BUG: Battle for Whiterun will not progress, I need help.

[TNightingale]

Hey guys and gals,

Long time lurker first time poster.

So, i am having some trouble with the mission "Battle for Whiterun" on the StormCloaks side.

It is unfortunately not progressing with the mission once we enter Whiterun, it's like the battle is already finished, the attacking soldiers have dissapeared and everyone is going about their daily business.

Here you can see the quest >stages<

*SPOILERS* (can't seem to find the spolier coding)

Battle for Whiterun (CWSiegeObj)
1 Ulfric Stormcloak has ordered me to join Galmar Stone-Fist in taking the city of Whiterun.
8999 Cancels Quest.
9000 We have taken the city of Whiterun. Proving the righteousness of our cause and the fierceness of our warriors. Unknown

Objective 1000: Get your Orders from Galmar Stone-Fist

Objective 1005: Break through the Enemy Barricade

Objective 1015: Follow Galmar Stone-Fist

Objective 1020: Open the Exterior Gate

Objective 1030: Open the Drawbridge

Objective 1050: Enter Whiterun

Objective 1060: Break through the First Barricade

Objective 1070: Break through the Second Barricade

Objective 1080: Break through the Final Barricade

Objective 1200: Force Jarl Balgruuf the Greater to surrender

Objective 1210: Accept Jarl Balgruuf the Greater's surrender

The issue i am having is between:

Objective 1030: Open the Drawbridge

and
Objective 1050: Enter Whiterun

Not to mention these two are skipped on screen (maybe they happen behind the scenes or were deleted before release)

Objective 1015: Follow Galmar Stone-Fist

Objective 1020: Open the Exterior Gate

Essentially what is happening is that after dropping the drawbridge i get the completed drum roll and notification but... that's it. No next objective pops up.

I have:

• Let Galmar Stone-Fist run into the city with every living Stormcloak
• Made sure every enemy soldier outside is dead
• Tried ResetQuest
• Tried SetStage

The problem is that these aren't stages when you complete them, they are objectives and i have no idea how to add or force the next objective only stages and i can't find a guide.

I have plenty of mods but none of them really have anything to do with quests, just gameplay improvements and visual graphics, some few item adds but nothing that i thought would change the flow of a quest.
One concern might be the outstanding quests i have for people inside Whiterun?

Please feel free to post questions or request anything from me as i want to get this solved and not just skip the quest by forcing it's completion through the console.

Thanks for all and any help.

P.S. I'm in Australia so sorry if my reply is 8-17 hours later. But i'll be on for the next 4 hours at least.

Edited April 7, 2015 by TarikVann

[saurusmaximus]

Speaking from personal experience, the only sure way to fix a broken quest in the CW is to go back to a save before it started and try again. I know, not what you wanted to hear, right?

[TNightingale]

Speaking from personal experience, the only sure way to fix a broken quest in the CW is to go back to a save before it started and try again. I know, not what you wanted to hear, right?

 

Yeah unfortunately not, simply because i have played alot since getting that quest. The main issue thought was starting the previous quest message to whiterun but it seems to not be able to do the quest from the beginning and resets as completed with the command ResetQuest <questID>

[TNightingale]

So i decided to load a save from before i got the quest, was about 40 saves back.
Did the quest and it all went smoothly.
The main differences I saw:

• There were far more combatants outside the city walls that we had to get through before getting to the door.
• Rolaf walked through the door in the smooth running version where as the bugged version he is standing outside the door to Whiterun between the drawbridge and the door and talking like the battle is over. Eventually he enters Whiterun after i am already in there and the guards start going nuts at him hinting that although i used the console command "setstage CWSiegeObj 9000" and got the quest completed, the stormcloaks didn't win or it didn't work. (I may need to load the cell)
• Gamul Stone-fist glitched in the smooth one; he went back to his non battle gear you see him in the Palace of Kings and walked around without a weapon drawn. He also went up the high path rather than standing at the draw bridge waiting for me.

So i don't know if it's Rolaf needing to go through the doors first before i enter for it to work because there were some similarities that made no difference:

• All mods stayed the same
• I still entered (loaded the ugrid cell) the same area (whiterun hold) the same way on the same path with similar pause times and combats taking place.
• I fought the same way and it was slightly easier but was slightly quicker because there was about half as many combatants.
• My outfits still had custom mod items in it and so did the enemy and varying it does not seem to change it.

So i'm a little stumped and maybe someone who is better than me at knowing the codes could give me a way to trick the next stage of the quest through possibly getting Rolaf into the city or just something like that.

Any help is much appreciated.

[anarchyxnow]

I had the same issue. I found a fix for it, but its a little unconventional. So, i made sure to wait 72 hours inside a building before doing this. Im unsure if it helps or not, but i'll give you as much detail as possible. After that, fast travel to Honningbrew Meadery and walk over to Galmar. Once his speech starts, turn off collision and run towards the drawbridge. Open the drawbridge and then go through the gate to the city. Once inside, go to dragonsreach once inside turn collision back on and set the stage of the quest to 9000. You should complete it and get a marker to go to ulfric. Although everything will seem normal, once you report to ulfric and come back, everything should come full circle. You should have stormcloaks roaming the streets, pissed off battle-borns, and that old dude who's name i cant remember as Jarl. As far as i can tell everything is just as it should be for a stormcloak victory, you just miss out on all the fun. Hope it works!

[piotrmil]

I had the same issue today, and sadly I also had to setstage 9000 to finish the quest. I have however, narrowed down what the problem might be. All the 1000s objectives that OP was missing are set by a script on a hidden CWAttackCity quest, which, from what I observed, failed to start. Starting it manually did not work, which usually means some of the aliases needed for the quest were not properly set up (for example, some might have been disabled, while the quest needed them to be enabled). I haven't gone through every single one of them (and there's quite a lot of them), neither have I figured out what exactly starts that quest (I suppose it's a sendevent thing). I might post here more if I find out what might be causing it.

EDIT 1: My hypotesis was correct! I made A Very Silly Patch that made all the aliases on CWAttackCity quest optional (a lot of them were optional already). Upon loading a save from before Galmar's speech, I was able to continue the quest! Now I will load that patch again, and I will try to undo my changes, one by one. I will mark my progress here.

Edit2: First progress. In my setup, CityFieldCOImp seems to be bugged. Leaving him not optional fails to start the quest. in three hours I'm going on holidays, so I doubt I'll be able to figure the culrpit before :D

Edit3: Hm.... The actor that would be chosen is being edited both by Usleep and (in my case) by patchus maximus, but neither of these edits do anything important; their edits do not do anything harmful. So the field general must be somehow being edited on the fly by some other mod. I'll keep looking into it, but that might be difficult to pinpoint. What is weirder is that this guy can be dead, disabled or reserved. So... perhaps he's not there? He is being chosen by conditions.

Edit4: Okay, for some utterly bizarre reason, Legate Quentin Cipius, or whatever his name was, was a) disabled (which isn't a big deal), and b) was in Valtheim towers. Not in Whiterun, which means his location did not match the one in conditions. So, a new enigma arises - what on earth was he doing there?

Edit5: None of my mods make permanent edits to that guy's reference, gotta see if somehing's moved into valtheim towers

Edited August 20, 2016 by piotrmil

[squidhm3]

I've had a similar issue on the Imperial Side. Legate Rikke begins her speech, and stops halfway through. The "Defend the barricades" never shows up. Two plays in a ROW now! I must have an offending mod somewhere.... Gotta love it!

[McCallJG]

I am having the same problem. I have gone back and retried 4 times. I am playing two separate games and in the other one my character is married to ulfric. Could this be a problem.

[tehdman]

I'm having this problem now too, lmao. I don't have any mods that alter quests or Whiterun. I tried finishing the quest via console commands but you know what happened in my case? The topic for the next mission from Ulfric wasn't in the dialogue options! What a twist! Thanks Todd.

Edited July 31, 2019 by tehdman

[MartyMcFly202120202019]

i'm having this same problem... i keep loading to right before i get my orders to attack whiterun and then most of the time, after the drawbridge is down, nothing progresses... i enter the city and it's business as usual... every now and then it's say make the jarl surrender but when i enter the city, it's business as usual.