Soul Shriven in Coldharbour Game Breaking Bug

Lilthuglet

I've reported this a few times on different characters now but it is getting silly, it still isn't fixed. In the quest Soul Shriven in Coldharbour as you enter a room filled with a number of torture cages, a Dremora Kynval appears. The tutorial guides you through blocking an enemy's heavy attack, indicated by the yellow starburst around the enemy, and exploiting the resulting effect of them being knocked off balance using a heavy attack yourself. Afterwards, you are immediately confronted by a Dremora Kyngald, who begins to cast a spell. Here, you are introduced to interrupting a special attack, indicated by the red starburst. Once again, you can exploit while the enemy is disoriented. A disoriented or off-balance enemy is indicated by the swirling circle around their head.

Or that is what the walkthrough says. It doesn't. Since the new start tutorial you get this quest at L10+ and it has been buggy as anything. The tutorial instructions don't pop but unless you follow them exactly with exactly the right timing the quest will not update and you cannot progress through the next door. If you log out and back in the section restarts and the Dremora Kynval appears again and you go through it all again.... and again...

On previous toons I have managed to get the timing right after four or five tries but this time it is just utterly stuck. I cannot start the main quest. Reporting the issue just gets my toon ported to a wayshrine in their home city, still without the main quest started, and still having to go find the hooded figure, get killed, try to escape, the Dremora Kynval appears... again... and again...

I have been through this section 6 times on this toon now including and sign out and overnight wait in between and I am still stuck staring at this door I cannot open. Really really frustrating.

Does anyone have a workaround that is consistently effective while we wait for the devs to finish the update that takes this out of being the starter quest?
I guess it is too much to hope that the NPC dialogue will stop telling me I don't have a soul when I still do because I haven't done this quest yet.

Lilthuglet

Wow. And customer support's response to the issue of me not being able to play the game I pay them for is "nuts to you, not our problem". Or to directly quote "Please note that you have contacted Customer Support and we do not have any control over game changes, updates, or balancing. Customer Support aims to help with in game, technical, or account issues."

Apparently a stuck character is not an in game or technical issue. I can't play the main quest. I don't want to start any of the quests that ivolve the characters that are currently stuck in coldharbour unless I play the quest to free them first. I can't play a significant portion of the game.

Metzel

I have the exact same problem right now. Level 10 and was in good spirits on the journey through the world, when I was suddenly approached and then abducted into this dungeon.

And i'm stuck at the exact same point. This "tutorial guards" drop death if you only look at them, and i fear that this is exactly the problem. even if you get the timing perfectly right the second guard drops after you parry the attack and i think at that point the script actually would continue, but since you are already level 10 in this "tutorial" you are to strong already and instead of just stagger the enemy you kill him and the progress freezes at this point.

you can not use the door and you can move out of the dungeon. using /stuck only teleports you back to the start of it. there is right now no chance to get out of this prison.

Metzel

Ha, i can confirm i was right. i took of all my equipment and used the sword you find at the beginning of the dungeon. with that i could stagger the second guard and then heavy strike him. that updates the quest and (for now) i can continue.

so the main problem is in fact that a level 10 character with normal equipment is way too strong for this tutorial to continue in a normal way.

Fennwitty

You're saying that the Soul Shriven in Coldharbour quest which starts you in a prison cell is behaving like a tutorial?

I went through this last week with a character who simply hadn't done it yet, but was over CP160.

While it did pop up messages a couple of times, I was able to ignore them and just do what I was going to do. I didn't engage the first daedra personally at all, and the game didn't force me to.

I had a companion at the time out and he engaged it while I looted the room.

But I have noticed timing issues elsewhere in the quest, and other parts of the questline recently. Sometimes dialog wouldn't start, and I had to run back to the start of the area and try to walk forward again.

Specifically the quest where you rescue Lyris and there's a section where Tharn appears and she talks to him. When I took my character in I went past it and killed the clannfear, Tharn never showed up and the quest got stuck.

Went back to the entrance area and basically walked through again and this time Lyris and Tharn had their little talk (which was now illogical since I killed the enemy).

So yes definitely some weird stuff happening.

A couple months ago when I went through the quest lines (I've been playing 3 years, it's always not been the official tutorial for me) I could blow through it, completely annihilating the first daedra boss in moments since it has so few hit points, it never tried to make me engage with a heavy attack or block.

Metzel

> You're saying that the Soul Shriven in Coldharbour quest which starts you in a prison cell is behaving like a tutorial?

As far i know this quest was the (or one of the) original beginner quests and acted as tutorial, yes. e.g. from the wiki
"It is the first quest in the game if the player has not purchased the Online: Morrowind, Summerset, Elsweyr, or Greymoor expansions."

Nowadays it seems to be just a _normal_ quest that just never got completely adjusted. for me it was like that
1) Wake up in the cell
2) Lydia frees you
3) you (or she?) kill first guard if i remember correct
4) walking through 2 rooms while all the standard stuff gets explained on screen (e.g. e-key to loot, etc)
5) enemy appears, quest updates to "defeat the guards" or something like that. and your get automaticaly stunned. text on screen explains block with right mouse button and then attack to kill.
6) second enemy appears, on screen text explains how to interupt with lmb+rmb and then heavy attack.
at that point the game got stuck for me since my counter attack killed the enemy and it never proceeded to show the "use heavy attack" on screen to kill the enemy. i could only do this after removing all my equipment and using a starter weapon i found there.

Fennwitty

Yes you're right it was the original tutorial and has some traces of it, but in three years I've never experienced the quest actually stopping me from proceeding because I wasn't following on screen combat instructions. That was moved into now the Direnni tower universal tutorial.

Only trouble I experience as I said has been with waiting for NPCs to talk.

Might be some kind of new bug or install problem?

In the past (not recently) I've one-shotted the guard and nothing went wrong.

Wolf_Eye

Fennwitty wrote: »

Yes you're right it was the original tutorial and has some traces of it, but in three years I've never experienced the quest actually stopping me from proceeding because I wasn't following on screen combat instructions. That was moved into now the Direnni tower universal tutorial.

Only trouble I experience as I said has been with waiting for NPCs to talk.

Might be some kind of new bug or install problem?

In the past (not recently) I've one-shotted the guard and nothing went wrong.

I can confirm what Fennwitty says, that this quest has never acted like a tutorial for any of my toons.

I always ended up one-shoting things because I set my CP, and it never seemed to stop me from proceeding.