Cutscene dialogue with Delphine won't trigger

[Ricardo Tărâță]

After killing Sahloknir, she'll come over to see his corpse, say "Gods above!" and "So you really are...", but the objective pointer is still over her head and I cannot advance further down the questline.

Her only two dialogue options are about Thalmor and something else (probably the Greybeards or why I'm the Dragonborn, either way it does not advance me on the questline when clicked on). She does not bring up the Thalmor Embassy mission, nor do I have an option to trigger Diplomatic Immunity.

Things I did:
- triggered the dialogue with the lady in Kynesgrove
- brought the Horn before going to Kynesgrove (tried afterwards as well)
- walked with Delphine to Kynesgrove
- fast traveled to a nearby place, then walked to Kynesgrove
- I dismissed any followers (had Barbas on me)
- never used any console commands other than tgm and tcl throughout my playthrough
- the only major mods I have are SkyUI, USLEEP, Unofficial High-res Texture Pack Patch, Run For Your Lives, When Vampires Attack, The Portal 2 Mod and the rest would be map markers, graphics mods and a Michael Rosen follower
- disabled all add-ons, except for the three official DLC (this lead to the game crashing to desktop)
- cleaned a few test saves with Skyrim Save Cleaner (which allowed me to load my unmodded save, but to no avail)
- loaded from before taking the note from the altar in Ustengrav (x2-3)
- shot Delphine in the head (she got back up though, no aggro)
- tried some random setstage MQ106 commands
- tried setstage MQ106 200 aka quest completion (gave me Delphine's key and made her walk back to Riverwood; at this point she only had a single dialogue option about the Thalmor: "Who are the Thalmor?" or something. No avail)
- absorbed the dragon soul every time, with the text appearing on the center of my screen approving the feat
- validated game cache
- installed Skyrim Script Extender (from way, way back)
- completed The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller (before going with Delphine)

I am simply stumped. I've spent all of my game hours into this save. Starting from scratch would be a big risk to take, since I've read people suffered from the same issues EVEN on a fresh, unmodded playthrough. Please help, be it by suggesting something or bumping.

[Uncle64]

Start new.

Since you have used some commands that is not that good.
TCL also makes you pass some locked places. There you should not have access and you risk make your save impossible to continue on.
Also your other console commands could mess up your game.

Usleep should you newer disable, since it fixes errors in the base games and dlc:s
General dont disable any plugin and play on.

[Ricardo Tărâță]

Originally posted by Uncle64SwE:

Start new.

Since you have used some commands that is not that good.
TCL also makes you pass some locked places. There you should not have access and you risk make your save impossible to continue on.
Also your other console commands could mess up your game.

Usleep should you newer disable, since it fixes errors in the base games and dlc:s
General dont disable any plugin and play on.

Damn, guess there go +100 hours of gameplay.

tcl I used to get myself out from between an urn and a wall in a dungeon or for things like picking up that tricky gold ingot slightly sunken into the ground in Mehrunes Dagon's shrine. Also to loot a couple of dragons that melted under the surface.

tgm I only used at the end of dungeons to haul back loot in the early-mid game, knowing stamina related and carryweight console commands bug the character out.

This is my second playthrough, since the first one was merely a few hours. Ever since that, I uninstalled then reinstalled not too long ago to start this playthrough.

[m0k]

Do you perhaps have a save from before you started nuking your game? Restore all your mods you had active at the time and try again. Sometimes a proc doesn't happen in a string of actions. Then just reload and try again.

Another thing. Just do a hard save inbetween quests and/or objectives, which means actively saving from the menu instead of an auto-save.

[Uncle64]

I think I have 20 or more plays, did remove one 360 hours play for some month ago.
You are not alone there.

What tool do you use for your modding?

[Uncle64]

Originally posted by Mr. Sheffield:

Do you perhaps have a save from before you started nuking your game? Restore all your mods you had active at the time and try again. Sometimes a proc doesn't happen in a string of actions. Then just reload and try again.

1+

[Ricardo Tărâță]

Originally posted by Uncle64SwE:

I think I have 20 or more plays, did remove one 360 hours play for some month ago.
You are not alone there.

What tool do you use for your modding?

Nexus Mod Manager and Steam Workshop. Nothing too fancy or complicated.

Originally posted by Mr. Sheffield:

Do you perhaps have a save from before you started nuking your game? Restore all your mods you had active at the time and try again. Sometimes a proc doesn't happen in a string of actions. Then just reload and try again.

Another thing. Just do a hard save inbetween quests and/or objectives, which means actively saving from the menu instead of an auto-save.

I do have manual saves from inside Ustengrav, before picking up the note and one from outside Kynesgrove, as Alduin is resurrecting Sahloknir. Those are before I used any major commands like setstage or the Save Cleaner. I even have those backed up in a separated folder, as I'm thinking of reinstalling the game from scratch, though I don't know how that would affect Nexus Mod Manager mods.

Thanks for lending a hand, I really appreciate it. This is making me lose my mind.

[Ricardo Tărâță]

Alright, started a new playthrough going strictly only through the main questline, with only the Unofficial Patch installed and no console commands used. Same outcome as before: Delphine won't talk to me.

I've only been to and cleared areas strictly related to the main quest. I have ran out of ideas.

[Uncle64]

You have all DLC:s you should use Usleep. Not the Unofficial Patch.

[Ricardo Tărâță]

Originally posted by Uncle64SwE:

You have all DLC:s you should use Usleep. Not the Unofficial Patch.

Damn, you right. I'm reinstalling the game and putting everything back together (USLEEP included), minus the mods I had. Thanks.

[Ricardo Tărâță]

Time to necro a thread, I guess.

UPDATE:
No avail. I decided to completely wipe all of my game data and start from scratch but nothing.
Looking into the Creation Kit at Delphine's dialogue regarding quest MQ106, it seems that she has no dialogue branch related to finishing the quest and starting the next one. As the dialogue Editor IDs show, there's a gap between her last line in the quest ("Gods above, look at that!") and the next quest's dialogue about the carriage ride, labeled with MQ20.
To note is that each quest related dialogue is organized into sections (MQ106DelphineIntro, MQ201DelphineIntro, MQ201DelphineOutro) with a notable lack of an outro section (MQ106DelphineOutro).

Revalidating and verifying game data does nothing, as I did that four times now with no results.

More or less related: there are unused dialogue files in her character script regarding Peryite, where the Dragonborn asks her about the Daedric Prince ("Can you tell me about Peryite?"), found in a branch named Da13IntroMain.

I hope whoever stumbles upon this will make the most out of the information I provided. I officially give up Skyrim, as the main storyline is locked for me.

[Shaiulud]

I had the exact same issue in SkyrimVR and after a couple of days of trying pretty much everything under the sun, I finally fixed it without having to resort to starting a new game from scratch.

Like many others report, once I killed the dragon in Kynesgrove, Delphine would only have 2 lines of dialogue and I could not complete the quest. Using console commands to complete the quest MQ106 would work, but then there was no way to start MQ201 (Diplomatic Immunity). Any console command I tried would not start MQ201. Doing player.sqs MQ201 would show that all stages are set to 0, no matter what stage I set using setstage. I also tried resetQuest and startQuest but that did not work either. I suspect that MQ201 has some conditions before it can be started and those conditions were not met. I was able to start the following quest "A Cornered Rat" using the console, but I did not want to give up on "Diplomatic Immunity" just yet.

So after reading all the posts I could find on the topic, and trying countless things, I finally found the combination that worked for me:

- I uninstalled the mod "View Yourself VR" because I read that it can cause this specific bug.
- I loaded a save that I had made after talking to Delphine in the Attic, and where she was starting to make her way to Kynesgrove.
- Instead of traveling with her or meeting her there immediately, I fast travelled to the Grey-Beards and returned the horn to them, learning the last word of Fus Ro Dah and thus completing "the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller" quest.
- I fast travelled back to Ustengrav, because I had never activated the altar where I found the note from Delphine. So I did that, which gave me a Dragon Soul! I also read, that you must make sure to have discovered the "Become Ethereal" shout from the waterfall at the bottom of Ustengrav. I had already done that, so did not need to.
- I fast travelled back to near Kynesgrove and made my way there.
- I used my Dragon soul to unblock the "Become Ethereal" shout. This step might be important as I tried without it and got the bug.
- I met Delphine at the Dragon burial site.
- Delphine started attacking the 2 Dragons immediately, which interrupted their dialogs. I got worried that it was a bad sign, because I had read somewhere that it was good to the let the 2 dragons finish their dialogs before attacking. It turns out it was not a problem, and I don't think it's a problem if she does not attack the Dragons immediately either.
- I killed Sahloknir, absorbed its soul, and looted it.
- I let Delphine finish her lines, then went to talk to her.
- And hallelujah, she finally had more to say that those 2 darn lines! This finally properly completed MQ106 and started "Diplomatic Immunity".

I know the original post is old but hopefully this will help others who run into the same issue.

[Ricardo Tărâță]

Originally posted by Shaiulud:

I know the original post is old but hopefully this will help others who run into the same issue.

Granted I haven't touched the game since this thread has been made, but wow, what a ♥♥♥♥♥♥, overly specific bug with an even more overly specific solution.
Thank you for finally finding the solution to it. What a god gamer.

[Shedmann]

I know the original post is old but hopefully this will help others who run into the same issue.

Thank you so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ much