Quest got stuck, need help

[Pak0tac]

Hey guys, i just started a new hero, when i got to the town, the legioneer that i escaped with was already there, and he and the blacksmith went into the house, so i followed them, talked to the blacksmith, but i cant talk to him about the escape, its like hes bugged and i cant progress with the quest (cant "talk to him")... what is the command to complete the quest and get the next one to go to the Jarl? Cheers

[Nazenn]

Using console commands on bugged quests is NOT recommended.

Console commands can be buggy and often skip over vital triggers that certain stages of the quests need for updating other parts of the world and why using a console command to skip the quest can fix the quest, it can often break other things.

You arent that far into the game, I suggest that you instead just start again and see if it happens again

[gnewna]

I would actually just try going straight to Whiterun and talking to the Jarl. I'm 90% certain that should work because it's perfectly possible to have a character who never goes to meet the blacksmith (or the lumber mill owner if you go with the Stormcloak guy) and goes straight to Whiterun (or goes and does other stuff for weeks and weeks first).

You could also try reloading to an earlier save and playing through to that point again, sometimes that's enough to reset things.

Using the console like that is very much a last resort, because it can actually either cause new problems, or disguise a problem that's underlying cause for the thing not progressing, which then gets worse and eventually your game flips out and becomes impossible to progress certain questlines. (Fair warning - if you ignore the fact that Alvor is bugged out and go to Whiterun to speak to the Jarl straight away, you may still find that there's something underlyingly wrong with the MQ in your current game, actually, but I *think* it should work and it might be enough to just nudge the game naturally to the next stage.)

[Pak0tac]

Well i already done the quest with the golden claw so i dont want to load the game before i did that as its time consuming, i will try and talk to the jarl, yet still if it wont work, what is the command? as far as i know its a basic quest that just trigger the jarl quest so i dont think there should be a problem...

[Nazenn]

It triggers the jarl, who is tied into the main quest, the civil war quest (which is the buggiest quest line of the game) and also the primary method of activating the first dragon fight which is also tied into those questlines and occasionally known to bug out badly.
Things are ALWAYS more interconnected then they seem at face value with Skyrim and the weird system Bethesda used to code it.

As gnewna said, the fact that the very first quest in your game has bugged out is a bad sign for your games general stablity and you would do well to not ignore that warning especially as that bug in particular is not a common bug.

If you would like to learn the console command even despite our warnings, go to the UESP and do your research into how to use it safely and what the problems with nudging quests with commands are first. There is a lot of information on there that will come in handy for you to know anyway

[gnewna]

It's actually meant to be part of the quest Before the Storm, so if that's not showing in your journal, you may well have a problem that can't be fixed without restarting, unfortunately.

[gnewna]

No. The safest option is to go to Whiterun, you don't *need* to speak to Alvor to progress the quest. The problem is STILL, though, that this *ought* to be coming up as part of the quest Before the Storm, according to UESP, and that if the game is bugging out at this early stage of the Main Quest it indicates Bad Things about the game's stability. None of these will be fixed by tinkering with the console, and generally speaking, moving NPCs to somewhere other than where they're meant to be tends to mess up their scripts, not fix them.