In case someone didn't do this SPOILER ALERT, but I doubt there are people like me who didn't deal with expansions yet.

Anyway, I finally started covering expansions, and now I reached the point in Dragonborn where I'm finally fighting Miraak. However it's totally bugged out. I mean, I know TES games have a lot of bugs and I don't usually flame on it, I'm used to bugs, but Bethesda deserves a really annoying, slow clap for this one.

So, I get to Apocrypha, I tame Sahrotaar and clear the first "island", and by the time I get to Miraak's tower-like structure several things can happen and were tried.

-Sahrotaar will try to land, regardless of my commands, and will freeze there

-Sahrotaar will land, I'll get off, he'll try to fly up and freeze right in the middle of animation of going up

-If I hit Miraak hard he'll go into etheral mode at which point no solution works (including hiding, resethealth, ressurect, nothing)

-If I kill all the dragons from Sahrotaar, dismount and kill Sahrotaar as well Miraak still goes into Etheral mode and remains there once I deal enough damage

-If I hit him with an iron dagger/flames he normally teleports around, and once he goes in etheral mode he summons a dragon and kills him with his own unique shout, at which point I drain the soul instead of him. I can get him back through resurrect, but after he kills the 2nd dragon, each time I deal enough damage to get him to become etheral he tries to cast the spell at a dead dragon, even if all 3 are dead, and cycle goes on infinitely

I have unofficial patches and nothing else that could intervene with these scripts so I'll take any ideas! Thanks in advance.

the final fight is probably the worst bugged quest/mission in the entire existence of bugs in Skyrim. Its the main reason I never do the quest...

Are you on the latest unofficial patches and are they in the correct load order?

I never had an issue with the dragons before.

But Miraak going invincible when going ethereal, I have. Or him getting stuck under the pool and not coming back up. or I've had him try to kill a dragon but never kill it.

Never knew you could absorb the dragon soul when he kills one so... what mods if any do you use that might alter dragons in anyway?

Only things I can say are things you seem to have noodled out already:

1. Make a hard save before fighting him. I make one right before the word wall and the dragon flight.

2. Don't do too much damage too quickly (ex: very strong weapons + weapons skills and perks + enchantments). If you hit him too hard he glitches and won't become tangible again.

Also, I never kill any of the dragons. You may want to just let him do that to keep the fight scripts chugging along.

They are according to Boss, and I have no mods that alter dragons whatsoever. I even recently removed Deadly Dragons.

If you removed Deadly Dragons, did you:

1. Continue with the saved game it was installed on, or

2. Forget to remove any lose script files installed with it?

Character was created after somewhat heavy change of mod setup.

Anyway, after trying several things, I tried to reinstall Unofficial Dragonborn patch despite having the latest files and, much to my surprise, it worked. Thanks for suggestions guys!

Closed at OP's request.