This is my first time on the forums, so hello and please don't hurt me

To the best of my knowledge there are two main bugs with the "Striking the Heart" quest that leave it unable to be completed - I'm inventively going to name them Bug 1, and - you guessed it - Bug 2, which is mine

I have scoured the internets for a solution to Bug 2, though it has mainly turned up a huge bunch of questions - most with the same solution - about Bug 1. So Bug 1 is where the radiant quest location is set to one the Dragonborn has already cleared, usually exemplified as Valtheim Towers. The quest marker for the quest leads either to an empty space on the ground where the now-despawned body of the leader used to be, or to the dead body of the leader. The simple solution is to resurrect the dead boss's body, and kill them again, which advances the quest. I'm not sure what the fix is if the marker leads to empty ground, but that doesn't matter.

My bug is different. And, from what I know, a lot worse/harder to fix. Through my internet-scouring I only found roughly four or five forum posts or wiki conversations that seemed related to Bug 2, all of them with no answer. The bug itself, is this:

Aela gave me the quest "Striking the Heart", which I totally did not want, but I couldn't back out of the convo so I thought "meh". My objective was to assassinate the Silver Hand leader at Lost Knife Hideout, a place I had never been to, never mind cleared, ever before. I checked it as active on my quest list, and looked for the marker on my map - there was no quest marker (other quests do work, just not this one). I then tried to show it on the map through the quest list, but the "show on map" button was greyed out and had no effect, as if it was a quest without markers, such as "No Stone Unturned". So I found Lost Knife Cave by myself on the map, went in with Aela as my companion of choice, and the Silver Hand were there as promised. Killed them, advanced into Lost Knife hideout, and killed everyone in there. There was no-one named "Silver Hand Leader" or somesuch in there, so I'm assuming the leader was the strongest enemy, who was a Bandit Marauder. Me and Aela killed everyone, fully clearing both Lost Knife Cave and Lost Knife Hideout, but the quest still isn't complete - likely because we didn't kill the marked enemy. And that's because there is no marked enemy.

I looked at the quest's objectives in the console, and this is what turned up:

Current Quest: CR09

1 current targets

Target 1: Reference; , load door: UNREACHABLE

Here's an example of the objective for a quest which is working:

Current Quest: DB03

1 current targets

Target 1: Reference: (000198F8), load door: (00015873)

So for my quest, CR09, where the reference ID of the target (The Silver Hand Leader) is supposed to be, there is NOTHING. This explains why it says the load door is unreachable (after all, how does the Dragonborn reach a target that doesn't exist) and also why there is no quest marker.

Attempted Fixes:

setstage CR09 20 (20 is the next stage, and the one others tended to skip to when they suffered Bug 1) --- No effect, even after restarting Skyrim.

setstage CR09 100, 200, 10 e.t.c. - basically all the other stages of this quest. --- No effect, even after restarting Skyrim.

SetObjectiveCompleted CR09 <10 and 20 at separate times> 1 --- No effect, even after restarting Skyrim.

SetObjectiveCompleted CR09 <1 and 10 at separate times> 0 --- No effect, even after restarting Skyrim.

Completequest CR09 --- The quest instantly completes, and appears in my completed section, albeit with the same objective, still unchecked. However Aela still thinks she has already set me a job when I ask her for more.

Note - after this happened I completed one of Vilkas' radiant quests in the hope that it would provide a fix. After handing the quest in, the good news is that Aela doesn't think she's already set me a job, but the bad news is that none of the companions leaders, not even her, will offer me any quests.

Resetquest CR09 --- Exactly the same effect as above, except the quest doesn't show up in my completed section.

movetoqt CR09 --- No effect, works with every other quest though (obviously because this one has no target).

I've been investigating this for a while now, and it seems as if a fix hasn't been discovered yet. If anyone has some advice or can just share their own experience of Bug 2, please let me know

Sometimes the Radiant A.I. will choose a dungeon the player has already cleared. In this case, it is possible the quest arrow leads to nothing and the quest cannot be completed.

Why you don't load a previous save and try to take that quest again or even not. !!!!!

Unfortunately I use a three-save rotation, and I accepted the quest before my last three saves