quest The Trappings of Fate

[Allen Harris]

3 hours ago, sky295 said:

I have a problem now,“Finding "where the ground whispers and the sky screams":”This problem has been bothering me for a long time and I haven't found the place mentioned in the Raiders. Please help me tell me how to find him.I only saw the glowing mushrooms mentioned in the Raiders here, but I don't know what to do behind them.

You have to listen for whispers. But there's a seuqence you have to perform to get in.

I've never been able to get it to work, so I find the whispers and clip through the rock.

[DayTri]

2 hours ago, Allen Harris said:

You have to listen for whispers. But there's a seuqence you have to perform to get in.

I've never been able to get it to work, so I find the whispers and clip through the rock.

 

Isn't this all that's supposed to happen anyway, you look away from the rock and up at the sky, which makes you able to walk through the rocks?

[sky295]

5 hours ago, Allen Harris said:

你必须倾听耳语。但你必须完成一系列步骤才能进入。

我从来没能让它工作，所以我找到了低语并剪辑了岩石。

Can you tell me how to find it? I've looked all over the cave but I haven't heard a whisper.

[sky295]

3 hours ago, DayTri said:

 

难道这不就是应该发生的一切吗，你把目光从岩石上移开，抬头看着天空，这样你就能穿过岩石了？

Is there an accurate entrance location?

[Frayed]

12 minutes ago, sky295 said:

Is there an accurate entrance location?

 

I've just updated the walkthrough with some images. Here, I'll copy them over here too: 

Spoiler

(those circled stairs will look slightly different for you - I'm changing them to be a bit more obvious next patch but it's the same spot)

 

[sky295]

8 hours ago, Frayed said:

 

我刚刚更新了一些图片，方便大家参考。这里也把图片复制过来： 

  隐藏内容

（这些圆形楼梯看起来会略有不同 - 我在下一个补丁中将它们改得更明显一些，但它们的位置是相同的）

 

Thank you for your answer. There is a question that you need to block some senses after entering according to the Raiders, but players don't have these equipment. How to solve it or can you add these equipment to the cave entrance in the next version?

[IcicleInn]

12 minutes ago, sky295 said:

Thank you for your answer. There is a question that you need to block some senses after entering according to the Raiders, but players don't have these equipment. How to solve it or can you add these equipment to the cave entrance in the next version?

There are items that can be found in various parts of the Mushroom House.  There's also a couple in the original room you escaped from, but generally less useful.

[sky295]

41分钟前，IcicleInn 说：

蘑菇屋里有很多东西。你最初逃出的房间里也有一些，但通常用处不大。

I can't find earplugs.

[IcicleInn]

You start the Gordian Bind with earplugs.

[LeafLeaferson]

On 7/22/2025 at 1:41 PM, Frayed said:

 

(Also @Bonding1005) Must've missed this one. Not sure what causes that, it sounds like something might've kicked her out her dialogue. Things you can try, in order of mild to drastic:

1. Talk to her, you should be able to talk from in the contraption if she's in range (or console target and moveTo player if she's not).

2. Target her with console, disable followed by enable.

3. Skip the dialogue, use console command setstage FrayEQ2 351 followed by StartScene FrayEQ2BedroomFunScene.
If that still doesn't work things get tricky. Last chance for reasonable console fixes is that she might be stuck in combat, so target her with console, use stopcombat followed by repeating StartScene FrayEQ2BedroomFunScene. If that doesn't work you'll need to post me debug information before I can guess any more: use sqs FrayEQ2 and tell me which stages between 300 and 370 are set, possible send me a papyrus log.

 

 

Legend. Seems movement got bugged for her. moveto worked. She got stuck again right after saying to follow her to the table but i just moved her closer to the elevator again and the ai picked back up and took over. Thx bro

[LeafLeaferson]

6 hours ago, LeafLeaferson said:

Legend. Seems movement got bugged for her. moveto worked. She got stuck again right after saying to follow her to the table but i just moved her closer to the elevator again and the ai picked back up and took over. Thx bro

Seems the issue exactly is the "float down" marker in her bedroom not working. Don't know if its just my gave but may be worth a double check to see if there's any broken logic. Great mod so far tho

[sky295]

According to the raiders process, there is no follow-up progress in the dialogue now. How to solve it?

[LeilaTwentyTwo]

oh! hey, thanks for the response! 

 

On 7/22/2025 at 1:41 PM, Frayed said:

 

Use lighting to hint: I've wanted to add a good way to hint towards quest-significant items for a while. I tried to make a shader effect to make quest-significant objects shine briefly, but I've not managed to get it to work yet. (If you know of any mods that do this, let me know because I'd like steal to have a look at what they do.) Adding actual lights runs into issues with light limits :-/. I'm probably going to make most areas a bit brighter though. I previously played with an ENB that had pretty aggressive light adaptation settings but I recently swapped to CS, and now I'm finding most areas are indeed too dark. Balancing lighting is tricky when everyone runs different and shader mods 😄 

Staves: adding a simple puzzle to teach the player they can use the staves is a great idea. I'm not sure where I'd place it though, the quest is already pretty stacked as-is...

Splinters: them dropping on the floor is due to mittens behavior changing slightly in more recent DD NG / UD versions, IIRC. You don't need them while wearing the mittens and you can get infinite anyway, so I don't think it's much of an issue.

Vial: I've had this complaint a few times, so I'll just change it for next version. It's not supposed to be too difficult anyway.

Storage room spider webs: the storage room was actually the original location for Mephala's shrine. I just didn't remove all webs when I moved it. Fixed in next version.

 

 

Use lighting to hint: ah, yeah, ive run into alot of issues with the lighting engine in the past. glad to hear its being tweaked, yeah i imagine its a pain.

Staves: it is quite a big quest already, yeah. made me tempted to suggest an option to skip the gordian knot quest too, for when there is content after it, heh.

Splinters: alright, fair~ mostly suggested it cause before checking the guide i was convinced that the splinters were what i needed to do something with next and spent a few tries fiddling with them.

Vial: awesome~ 

Storage room spider webs: hah! great, heh~ interesting~ thanks for the insight into the quest's development~

 

On 7/22/2025 at 1:41 PM, Frayed said:

Mephala: if you still have this save, could you tell me if stage 2010 is set (using sqs FrayEQ2), and maybe get me a papyrus log of you trying to activate the gem? People have posted this multiple times, but I haven't been able to reproduce the issue on my side yet, so it's hard to fix.

Broken fork: a bit of a shot in the dark, but if you mean you could see the fork but it wasn't interactable and you're on the most recent Skyrim version, check if you have a "Skyrim - Patch.bsa". This is a file from the "Best of Both World Patcher", and you should remove that BSA since you're now on a different Skyrim version. I encountered that same issue when I updated to 1.6.1170 a few months ago and spent ages and half my sanity trying to track down why the forks were suddenly broken.

Broken collar on melee: Not sure. There's no special handling for melee vs the other triggers, so I suspect some kind of mod conflict. Would need more info.

Stuck contraptions and broken animations: most of this is on DD's side. I've been busy fixing those in DD NG recently. Should be better in future DD NG versions.

Third trial issues: will have a look.

 

Mephala: Stage 2010 is indeed set to 1 after clicking on the soulstone. ive attached a papyrus log of me loading into the game in front of the stone before I've touched it, touching it, and then exiting the game shortly after.

broken fork:  I do not recall if i could see it or not before clipping into the wall, i didn't check and don't have a save for it. i solved the issue by clipping into the wall with tcl, so it was interactable. I don't have a bsa file with that name in my vortex skyrimse mod folder, and did not use the skyrimse downgrade patcher. i am on the latest version of skyrim.

broken collar on melee: ah, thats unfortunate. nothing specific comes to mind as a possible cause but i have no idea what kind of mod would cause this in the first place.

Stuck contraptions and broken animations: oh! awesome to hear!

Third trial issues: alright, good luck!

Papyrus.0.log

Edited August 2, 2025 by LeilaTwentyTwo

[Frayed]

6 hours ago, LeilaTwentyTwo said:

Mephala: Stage 2010 is indeed set to 1 after clicking on the soulstone. ive attached a papyrus log of me loading into the game in front of the stone before I've touched it, touching it, and then exiting the game shortly after.

 

Thanks, that was immensely helpful! I think I've found the bug now, but it's a rather esoteric one and there is no way I would've even thought to look there without that log you posted. For the record let me put the technical explanation here: I think the issue was that the NPC didn't have a Persist Location set (see that bottom paragraph), and so depending on game memory handling the NPC might not be loaded when the quest starts and tries to fill its aliases. Because the quest now doesn't have a reference to the NPC, it can't enable it properly.

Edited August 2, 2025 by Frayed

[LeilaTwentyTwo]

Oh thats great to hear! I'm so glad i was able to help

[MrNobody11]

This is rather small issue, but as most of items in the Gordian Bond quest are flagged as stolen, Irkalla may send hired thugs after you, as part of standard Skyrim random events. 

[Cursed Atelier]

I'm having an issue that after I drank the wine and sleep. It teleports me, I can hear the characters grunt real quick, after that it stays black, I can't access the menu or inventory either.
Console seems to work fine though.

[Allen Harris]

9 hours ago, Cursed Atelier said:

I'm having an issue that after I drank the wine and sleep. It teleports me, I can hear the characters grunt real quick, after that it stays black, I can't access the menu or inventory either.
Console seems to work fine though.

It does that in VR sometimes too. For me, it's because there are notification boxes that just haven't rendered. Have you tried just pressing space, enter or "e" a few times (as if you're being spammed with notification boxes)?

[Cursed Atelier]

4 hours ago, Allen Harris said:

It does that in VR sometimes too. For me, it's because there are notification boxes that just haven't rendered. Have you tried just pressing space, enter or "e" a few times (as if you're being spammed with notification boxes)?

Haven't tried that, I only tried to get into the main menu or inventory.
I will try that.

[Vinoma]

How the hell do you escape the strait jacket in The Gordian bind?

[Vinoma]

8 minutes ago, Vinoma said:

How the hell do you escape the strait jacket in The Gordian bind?

Nvm just had to keep struggling

[recroid366]

Just tried to start the first quest, And everything goes to plan, but I go through the loading screen and then my screen is just black, And I know it hasnt crashed cause I can open the console, and hear the sounds, But I can see or do anything. Is this a common issue? Or does anyone know how to fix it 

 

[Frayed]

13 minutes ago, recroid366 said:

Just tried to start the first quest, And everything goes to plan, but I go through the loading screen and then my screen is just black, And I know it hasnt crashed cause I can open the console, and hear the sounds, But I can see or do anything. Is this a common issue? Or does anyone know how to fix it 

 

I've had these reports for ages and could never reproduce them, but only recently did I realize what could be causing it. Another mod is using your character in one of its Scenes while my quest is starting. Probably some kind of "approach" style mod, but it could be anything. Depending on what mod provides the Scene causing the issue, you may be able to simply try again and it might work. You can also try to use the console command "startscene FrayEQIntroWakeUpScene" after you get past the loading screen, but I'm not certain it'll work if the other mod doesn't finish/stop its scene first. I will include a fix for this problem in the next update.

[alkator979]

I played through the mod twice now, it was really enjoyable and the story was surprisingly good. I hope to see more of it in the future, especially of Irkalla continuing to be the mistress.

[wren888]

Great mod, Frayed. However, the second time I played it, with version 2.1.2, I had problems getting it to work.

 

The courier never came for the Snare quest. I started the it with ~setstage frayescapequest 10. I got the wine and note, but upon opening the note, the only word was "Dear" at the top. I went to the Frostfruit Inn and talked with the innkeeper. However, the gift bottle of wine never appeared, and the bed was not activatable. I proceeded with ~setstage frayescapequest 13. No wine, but I was able to activate the bed. I appeared in the hidden dungeon, but with no crane, and not suspended. After I struggled free, the crane appeared. I escaped the armbinder and found the key, but it was not labeled as the falcon key. Despite lots of trying, I couldn't get it to fit into the indentation in the wall, so I could not proceed.

 

I went back and tried the previous version of the mod, 2.1.1, which is the one I successfully played before. The courier came with the wine and note, with the note's full text, and the quest updated. I expect things will go fine from here. If not, I'll edit this post.