Yes, I've gotten to the final quest of the main storyline and am fighting Miraak. The problem is that every time I get him to the part where absorbs the first dragon soul, I absorb it instead and he stays stuck in his invulnerable state and just stands there. I've tried numerous fixes suggested by others on the web, but nothing seems to take. Could anyone help?

You are not alone, and it looks like there are no solutions yet.

This is how I got past it.

1. Clear all memory caches on your xbox.
2. Restart your xbox.
3. Do not use glitched weapons against Miraak.
4. Try to use spells/shouts against Miraak.
5. Watch end.

I hope this helps a little.

Artist of War: did you have the problem where YOU were absorbing dragon souls instead of Miraak, or was he just stuck in ethereal only? It seems this bug can take numerous forms...

That's what i said

I know that's what you said. I'm asking if Artist of War's solution applies specifically to our issue since it seems that there may be different versions of this Miraak bug.

Oh, I apologize then.

If you look at the pinned thread at the very top of the forum, with the somewhat misleading titles Starting Dragonborn, in the last post you will see that bug is already covered.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1426775-starting-dragonborn/

You will have to go back to a previous save and do the fight again. Even if that is not the exact problem, still you will have to go back and do it again and try doing the fight differently.

You should not have to go through clearing the system cache, that is for performance issues, not straight put bugs. But as a last resort, if you cannot get past that point in the fight, clear the system cache, and uninstall game, patch and ALL DLC, then install and download it all again for a fresh installation, load your save game do the fight and hopefully it works as it should.

I tried that several times but it doesn't work. I think this entry doesn't refer to the bug where the player is absorbing the Dragonsouls instead of Miraak.

Yes, clearly Aussie500 doesn't know the severity of this glitch.

And there is no way I'm deleting everything (and throwing away hours upon hours of gameplay for my family's various characters) and starting over. This bug has already caused me to waste about 4 hours of game-play (unfortunately due to having poor game-save locations, a problem I'm going to rectify on my next attempt at Miraak, so that I don't get stuck in Apocrypha with no escape options).

I have yet to see the bug that cannot be beaten by going back and replaying the thing again. Since it is how you play that breaks the game, playing it differently usually avoids it. But you have to go back far enough before you triggered the bug. What triggered it could have occurred before the fight.

FWIW, The same issue presented itself even after restarting from a save point very early in the main Dragonborn quest (3 hours or so of real time prior to Summit of Apocrypha). I finished catching up to that point just now, and tried many different ways of battling him. I even bought a base Elven bow and iron arrows, took off almost all of my archery gear and still triggered it. Even tried to kill the other dragons before I start fighting him, but can only get one off before the battle starts.

An interesting test will occur when my son's character reaches that point (which is in a different Xbox profile).

May be, but who knows.In my opinion it shouldn't be necessary to go back to the beginning of the DLC only because of a bug that occurs at the end (in case your gameplay was wrong).
Something like that is a no-go.

Hope they will patch it soon.

This happened on two different accounts for me. I am highly annoyed. Hope patch comes soon.

No, just no.

I just fought him more slowly.

I just ran into the last of those issues, where he gets stuck in etherial form and won't come back into the fight. Too late to turn the xbox back on, but I'll try it tomorrow.

You have absolutely no idea what is going on and your assumptions on this bug are way off (no offense intended). It is not "how you(we) play" that breaks this as I have tried so many variants on this fight from fighting butt naked, to literally using a pickaxe for a good half hour, to combos of spells and shouts. I have no uber weapons, I am not killing him fast, I did nothing wild and crazy and even tried different diificulties. Playing up to the fight I tried several saves prior to even entering his domain. The issue here is no matter what you do (for those of us bugged)...when Mirrak is weakened enough to go ethereal and to the center, the dragon he sacrifices has it's soul go straight to you and not him. I even saved here and re-loaded that event around 10 times and every time I get the soul and Miraak stays standing there. Killing all the dragons before fighting him, taking 30 minutes to punch him into that state, running like a chump when he calls in his dragon to avoid being close...nothing works. I even jumped off the damn platform to avoid the soul and I was ported back up standing next to Miraak just in time for the game to "Dragon Soul Absorbed" me. He does not regenerate health in that state so waiting did not work. This is utterely game breaking for the dlc.

I reloaded a save prior to coming to Solsteim, I just wasted hours gorting back through the content but this time instead of exploring I just focused straight on the main quest. DLC was reinstalled and the end result was EXACTLY the same. Restarting the entire dlc may work for some but I wish I could get back the hours of my life I just wasted trying in vain. My last idea is I hear Miraak steals dragon souls when you are out normally fighting dragons. This has yet to happen to me and I am wondering if maybe that would trip him into actually being a friggin Dragonborn and taking a soul. I'll give it a last try and post back with results. This is one reason I prefer playing on the pc over the console as console commands could help debug or advance the damn quest past this bug.

If anyone has actually had the dragon soul glitch and fixed it please share it. I see trolls posting idiotic things to get people to waste time trying to trouble shoot this so I came here to the official forums as I know the crowd here is helpful and usually a lot more mature.

I too am experiencing the same glitch. I put well over 12 hours into it and did everything anyone said even advice from the dev team. Nothing works. I'm just gonna wait till a patch comes out. Gonna admit this glitch ruined dragonborn for me. I loved it till that point. I guess we are just the lucky ones buddy. I just went back to minecraft and borderlands 2 till the matter is resolved.

I, too, have not had Miraak "steal" souls from me at any time, in any place. This, despite having played DB for 6 days for many hours.
Question for those of you who have this issue: when I installed Dragonborn, I hadn't yet installed a Skyrim update so I couldn't get any of the Dragonborn quests to trigger. Eventually, I loaded an Xbox profile that is connected to Xbox Live, and it prompted me for the update download. NOTE: this is AFTER I have installed Dragonborn and tried to play it (no success). So once this update was installed, I could finally play Dragonborn, but I've got a handful of glitches, like the one in this thread.

Does anyone think that this problem could arise because a Skyrim update was installed AFTER Dragonborn was installed?


PLEASE BETHESDA, HELP US PLAY THIS GAME WE BOUGHT FOR $20 ($80 actually I guess).

Let's hope there will be a patch soon.
As I nitoced this glitch is "unfixable" I thought: Well I will search for the other black books and wait for a patch. Then, after I found and entered the first black book, a very annoying soundbug occured. ( Some sort of a "broken TV-sound)
This was the moment I said: Enough. I will play again when the Miraak-patch is out. Lest's go back to "Shadow of the Colossus."
I now I'm killing giants instead of serving Hermaeus Mora.

I had this issue two times. Dealing too much damage to him seems to be the issue I believe. My fix was hitting him a little, stopping, hitting him some more and then he would enter his Healing phase and it would complete. This isn't a 100% chance to work solution, but it worked for me. Try slowing your damage down a little bit.

Sorry I can't give you guys a full method of avoiding this glitch.

Well I did the fight with just a plain Daedric bow and dragonbone arrows and the drain vitality shout which I used when he stayed in ethereal form too long, he eventually came back for me. What exactly happened with the dragons was a bit confusing so I could not say who absorbed what in my game, would not surprise me if my character got an extra dragon soul out of it though. The fight took ages and seemed to end when Miraak went ethereal with his health bar very low. It could be killing him too fast that is causing the glitch or it could be what spells or shouts you are using against him.

If it is something that we do while flying the dragon but before the fight, I killed all the practice creatures I saw in one location on the way. But I am hopeless at dragon flying, if it is a combination of buttons that sets up the glitch I could not say what I was pressing, the dragon was going all over the place. You can set bugs up by what you do earlier, Miraak staying ethereal is only the effect the glitch has when triggered, so what you do before the fight could conceivably set the bug up, or even somehow dying before the fight could contribute to the problem. I would think it more likely something you are doing in the fight that is causing it, but you never know. My character never died anywhere. And my fight was glitch free.

I also had the bug with the hissing static sound with one of the black books, the one you get where all the spiders are. Sound came back with my character. I just saved and turned the game off, annoying sound was gone when I started the game up again.

I too have been affected by this bug, whenever he kills a dragon I absorb the soul and he is stuck in the middle . The only way I could get him out of the ethereal state was to be completely sneaking, and his health would go back up to full. Didn't seem to fix the problem tho as anytime he got low health he would run into the middle and get stuck again. And he only seemed to heal up (when I was fully sneaking) when all the dragons were dead..sick of this hope there is a patch soon

Maybe it is just that the ending scene is refusing to start for some? You all seem to be doing the right things and then getting stuck. I never attacked any dragons I went straight for Miraak as soon as I could, he had not even finished talking. Never attacked anyone else, Miraak killed all the dragons.