Right, well this is what happened. I decided to have a go at the Repairing the White Phial quest given by Quintus Navale of Windhelm with my wood elf, Volpe. I was knee deep in the playthrough with a house in Windhelm and Whiterun, smithing maxed out and a chest full of fancy weapons including daedric, rare enchanted weapons, and I was a good 30 levels into the game. That's when Skyrim f-ed me over.
What I didn't know was that it was a good idea to get rid of any briar hearts in your inventory before starting the quest until Quintus asks you to retrieve one. Ladies and gentlemen, the Elder Scrolls wikia page is your friend through thick and thin. Anyhow, as I started the quest, I noticed I already had two briar hearts in my inventory, so I thought "Yeah okay, let me go retrieve the unmelting snow and mammoth tusk powder and head back over to the White Phial." So I did that and I evidently didn't have a briar heart. Uh, excuse me video game, I have two. Lo and behold, the quest script got screwed up by already having 1+ briar heart(s) in my pocket and therefore, the quest couldn't be completed. Totally bummed me out.
So I said, whatever, broken quest, go on without it. If that wasn't bad enough, when I went to Riften to meet with Brynjolf at the Ragged Flagon, he was still at his podium (dressed in his Thieves Guild armour, mind you) trying to sell his phony elixirs. So I read if you punch him and lower your arms, he'll attack then yield your surrender and head over to the Flagon. Well, I did just that, and he continued to attack along with the city guards and a few random NPCs. So the entire Thieves Guild quest line was broken. Hurrah! I deleted everything and started over. Then, 5 minutes in, I got bored and gave Skyrim a big middle finger.
However, every cloud has a silver lining, and thus being, when I went home, I saw that the Cloud Saves via Xbox Live had saved an auto save in sync from my Volpe being level 30 and going through the crypts of Mzulft - four quests from where I went wrong. I jumped for joy and got back on my game. Now I am deep in the Thieves Guild and completed the White Phial quest entirely.
...and that is the story of how Skyrim screwed me over, and then life gave me a break.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Glad there was a happy ending with that story.
I know when I finally sit down and start skyrim for the very first time, I'll be looking up every quest before I start and saving my save to the cloud PSN server every hour once I triply check none of my quests are broken.
It's a pity, because I would love to just go through the game and immerse myself without having to look up a guide every 2 seconds just so I can play the dam game.
Here's to hoping patch 1.4 will let me play the game like a normal person.
So thats why I can't finish the white phial quest. Is it fixable with patches after it's been broke?