Way Of The Voice Quest, Einarth bug

[AZHIGHWAYZ]

Intro:
So after hearing for years and years about how good Skyrim is I finally broke down and installed it. I got the SE on sale for dirt cheap a few years ago or maybe it was in a Humble Bundle, I honestly don't remember. It's been sitting in my library for a few years. I assumed the SE would have all the bugs ironed out of such an old game. I was wrong. I also had no idea there was an unofficial patch that helps alleviate many bugs in the game. No idea if this is one. I installed and ran the game Vanilla, no mods.

The Bug:
I play for a couple days, I don't have a lot of time for gaming anymore, so when I do play it's valuable time. I get to the quest where I kill a Dragon and then I'm told to go see The Greybeards. There's a lot of running to get there as it's early in the game. I learn the valuable lesson of not trying to kill the bears I find along the way nor the Frost Troll. I get to the Greybeards, I talk to the first one, I demonstrate my first shout I learned after killing the Dragon. I'm told to learn "RO" from Einarth he appears with an interaction icon above his head...then nothing. I get the prompt to press "E" to speak with him but nothing happens when I do. He just stands there and gestures at me. I tried reloading a save. That didn't work. I tried reloading from a save waaaaay back and traveling all the way from Dragonreach again, that was a waste of time, it still was bugged. I started looking online for solutions. The few I did find suggesting using the command console and entering codes to progress the quest. I did that and then the next quest would not activate. There was no other solutions offered I could find that worked. I did not want to restart the game with another character.

The Solution:
In a fit of desperation I began trying everything I could to make them activate the stupid trigger to make him show me the word I was supposed to learn. I finally found something that worked for me. I hit the TAB button and went into the magic menu. I chose the shouts option and saw I had a WAR CRY that frightens enemies for 30 seconds. So I chose that exited the menu and activated the WAR CRY. The Greybeards all backed up as if I had hit them with a regular Shout and when Einarth moved back into his position I was able to interact with him to learn the word. Perhaps this is just a matter of the character not hitting it's trigger spot because I interacted with him before he got there or something along those lines. That's what worked for me. If it helps anyone along the way please let others know as it is really a bummer to have to start all over due to a main story quest being bugged.

My Skyrim future:
So now that I've found the Steam community forums and the unofficial patch to fix bugs...I'm starting a completely new game with the patch installed to avoid any further game breaking bugs down the line. though if I find too many more I may just give up on it. I find it really hard to believe that such a popular game and such an old game still has that kind of a bug in it. Just goes to remind me why I normally don't play Bethesda games.

[Uncle64]

Ah nice solution. Have not tried that one, but it did work for you "thumbs up"

You should actually also install SKSE64 and one mod called SSE engine fixes.
Then you will also have more stable game and achivments.

[smr1957]

Welcome to the forums, AZHIGHWAYZ! Thanks for that posting that fix, and thanks Uncle for the independent confirmation that it works! Am adding this to my personal notes just in case I come across mention of this bug again.

[Uncle64]

Oh I may have been unclear, I have not tried that one, but I was glad that it did work for him.

[ralphtobybob]

There's an arrow pointing to the spot you should stand in. That spot is the trigger. I just did that quest a couple of days ago, because smithing hit 100 unintentionally and I want dragon armor before I make it legendary.

You might have noticed that some locations aren't considered 'discovered' until you're in a specific spot. Lot's of quirks in this game.

[AZHIGHWAYZ]

To be clear ralptobybob, the arrow will not appear until Einarth makes the word appear on the ground. The bug prevents him from ever making that word appear. Therefore no marker for me to stand on ever appears.

[ralphtobybob]

Originally posted by AZHIGHWAYZ:

To be clear ralptobybob, the arrow will not appear until Einarth makes the word appear on the ground. The bug prevents him from ever making that word appear. Therefore no marker for me to stand on ever appears.

I had similar problems and just moved to a different spot hoping to trigger the next step.
Doing the whirlwind demo I had to almost frantically move around to get into the right position.

[Ribbles]

My solution was hitting him with an axe