New file with a patch. It prevents the autopsy scene in the Hall of the Dead to run if you have saved Susanna (really odd to have Susanna alive at the same time that Helgird is doing the autopsy to a corpse that seems identical to Susanna...). It only contains the .bsa file, so just install over the old one (either manually or with NMM).
I love using this mod to give myself a shot at saving as many people as possible. But I do have a question. Not asking you to do anything yourself, per se, but would we be able to somehow patch the quest so it only triggers using the methods introduced by this mod? I always get antsy about visiting Windhelm because I always feel the need to immediately initiate this quest in case something goes wrong and Susanna's dead the next time I visit. I'd prefer being able to just activate the quest whenever I want without that ticking clock.
Well, it's possible. If the counter is disabled, the quest will only follow the modded stages, so Susanna's murder won't happen.
If I remember correctly, the counter is tied to MS11kicker, so stopping that quest should stop the counter (I could be wrong, too much time since I delved into this things).
But the counter is also tied to the Wuunferth part of the quest (if you acuse him and he is put in jail), so, I don't know how stopping the counter could affect those stages.
I never convict him anyway so that wouldn't affect me much at all, really. But that's good to know. So would just using the stopquest command on game load prevent that quest from auto-triggering without needing to make a patch for it?
You'll have to try it, because I don't remember exactly how the counter is attached to MS11kicker. So use the stopquest command, enter Windhelm and see if the counter does not move. If so, the murder scene won't trigger ever. If the counter goes up even with the kicker quest stopped, then your last resource is to reset the counter to zero every time you enter Windhelm, and hope that the counter never reaches the trigger point.
In all my playthroughs, I allways completed this quest as soon as I arrived to Windhelm, just to avoid the possibility of the murder triggering randomly.
Using both this and Finding Susanna Alive, I managed to actually solve the Windhelm Murder Mystery before he could kill Susanna and whatsername.
However, quest now being fully completed, the Innkeeper still "misses her friend" and Susanna is nowhere to be found anymore. I was a bit taken back by that, is that supposed to be the case? Even if we save Susanna the game makes her play dead anyway?
I left the inn with Susanna alive, the counter was at 2, think I might've hopped back into the inn quickly at some point but only to talk to the writer at the bar, so cannot say for sure if she was alive then, but she wasn't murdered at least (passed the graves multiple times).
At some point missed talking to Tolva for the key and lockpicked Hjerim instead, and I think either the entering itself or "investigating" the first clue is what started BOTI for the game. After going back and forth all night and finally killing Cal and finishing up the quest, it couldn't have been more than count 3, and that innkeeper line came only after fully completing the quest (and hadn't spoken to her in the mean time).
For what you are telling, until you entered Hjerim, the mod was working as intended: the quest log will only appear either when you enter Hjelrim or when Susanna is murdered. In the first case, Susanna should be alive. Can you check what quest stages are active after you finished it? If, for whatever reason, stages 9 an/or 10 had a value of 1, then the game will consider that Susanna is dead and she will be disabled.
Try as I may, I just can't get this mod to work. None of the NPCs have dialogs, only a few lines on repeat. Checking the quest state, the only states I've seen are either 0 on all stages, which won't let me progress the quest at all, or 1 on stage 0 and 1, which results in Susanna being dead and vanilla quest playing out.
I have no quest mods except for this one installed, or mods that alter the city. The only thing I have installed that isn't cosmetic or player related is Immersive Citizens. I tried both with and without voices.
It's also my first time entering Windhelm, and I tried installing the mod both before and after entering to see if it works.
All are there, plus stages beyond that with higher numbers.
I also noticed that the hour of the day when you first enter Windhelm plays a role. Through the "help MS11EnteringWindhelmCount" command I could see entering at night displayed count 2 even when just near the bridge, whereas entering in mid day, the counter would display 0 right up to the city gates. Having a counter of 2 right away for the first entry to the city also results in Susanna being already dead.
Thanks by the way, regardless if I get the mod to work. I appreciate just the fact you even replied, so swiftly at that, to a question for a decade old game.
Now, the counter seems a bit erratic, and different people have different outcomes (probably due to other mods installed, besides the unruly nature of the quest itself. In my playthroughs the counter always went up by 1 when I was passing by Windhelm stables).
With a counter less than 4 the murder scene of Susanna should not be triggered. Also, in the modded version, that scene is played in stage 9 (the new stage 1 let's you talk to Viola). If you have a previous save with a counter of 0, try seeing how the game reacts both with the mod active and inactive, to see if something else is messing with MS11. Again, if the counter is below 4, the murder scene shouldn't be triggered.
Tried to start the quest with BOTI and Finding Susanna disabled and couldn't start vanilla either.
I don't have much on the way of quest mods to begin with, so I'm baffled, tbh.
First culprit that comes to mind is alternate start mods, I use Skyrim Unbound, do you think it might be that?
Edit: OK, nothing like the classics, tried it out with just USSEP and BOTI, added Finding Susanna Alive right after, and there you have it. I don't know why it's happening, but FSA is preventing MS11 to initialize.
Edit 2: chanted victory too soon, just deactivating FSA on the full setup doesn't work. But with just USSEP and BOTI, adding FSA makes it stop working, this game can be such a torture sometimes.
Don't ask me why, because they don't conflict at the plugin level (the mod just changes two game settings and that's all) and it doesn't come with scripts whatsoever, so I don't see why HLU would preclude BOTI Redux from starting.
But it does. o_O
Edit: on a whim and because HLU just changes two game settings, I reproduced the mod via Game Settings Override (so without a plugin). Same result. For whatever reason, changing how many stats you gain on level up makes the quest crap its pants.
Here's an excerpt from Exercise - Incremental Growth's changelog.
I'm assuming this is what's happening here too, some BOTI related NPC is starting with 0 HP due to changing the stat growth game setting (so, very dead), hence the quest not initalizing.
Not sure who's the dead guy or gal, but has to be this.
In the end, I never figured out what caused the issue, but I did manage to get it to work.
For some reason, the mod would end up killing Susanna on the first entry to the city, even with the patch that's supposed to fix that issue installed. So I removed everything, walked into the city to load the cell, installed the mod, and used the command setstage MS11 0 to start the quest, because it otherwise wouldn't let me talk to Viola Giordano. After that, everything worked perfectly.
Finally I got to experience the alternate timeline. Thanks for the mod. You're a literal lifesaver.
Thanks for letting us know about the command, Davidlo. I spent a day running back and forth between all of the NPCs trying to start the quest before Bethesda's scuffed count hit 4. The setstage command help start it. I got into a bug where you need to investigat eclues in Herjim but the quest won't update despite getting the amulet and journals. So just used setstage ms11 70 to progress to the next step and save yourself some headache if your quest also bugs there.
This worked for me on a new save but not an existing one. Also if you get to the point where you need to investigate the house, once you get into the house I had to pick up the amulet first for the next step to trigger. THEN I picked up the journals. The quest worked fine after. Picking up any of the journals first would not trigger the the step even if I picked the amulet up
Can't complete the quest as Calixto are essential even at the end when he try to kill Arivanya at the market. Funnily enough, Arivanya also essential, she still live even after Calixto's killmove. I don't know what cause this.
Edit: I managed to to find a solution from older posts I recommend to do this quest right after entering Windhelm. The quest itself isn't long.
Step 1: Talk to Viola Giordano. Step 2: Talk to Adonato Leotelli. Step 3: Talk to Tova Shatter-Shield and get the key to Hjerim. Step 4: Go investigate Hjerim. Step 5: Talk to Jorleif. Step 6: Talk to Calixto Corrium and sell him the amulet. Step 7: Talk to Viola Giordano. Step 7: Talk to Wuunferth the Unliving. Step 8: Wait for Calixto Corrium trying to strike again and finished him off. This time he won't be essential. Step 9: Talk to Jorleif and the quest will be complete. You can buy Calixto's house after completing the quest if you install the optional file BOTIXtra.
i didnt download ussep could that cause your mod to not work at all or would i just get ctd? so far i have not gotten any ctds but viola wont give me any special dialogue
Without USSEP, the mod will not work properly (if at all), and you risk to suffer CTDs and other problems within the save file if BOTI Redux tries to load some resource from the unofficial patch and the game doesn't find it.
As a golden rule, install all requirements of every mod you use, because the problems in the long term for not doing so are unpredictable.
I hate this bugfest quest, each mistake/glitch and another one bites the dust, at least two up to as many as four. This quest can start if you get too close to Windhelm, how close is too close who knows???
I just reached the point that when starting a new game I open the console and enter...
I have a bug where I have stages (after looking in SEEdit) 0, 4, 5, 9, and 15 added by BOTI, but no 1 or 3. Viola doesn't say anything, and while I did find the preessentializing script running for some reason, after disabling it, the dialogue still did not appear from Viola. Even setting the global variable doesn't kick off the quest. Any help would be appreciated. Also planning to update if I figure it out.
No idea why 1 is missing. Try to put BOTI Redux lower in your load order, to see if it's other mod conflicting with it.
Oh, and I misremembered the quest stages in BOTI Redux in some comments. You should have 1, 4, 5 and 9 (stage 3 does not exist). Here are the actual quest stages:
Spoiler:
Show
stage 1 now don't kill Susanna. Instead you can talk with Viola stage 4 let you question Leotelli stage 5 let you talk to Tova stage 9 is the original stage 1, where Susanna is dead stage 60 is like the original 60, but with a new state for those who entered Hjerim and didn't went through stage 9 (so Susanna is alive) stage 65 is a dummy stage. If something didn't trigger properly in stage 60, try setstage 65 the quest and see if the problem is solved. Should always be 0 if not activated manually.
Yeah, I doubled checked this in the creation kit & SSEEdit, I do have stage 1, but I'm beginning to think it's nothing to do with this mod in particular and maybe another, since disabling this mod and running the game without it still will not let me use the console to change the quest stage. I didn't see any other mods edit this quest either in SSEEdit, so it's a bit confusing. I'm going to just disable the newest mods I've installed and I'll update later if I find anything out.
The culprit was SkyPatcher (v1.11.2). Updating it to the latest version (as of writing 2.4.16) corrects the issue. I'm guessing at runtime it patched over the BOTI quest.
The culprit was SkyPatcher (v1.11.2). Updating it to the latest version (as of writing 2.4.16) corrects the issue.
BY THE DIVINES THANK YOU CORRAMEL! I have been trying to figure out why Blood on the Ice and The Dark Brotherhood have been broken for TEN MONTHS and I just found your post! Take my kudos you beautiful person!
I'm having a very similar problem - Came to Windhelm for the first time, walked around long enough to hear people mention a killer, so I then began wandering around looking for someone who could get the quest started for me. No one, including Ulfric's steward, would point me in Viola's direction (idk if this mod or the vanilla quest would do that; honestly couldn't remember, but figured it was worth a try for muh IMMERSION). Kept looking, and found her wandering around outside Candlehearth. Tried nine ways from Sunday to get her to engage me in conversation, but no dialog box pops - she just keeps repeating her canned warnings and complaints.
I'm not NEARLY as bug hunter savvy as you clearly are - I barely know how to turn the creation kit on lol, so I came here.
One other commenter stated that The Second Great War was their culprit for causing this issue. I had already tried moving Blood on the Snow to the bottom of my load order, and loading a new character without TSGW gave me no change.
Found your comment. Didn't think it applied to me since I'm using a recent download of the NGVO Wabbajack list then adding to it, so I assumed all the technical mods would be up to date, but when I double checked my SkyPatcher was very behind of the current version (Wasn't a 1.x version like yours was, but still pretty far back). Updated, and still no change, with or without Second Great War..
I left Skyrim for quite a while and came back after hearing about getting a great visual experience using Wabbajack lists, so I don't really understand how SkyPatcher works. Does simply unticking it and changing to a newer version in MO2 remove the conflict? Or is there something buried in my Overwrite folder or another step I need to do to get things fully updated?
I think you may need to update your overwrite folder, that was also an issue with me as well. There should be a folder I believe was there and contained scripts (pex/psc files) and deleted those. I do not remember 100%, but there should be a folder in there that contains those overwritten scripts. Im not 100% sure on how skypatcher works, but I do think that at runtime it updates and tries to sort out any conflict within scripts, and may see the script changes here as a conflict that needs to be overwritten
So, after some testing and really, REALLY getting annoyed at how I couldn't find a way to get this mod to work, I finally discovered what was wrong. For anyone else that might be having this same problem, I have discovered that the Mod "The Second Great War" ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17204 ) is, for whatever reason, altering the quest here and putting you back on the default quest line. Why? How? I don't know, I don't actually know how to MAKE mods, I just use them. What I DID find is that, using TES5Edit, I saw it was the only mod I had that altered anything to do with BOTI other than this mod. After disabling it, the mod seemed to be able to function as normal.
As The Second Great War, by the creator's own words, seems to work fine installed in an already existing save, it would thus probably be best to keep it disabled until after the BOTI quest is over. I don't think activating it after everything is said and done will ruin things, but I will have to test that myself.
Just wanted to help people out here as this boiled my piss something fierce for the last few days.
Nope. Not one bit. Don't know why, but it seems to edit it so bad that no matter where you load it, it does diddly dick.
I will be doing more tests with my load order and mods, and see if I turn up anything else. I'll let you know if I find anything. As a...sometimes heroic character in games, I approve of this mod and being able to deck this murderer in the snoze before he can kill again.
Did this with Second Great War active and everything worked fine. Could just be a hiccup in your game, I got one with the final house and ended up with museum or empty.
I'm in the opposite boat... I can see on MO2 that there is a conflict, so dropped BotIR WAAAAYYYYYY down to the very bottom of my load order in both windows and still no dice - Viola won't engage in dialog, she just repeats her canned dialog about looking out for the Butcher and being cold shouldered by the Captain.
Just as a test, I completely removed Second Great War and its patches from my load order, started a new character, and used Alternate Start to spawn him in Candlehearth Hall. He ran her down and no change - I simply cannot question her... So weird, because this mod has worked perfectly for me in the past. I just have something else bugging it out that I can't put my finger on.
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JumpIf I remember correctly, the counter is tied to MS11kicker, so stopping that quest should stop the counter (I could be wrong, too much time since I delved into this things).
But the counter is also tied to the Wuunferth part of the quest (if you acuse him and he is put in jail), so, I don't know how stopping the counter could affect those stages.
In all my playthroughs, I allways completed this quest as soon as I arrived to Windhelm, just to avoid the possibility of the murder triggering randomly.
However, quest now being fully completed, the Innkeeper still "misses her friend" and Susanna is nowhere to be found anymore. I was a bit taken back by that, is that supposed to be the case? Even if we save Susanna the game makes her play dead anyway?
At some point missed talking to Tolva for the key and lockpicked Hjerim instead, and I think either the entering itself or "investigating" the first clue is what started BOTI for the game. After going back and forth all night and finally killing Cal and finishing up the quest, it couldn't have been more than count 3, and that innkeeper line came only after fully completing the quest (and hadn't spoken to her in the mean time).
MS11FollowUpStartDay = 0.00
MS11EnteringWindhelmCount = 3.00
MS11 Stages at 1: 0, 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 60, 70, 90, 120, 130, 150, 205, 250
MS11b all 0
MS11Kicker Stage 0: 1
So the game indeed thinks Susanna is dead, but she has for sure not been murdered by Cal.
I have no quest mods except for this one installed, or mods that alter the city. The only thing I have installed that isn't cosmetic or player related is Immersive Citizens. I tried both with and without voices.
It's also my first time entering Windhelm, and I tried installing the mod both before and after entering to see if it works.
My version of the game is AE 1.6.1179.
I also noticed that the hour of the day when you first enter Windhelm plays a role. Through the "help MS11EnteringWindhelmCount" command I could see entering at night displayed count 2 even when just near the bridge, whereas entering in mid day, the counter would display 0 right up to the city gates. Having a counter of 2 right away for the first entry to the city also results in Susanna being already dead.
Thanks by the way, regardless if I get the mod to work. I appreciate just the fact you even replied, so swiftly at that, to a question for a decade old game.
Now, the counter seems a bit erratic, and different people have different outcomes (probably due to other mods installed, besides the unruly nature of the quest itself. In my playthroughs the counter always went up by 1 when I was passing by Windhelm stables).
With a counter less than 4 the murder scene of Susanna should not be triggered. Also, in the modded version, that scene is played in stage 9 (the new stage 1 let's you talk to Viola). If you have a previous save with a counter of 0, try seeing how the game reacts both with the mod active and inactive, to see if something else is messing with MS11. Again, if the counter is below 4, the murder scene shouldn't be triggered.
Tried to start the quest with BOTI and Finding Susanna disabled and couldn't start vanilla either.
I don't have much on the way of quest mods to begin with, so I'm baffled, tbh.
First culprit that comes to mind is alternate start mods, I use Skyrim Unbound, do you think it might be that?
Edit: OK, nothing like the classics, tried it out with just USSEP and BOTI, added Finding Susanna Alive right after, and there you have it. I don't know why it's happening, but FSA is preventing MS11 to initialize.
Edit 2: chanted victory too soon, just deactivating FSA on the full setup doesn't work. But with just USSEP and BOTI, adding FSA makes it stop working, this game can be such a torture sometimes.
I'd swear the most common victims and Tova are alive. I'll check on Calixto, Jorleif and Wunferth.
Edit: as far as I can tell, all implied actors are alive and working.
Edit 2: managed to trigger the quest with a minimal setup both with only USSEP and USSEP, BOTI and FSA.
In my case, it's 100% a thing with Hardcore Level Up.
Don't ask me why, because they don't conflict at the plugin level (the mod just changes two game settings and that's all) and it doesn't come with scripts whatsoever, so I don't see why HLU would preclude BOTI Redux from starting.
But it does. o_O
Edit: on a whim and because HLU just changes two game settings, I reproduced the mod via Game Settings Override (so without a plugin). Same result. For whatever reason, changing how many stats you gain on level up makes the quest crap its pants.
Here's an excerpt from Exercise - Incremental Growth's changelog.
I'm assuming this is what's happening here too, some BOTI related NPC is starting with 0 HP due to changing the stat growth game setting (so, very dead), hence the quest not initalizing.
Not sure who's the dead guy or gal, but has to be this.
For some reason, the mod would end up killing Susanna on the first entry to the city, even with the patch that's supposed to fix that issue installed. So I removed everything, walked into the city to load the cell, installed the mod, and used the command setstage MS11 0 to start the quest, because it otherwise wouldn't let me talk to Viola Giordano. After that, everything worked perfectly.
Finally I got to experience the alternate timeline. Thanks for the mod. You're a literal lifesaver.
Edit:
I managed to to find a solution from older posts
I recommend to do this quest right after entering Windhelm. The quest itself isn't long.
Step 1: Talk to Viola Giordano.
Step 2: Talk to Adonato Leotelli.
Step 3: Talk to Tova Shatter-Shield and get the key to Hjerim.
Step 4: Go investigate Hjerim.
Step 5: Talk to Jorleif.
Step 6: Talk to Calixto Corrium and sell him the amulet.
Step 7: Talk to Viola Giordano.
Step 7: Talk to Wuunferth the Unliving.
Step 8: Wait for Calixto Corrium trying to strike again and finished him off. This time he won't be essential.
Step 9: Talk to Jorleif and the quest will be complete. You can buy Calixto's house after completing the quest if you install the optional file BOTIXtra.
As a golden rule, install all requirements of every mod you use, because the problems in the long term for not doing so are unpredictable.
I just reached the point that when starting a new game I open the console and enter...
"setstage ms11 250"
This completes/kills the quest nobody dies.
Oh, and I misremembered the quest stages in BOTI Redux in some comments. You should have 1, 4, 5 and 9 (stage 3 does not exist). Here are the actual quest stages:
stage 4 let you question Leotelli
stage 5 let you talk to Tova
stage 9 is the original stage 1, where Susanna is dead
stage 60 is like the original 60, but with a new state for those who entered
Hjerim and didn't went through stage 9 (so Susanna is alive)
stage 65 is a dummy stage. If something didn't trigger properly in stage 60, try
setstage 65 the quest and see if the problem is solved. Should always
be 0 if not activated manually.
All other stages are from the original quest
I'm not NEARLY as bug hunter savvy as you clearly are - I barely know how to turn the creation kit on lol, so I came here.
One other commenter stated that The Second Great War was their culprit for causing this issue. I had already tried moving Blood on the Snow to the bottom of my load order, and loading a new character without TSGW gave me no change.
Found your comment. Didn't think it applied to me since I'm using a recent download of the NGVO Wabbajack list then adding to it, so I assumed all the technical mods would be up to date, but when I double checked my SkyPatcher was very behind of the current version (Wasn't a 1.x version like yours was, but still pretty far back). Updated, and still no change, with or without Second Great War..
I left Skyrim for quite a while and came back after hearing about getting a great visual experience using Wabbajack lists, so I don't really understand how SkyPatcher works. Does simply unticking it and changing to a newer version in MO2 remove the conflict? Or is there something buried in my Overwrite folder or another step I need to do to get things fully updated?
Thanks
As The Second Great War, by the creator's own words, seems to work fine installed in an already existing save, it would thus probably be best to keep it disabled until after the BOTI quest is over. I don't think activating it after everything is said and done will ruin things, but I will have to test that myself.
Just wanted to help people out here as this boiled my piss something fierce for the last few days.
With Regrads,
Marcus Aveon.
I will be doing more tests with my load order and mods, and see if I turn up anything else. I'll let you know if I find anything. As a...sometimes heroic character in games, I approve of this mod and being able to deck this murderer in the snoze before he can kill again.
Just as a test, I completely removed Second Great War and its patches from my load order, started a new character, and used Alternate Start to spawn him in Candlehearth Hall. He ran her down and no change - I simply cannot question her... So weird, because this mod has worked perfectly for me in the past. I just have something else bugging it out that I can't put my finger on.
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