Hi everyone, I'm hoping I can get some help with a bug I'm having. I'm playing on PC. I've been playing the original edition of Skyrim, no DLC, for quite a while now. I started a new character about a week ago, and today I decided I wanted to pick up the DLC, so I bought the Special Edition and copied my save files from the original, no DLC game into the new install of the Special Edition.

Well, I was in the middle of becoming Thane for Falkwreath and now it appears I've bugged myself. When I moved the files over, I was in the middle of the quest to bring Jarl Siddgeir the Black Briar Mead. When I booted up in Special Edition, I got a note from a courier to go speak with him, and failed the mead quest. When I went to Falkwreath, I didn't have a dialog option about the letter he sent me. I did some reading--apparently this is supposed to trigger a radiant quest to kill bandits, so I went back to my no-DLC original edition file and brought him the mead. It still didn't trigger a bandit-clearing quest; no new dialog options. I copied this new save (which had cleared the Black Briar Mead quest) over to the special edition save folder and relaunched the game. I still got a letter from a courier telling me to go meet with Jarl Siddgeir, and I still don't have new dialog options to kill bandits.

At this point I'm at a loss--no idea what could be causing this glitch. I'd like to become a Thane in Falkwreath/buy the land there for the DLC I just bought, but I don't really want to start over if I can avoid it. For what it's worth, I haven't started the Black Brotherhood quests and Helvard is still alive, so that can't be the cause of the issue. If anyone knows how I can resolve this, that would be great. I can do something in the Special Edition file or in the original Skyrim save in the no-DLC game if either of those provides a better option, but I don't seem to have dialog to start the bandit quest in either file.

Edit: I didn't manage to fix the bug naturally, but I did manage to track down a workaround for anyone else who stumbles upon this thread with a similar problem. Type:

player.getrelationshiprank 19822

If the value is less than 3, he won't let you move on to the Thane quests (help 3 people in the hold). My value was 1. You can fix this by typing:

player.setrelationshiprank 19822 3

Which sets it manually to 3. For me, the next time I talked to him I was able to skip the bandit quest and unlock the "help people" quests to become a Thane. You can also do the same with Nenya, the steward, who has ID 19823 (type that instead of 19822 in the above code--her relationship level should also be 3). I checked with Nenya, and I can also buy a house now (before finishing the Thane quest, which I'm not sure if that's intended or not but oh well I'm happy). This fixed is based on advice from this thread.