Under Saarthal Quest Not Starting

[SnobbyCoder60]

On 3/20/2025 at 1:06 AM, scorrp10 said:

When you tried prid on all the IDs I mentioned, are all of them coming with  'Is Enabled:  Yes'?

What about 'startquest mg02' or 'sqv mg02' commands?

About SSEEdit:
Once you got it installed, and launched it, have it loading all the mods.   Then you expand Skyrim.esm entry, under it - Quest entry, and then look for 0001F252
I my case, only thing overloading that quest for me is USSEP, which is fine.

Thank you again. I can confirm that each of the voices tried with "prid" show the tag "Enabled: Yes" EXCEPT NERIEN (233d3) which is tagged as: "Enabled: No".

Moreover i proceeded with SSSEdit as of your guidelines, and similarly to you, my only mod that overwrites the quest "Under Saarthal" in Skyrim.esm is the USSEP (which makes no sense).

As I told you, this is not a new Bug neither a previously solved one; I met many people with the same bug on reddit and steam, even tried to share modlist one another to see if there was a common buggy mod, but hell, nothing ever solved this since years.
Talking about console commands, of course setqueststage and similar work to start the quest "on paper", but this is useless, as even if the quest is displayed in the menu the NPCs (Toldfir etc) do not do the scripted actions they were suppoosed to do, making the quest IMPOSSIBLE to progress at all.

I hope to not bother you too much, but really this is a bug that no one seem to ever have solved neither cared to solve..

Any ideas on how to proceed? Appreciate your help.

Edited March 24 by SnobbyCoder60

[SnobbyCoder60]

On 3/20/2025 at 1:06 AM, scorrp10 said:

When you tried prid on all the IDs I mentioned, are all of them coming with  'Is Enabled:  Yes'?

What about 'startquest mg02' or 'sqv mg02' commands?

About SSEEdit:
Once you got it installed, and launched it, have it loading all the mods.   Then you expand Skyrim.esm entry, under it - Quest entry, and then look for 0001F252
I my case, only thing overloading that quest for me is USSEP, which is fine.

Hello, do you have any clues about posssible causes of Nerien being "Enabled: No" typing prid into the console? Is it this alias the cause of the quest not starting? Thank you.

[scorrp10]

No, Nerien Alias actually has a 'Allow Disabled' flag.   Now about this:

Quote

Talking about console commands, of course setqueststage and similar work to start the quest "on paper", but this is useless, as even if the quest is displayed in the menu the NPCs (Toldfir etc) do not do the scripted actions they were suppoosed to do, making the quest IMPOSSIBLE to progress at all.

So does the quest actually START, but is not working right?   Cause if it actually starts (which can be verified with 'sqv mg02' command),  then all these alias checks were essentially barking up the wrong tree...

[SnobbyCoder60]

8 hours ago, scorrp10 said:

No, Nerien Alias actually has a 'Allow Disabled' flag.   Now about this:

So does the quest actually START, but is not working right?   Cause if it actually starts (which can be verified with 'sqv mg02' command),  then all these alias checks were essentially barking up the wrong tree...

I tested with "startquest MG02" and the quest DOES NOT START AT ALL (I remembered differently but i confirm that the quest DOES NOT START).

Trying with "sqv mg02" report ALL the related aliases (29x total) tagged with "NONE" and the following results: (*see attachment*)

 

Of course trying "startquest" on further related quest works fine, but using "startquest mg02" does NOT start the quest, even if the console compiles it (as it does not return any error..)

[maladi777]

Hi guys. I encountered this issue myself tonight and I managed to make it work. The previously mentioned commands did not work for me either, the npc still wouldn't come to the door even though the quest was showing as running. So I typed this into the command console: setstage mg02 20

What it did was finish the part in front of the door and the door unlocked for me. When I entered all the npcs were inside and I could continue the quest. 

It was literally a blind shot because I don't understand a thing about these commands, I just randomly changed the number in the command and it worked. So try this and let me know  if it works for you too. Cheers!

[scorrp10]

Try following:
Launch game.   Get to main menu.    Instead of choosing 'Load', open console and put in command:    "coc qasmoke"
You will end up in a test area, in what is more or less a new game.    Now, do the command:   "startquest mg02"

Then check it with sqv.

[SnobbyCoder60]

On 3/26/2025 at 11:49 PM, maladi777 said:

Hi guys. I encountered this issue myself tonight and I managed to make it work. The previously mentioned commands did not work for me either, the npc still wouldn't come to the door even though the quest was showing as running. So I typed this into the command console: setstage mg02 20

What it did was finish the part in front of the door and the door unlocked for me. When I entered all the npcs were inside and I could continue the quest. 

It was literally a blind shot because I don't understand a thing about these commands, I just randomly changed the number in the command and it worked. So try this and let me know  if it works for you too. Cheers!

hello, i think your problem was different: the quest "Under Saarthal" here DOES NOT START AT ALL, while in your case it seems that it starts but yet does not work.

but if i am wrong and you solved the problem, can you please be more specific? thank you.

On 3/27/2025 at 2:02 AM, scorrp10 said:

Try following:
Launch game.   Get to main menu.    Instead of choosing 'Load', open console and put in command:    "coc qasmoke"
You will end up in a test area, in what is more or less a new game.    Now, do the command:   "startquest mg02"

Then check it with sqv.

I am gonna try with coc qasmoke and see what is changing, but what should i am expecting from sqv? 

There must be a reason for this quest to not start after completing "Fist Lessons", and some kind of mod should be the cause... could it be the USSEP?

Again thank you for your help, apreciate.

[scorrp10]

It is about a methodical approach.

If you use 'coc  qasmoke' at main menu, you essentially start a brand-new pristine game world.    TOO pristine actually, as a number of things that get set in motion when selecting 'New Game', get omitted.   But that is beside the point.    What we are trying to establish is whether the problem with Saarthal quest is inherent to your mod lineup from the get-go, or if it is something that gets compromised further into the game.

So, you do 'coc qasmoke' at main menu, and then 'startquest mg02', and then 'sqv mg02'

If it still shows that the quest is Stopped and at stage 0, it means your existing mods mess with your world sufficiently to render Saarthal quest non-startable.  And I am afraid to say that it means you did not do the due diligence when checking the alias RefIDs.   Just in case, here they are again.    The Refs starting with FF are actually spawned by the quest, no need to check those.

If the quest does start in the newly initialized world, it means that something messes with one of its prospective aliases somewhere in the course of the game.   I am not sure if you have a habit of making regular manual saves of your game (you should), but I would recommend trying following:   Starting from the earliest one you made for this playthrough, start loading your savegames, and try 'startquest mg02' on each one.   Say, if you load save #24, and can start the quest, and then load save #25, and can no longer start the quest, you can start looking at what has changed between those two saves.

 

[SnobbyCoder60]

On 3/28/2025 at 5:02 AM, scorrp10 said:

It is about a methodical approach.

If you use 'coc  qasmoke' at main menu, you essentially start a brand-new pristine game world.    TOO pristine actually, as a number of things that get set in motion when selecting 'New Game', get omitted.   But that is beside the point.    What we are trying to establish is whether the problem with Saarthal quest is inherent to your mod lineup from the get-go, or if it is something that gets compromised further into the game.

So, you do 'coc qasmoke' at main menu, and then 'startquest mg02', and then 'sqv mg02'

If it still shows that the quest is Stopped and at stage 0, it means your existing mods mess with your world sufficiently to render Saarthal quest non-startable.  And I am afraid to say that it means you did not do the due diligence when checking the alias RefIDs.   Just in case, here they are again.    The Refs starting with FF are actually spawned by the quest, no need to check those.

If the quest does start in the newly initialized world, it means that something messes with one of its prospective aliases somewhere in the course of the game.   I am not sure if you have a habit of making regular manual saves of your game (you should), but I would recommend trying following:   Starting from the earliest one you made for this playthrough, start loading your savegames, and try 'startquest mg02' on each one.   Say, if you load save #24, and can start the quest, and then load save #25, and can no longer start the quest, you can start looking at what has changed between those two saves.

 

I'm sorry i still have not updated you but i'm working hard these days, i will check again all the aliases id with pris ASAP, as well as trying a pristine new world with "coc quasmoke" in the main menu.

Later, if I find one that is flagged as "Enabled: No" (apart from Nerien) how would I proceed then?

Last time i checked all the voices provided through More Informative Console to look for any mod rewriting each alias, finding only one file different from "Skyrim.esl" which was "Oblivion Artifact" mod, but disabling it does not solve the iussue.

Thank you for your help, I will update you as soon as i did, hoping to solve this..

Edited Wednesday at 06:33 PM by SnobbyCoder60

[scorrp10]

One step at a time.  See if it can start on a pristine game.  If it can, go through saves till you find one where quest will no longer start via console.