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Issue Data
Status: New
Issue Type: Bug Report
Project: Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch
Component: Vanilla Game
Category: Quests & Dialogue
Assigned To: Nobody
Platform: Windows PC
Severity: Medium
Votes: 0
Watching: N/A
Opened By TemporaryMan on Jun 28, 2025 7:29 pm

Issue #35623: Unable to close Oblivion Gates after completing Vahtacen's Secret

 
I am unable to close Oblivion Gates. Activating the sigil stone makes it and the fire pillar disappear and the sound effects play, but the sigillum sanguis does not catch fire, the activation prompt remains floating in the air, no stone is added to my inventory and the gate does not close.

I have spent a day trying to track down the cause, turning mods on and off, and what I found is that the only thing that works is loading saves from five days ago or more. The quests I completed between the last save that can still close gates and the first that cannot are Hircine, Amelion's Debt, and Vahtacen's Secret. I have tested closing gates before and after completing each of these quests (as well as notification that the Dunbarrow Pirates have returned from a raid) and found that the bug appears once I complete Vahtacen's Secret.

There are some further things I still need to test:
  • Does the bug appear if I finish Vahtacen's Secret first, or do I need to complete all three? Maybe it's a matter of how many quests have been completed?
  • Is the problem the quest itself, or is it the amount of time it takes to complete it? Maybe the cause is something older and I'm already on a ticking clock?
  • If it is the quest, which part of it is the cause? The last save that can close the gate is from after I started the quest and got the pillar 3/4ths open, then returned to the Magic University to make a custom fortify magicka spell so I could keep the scroll as a souvenir. Both times I've completed this quest I've done everything, pushed all the buttons, killed the liches, crumbled the walls. Maybe I could skip some parts to narrow it down?

Comments

1 comment(s)
TemporaryMan said:
 
Well I did some more testing and the answer to the first question is, surprisingly, no. Now I have to figure out if the cause is something older and I'm on a ticking clock, or if the problem was interrupting VS with the tower 3/4ths open and then completing two other quests first. Which yes, is what I did both the first time and in my tests earlier today.

More testing shows I can finish the other two quests after Vahtacen and still close gates, so it's probably doing other quests with that tower 3/4ths open, rather than passage of time, but it'll take a few more hours to know for sure. I wonder why it's the sigil stone script that breaks, rather than anything in the VS quest itself?

Comment #1 Jun 28, 2025 9:36 pm  Edited by TemporaryMan on Jun 28, 2025 10:13 pm
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