Game freezes on a specific part of quest - Diplomatic Immunity.

[Eugenewithanaxe]

I ran into this intolerable problem with the game freezing up the moment I hand over my stuff to Delphine.

UESP suggests running the command: setstage m201 100 to advance the quest, but this just froze it also.

I also had no interactivity at all, short of intentionally crashing the client.

After enough testing, I had a perfect case scenario that included:

• No unremovable quest items in my inventory.
• No armor/weapons.
• 2 lbs of stuff total in my inventory.
• Still froze.
• I even tried it on two different systems, both of which are fairly pimp.

After backing up a couple of saves, I discovered it didnt happen.

The only difference between that save and the next one it would hang on was HearthFire housing decoration (about 3 hours worth). Can't imagine what that would have to do with anything.

I tried a plethora of solutions scattered about the web, none of which worked in what I guess was an extreme case.

 

Although this was the most annoying bug I've had to deal with in Skyrim to date, I knew there'd be a way around it that didn't involve losing hours of creative work.

 

1. Give your stuff to Malborn in the Winking Skeever as usual.
2. Gate to Delphine and accept the Party Gear and Invitation, as usual.
3. Do not agree to give her your remaining stuff to get into the carriage. That's where it freezes.
4. Manually make your way to the Thalmor Embassy.
5. Unlock the front gate with the "Unlock" console command and then open it.
6. Use the console command to advance the quest: setstage mq201 110
7. Proceed in straight ahead and go up the winding steps past the two guards.
8. Unlock the door with the same console command and go in.
9. If Malborn isn't already standing next to his door waiting for you to make a distraction, talk to him and he'll proceed there.
10. The distraction involves talking to a party guest, but they're not present because of the way we're doing this. I went so far as to teleport one into the room, but the dialogue option was not available. So instead, manually unlock (console command) Malborn's door and the next one as well.
11. Go through the kitchen and get your stuff.
12. Advance the quest again: setstage mq201 140

From that point forward, the quest proceeded normally. No more tricks needed.

 

After it was done and I spoke with Delphine (who was travelling on the road), she told me to get my stuff out of her room, not that I gave her anything with the bypass. I considered attempting to track down wherever her room is to see if there was a bunch of duplicate stuff to reward me for all this trouble, but I decided I didnt care that much.

 

I did get the next quest in line as usual, so I don't expect to run into any trouble associated with the bypass.

Hope that helps you guys out

This thread is pretty old, but to anyone who has run into this problem and sees this, there is an easier and less drastic solution that I have found on the pc version.

 

-Follow the quest as normal (giving your stuff to Malborn, Get the clothes and invitation form Delphine) until Delphine asks you to give her your stuff.

-Give everything you can to a follower.

-Open up the console and use the command player.showinventory to get a list of all the items with their refID's in your inventory.

-Use the command player.drop to drop any quest items on the ground (NOTE: Using the command player.showinventory may show items that are not visible in the player inventory such as sawn logs from the Hearthfire DLC, simply use the command player.removeitem to remove those since they can not be dropped. This may actually be the cause of the problem.)

-Order a follower to pick up any dropped items

-Talk to Delphine and continue the quest as normal.

-Make sure you retrieve your items from your follower after finishing the quest.

 

While using this fix myself, I actually found out that I had a bunch of items that were not visible in my inventory. These items were most likely interfering with the script that removes the items from your inventory after talking to Delphine. Removing those items seemed to fix it, but I would still remove any quest item just to be safe.

 

This seemed to work for me, so I hope it helps someone.

[Technous285]

~snip~

 

Thanks to your post, I am able to continue along with the quest in my current play through, after having spammed my poor "E" key for about 3 minutes to dump almost everything I had onto poor Lydia.

I kinda forgot how much junk I was stockpiling in my inventory (thanks to a 100x capacity mod), and it was all that junk that was causing my game to freeze until I dumped it all onto Lydia. >.>;

[cruxbone]

 

~snip~

 

Thanks to your post, I am able to continue along with the quest in my current play through, after having spammed my poor "E" key for about 3 minutes to dump almost everything I had onto poor Lydia.

I kinda forgot how much junk I was stockpiling in my inventory (thanks to a 100x capacity mod), and it was all that junk that was causing my game to freeze until I dumped it all onto Lydia. >.>;

 

 

Followers are excellent porters. Don't hesitate to dump your burdens on them!

My reliable Farkas carries tons of 'Large' Dwemer gears and metal parts that usually weighs more than 30 each(I need them for smelting and constructing Animunculi; I use Perma). And he never failed to catch up with me when I ran.

[Project579]

Or you can install EFF that gives infinite Inventory to followers

[zelurker]

One of the stupidest bugs in skyrim, and there are quite a few ! I stumbled on this one too, so I made experimentations, and it appears it's simply because I was carrying too many arrows ! I usually grab the arrows from the bodies I find because it could always be useful later or smelted into ingots, anyway... I had about 500 steel arrows, 700 iron arrows, and about 1450 ancient nordic arrows (!), when I removed these 3 stacks from my inventory, the freeze just went away !

Too stupid !!!

Edited September 12, 2017 by zelurker

[BigChungus72]

i figured it out. for whoever is reading this, put all of your items in a chest or something, the ones you did not put with malborn. the freeze happens when she takes the items, so getting rid of all items you can fixes it./

[Cyrodildoh]

I had this problem in Skyrim SE. Except that It started with Delphine not showing at the Solitude stables, even though the game said she was there... so I created a copy of her npc at that point (and then got the above bug).. I searched, found this thread, then did the dialogue with her as instructed (did not give her my gear), followed the rest of the directions and got through until the quest completed.

There were lots of "UNLOCK" and other such commands, and I had to use a few TCL's because of doors that would not work or open right, it is not much fun and no immersion.

 

Finally, I managed to save the loser Malborn and guide him safely to Solitude. I then met Delphine back in Riverwood, as per her instructions and the quest continues.

 

I'll post if I don't get normal progress in Riften with the rest of the "Main Quest".

[Luteni4kaftw]

Same thing happened to me
fixed it by giving everything i carried on me to Malborn

[Mig35]

Dear whoever might still be interested in this topic,

 

Today in 2021 this bug is still a pretty annoying issue. Here is what I did: after I gave two useful items to Malborn, I went to my house in Solitude and I dumped most of my stuff there in the chest in the bedroom. Still the same problem after I went to Delphine. I thought it might had something to do with a magical item mod, so I put that off as well. Same freeze....

Later on I realised: I also carried a lot of arrows. Around 1000 iron and a few 100 steel. I dropped them there before I went to Delphine and voila... I could hop on the carriage without problems. For me the arrows where the problem too.....