Hey, so I'm kinda in a pickle right now... I bought the Dragonborn DLC a couple months ago, and started playing a new character (even though I had a lvl 51 before). And everything worked fine; The Cultists came and attacked me and so on and so forth.... However, I thought to myself, why not play an overpowered two-handed sword swinging Orc lvl 51 in the Dragonborn DLC... WELL I CAN'T! I loaded my lvl 51 character save, but no Cultists... doesn't matter where I go, I can't seem to find them (or they cant seem to find me).

What can I do about this? Can I only play the DLC on one character? o.O Am I doomed to use my lvl 32 battlemage in Solstheim, FOREVER!!?!?!?!?!? Help would be appreciated! THX!

You have to be recognized by the Greybeards.

Regardless, you can still travel to Solstheim.

I believe you have to receive the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller before they appear in any village/major city. Did you get that far in the MQ with your Orc? If so, than it's probably just bugging out, but you can still go to Windhelm and travel to Solstheim.

close, but not quite.

you can start it as soon as you leave High Hrothgar for the first time (After learning the second word of Unrelenting force and first word of whirlwind sprint), but you don't have to go get the horn to start the DLC.


@OP, I am guessing you haven't started the Vanilla MQ yet, you cant do Dragonborns MQ without starting it since the whole DLC revolves around Dragonborn vs. Dragonborn

You can also start it by traveling to the Island, and learning the Bend Will shout and freeing the Wind Stone,

OR traveling to Miraak's Temple and meeting Frea

Actually, all that is required to start the main quest of Dragonborn is the killing of your first dragon outside of Whiterun. To finish it you'll need at least three more dragon souls.

You can travel straight to the Skaal village after killing your first dragon and talk to the Skaal shaman to start the questline.

To travel to Solstheim all that is needed is five hundred gold, the boat can take you there at any level or stage of questlines.

Well, he's LVL 51, so I have finished almost everything in vanilla with my orc.... now I want to play the Dragonborn DLC with the same character, but I'm never confronted by the cultists :/ and the ship that takes me to solstheim is not there at all... notice that I started this character BEFORE I bought the DLC... should that matter?

Are you sure dragonborn.esm is selected in the data files in the launcher? No boat means that the dlc is not active, probably.

Are you certain the boat isn't there? It's manned in the dock at Windhelm.

On a side note... this will probably be better served in the spoiler section, given the detailed events of the DLC.

It is possible.

On my first attempted playthrough of Dragonborn I experienced the same thing.

No cultists, no boat. I play on 360.

It has worked fine on all new characters since then so perhaps it is just best to start a new character for Dragonborn.