Diamond City Blues Quest glitch

[Aragiss]

I assume the people who opened this post already know about the quest.

So here's what I did; I persuaded Pembroke that I will talk to Cooke alone, so he wasn't there.

I talked to Cooke and he led me to the drug deal. I killed all except for Trish. I wanted to spare her but Cooke was going to kill her even though she gave me the password. So I killed that bastard Cooke before he could kill Trish.

Then I went to Pembroke to notify him. I didn't have the option to tell him about the drug deal. He thanked me for dealing with Cooke. But just after that, he started acting like I screwed him over or something. The quest info also states that I told Pembroke I was going to keep all the drug money to myself, which is definitely not what I intended.

This quest is obviously bugged if you do it the way I did it.

I tried various console commands to fix the situation like resetting quest, setting different quest stages, resurrecting Cooke, failing quest etc. Nothing works.

I can't even load an older save. Because I entered so many different areas in quick succession, all the autosaves are quite new. The only manual saves that I can use are from 11 hours before!

Did anybody else have this problem? Is there a proper way to reset a quest?

[Yhwach]

You're not supposed to kill Cooke before talking to Paul, if you don't let him kill trish then it'll mess up the quest.

[Crimsomrider]

Yeah, as Scarecrow said you messed it up.

Your particular issue with this scenario comes if you bring Paul along for the ambush. If Paul is there, you can't shoot Cooke at all because they're meant to have a conversation after Trish dies and then you either let him keep half the drugs (everything at the ambush deal) after which he becomes the bar owner in Diamond City and a wealthy citizen (although that ending is also bugged because he won't leave Cooke's house after that).

You can only save Trish if you don't bring Paul, but then Paul won't be the owner of the bar in Diamond City.

If you let Trish go, she informs the boss about you. (She lies to you about not saying anything).

All in all, until the unofficial patches roll out or if Bethesda decides to fix gameplay issues, you have only two choices :

-Bring Paul, let Trish die, decide what to do with the stash.
-Don't bring Paul, kill Cooke, keep the stash > Paul is a nobody in Diamond City.

I personally like having Paul becoming a wealthy citizen and the bar owner.

Also PRO TIP : DO MANUAL SAVES OFTEN. Not quicksaves, not autosaves - manual saves.

[Aragiss]

Originally posted by Crimsomrider:

Yeah, as Scarecrow said you messed it up.

Your particular issue with this scenario comes if you bring Paul along for the ambush. If Paul is there, you can't shoot Cooke at all because they're meant to have a conversation after Trish dies and then you either let him keep half the drugs (everything at the ambush deal) after which he becomes the bar owner in Diamond City and a wealthy citizen (although that ending is also bugged because he won't leave Cooke's house after that).

You can only save Trish if you don't bring Paul, but then Paul won't be the owner of the bar in Diamond City.

If you let Trish go, she informs the boss about you. (She lies to you about not saying anything).

All in all, until the unofficial patches roll out or if Bethesda decides to fix gameplay issues, you have only two choices :

-Bring Paul, let Trish die, decide what to do with the stash.
-Don't bring Paul, kill Cooke, keep the stash > Paul is a nobody in Diamond City.

I personally like having Paul becoming a wealthy citizen and the bar owner.

Also PRO TIP : DO MANUAL SAVES OFTEN. Not quicksaves, not autosaves - manual saves.

I can't bring Paul. I can only inform him that I've dealt with Cooke.

I though it was a real d.ck move when Cooke proceeded to kill Trish even though she had told everything. Didn't think killing him would mess everything up like that.

I just finished the quest though. I think it finished as if Paul was there and I decided to keep the stash to myself.

You're right. I should do manual saves a lot more often!

[Aragiss]

Update: Killing Cooke prematurely REALLY messes this whole questline.

Even though I was able to finish Diamond City Blues, Colette does not spawn and Darcy doesn't give you the photo that initiates the next quest. I was able to start the next quest through console commands and finished it. However, I don't see a way to get Colette to spawn.

Why didn't Bethesda make Cooke unkillable in that part of the quest? I've spent 3 hours trying to figure this stuff out!