Okay, so, I just recently got into the Elder Scrolls universe a couple weeks ago (?). Starting with the Anthology, and Skyrim, and planning on going backwards from there (haven't heard good things about Online so I'm not gonna even bother). I'm on my first file, playing a Nord named Alistair Donnelly. I've run into a little problem recently yesterday...

Okay, so I'm exploring Solitude, right? I reach an area near... the Blue Palace, I think? and see some stairs. I, playing semi-blind, go up there which leads me to just the walls around the city, so I turn around disappointed and then I see the stairs go down and they say "To Skyrim."

'Sweet!' I think, 'I can discover new areas!'

So I go down them and come across the ocean with a path leading both directions. I go to my right (my left, as I have tested, just leads to the snowy mountains) and discover the East Empire Company Warehouse. I go towards it... and the game crashes.

Now, I already have the Lights Out! quest in my Journal, so I know I need to get to the Lighthouse somehow. I've tried coming from the other direction from Dragon Bridge to Solitude. Still crashes. I tried going out of Solitude's gate to go down that path. Still crashes.

At first, I thought it might be my mods, because I downloaded a new one that fixed lighting which I realized was kinda conflicting with the others (Agh! Dragonreach's fireplace is BLINDING!), so I deleted it. Still crashes.

My friend tells me that, "You may need to reload from a save about an hour before you started the quest that got you crashing. See if you crash then." However, I really REALLY don't want to resort to that unless I absolutely must. Why? Because I follow the "Sierra Golden Rule": Save Early, Save Often, Don't Overwrite Saves. and I have made SEVERAL saves since getting to Solitude. If I reload, I'm going to go back to level 11, instead of 14 and lose pretty much this whole week's progress since the file I got for when I first get to Solitude is July 26th. I'm going to lose my trek through Volkygge and getting Meridia's Beacon AND the second word for Whirlwind Sprint. I'm gonna have to go through Wolfskull Cave again. I'm gonna have to do several things over again, which will really bug me.

Last resort, I'm swimming to that lighthouse!

Also, quick question: How exactly do I take Torygg's horn to the Shrine of Talos? I can't drop it nor use it, and talking to the priests yields nothing new.

The mod you installed and uninstalled could have changed something in your vanilla game. I am new to modding but some mods just don't uninstall without leaving a mark.

Good luck with that.

On your horn question you have to go to a specific Talos status not just anyone you come up to,.

hth