Questions about completing quests with the command console

[frodius]

Hello,

 

I started oblivion shortly after it was released, but then real life intervened and I had to take a long hiatus. By the time I got back to it, my PC (which was on the old side when oblivion was released) couldn't really compete with my Xbox 360 displayed on my HDTV, so I started a game on my xbox. Then real life intervemed again, and I had to take another long hiatus. I just got a brand new PC and I would like to finish Oblivion on my PC, which is the way it is meant to be played.

 

My plan is to use the command console to duplicate my character from the 360 on my pc so that I don't have to do the first half of the main quest again (I have done it 4 times already), but I am unsure how the completequest and setstage commands on the console work. Is there any potentially game damaging effects from experimenting with those commands. For instance, I don't want to use the console to get half of the main quest line done, only to find out that I somehow have made the second half impossible because the commands have deleted or misplaced a critical npc.

 

Thanks in advance for any help

 

 

P.S. everytime 'real life intervened' if was for generally wonderful things like graduation and starting a career, marriage, and/or the birth of a child

[Micko]

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Console_Command_Tutorial

 

 

SetStage BaseID StageNum

(Only works with quest IDs.)

 

This command will force a quest to update, which is extremely useful as a lot of times a quest will get bugged and stop you from advancing it for one of many reasons. There are a couple ways to go about doing this. The first is to use the console command SQT to find your current quest's ID and what stage you're on. Most quests' stages increase by 10 for each part completed, so you can input the quest's ID and stage with this information. For example, if it gave you Dark01Knife for the quest ID and 20 for the quest stage, you'd put in the command SetStage Dark01Knife 30 to update it. The problem, however, is that in some cases the stages don't increase by 10, but instead by a larger or smaller number. That's where the second method comes in, which requires you find the quest's ID and the stage that you want it to update to.

 

Ex.: SetStage MQ02 20; forces the player's quest to update to the next part.

 

Notes:

 

It is not possible to undo this command. So, for example, if you type SetStage MQ03 20 by mistake (instead of MQ02), there is no way to reverse that command and make the game think that you have not started MQ03. In particular, SetStage MQ03 0 will have no effect. Overall, it is not possible to decrease a quest's stage. So even entering SetStage MQ03 10 would not change the quest stage (e.g., GetStage MQ03 would still return 20, not 10).

Internally, the game has flags that keep track of the status of each individual quest stage. So the command SetStage MQ03 20 does not set a "stage" variable to 20; it actually sets the "stagedone" variable for MQ03 stage 20 to true (or 1). The command GetStage MQ03 just figures out which is the highest numbered stage that has been flagged as done, and returns that number. There is no known way to directly alter the "stagedone" variables, which is why it is impossible to undo a setstage command.

Some game scripts are based upon the the overall quest stage (i.e., the value returned by GetStage); other scripts are based upon whether or not specific stages have been done (i.e., the value returned by GetStageDone). Therefore, skipping ahead in a quest, for example by entering SetStage MQ03 100 can have unpredictable effects, because the individual stages of the quest are not marked as complete. Also, there are invariably many other scripts that are supposed to get executed as a quest progresses; skipping ahead in a quest will not cause any of the other scripts to be run. It may subsequently be impossible to ever reproduce the missing events using the console. Therefore indiscriminate use of this command can lead to permanently bugged games.

 

somehow have made the second half impossible because the commands have deleted or misplaced a critical npc.

 

With the PC it is often not too hard to fix the above examples you have used.

 

The moveto command can help you find where that missing NPC is.

 

You can resurrect them if they're dead or enable them if they're nowhere etc.