Taking Care Of Lex - Missing Seal

[alyndrya]

Hi all,

So I've been playing TES: Oblivion for a few weeks now and I'm really stuck on the 'Taking Care Of Lex' mission. I got the letter forged and then headed to the Imperial City to use the Seal. Only problem is-there is no seal on the desk. I have come at all times of the day and night, whether the guard was at the desk or not, but the seal is never there. I tried doing other missions, then came back and tried again, with the same result. Just to make sure I wasn't missing something, I collected everything on the desk till it was completely empty, then I checked all over the floor and under the desk and the stairs. It isn't there. I have also double checked that I had the right location and even looked at screen shots on the web that show what it looks like and where on the desk it should be.

Is this a known bug and if so, can someone help me. I am playing it on the Xbox and have no mods.

Thanks in advance.

[Belthan]

I never heard of the seal disappearing completely, although I have heard some people say that it can get knocked off the desk. Supposedly most common if you cast area effect spells in the room, although it could probably get moved by walking on the desk or melee combat nearby. There's a mission in the Dark Brotherhood quest line that involves the same desk, and if you did the DB quests before the TG you might not have even noticed it. I would search the whole area carefully, not just the floor. Unfortunately, collision detection for small objects can be twitchy and if it hit the ceiling or bounced off the furniture it might have fallen completely out of the environment, in which case your only option would be to reload a saved game from before you ever entered the room.

[Fljotsdale]

Hm. Not heard of this happening - but it can be quite difficult to actually spot the seal. On the other hand - are you SURE you are in the right room? Have you been into the room next door? I made the mistake of searching the wrong room first time!

[ParanoidAndroid]

uesp says you have to activate it:

The seal for the letter is on top of the desk (just activate it to proceed), although it can be knocked off and be somewhat tricky to find.

[alyndrya]

Thanks for replying.

I have checked the entire room over several times. Stairs, chests, floor, table. Even behind the table while standing on the stairs. I assume I am in the right room, as the red compass arrow pointed the way through the first door, past the dinning tables and into the door on the right. I picked the very difficult lock and found the Commander sitting at the desk. No magic used and I have not done the Dark Brotherhood quests yet. I checked that the seal was there when the Commander was sitting at the desk and it was gone. Every time I came back, at different times of the night and day, the seal was still gone. Grabbing everything from the table till it was completely empty still didn't turn up the seal.

I checked the net and there are at least three other people who have had this same problem, but they had no solution. It's very frustrating to not be able to complete this quest. I did go back several saved games at the time and redid the Quest over with the same result.

The biggest problem is that the Thieves Guild won't give me any more Quests without completing this one.

[Tricky]

There should be a console command or something to reset the cell you are in. All objects and actors should be reloaded. Check UESP's console command list.

[ParanoidAndroid]

He plays on xbox so unfortunately he has no console.
I had a similar problem once where Summitmist manor would crash everytime I walked in. The only solution was to reload a previous savegame and try again, until I found one where the problem was gone.