No One Escapes Cidhna Mine trigger is completely broken and here's how to fix it

[WhiterunModder]

I just got stuck in Cidhna Mine for like an hour because apparently the escape sequence won't trigger unless you talk to the right NPC in the exact right order, and the game gives you zero indication of this. I ended up having to console command my way out because I'd already talked to half the prisoners and the quest marker just sat there doing nothing.

So if anyone else runs into this: you need to talk to Grishnakh first before you do anything else. If you talk to any of the other prisoners or try to pick the lock on the door before that conversation happens, the whole thing locks up. I don't think this is even in the USSEP patch notes, which is wild because it's been broken since launch.

Has anyone else hit this, or did I just get unlucky with my load order? I'm on PC so at least I had the console as a backup, but I can't imagine how frustrating this would be on console.

 

[DragonbornVet]

I've never hit this exact sequence-lock, but I believe you - that quest has always been janky. The Forsworn Conspiracy and No One Escapes Cidhna Mine are basically a two-part mess that the game doesn't handle gracefully if you deviate even slightly from the intended path.

That said, I'm pretty sure USSEP does fix some of the Cidhna Mine progression issues, just maybe not the one you ran into. The quest has so many moving parts (the prisoners, the door, the escape trigger, the guards) that it's honestly surprising it works at all. If you're hitting something that breaks the escape sequence, that might be a load order thing or a conflict with another mod touching that quest, depending on what else you're running.

For anyone else reading this: if you get stuck, yeah, console is your friend. `setstage MS11 200` or thereabouts should skip you past it, though obviously that's not ideal. But the real lesson here is don't talk to random prisoners before you know what you're doing - Skyrim quest design can be real brittle about NPC dialogue order.