Like the titel said, I traveled whith Serana back to Castle Volkihar (whitch I discovered about 10 houres earlier) right after I released her from her "prison". There should be some interaction and the iron gate should open, so I should be able to enter the castle. But nothing happens. I reloaded several savegames an tryed it again (and again and again) - no success. Now I am stuck at an dead end after only 2% of DLC content

same here it's really pissing me off

do NOT fast travel there with Serana! After releasing her from her tomb, travel there on foot, and it would help if you didnt venture to the castle before the quest takes you there..

I'll try walking there. I hope this works, if not, there goes a level 40 character wasted.

good luck

Didn't work. Same result. There goes a level 40 assassin.

well that is strange. when you first travelled to the castle without serana, did you walk all the way to the castle entrance by chance? did you see the gatekeeper there then?

No offense, but that's such a silly comment!
The game stores two quicksaves, multiple autosaves, plus there are the 'full' saves that you make manually.
Pick one and try again...

I think I read that doing the plate glitch to get through the gate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8teW5icV0k

Think I read somewhere that this fixed it.

er, rather allowed you to get past that sequence

One of the main targets of that character was Dawnguard. I first found the Castle at level 8. Can't exactly reload before then.

@Litter I walked all the way, but I'll try the wooden plate glitch now.

Which Castle, bro - Volkihar Keep?
I never went to Volkihar until I was directed to go there.
Always fast-travel to the little boat, then take it across.

Anyway, that's harsh man - too bad. svcks...
I don't recall this type of thing bugging on the PC?
But then, it's a recurring theme - don't go to quest-related locations until directed to do so.
(It's a Beth thing.)

The plate glitch worked after a couple of tries, but the gate remains closed. I can fast travel away from it, but I need to glitch my way through to enter.

Did you not get Serena through with you?

Sorry, I think tehre are more specific directions for using the plate glitch with this bug:

1. Get a plate (for you)
2. Give serena at least one lockpick
3. Get Serena between you and the gate
4. Do the plate glitch 'through' Serena


Another would be to check all of Serena's dialog options are greyed and you have heard her little monologue.

Failing that I would try and get a handful of wooden plates and see if you can get all the way into the castle and maybe interact with Harkon ???

I'm already a vampire lord and was sent to get the Bloodstone Chalice. Thing is, when I need to return to the Castle Volkihar the gate is still shut and I need to do the plate glitch whenever I want to get in.

ahh well i guess youre stuck with the stuck gate eh? if i were you i wouldve sided with the Dawnguard side with such an issue. And yeah, i believe the fact you discovered the Keep before the questline caused it for you. Oh and by the way, when you go to the castle, do you go by the boat, or by swimming? During the quest with Serana you have to use the boat.

oh, sorry. I didn't understand you were already passed that.

Do you think you can keep using the plate glitch to finish the storyline?

Only other option I can think of is to reload a previous save.

@Gryphon: This is the PS3 section. Quick saves are only on the Xbox because you can use voice command. No such feature on the PS3. I bought an Xbox just to replay Skyrim with voice command a year ago. And there's only 1 quick save file. Same one gets rewritten the 1000 plus times I yelled Quick Save! last year. I'm pretty sure there is generally only 1 autosaves file, too, which is why so many people have lost their whole games because they didn't do manual saves. There may be rare instances of an additional autosave when the game forces an autosave before certain scenes, as it does during Dragonborn. Not sure because I have all autosaves turned off.

Tommy, that is bad luck if you're a vampire. I chose Dawnguard side on both consoles and had no problems getting in and only had to return once. However, something odd did happen on my PS3 game. We took the skiff over, Serana, me and my follower. She always hangs back so I lead the party up to the gate, when Serana stops us and initiates a conversation. I chose the dooshbaggy response, something like "what now?". And she says forget it, the gatekeeper calls out to Serana that he recognizes her and opens gate. For some reason I reloaded my game to an earlier point, repeated the boat trip, this time gave Serana a more supportive response and the gate keeper opened the gate without talking to any of us. Why would there be different behaviors from the gate keeper? I think this variation is programmed into Skyrim and is the reason most of us are fine but some few unfortunate ones get a completely crazy glitch.

Next time something odd happens, reload and try a different response?

its not a glitch, its simply cause the Gatekeeper talked to Serana while you were also talking to her ..and PS3 uses 3 autosave slots, so does xbox (i think), and both xbox and pc use 1 quicksave spot