This is a universal quest bug. If the guy keeps telling you there is a house available but there was an incident and you can't buy it yet, then leave town a few times and it should start.


If it isn't starting then you may have killed the npc needed for this quest in the very first contact with the dark brotherhood. You are give a choice of three people to kill and unfortunately, one of them is the victim that is supposed to start this particular quest.

Bethesda missed this one. I hope they fix it when and if they ever get round to fixing all the script errors in this game.

Incorrect.

The murder victim in Windhelm is Susanna the Wicked.

The ones you can kill at the Abandon Shack are
Fultheim the Fearless
Alea Quintus
Vasha
None of these three shows up anywhere else in the game.

One of them is a shatter shield and is needed to start the quest. It's why the quest doesn't start. I don't know who the actual murder victim in the quest is.

Oh and by the way, if this has happened to you, the tips you say in your siggy wont work. You can loot the key off the shatter shields and enter the house, but the quest WILL NOT start.

What you suggest only bypasses the finding of the body and following the blood trail. It has to be there though. If not, when you go in the house, nothing will happen. You can read the notes and stuff, but the quest wont start.

I can take a new character to Windhelm, pickpocket the key to Hjerim, find the Butcher's Journal and start the quest right away without ever seeing the murder scene. I have done so with 4 characters now, just to confirm that it's possible.

I have done the same thing with another character at lvl 55ish, where I never saw the murder prior.

Yeah, this isn't true. There are clearly multiple glitches that cause this quest to never activate. I never started the DB quests until very, very late in my game, 20-30 levels and a RL life week after I had tried everything in the book to get this quest to start, researching dozens of google results trying to find any trick. There are so many bugs related to this quest that I don't know how anyone can go around stating anything definitive about what causes the problems. You. don't. know.

Just to debunk the last myth, I made a new character and joined DB by killing all three hostages.
Then I started the Blood on the Ice quest, just as described before.

With Friends Like These... and Blood on the Ice are unrelated.

The Shatter-Shield can kill later on is Nilsine. She doesn't have any other purpose than just that.

Absolutely nothing works. I've tried everything I could for xbox version. Before and after the attack on windhelm, nothing to do with DB, cant buy the house, Took the key to the house, looked around, didnt start. Found the notes/diaries and strange amulet, still nothing. Hopefully this is one of the first quests that gets fixed.