Are there any ways to avoid the Windhelm quest "Blood on the Ice"? I've done it so many times now that it's a chore, and I really don't want to deal with it anymore.

If I kill Calixto the first time I see him, will it stop the quest? Or will people keep dying?

As far as I'm aware the murders don't continue if we don't trigger the quest. If fact a common complaint about this quest is that it doesn't trigger at all. Several specific conditions have to be met before the graveyard scene even appears, if I remember correctly. I have only done this quest once. I have ignored it on all my other characters. It isn't hard to do.

I'm going to request that this be moved to the proper forum.

True but the quest will start after you've entered Windhelm 4 times and the counter is set to 2 by default...

It's a pain to me too; I thought I was alone. I don't think you can kill Calixto, he must be essential. The best way to avoid that quest is never enter Windhelm... or use a mod if you are on pc. In the meantime, if you are on pc, you can use console commands to reset the counter, as long as you don't forget to do it each time to approach Windhelm (I forgot in my current playthough).

show ms11enteringwindhelmcounterset ms11enteringwindhelmcounter to 0

Really? I just avoid EVER going through the "graveyard" and it does not "trigger" for me. I even see Susan(?) in Candlehearth Hall most of time.

That's because your game doesn't work properly.

Ok, so here's one of those dumb questions, cause I don't know. If you used the console to delete Calcemo ( or make him unessential and then kill him) would the quest trigger and Susanna die?.. and the rest of the Ladies as happens if you don't do the quest.

btw not something I would try anyway, just curious, I just ignore the whole questline if I am not going to do it.

Most likely

But even after doing that quest once in Vanilla (prior to DLCs and my foray into mods) that is how I avoided it, after it borked up on a playthrough

The UESP has a couple solutions:"Although most of the NPCs needed for the quest to initiate are marked as essential, another quest, namely the Dark Brotherhood quest Mourning Never Comes, will encourage you to kill Nilsine Shatter-Shield. Even though she is not related to this quest, her mother, Tova Shatter-Shield, will commit suicide if Nilsine is killed, and will therefore render this quest impossible to initiate."And "Arivanya, the [Windhelm] stable hand, is also needed for this quest to trigger, but is not marked as essential."

That's what I do too. Just avoid the graveyard and it won't trigger.

What I do is never talk to the people in the graveyard about what happened. Then I have a group of people who are always hanging around in the graveyard but the quest never advances beyond that point.


What do you mean by that.

If the quest hasn't started you can always (on PC) just "disable" Calixto and that will stop it from ever triggering or Susanna getting killed. You can always "enable" him if you change your mind later so you can buy Hjerim or whatever.