Circus of Cheerful Slaughter (Mage guild quest)

Nhoxxx

I have a troublesome problem with this quest.
Shalidor appeared told me to speak with Valaste who should have been in the Mage guild quarters in Stormhold. I had the symbol on the map and minimap but no Valaste in the Mage guild...
I thought it was a bug so I abandoned the quest, and was hoping to retake it. Now is the problem : I can't find Valaste anywhere in all Mage guild and Shalidor is not appearing anymore... I already finished Fighters guild quest line, I'm almost lvl 50, level 8 in Mage guild and can't get this lvl 25 guild quest ....

Please tell me someone had this problem before and knows how to solve this cause no one answers my question using the ingame tool...

Enodoc

If you abandoned the quest, you should be able to retake it from Shalidor at any Mages Guild, or directly from Valaste in Stormhold. If she's not appearing, the first thing you should try is logging off for 15 minutes to allow the area to reset. Even after that, it takes some NPCs quite a while to spawn, so just wait around a bit. I had trouble finding her for a quest in Wayrest, but then she popped up as I was doing something else, and this was like 5 minutes after I entered the building. Shalidor may be the same; try waiting outside the Mages Guild tent in Kragenmoor for a while, as that's one of the more stable locations (since players don't go there so much).

Nhoxxx

Tried to log out for an hour this morning without success. It's been almost a week (got my V1 today and finished main quest), and still no Shalidor nor Valaste. Good thing is, I finally got an answer from Zenimax. Too bad the advices I got didn't work.
I tried the tent in Kragenmoor as you suggested, but didn't work either.

Starting to feel I'll never get this quest line... ( I got no problem at all on my alt though...)
Maybe I'll be able to get rank 10 with all books I can find in VR zones, just gonna take a lot more time.

Anyway thanks for trying to help ! Your answer was faster than any I had from Zeni

nclauson

I have a very similar issue, except mine is for the next quest in line (Chateau of the Ravenous Rodent). No quest, and no way to start it...

Posting here to reinforce in Zenimax's minds that this is a most disturbing bug that cuts off a large chunk of the game. Any help would be nice...

What did Zenimax suggest for you to do that didn't work?

Enodoc

nclauson wrote: »

I have a very similar issue, except mine is for the next quest in line (Chateau of the Ravenous Rodent). No quest, and no way to start it...

Posting here to reinforce in Zenimax's minds that this is a most disturbing bug that cuts off a large chunk of the game. Any help would be nice...

What did Zenimax suggest for you to do that didn't work?

Just wanted to check that you have reached Mages Guild Rank 4, since you need to be there before you can get Chateau.

Nhoxxx

What I don't get is why do we have to wait so much to have a real answer.
Since the game went f2p there is no one anymore to fix the bugs? Or is there so many bugs that a person alone can't answer that quickly ?
Starting to get pissed off to be honest ...

nclauson

Enodoc wrote: »

nclauson wrote: »

I have a very similar issue, except mine is for the next quest in line (Chateau of the Ravenous Rodent). No quest, and no way to start it...

Posting here to reinforce in Zenimax's minds that this is a most disturbing bug that cuts off a large chunk of the game. Any help would be nice...

What did Zenimax suggest for you to do that didn't work?

Just wanted to check that you have reached Mages Guild Rank 4, since you need to be there before you can get Chateau.

Yep, I've made it to level 5 in Mages' Guild even by now. Getting sad that I can't have my "Master Wizard" title as I'm a sorceror : /

Enodoc

nclauson wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

nclauson wrote: »

I have a very similar issue, except mine is for the next quest in line (Chateau of the Ravenous Rodent). No quest, and no way to start it...

Posting here to reinforce in Zenimax's minds that this is a most disturbing bug that cuts off a large chunk of the game. Any help would be nice...

What did Zenimax suggest for you to do that didn't work?

Just wanted to check that you have reached Mages Guild Rank 4, since you need to be there before you can get Chateau.

Yep, I've made it to level 5 in Mages' Guild even by now. Getting sad that I can't have my "Master Wizard" title as I'm a sorceror : /

All I can suggest is that you try going directly to the Mages Guild in Sentinel/Windhelm/Baandari Trading Post (depending on your alliance), as that's where Valaste should be to start the quest.

Nhoxxx wrote: »

What I don't get is why do we have to wait so much to have a real answer.
Since the game went f2p there is no one anymore to fix the bugs? Or is there so many bugs that a person alone can't answer that quickly ?
Starting to get pissed off to be honest ...

Just because ZOS don't comment on every bug thread, doesn't mean they haven't read it. What was it that they suggested that didn't work?

Nhoxxx

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We greatly appreciate you submitting a bug report so we can look into this issue more closely.
You should be able to pick this quest up by locating Valaste at one of the below Guildhalls:
Marbruk (Greenshade)
Shornhelm (Rivenspire)
Stormhold (Shadowfen)
If you haven't yet, please return to the Guildhall for your alliance and see if you can find her again. We also recommend typing /reloadui to refresh the area. You can also try logging out for 15 minutes and then logging back in again. This will cause a soft reset of the location and potentially give Valaste a chance to return to her work in the Guildhall.
If none of these steps fix your issue, please feel free to respond back so we can look deeper into the issue for you.

I understand they have to start with the "basic" advices first when they try to solve a problem.
What I don't get is how is there still bug in the main quests of the game, and why I don't have any answers after I tell them this doesn't work. You know just a mail saying there is still someone working on this, I don't even know if they got the mail I sent. It's rude and really not professional.
Even if ZOS doesn't have the money to get GMs into the game, they should have enough to pay people to do some customer service.
I really hope I can get to level 10 into the Mage guild without the quest since I got the feeling this won't be resolved any time soon.

Enodoc

Nhoxxx wrote: »

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We greatly appreciate you submitting a bug report so we can look into this issue more closely.
You should be able to pick this quest up by locating Valaste at one of the below Guildhalls:
Marbruk (Greenshade)
Shornhelm (Rivenspire)
Stormhold (Shadowfen)
If you haven't yet, please return to the Guildhall for your alliance and see if you can find her again. We also recommend typing /reloadui to refresh the area. You can also try logging out for 15 minutes and then logging back in again. This will cause a soft reset of the location and potentially give Valaste a chance to return to her work in the Guildhall.
If none of these steps fix your issue, please feel free to respond back so we can look deeper into the issue for you.

I understand they have to start with the "basic" advices first when they try to solve a problem.
What I don't get is how is there still bug in the main quests of the game, and why I don't have any answers after I tell them this doesn't work. You know just a mail saying there is still someone working on this, I don't even know if they got the mail I sent. It's rude and really not professional.
Even if ZOS doesn't have the money to get GMs into the game, they should have enough to pay people to do some customer service.
I really hope I can get to level 10 into the Mage guild without the quest since I got the feeling this won't be resolved any time soon.

These aren't main quests, but I completely agree. Sometimes the soft reset just doesn't work (incidentally, I'm glad that the advice I've given in relation to bugged quests matches up to the official stance), but equally it might not actually be anything broken in the code. Missing NPCs and interactables do randomly occur if the server glitches, and soft resets often fix that. If they don't, then hard resets (ie, the ones that occur during maintenance) are most likely to. Only after that doesn't work would ZOS put more attention into fixing it, because it's at that time they are more able to see whether it's a code issue rather than a server issue.

To answer your second question, yes. You can get to Mages Guild Rank 10 without the quest. Guild quests provide absolutely no progress for their respective Guild skill lines, so you don't need to do any at all if levelling the skills is your aim.*
*Exceptions to this are that you do discover some Lorebooks during the quests themselves, but not enough to make a difference.

Nhoxxx

What I meant by main was not the "main quest" line, but the major quests in the game like the main line, the fighters guild line and the mage one.
Had a new answer this morning telling me to repair the game or lower my firewall. Already did these, even reinstall the game, and I'm not using my firewall.
Maintenance already occured last monday and did nothing so now I can just give up on this quest line, I don't want to spend my time asking for something that will not happen.
It's really sad to see that bug like these still happens and still can't be solved

Thanks for the advices and your help, it's cool to see that players still try to help each others.
I'm gonna try to find more books then, I was sure the quest gave some guild xp so I was waiting for the bug to be solved.

Nhoxxx

Got an email today asking me to retry to go the mage guild hall, and Shalidor was there.
Took some time but I finally could finish this quest !
Better late than never

Cerbin

I have similar issue with "Mad God's Bargain".

I have already level 10 in mages guild skill line (VR12 atm), done the previous quest "Circus of Cheerful Slaughter" but now Shalidor is nowhere to find and i can't pick up the last quest. I have searched every Mages Guildhall.

Tried with loging out. I have even picked up some last mages lorebooks in Cyrodill, without success.

Shalidor is not there and i cant progress to last quest.

I have filled the bug report in game, but did not recive any response.