Dark Brotherhood quest line permanently broken?

[Illuminated888]

First the DB quest line did not continue after I killed Grelod and received the heirloom from the Imperial boy who hired me. The courier did not show up and would not show up no matter how long I waited or what city I went into. I do not have any dark brotherhood mods by the way. I have the Skyrim UPs as in all of them because without them I cannot absorb dragon souls... anyhow.. I used the console to start the next quest then traveled to the abandoned house, used the console to unlock the door, and then killed all three prisoners as I always do. I was accepted into the DB and I did the first three contracts that you get from Nazir. Well I killed the targets, got the payment, and the next quest did not start. I was not given the journal update that says to go talk to Astrid. Astrid just says that she does not have a primary contract for me yet. This happens with every new character I make. DB is unplayable probably because the Dragonborn DLC broke it just like it broke the dragon souls. In fact I have to have both the UPs AND the dragon merchant mod both just to fix the dragon souls problem so removing any of those is out of the question. I can only hope they are not the cause of this problem. I am quite certain it is the dragonborn DLC screwing everything up because before the DLC the Dark Brotherhood questline was flawless. Bethesda has never let me down like this before. Morrowind was flawless save for a few CTDs here and there. Oblivion was near perfect bug wise (for me anyway). This is ridiculous. An entire faction is now rendered unplayable forever because they will probably not even address it in their next patch. Not enough people are complaining because everyone else probably completed the dark brotherhood questline before they played dragonborn. I guess I will just have to accept the fact that new DLC ruins older content. :/

[IsharaMeradin]

Is this on a new game or on an existing game that did not have the Dragonborn DLC?

 

If it is an existing game prior to adding the Dragonborn DLC, you may want to try with a brand new character to see how it plays out. DLCs are just like mods. When added or taken out of an existing game there can be problems.

[Lisnpuppy]

I wonder does the unofficial dragonborn patch address any of these issues? And are you using any of the unofficial patch mods made by Artmoor and others?

[acidzebra]

Worked fine for me. I'm guessing mod or load order problem.

[Vulon]

True, Skyrim's particularly prone to bugs and crashes, but that's because there's a lot more variables to take into account, and modding / scripts have become much more complicated. I still play Oblivion rather regularly because I view it as my modding 'playground', since there aren't many notable consequences to activating and deactivating mods in comparison to Skyrim. I'm more careful with what I install when playing Skyrim. I've already had to do a clean install once before because I broke my previous save, so I'm quite cautious. In any case, I digress. You mention progressing through the quest line initially using the console - now, I assume you did the same for the part you're currently stuck at? Also, your load order and papyrus log would be quite helpful.

[Illuminated888]

I am using all of the unofficial patches as I said in my post. I really do not want to have to use the console to advance to every single quest or every single part of a quest that will not start. Yes it happens with every character. This is a completely new character and it happened again on another completely new character. Something is very wrong.