Blood on the Ice breaks if you talk to the wrong NPC first

[TamrielTactician]

I'm stuck on Blood on the Ice and I think I softlocked myself. I talked to Calixto before going to the graveyard, and now Viola won't give me the clue about the amulet. I've already looted the body in the graveyard but the quest marker won't update past "investigate the graveyard."

Is this actually broken or am I missing something? I'm on Switch so I can't just console command my way out of it. Do I need to reload an old save or is there a workaround?

 

[WhiterunModder]

Yeah, that's a known quest progression issue with Blood on the Ice. The quest has some janky dialogue gating and talking to Calixto before you're supposed to can lock you out of Viola's clue, which breaks the chain. Since you're on Switch you're stuck with whatever the game gives you - no console fixes available.

Your best bet is honestly to reload. I'd go back to before you entered Windhelm if you have a save that far back, or at minimum before you talked to Calixto. The quest is pretty linear about the order it wants you to do things in, and once you miss that dialogue flag from Viola there's no way to trigger it again without console commands.

It sucks but Blood on the Ice is one of those quests where the vanilla scripting is just fragile. If you do reload and restart it, talk to Viola first at the graveyard, get the amulet clue from her, then go talk to Calixto. That should keep things on track.