Unable to Exit Kolbjorn Barrow

[Ananisapta]

There appears to still be a glitch at the end of Kolbjorn Barrow for PC. I stumbled through this quest at level 17, but when I got to the room with the word wall, the structure was in a jumble with patches of sky blue showing. After getting the shout, I fell through one of those empty patches into the room with the black book. I was able to sneak as far as the end of the quest Filament and Filagree, but there was a creature in hot pursuit that was able to two-shot me no matter what I tried. That prevented me from selecting the book's Exit to Skyrim function.

 

After being defeated, I wind up in the room where I picked up the black book, but can't find an exit to the surface. The iron gate opens on the other side, the stairway leads up to the jumbled room but that room has no exit except by falling back into the room where I found the black book.

 

I tried verifying the Steam cache and it verified fine, so that didn't fix the problems. My last save is in the Winking Skeever, which means losing all the progress I made in Kolbjorn Barrow.

 

What am I missing?

Edited May 7, 2019 by Ananisapta

[Ananisapta]

Addendum: By lowering the difficulty, I was able to complete the quest.

 

The only way out of the barrow was to climb some of the broken pieces. This brought me to one of the upper halls but there was then no sign of how I got there.

 

The main problem, besides the huge difficulty spike, was the broken structures in the room with the dragon wall.

[Ananisapta]

Final note -- The guide I used in this instance says the following:

 

First off, complete the Unearthed quest. To begin that, find a treasure hunter called Ralis in a camp just outside of Kolbjorn Barrow, which is south-east of Raven Rock. He wants to dig down into the ash to explore the Norse ruins below, and luckily you’re around to help. Talking to him will kick off the Unearthed quest, and bear in mind that you’ll have to invest a total of 6,000 gold in Ralis’ archaeological dig (which will eventually lead you to the Black Book), so make sure to save up some beforehand. Once you’ve finished the quest you’ll find the Black Book at the end of the final tunnel in the ruins.

 

I had NOT got to the end of Unearthed when I fell into the Black Book scenario, apparently by stumbling into a crack in the scenery in the room with two exits, one above the other... as I recall, I was near the lower exit when this occurred.