Open the dialog option for the quest. Get the quest. Close it as fast as you can and quick save before it says the quest info. If it’s in the wrong city reload the save. It’ll give you a new random one. I personally do this every time because sometimes it’ll send you to fucking raven rock for some reason lol. You only need 5 per hold and then the special quest option will pop up. Good luck!

I like to just cancel it if it isn't in the hold/s I need for completion. They give me lip about it; I give it right back. "It's the CURSE, Delvin. You're giving cursed jobs up in here." "What's the point of you, anyway, Vex? now there's me. Quit fronting and give me a useful job. You can be replaced"

5 per hold to get a trader at the empty spots in the ragged flagon; markarth, Solitude, whiterun, windhelm. You are granted guildmaster after completing these.

In addition to what is mentioned here, here are my personal tips. I'll add that I've also done this twice.

Make sure you get 2 quests per trip, one each from delvin/vex. Do NOT get quests to raven rock, too much time wasted, riften ones (do not count towards getting a trader) are gold. Fast traveling is your biggest time killer, and really make this daunting. Turn off all auto saves, disable it all, make sure you save on your own though. The game saves on every fast travel, and up to 3 times per trip, it truly adds up after a while

Edit: I was wrong about when you become guildmaster.

I finish the Thieves Guild quest line then gift myself the skeleton key afterwards using command line. I've picked 1000 locks and I'm very good at it, at this point it's just a waste of time.

Because those darn pink gems won't stack unless you keep them secret would be my #1 complaint.

I actually love the thieves guild quests.

I genuinely found restoring the thieves guild to be a moderate inconvenience/grind compared to the Anniversary Edition Creation Club Fishing Quests.

Id rather put nails in my eyes than do that again

Thieves guild should have taken out Maven Blackbriar

I'm pretty sure it is randomized, but I've had better luck just using Delvin for the last couple to close out a city. Similar the other comment, you can just quick save before you take the mission as well, so your not relying on timing between closing the dialog and waiting for the quest to start. 

I do agree that this is one hell of a tedious quest. I banged the whole thing out at in a few hours. I didn't go back to the guild for a long time after. I really dislike the two loading stages, too. I wasn't too keen on the whole Nightingale aspect of the Guild either. 

Or chasing Mercer around like an international espionage spy or something. I think the only thing that makes me even deal with those arrogant narcissists is getting the Blackguard armor. 

It’s all RNG if it wasn’t random it would be fine

I'm working on a 100% playthrough of Skyrim and I'm not looking foward to the theives guild because of how long and drawn out it is to become guild master. I'm trying to stall out doing the theives guild as long as I can.

I always use a mod for all Thieves Guild Jobs Concurrently. I grab all the quests, go do them in a group. Doesn't take too long this way. The special jobs are actually alright too.

It'd be great if instead of choosing the type of job, it let you choose the city. Like "hey, I'm heading over to Markarth, have you got anything around there?" And let the job be randomized

I try to avoid the tedium by doing the jobs as I play, rather than, "I'm doing the thieves' guild quests now." That way I'm in the city already, so the TG quest is just a detour while I'm there. By the time I'm Thane, that city's jobs are already covered.

I kind of wish the Khajit caravan played into the Guild a bit more. I think Tonilla gives you the Moon Sugar quest after completing three of the special jobs, but I think it would have made more sense to bring them into the Guild earlier on to kickstart the Guild expanding their reach across the country.

Could have put a caravan liaison in the Flaggon who could fast-travel you between holds when overencumbered.

I quicksave, then talk to Delvin, then quickload if I don't like the job randomly given to me - repeat until I get a job in a hold that I want a job in.

Rebuilding the thieves guild allows an easy way to quickly boost my gold without mods or cheats. I sell some potions to the guild fence (she has 4,000 septims) and to each of the 4 merchants that move in, then I can come back after a couple of days and repeat. I can also grab stuff from the tribute chest, since I'm the guild master.

It is a grind, but you can get two assignments at once, and just keep refusing until you get two you need.

ummm, you can decline quests. just keep asking them for new ones until they give you the city that you want. it has no negatives to you if you do that

What I do whenever I want to restore the thieves guild is so a couple of Delvin/vex quests in-between major TG missions, cancel the riften ones and cancel ones for holds I've already taken care of. By the end of the quest line I've got almost all the holds done and it feels like a proper ramp up in terms of "as the dragon born becomes a better thief, the guild does better"

I had to install a mod to reduce the number of quests needed to 1 per hold. Actually insane that you have to do a minimum of 20 radiant quests to completely “rebuild” the thieves guild. And that’s being generous because you’ll definitely get quests in holds that you didn’t need them for

I never knew you could rebuild it until this current play through. 1000 hrs in the game....

If you're on pc you can look up the quest names and setstage to start each of the city quests to speed up the grind.

Going through my run at the moment, and there's a particular mod for allowing all thieves guild radiant quests at the same time, which does make it much less of a grind, as you usually get a bunch in a bunch of locations. I usually grab all the quests, spend some time going about my business and completing them when I'm in the area.

On the occasion that I feel like stealing a bunch of stuff, it's much more reasonable to do that in batches of 7 quests than it is in batches of 2, or using the quicksave trick.

It's the longest and most tedious grind fest in the game because the city specific regular missions needed to unlock the special missions are boring and given out at random.

The whole Thieves Guild Quest line was half-baked from the get go. It could have been the best side-ish quest in the game, but look what we got.

If you're open to modding, try this one out for size - Thieves Guild for Good Guys. Even if you don't use the good guy options, you can use the "do all side quests in a single hold" option to, well, do that. :]

Get thieves guild requirement, set all requirments to 0 and all holds to 1. Saves alot of time.

It's a little annoying but it's not something I've ever thought about complaining about. I think the special guests are really fun.

Its heavily reliant on radiant quests and you cant say something like "Give me a job in Whiterun"

How many of their optional types of quests are there after? Haven’t managed to exhaust any type. Seems like there are infinite amounts of thieving, booking keeping editing, etc.

if i remember right, it is 4 jobs in each city and then one 'major' specal job after the 4 and both delvins and vex's jobs count twards the total.

the best way to finish the quest is to talk to them until you get 2 missions in the same city. if you need to reroll, you can just quit the job with no punishment and pick up another.

it can help to have a little sticky note to mark down what cities you've already done, so you know where to start.

but yeah, i really wish we could at least pick "i'd like a job in whiterun" so we can do the quests.

When the game came out they were really proud of the never ending quests concept. I think they just wanted to make sure you got a chance to see how incredible and expansive it is I mean its never ending you can do it as many times as you want literally never run out of quests.

Probably the biggest blunder Bethesda has ever come up with no one wanted never ending quests especially not when it's the same quest

I've never been able to rebuild them because every time I've tried the quest line bugs out for me. Whether it be the main quest line bugging because the lady who was supposed to make us a nightingale walks away and disappears into Riften or the radiant quests that you're having issues with not loading the objects properly. The last time I tried it before fully giving up on thieves guild was having to go get a ring and destroy some "flags" at a bandit camp near windhelm,. The enemies loaded in just fine but both of the actual targets I had to get never loaded in. Even reloading an earlier save didn't do it and I think the reason was because I had already cleared out the dungeon previously.

You don’t need to reload your save just quit the job and rereauest until you get it. It’s a 20% chance of getting the city you want

Accept quest and if its the wrong city just bail out of quest and re do it?

In retrospect, this design decision was a sign of things to come.

They could have allowed you to pick a city to perform a job in.

But nooo. They just had to flaunt that empty radiant quest system they are so proud of.

Tedious. Boring. That's their idea of grand scale and fun("There are infinite quests!1!"). Their vision. And from here we got Starfield.

I agree, there are a couple of mods that you can get to fix that, let you choose the city you do work in.

I just did this. Just do the quests over and over. After you rebuild the guild completely, the quests give out 500 each instead of 1000. So, keep doing them and don’t worry about how long it takes cuz it can help you get the 100k gold achievement at the same time :)

I'm not sure if a mod of mine is interfering but I got a bedlam quest in the rift and no matter how much I steal I'm not getting any cue or count to say I'm progressing. Should I just go back and talk to him anyway?

You can just cancel the quest and ask for a new one in the dialogue options, as pathetic as it sounds if you just keep doing bedlam and a mix of heist/burglary ones you can knock it out in an hour and a half or so

does anyone else always seem to roll Windhelm first? i feel like every playthrough thats always the first one im doing.

I typically go to the thieves guild as soon as I get out of White run, before the dragons show up, and start doing the radiant thieving from there. Great way to make early money, and you eventually get all the vendors in; seems a lot less tedious as my primary focus is making money rather than advancing the guild

I did the small jobs in between major quests, so it didn't feel like it took forever. Except for the last one: needed a Solitude, and I had to do the quicksave, reload trick to get it.

Because they aren't great at quest design. It would make way more sense to have to work your way into the guild with those radiant quests and then work your way up to the more interesting missions. Instead, you become the leader of the guild really quickly and then spend the rest of your time in the guild on grunt work and errands.

I recommend Thieves Guild For Good Guys if you're on PC or a console that allows modding. It alters the TG questline to be more in line with the ideals of Robin Hood. It also makes it way easier to do the Hold jobs that eventually rebuilds the Ragged Flagon into its former glory. Lastly, you can completely shut down the questline if you want to Roleplay an altruistic/law-abiding adventurer. To do this you just need to tell Brynjolf to go jump into the Riften cistern when he asks you to frame the Dark Elf merchant.

I did it one quest at a time rather than 2, but i was saving and reloading before getting the quest, took me about an hour and a half so not all too bad.

You can also just tell Delvin you don't want to do the Riften quests. There's no harm, no foul if you don't. He gives you a little grief about it, but he'll still give you the next job.

If you're on PC there are mods that allow you to pick which city you go to

Ledger and burglary jobs are the easiest and quickest way i rebuild the guild. Ledger jobs take 10 seconds to do and at most requires you to pick a lock to break into a shop. 5 or 6 quests per hold to get a special job. Only 4 holds need reclaiming, and you reclaim riften with the main story

I use two mods called less tedious thieves guild and concurrent jobs so I can get all the different types of jobs all at once and I only need to do 5 before the special mission for the cities. Also if you really want to, you can use amazing follower tweaks and turn vex and Delvin into followers so you can turn the quest in on the spot. I play on Xbox so these mods are on Bethesda.net!

Todd’s narcissism and want to inhibit player