He doesn't take it. You show it to him and he tells you to talk to Vex.

Indeed.

Cooler, perhaps you wouldn't be so angry if you actually paid attention to what happened in the game? Just a thought.

I'm multi-tasking.


He takes it. Tells you to talk to Vex.

He NEVER gave it back, as I'm looking in my inventory right now.

So am I. I still have an "Unusual Gem" in my inventory.

Once you go talk to Vex and get the proper quest, they will be renamed Stone of Barenziah.

No stoned unturned is not a magical quest nor does it involve the college, therefore it shouldn't be inaccessible. At least you can get a stone from the DB sanctuary without joining...

you may not like this solution however, simply steal infront of a mage there. They would hate you, ban you, chase you, and not let you back in

Incorrect, or you've hit on an odd glitch. My character had three unusual gems by the time she got around to talking to the "appraiser." Many in game hours afterwards, she still has three unusual gems. (And no, she hasn't found any more.)

They are quest items. They cannot be dropped or sold until the quest flag is removed.

No stone unturned is a miscellanious quest.
It is not involved in any guild, per se, and why initiation into the thieves guild is required baffles me.

I long to be able to drop quest items.
To be free of this hand-holding idiot-proofing that assumes Im a toddler that will rage because I cannot complete a quest because I dropped/ sold/ lost an item.

If you do that to the unique item with the unique model and the unique name then you deserve to be the unique dunce that doesnt get to do the quest.
This has nothing to do with good game design and all the more to do with good roleplaying.

By Julianos, even in old 80's cartoons there is always the slightly off-coloured bit in the background where you as viewer know the secret door will turn out to be.
What more clues do you need to think 'Hey, this might be important', apart from the unique name and model?

I don't particularly get that either. Same with the "Forbidden Legend" side quest that eventually requires you to join the College to finish it. I'd been planning to join both guilds anyway, but...I can imagine how infuriating it would be for someone who wasn't. A bit of poor form there, to be sure.


The "quest item" system has been in place since Oblivion, and tbh I've long suspected that it had to do with all the rage you used to see around the Internet from people who started Morrowind, immediately dropped/sold the package for Caius Cosades who knows where, then came back to do the main quest 500 hours later and couldn't remember where they'd put said package, or who they'd sold it to. Oops.

I think I'd like the "quest item" flagging better if it were less buggy and flags were dropped at the appropriate times, so you wouldn't end up with random junk clogging up your inventory that you could never drop, ever.

One of the best quests in Morrowind that I ever had wasnt scripted, it was because of my own choices.
I didnt even know there was such a thing as a main quest at the time, I didnt have internet. I thought Morrowind was just a world to explore and discover. I was only on my third playthrough or so.

I had done the mages and fighters guild and was wondering what else there was to do.
Then I remembered that package.
What did I do with that? It wasnt in my stash.

So the quest was to locate that package.
It wasnt that hard of one as I realised there were only a limited number of merchants I had access to early in the game.
And to be sure, I had sold it to Arille.

That joy, on recovering that package is unparalleled in later games.
It was a wholly off journal quest, no markers no clues even, I had to do it on my own wits, it had a logical solution, it was choice and consequence and I got the reward of tracking the blasted thing down.

I would kill to be able to sell the dragonstone in Riverwood or kill Delphine for that matter.
At least that sort of thing makes me care about people.
Arille was my buddy after he kept my letter for me.

Riverwood trader guy?
Dont even remember his name.*

* What makes characters memorable is their mortality, in a way.
Kill Eydis Fire-Eye, and be locked out of quests.
Not in modern TES games, now they are 'essential' because its 'a shame to be locked out of quests'.
No!
This is what gives characters life, makes you care for them, encourages multiple playthroughs.

Incorrect sir, your mind perceives the "in-game functionalitiy" and you have the ability to feel any such way about it.

Bacaues it tied in with the TG questline. If you are not a thief you can't have the perk. It's simple as that.

Thats nice, but please do read more than the first sentence.

The arch-Mage finds a gem. 'Yay! Pretty!' he says. He precedes to put it beside his bed to look at as he falls asleep at night. 'BUT WAIT! I CAN'T DO THAT!' he cries, leaping out of bed. 'I'M NOW FORCING A THIEF TO JOIN THE COLLEGE IF HE WANTS TO STEAL MY GEM!'
Seriously, it makes sense. Wouldn't it be immersion-breaking if all of the gems were in convenient locations?

Exactly - Of all the people to own a gem I think the most fitting is the Arch-Mage. I mean it has a magical look does it not? Being an Arch-Mage, your quarters would be the safest place to put it too. You wouldn't suddenly think: "I am going to put this incredibly valuable piece of artifact outside the College in Winterhold, so a certain thief from the Thieves Guild can steal it without my knowledge."

No, naturally you would keep it in the safest place - which would be the College for Savos Aren. So the implication of that is that the thief after the Stone would have to get into the College to retrieve the gem - which would be easiest undercover.

Is it possible to pickpocket the key off the archmage?

Not to mention you can't even complete the quest without at least starting the main quest, That is mindblowing.

Pretend you're infiltrating them... problem solved.

I did like in Oblivion how if you wanted to join the thieves guild, you really had to seek them out. And also contest with three others to join.

Honestly, they have two highly competing interests here. I'm not saying Bethesda found the correct solution, but I am pointing out that it's a tough call to make.

On the one hand, you want to have this quest that involves going all over the world (of Skyrim), looking for rare, valuable objects. These things are supposed to be secreted away in some of the game's hardest-to-find locations, or in the residences of premiere people that the player wouldn't likely have access to. The concept is pretty cool here, and I don't think any of us should discourage Bethesda from having such a quest.

However, you also want to have some areas that are plotlocked. Both because of the risk that a player will wander into the wrong area too soon, do something or find something that messes up a later quest and then can't finish the quest lines for an entire faction, and because it makes good logical sense for the head of an stately office, or a preeminent leader in a powerful guild, to have security that isn't defeated so easily as 3 minutes and a half-dozen lockpicks.

Point is, you can't have them both at the same time. There are big, powerful, important places where you find this rare stone, but at the same time those places can't easily be accessed because it wouldn't make sense for such a location to be accessible, or the player might even mess up an entire quest arc by going there.

I remember reading about another similar example to this stone unturned quest, but it was about the dragon masks. Apparently, someone was collecting all the masks and was outraged to find that at least one of them was in a place that was plotlocked by the mages guild leader. That person claimed almost exactly what I'm reading a lot of here, which is that s/he should be able to get at the dragon mask without joining the mages guild.

I said... no, you shouldn't. Think of Skyrim as a real place for a sec. That location was locked by the archmage for a reason, for whatever reason. It doesn't really matter why he did it, the point is that he did, and only he can open it. To get in, you can't just use a lockpick and bypass the magical barriers set up by some of the world's best scholars. Nope. You need to get friendly with the people that are able to open the thing, and then get them to let you in. That's just the only way that makes any sense, even if all you want is the mask.

Never mind the fact that you could ruin the entire mages guild questline if you broke into that place early, that wasn't even the point at the time.

Social engineering is a common way to manipulate others in order to get what you want when there are no other alternatives in the real world. Even good thieves, when they recognize they cannot just break in or sneak into a place which has the items they want to steal will resort to social engineering (any number of art theif books and films come to mind). The only poor implementation is what people are doing. They are playing a fantasy game which should be a cause to use some imagination. Instead, they create their own world with their own rules that this personal world must abide by, thereby cutting themselves off from the infinite. They put the game in their own little box, then complain when they've run into the constraints that theyve set themselves.

Nerevarine is correct. He is responding to a situation with a real-world solution yet there are those wagging their heads at him because his real-world solution isn't what they "want" to do. Then they continue by attacking the game makers as being close-minded. Incredible.

Has game development become so awesome that it does so much of our thinking that we've become lazy and expect game designers to read our minds and create custom made games that do exactly what we want in the exact order that we want it? When I look at it that way, the constant complaining about Skyrim by those who have invested a good portion of their recent lives playing it is a compliment in a way. The gaming industry is better than ever because it has made people less iimaginative. It has been so good at creating virtual realities. Similar to GPS, no one looks at maps any longer and no one knows how to navigate themselves to anything that isn't within a 5 mile radius of their own lives: GPS has made us lazy. Similar with smartphones... etc.

Personally I think they should have just made the arch-mages door Master locked and that's it. I haven't done every quest in the game, but being able to go into the arch-mages quarters without being in the College shouldn't break other quests. Or can it?

On Dragon Masks mentioned above: You also have to complete the MQ to get all of those. Same with getting all shouts, the only guild you don't have to join to access all shouts is the DB.

There you go. Problem would be solved. Simple, and doesn't change much.

The key doesn't exist.