Problem with the Ysolda's Tough Lesson quest

[Echobaby]

Initially, when the dragonborn interacted with Ysolda, the dialogue progressed to starting the Ysolda's Tough Lesson quest. It shows up as a quest in the journal, and it has two tasks: Talk to Ysolda, and Get and complete Ysolda's related quest to retrieve a Mammoth's Tusk. When I activate the quest, the quest marker hovers over Ysolda, and in the journal the diamond in front of the "Talk to Ysolda" is not filled in.

This tells me that the next step in doing the quest is to talk to Ysolda. Initiating dialogue results in two top 'threads':

"You mentioned trading caravans"
"What do you know about the Khajiit?"

Selecting the trading caravans dialogue results in two other threads:

"Why not?"
"Do you trust them?"

Both of those threads end with the the topmost dialogue threads appearing again. If I had selected the Khajiit thread, it also ends with the two topmost threads appearing again. In all of these cases the diamond next to the "Talk to Ysolda" tasks remained unfilled.

At that point, I had the dragonborn go off and get a mammoth tusk. Bringing it back to Ysolda doesn't change the dialogue sequence previously mentioned. Searching the internet I've run across cases where ppl couldn't get the Ysolda's Tough Lesson quest. My case, however, seems to be not that I can't get the quest, but that it won't advance. Any ideas about what I should do?

[kimbersplace4320]

Sometimes when a quest npc is stuck, you can unstick them by hitting them once. There are some console commands also that progress through stages of a stuck quest. Good luck

[DarkEternal]

There are 2 possible fixes for this.
1) If a mammoth tusk is found before accepting her quest to find one, it may not come up at all. This can be fixed by dropping the tusk and picking it up again. If this doesn't apply then try the next step.

2) Go to Sleeping Tree Camp. Get the Sleeping Tree Sap and find the note on the dead Orc about taking it to Ysolda. Confront her about it. After the dialogue is complete, you should be able to talk to her about the mammoth tusk.

Those are the only 2 workarounds that I know of. I'm not sure if there's a setstage command for that or not. At least, I never found one for it.

[Brandybuck]

Just go collect a mammoth tusk...

This game is not a "follow the arrow" game. Or at least it does not have to be.

[Echobaby]

Just go collect a mammoth tusk...

This game is not a "follow the arrow" game. Or at least it does not have to be.

Getting a mammoth tusk didn't advance the quest past the dialogue I mentioned.

There are 2 possible fixes for this.
1) If a mammoth tusk is found before accepting her quest to find one, it may not come up at all. This can be fixed by dropping the tusk and picking it up again. If this doesn't apply then try the next step.

2) Go to Sleeping Tree Camp. Get the Sleeping Tree Sap and find the note on the dead Orc about taking it to Ysolda. Confront her about it. After the dialogue is complete, you should be able to talk to her about the mammoth tusk.

Those are the only 2 workarounds that I know of. I'm not sure if there's a setstage command for that or not. At least, I never found one for it.

Thanks. I'll give them a try in tomorrow's session. The sleeping tree camp fix was mentioned as a fix for obtaining the quest. Maybe it will fix a non-responsive quest as well.

[Echobaby]

Welp, dropping and picking up the mammoth tusk didn't help, and Ulag was not inside the Sleeping Tree Cave, only his knapsack. It seems that anything associated with Ysolda isn't working right.

[Gaminger]

Did you ever find a fix for this? I'm having the same problem as well with Amorous Adventures and Ysolda (LE).

[Deadzoneer]

Certain radiant quests are grouped together. You can only have 1 of these quests active at a time.

Ysolda's mammoth radiant quest is one of them in a group.
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Rare_Gifts

Check if you have any of these other radiant quests active. If you do, you need to complete that one first before you can take the mammoth one.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Echobaby:

Welp, dropping and picking up the mammoth tusk didn't help, and Ulag was not inside the Sleeping Tree Cave, only his knapsack. It seems that anything associated with Ysolda isn't working right.

Got any mods affecting the quest? Usually groups of quest items missing and not setting flags means some mod did not load properly and the item ids are messed up.

Originally posted by Deadzoneer:

Certain radiant quests are grouped together. You can only have 1 of these quests active at a time.

I have had overlapping quests at the same location plenty of times.

However I think there is a bug in the engine that if you create a bounty mission at a location then it can bug out the quest fixed quest. (This bug still existed in Fallout 4's engine.) If you have the fixed quest first then the bounty goes fine, usually.

[LonerEmperor]

I'm not sure if this will still help but I had the same issue for weeks and I finally got through the first 2 tasks.

Unfortunately, I needed to use a console command to continue the stages. This worked for me, I could only hope that this would also work for you.

0. Follow these at your own risk. MAKE SURE to save your game first.

1. Make sure to keep "Ysolda's Tough Lesson" as the only active quest when you do this so it won't create any possible conflicts with other Rare Gifts quests.

2. Use console command format:

setstage <quest id> <stage value>

3. Change <quest id> to favor110

4. Change <stage value> to 10.

5. In the console command bar/field, type in:

setstage favor110 10

6. After that, I was able to hear the sound when you complete a task but the diamond didn't get greyed out. But when I spoke with Ysolda, I finally got the option to give her the Mammoth Tusk.

7. So I did, and then it gave me the option to talk about Mikael. Then I noticed that the first two diamonds are now completed and greyed out. Now I'm about to speak with Mikael. This has been such a headache. Hopefully, it's gonna go smoother after this.