Is my Skyrim save game file borked?

[Michaeljcox24]

Sorry if I'm posting this in an inappropriate place but asked the question in a couple of other places and most of the replies seemed to be clueless....

In the College of Winterhold questline, when I finish the 'Containment' quest, the 'Staff of Magnus' quest doesn't autostart. Nothing happens, and Mirabelle just gives me the two items and goes back to talking about her generic stuff.

- Official Bethesda reply: Verify integrity of game files and restart steam, no effect whatsoever

- Lads on Steam forums: Set Stage MG07 200 in the console, theoretically should work but nothing happened when I tried it.

- Lads on Nexus forums: No reply whatsoever.

I've ran out of ideas for this one, it's a serious game breaker. Should I wait for the next patch?

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Not the main one, just the Winterhold ones, where Arcano has the big blue force field around the eye of Magnus. I have disabled all mods on the games, launched it, and the fault still happens, so I'm pretty sure doing something in game in the past has disabled it from starting, and its bugging out.

I think tbh honest mate, you have the best idea, just carry on and accept that its got bugs, and just carry on with the others. Not a fat lot else I can do is there.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

If setstages in the console don't work theres really nothing you can do... unless you have an old save to load.

I've loaded an old save from a couple of days back, and it still does the same thing, doesn't progress onto staff of magnus when I finish containment.

This is Bethesda's official response (after 225 hours on skyrim and 1400 saves)

Thank you for contacting Bethesda Softworks Technical Support Unfortunetly since you have done all the troubleshooting for this quest the issue you are having is a corrupted save file. We recommended starting a brand new game. If you need further assistance, you can also reach us online at http://support.bethsoft.com or our technical support staff at (410)-568-3685 . Please include all previous replies when/if responding to this message.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

 

[Michaeljcox24]

But if I've taken all the mods off, and the save games still load fine, how can they be corrupted? The faulty still happens with no mods on whatsoever.

Could it also be interaction with other quests that need to be finished first?