live should apply the update properly if needed.

5.) Load your save back up and you should now be good to go. The Windhelm boat to Solstheim should be there, the cultist attacks awaiting, and everything on the island reset. You also should notice that, after meeting Miraak the first time and getting the boot from him, afterwards he can show up and steal a dragon soul after you down one. For me, it happened my first dragon kill on the island shortly after first meeting him. To be careful, I also did not explore the island at first and went straight forward with the main quest till I met him. After that I did nothing but hunt dragons down (not unlocking shouts, exploring, picking up quest, or anything). When he showed up he said a line or two as he magically ported in, stole the dragon soul, and then disappeared. If this happens, you can definitely rest assured in knowing he is not glitched anymore.

Anyways, I know this is a hassle but it works as I had this bug and doing this fixed it. I also discovered some things I missed going through again so it was worth it. Hope this helps anyone and happy gaming.

I don't know why but the bug just disappeard.
All I did was to load a sve before meeting the cultists in Skyrim. Everything worked well.
( This was my third reload.)

So, when you say you loaded a save from before you met the cultists, do you mean you then re-played the DLC again from that point? Or, did you quit out of that and then reload your save with the glitched Miraak? Thanks.

I replayed the DLC and concentrated on the story. ( No sidequests or excursions)

I have a sinking feeling your right, I installed Dragonborn before I was asked to patch, so when I did load up directly after the patch was applied I had to reset to actually get the cultists and ship to appear. I've also killed multiple dragons on Solstiem and not once did Miraak show up to steal it's soul, in fact I wasn't aware he could do that. Unfortunately for me I've done far to many quests and gathered to many items to delete all my rewards and start again, since I explored everything first. If I were to guess something has gone terribly wrong with Miraak's ability to steal his dragon souls.

Holy [censored], that is exactly what I did as well. I installed Dragonborn before I updated with the latest patch! Could that be it? We have several xbox accounts and my account is not the main one. After downloading and installing Dragonborn I immediately logged out of the main account and then into mine and tried to play Dragonborn but it was as if it had not loaded. So I logged back into the main account and launched Dragonbornd and it asked me if I wanted to install the new patch, which I did and then logged out of the main account and back into my account and then Dragonborn worked. I also have killed many dragons and never did Miraak ever show up and steal the soul.

Could it actually be that if you didn't update the latest patch before installing Dragonborn that is the problem and the cause of the glitch?

**** BETHESDA, ARE YOU READING THIS, THIS MAY BE IT ******

**UPDATE**

***I'm happy to say this worked for me too!!! *** I decided to try this and went back to my very last save before purchasing and downloading Dragonborn. Sure enough the Cultists came and that basically started the entire DLC over. I very quickly made it to the part of the main quest where you read the first book you encounter in the Nordic ruins along with the woman from Skaal which takes you to meeting Miraak for the first time. After that you visit Skaal and the old guy tells you to go learn the Bend Will shout and there you battle a dragon. Upon defeating the dragon Miraak showed up and stole the dragon soul from me and THAT HAD NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE! I had killed a few dragons on the island before but never once did Miraak ever show up to steal a soul. So it appears with this happening everything should be fine and I shouldn't get the glitch with Miraak when I battle him. It svcks I had to start over but it's not that bad I guess having had only a few hours into it before.

I just ran into this bug this morning. I tried several solutions, but none of them worked. But I did have the pre-Dragonborn DLC patch installed before I went to Solstheim.

Any news about when a patch for this bug will be released? This bug ruins the climix of the player's battle with Miraak.

When you say you had "the pre-Dragonborn DLC patch installed before I went to Solstheim." Do you mean before you purchased and installed Dragonborn? It's not a matter of when you traveled to Solstheim via boat within the game, it's whether or not you had installed the patch put out in November BEFORE you purchased and installed Dragonborn.

I purchased and installed the Dragonborn DLC first. But, the boat to Solstheim at Windhelm did not appear until I downloaded the pre-Dragonborn DLC patch. So, really, I literally installed the latter right after the former.

Of course, I know where you are going with this. And, absolutely not, I am not going to follow your instructions and redo the many hours worth of gameplay which I have done in Solstheim. I should not have to.

I have a hard time believing that reversing the order of installation for these two items caused all of the bugs which I have experienced. In fact, deleting and reinstalling the Dragonborn DLC alone has cured all of the bugs which I have experienced thusfar, except this one.

Let's just face it--Bethesda released a very buggy DLC. It's their best DLC for TES5 yet, but, unfortunately, it's just annoyingly buggy.

Agreed there, it's really ridiculous. And regarding what you said in the first line, you exactly pointed out what the problem is and why your game is glitched. You purchased and installed Dragonborn first AND THEN applied the November update. It doesn't matter if you tried playing the game or not. Because of the order you did it, THAT set the glitch in motion. It's really unfortunate this has happened to people, I hear ya.

I don't understand. Why would the programming for the player's fight with Miraak be dependent on this?

For the same reason that you loaded up Dragonborn and the boat was not there nor any cultist attack. Yet let me guess, under Addons in the main menu Dragonborn showed up as installed despite this? I know it did, we all (those that experienced this game breaking bug) had the same problem. Those scripts for the cultist attacks, anything Dragonborn related are dependent on that critical title update and how it was applied. Once that save was loaded, without that critical update there, it was corrupted. Applying the patch properly afterwards and finally getting the content to appear did not change the fact that your save now was bugged. Specifically in that Mirrak can not absorb dragon souls because the scripts that should be running for events leading up to the fight were all messed up. So in the end fight, Miraak can not heal and proceed because...let me guess, you are absorbing the souls instead of him.

Look, I am not a developer but just a fellow gamer. I was frustrated by this glitch but the solution is there as much as it may svck. You can choose not to do it, that is your choice but if you wait for a patch for this...you will be waiting a LONG time because the team is still convinced that loading corrupted saves will solve this issue. Lots of supporting post in these forums outlining in detail the circumstances surrounding this unique glitch and how it happened...and how it was worked out and the success people had doing it now. Up to you to either sit with a broken game, or fix it and enjoy the rest of it. Not trying to be overly harsh but that's just reality. Happy gaming.

thats why I install every update when the game asks me to, I am yet to finish the DLC and I hope I dont experience this frustrating bug, as I installed the patch in November, then purchased Dragonborn, the cultist did show up and attack me, and Miraak stole a dragon soul when I thought it would be mine saying "not this one, dragonrborn" or something like that... seriously... this game.. the whole game really NEEDS a huge bug fixing patch, with tons of fixes even the Vanilla version still needs, let's not forget about the Dawnguard and those annoying Heartfire bugs too...

I can confirm that this worked for me, although I had to kill two dragons before miraak showed his ugly mug, and of course I was able to finally beat the main quest! Thanks for help elder drake!

Unfortunately I bought my DLC from XBox Live. Is there a way that anyone knows to re-install without being charged again for it?

Here's another confirmation that elderdrake's solution described above WORKED! I have just played up to the point where you get Bend Will for the first time (first serpentine dragon), and Miraak showed up and stole my dragon soul. This never happened in HOURS of previous gameplay and many dragons slain.

THANK YOU ELDERDRAKE.

PS: mrszonie: you can download again without being charged. Just go to the same place and it will say "Download again".

THANK YOU ELDERDRAKE!!! This fix worked flawlessly. I knew things were going right when I killed a dragon while cleansing one of the stones and Miraak came and stole the soul from me, just as you said it would. Now Miraak is finally dead. I didn't have to kill him slowly or kill the other dragons to do it. As all of us know who have this particular bug, it has nothing to do with that. I dealt a lot of damage, let him kill the dragons one by one and absorb their souls, then I finished him off quickly and easily.

Seriously, you should be a moderator for this forum, I can't thank you enough.