Ok, so I've done the requesite 5 jobs in Windhelm for Delvin to start giving me the dialogue that Torsten Cruel-Sea wants to talk to me about doing a special job for him in Windhelm. HOWEVER:
After the dialogue ends, no quest is added to my Journal.
Every time I try to talk to Delvin or Vex about getting another of their burglary, shill, fishing, or other odd small jobs, they keep telling me I need to finish the Windhelm quest first.
I try to talk to Torsten in Windhelm, but nothing pops up about a Thieves Guild quest.
I did some Google research, found out that the quest is called Summerset Shadows, and that there are several issues associated with this quest, and one of those is it not starting properly. I tried several fixes:
Used the console command to setstage TGTQ04 10/20/200 to advance the quest properly, but it doesn't work.
Tried the suggested fixes here but none work as well.
Was made aware that the issue probably stems from the fact that Uttering Hills Cave is the quest location for several radiant quests that might conflict with each other, like being made to kill the bandit leader there before you get the Thives Guild quest, with the leader present being Linwe, the NPC you also need to kill in Summerset Shadows, instead of a generic bandit leader. With Linwe dead, or any other NPC connected to the quest being dead before you get the quest, the quest gets broken.
I used the placeatme console command to summon Linwe in the Uttering Hills Cave, but upon appearing he promptly dies a second later. I resurrect him, and even use the recycleactor command at him, then try talk to Delvin to get the quest, but it still won't work.
So based on the following facts, I surmise:
At some point in the early past of my current 200+ hour play-through, I had a quest that led to clear out the Uttering Hills Cave (which I believe might have been retrieving Kharjo's amulet).
2.Whether I killed Linwe or a generic bandit leader, I really can't recall, but suffice to say the game has tagged Linwe as dead in this play-through, due to the fact that every time I have him appear via console he dies promptly a second later.
A dead NPC (most likely Linwe) is probably the reason the quest won't start. I haven't yet checked the other NPCs besides Linwe if they are still alive or dead, but I am fairly certain I haven't slain a civilian in the cities so far that outside of certain quests that told me they had to die.
The setstage console command won't work unless all the elements of the quest are present, which means so long as Linwe is dead and tagged as such by the game, the quest won't start.
With these in mind, I want to see if I can somehow fix the quest by resetting the interior of Uttering Hills Cave and/or resetting Linwe by bringing him back to life and making it so that the game doesn't consider him as having died in the first place. Thus, my queries:
Is there a mod besides this one that fixes the issue? The one I found on Nexus does not work for me.
Do the unofficial patches address this? If so, can someone link them?
Is there a command that lets you reset the tags on actors in-game like making the game forget the NPC is dead or has died, or something similar.
Is there a way to use the Creation Kit to fix this? I have not used the CK before, but if there is a way to do so, I would be willing to learn.
I haven't been able to check if it is a mod that is causing the bug, because so far, every time I deactivate all my mods to test, the game crashes to desktop a few seconds after loading a save. I will still try and check, but I stayed up late last night just trying to fix the problem, so I am feeling the frustration.
I am of two minds on whether I should go back to an earlier save, simply because I have already completed the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild main quest lines on this character, and I want to finish all main and faction quests with this character, and going back would mean a significant loss of progress and time and honestly I don't know how to test if the quest will work in an earlier save since the setstage console command may not work, and I don't know how early I need to go back in all my 127 save games. On the other had though, I can probably finish things faster and avoid some of the issues, but that probably means loading a very early save.
Of course, I can just leave the quest and the rest of the remaining Thieves Guild quests unfinished. I won't become the leader of the Thieves Guild, but I'll move on to the other factions. This is likely my course of action if I can't find a fix to the problem, but it will be annoying, at the very least.
In any case, hope you nice sons and daughters of Skyrim will be able to give me some sage guidance and whatnot. Thanks!