The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

First off: this forum won't allow you to post the place name properly, that's why, kinda funny...

I stumbled upon Mist Watch while attempting to walk to Riften. I'm a fairly low-level and new player. It was a hard battle, lots of running and hiding required, there was a very strong hard-to-kill archer there. I whittled her down to almost nothing from faraway cover, and I guess Lydia sneaked in behind her and finished it, because I couldn't for some reason.

So I get to this guy Christer. He keeps asking me to help him, but I never get the option to help. There's a nearby door where I can hear there's bad guys behind it. Need a key, can't find it anywhere. Check Christer, he has it, so I pickpocket him. My first time doing that, it had a 59% chance of success, seemed high for a pp beginner, so I figured I was supposed to get the key this way. Weird thing is, Lydia somehow got behind the locked door while I was looking for the key, but I couldn't.

Anyway, I progress, find a locked chest and cookfire up top etc. But now I check the wiki, and nothing is like it described. No Christer's wife, he didn't offer the key, no note about the wife, no dead Imperial woman, etc. etc.

Question: apparently there's a Mist Watch quest. I didn't have it. Is it too late to get it now, or if I can still get the quest, will the baddies respawn and Christer and his wife all appear and act correctly? Or should I just load a prior save and skip the whole thing until I get the quest? If I keep what I did, I don't think I'm missing much, but not sure.

Yeah, you won't miss much, but yes there's a Mist-watch quest. You just ran into a bug.

craig_psn posted...

Weird thing is, Lydia somehow got behind the locked door while I was looking for the key, but I couldn't.

This might have been the cause.

Depending what you say during the actual quest you may have to kill her and him anyway, the only unique thing you get is a wedding ring which has no enchantment so you literally lose nothing by doing him in.

Thanks for responses.

I decided to go back there first thing the next time I played, before I forgot. Now, I misunderstood from the wiki how I'm supposed to get the Mist-watch quest. Somehow I though I would get it from somebody I met out in the wild (there was an empty cell...escapee) or a Jarl. I only checked the wiki at all because of the weird behavior of Christer (he kept non-stop calling to help him) and Lydia, so something seemed off before I even knew the facts.

Anyway, back there, all the dead bandits' corpses are gone, inside and out, except for one outside. Everything worked just as it should, except that Christer didn't give the key since I already had it, he didn't have another copy on him (thought I might boost my low pp skill if he did).

So to answer my own question: the baddies didn't respawn (within a couple days game-time), and Christer and his Fjola etc. all acted correctly. I didn't kill either of them, I got a wedding band and some gold (apparently, least Christer said he gave me some).

It's not the loot I wanted, I'm always just wary of things in Bethesda games having future consequences. But I should know that almost always, necessary NPCs don't get killed off, so you'll never lose anything major/game-breaking.

Yeah, Lydia somehow getting through the key-required/locked door without a key might have broken it. Reminds me of Dogmeat doing that in Fallout 3.

Fjola was meant to be a follower I believe, hence her dialogue but it was not coded in, just like Nazeem's house. You can loot her boss chest for goodies every so often.