Hello!

As the title suggests, i have having some trouble with the quest 'A cornered rat'.

After completing the previous quest, the next quest that was due to start up was 'A cornered rat'. Unfortunately, it never did. Delphine told me to travel to Riften and search for information about the whereabouts of Esbern, yet the quest was supposed to start up beforehand. I traveled to Riften and after a while I located where I was supposed to find Esbern. Once i reached the Ratway Warrens, I went to Esbern's 'room' but was greeted with Esbern opening the hatch and basically telling me to bugger off. Now according to the wiki, Esbern should've opened the door after he tells me to go away and then i mention a date, but i got no dialogue option. After a bit of searching around i found out that this bug has been noted and there have been some workarounds, such as installing the unofficial skyrim patch 1.2, which didn't work. Another was to type in CompleteQuest mq202 into the console, which would of then ended then quest, then type in Setstage Mq203 1 (or something like that) which would of skipped that quest and started the next one, which also didn't work. The Setstage's to open Esbern's door and make him talk didn't work either, so now i have no way of proceeding through the main questline. The quest just hasn't started at all.

I appreciate your time, hope i can get some replies

Are you using other mods?

Do you have the "A Chance Arrangement" quest? IF so, try to finish that one first.

Try loading a previous save before you started diplomatic immunity. Make sure the USP mod is activated.

Yes, however there are too many to list.

I do not have that quest, no.

I don't have any saves before i started that quest, only quicksaves and the main save from the very beginning of the game.

I can tell you right off. NEVER rely on quicksave/autosave alone. Especially with mods. Save corruption is real and does happen.

Always make NEW manual saves along the way. Every ten or so minutes. There are mods that make saves for you I believe.

You could very well have a mod that is conflicting with that quest. THe issue is loading the USP now isn't necessarily going to work as you are already

progressing in that quest. The USP fixes are for issues that havent occured yet mostly.

Check out this thread: https://eldersouls.com/topic/1711-how-can-i-get-the-cornered-rat-quest-to-start/page-2

ANother thread: http://forums.nexusm...jor-glitchbug/?/a>

You might be able to skip it altogether.