Early on I made a choice I regretted - I followed Hadvar. I didn't really understand what that meant, and by the time I got out into Skyrim I'd realised I would've preferred to be a rebel. No problem, I thought, I'll just kill Hadvar and run off to the Stormcloaks.

So I knock this asshole down but he won't die. He gets up, now he's incandescent with rage and won't leave me the fuck alone. He chases me to the ends of the world. I managed to escape into a mine, cleared it, and carried on toward Riverwood. Who's waiting for me there? Pissed off Hadvar and his dad, who immediately also becomes pissed off. They're invincible furious nightmares. I can't advance the main quest because they attack on sight.

Am I screwed? I'm thinking this early on I should just restart, but I'd be disappointed if there wasn't a way out of this, like a way to change my allegiance for example. Any ideas?

I would recommend you start again.

I havn't gone down the Hadvar route, but those 2 characters don't seem essential to the main story quest. You can easily get the quests to continue on from elsewhere, of course i couldn't say where since i don't know your side very well, but the involvement of the other guy is pretty low so far. That said, having him chase you around the world might not be so nice, and you're still pretty early in, might as well restart ya?

I suspected that might be the response. Kind of a shame to hit a dead end so early. I'll have to be more careful next time.

Thanks

@Insectecutor said:

Early on I made a choice I regretted - I followed Hadvar. I didn't really understand what that meant, and by the time I got out into Skyrim I'd realised I would've preferred to be a rebel. No problem, I thought, I'll just kill Hadvar and run off to the Stormcloaks.

So I knock this asshole down but he won't die. He gets up, now he's incandescent with rage and won't leave me the fuck alone. He chases me to the ends of the world. I managed to escape into a mine, cleared it, and carried on toward Riverwood. Who's waiting for me there? Pissed off Hadvar and his dad, who immediately also becomes pissed off. They're invincible furious nightmares. I can't advance the main quest because they attack on sight.

Am I screwed? I'm thinking this early on I should just restart, but I'd be disappointed if there wasn't a way out of this, like a way to change my allegiance for example. Any ideas?

exact same thing happened to me and i had to start a new game. this was the first event in a series of disappointments that colored my day 1 Skyrim experience.

@normalpants said:

exact same thing happened to me and i had to start a new game. this was the first event in a series of disappointments that colored my day 1 Skyrim experience.

disappointment? but that sounds so awesome!!

I've yet to play Skyrim, but in Oblivion if you held down block and pressed A you could "surrender" to an NPC who you accidentally hit and pissed off. Try that?

This happened to me too. If you put your weapon away you submit to him and he stops attacking you

@TheMustacheHero said:

I've yet to play Skyrim, but in Oblivion if you held down block and pressed A you could "surrender" to an NPC who you accidentally hit and pissed off. Try that?

They've changed it to simply sheathing the weapon but that rarely works.

You're not obligated to join the imperials. Hadvar just makes that suggestion to you.

If submitting to hadvar fails go to whiterun and submit to a guard that fixes it too

In Oblvion, there used to be a (albeit subtle) icon that denoted when a character was "essential" and thus could not be killed permanently. Is this not the case with Skyrim, and wouldn't that have tipped you off you couldn't kill him?

Is there any sort of yield option? In Oblivion, you could hold block and try talking to someone to get them to yield (wouldn't work on naturally hostile enemies and monsters, of course). I haven't found any such thing in Skyrim yet myself.

In Skyrim you yield by sheathing your weapon (Or lowering your hands if you're a magic user)

I did the same thing. I just started over, and made a better character while I was at it.

You probably should have just left him alone. He doesn't care who you join, and splits with you as soon as the tutorial dungeon is over.

I had the exact same issue, killed him at the exact same point, had Ralof and Hadvar attacking me. Tried using the console to enable and disable them, disable combat ai and all, none of it worked. I loaded a previous save, beforei saw Hadvar and Ralof in riverwood, outside Embershard mine. I stood there and waited for 3 in-game days. I then went to Riverwood, saw Hadvar and Ralof talking at the forge, they split up and neither attacked me. I think I fixed it permanently, but I'm not certain yet.

Havdar won't follow you everywhere. He hangs in the Riverwood section but if you leave it he'll leave you alone, and after a few hours he'll forget. there is no permanent aggro in this game. You can't kill him because he reappears in the Civil War quest line later.

@insectecutor: First of all, this story was HILARIOUS! Secondly; here's a fix. That is assuming you're playing on the PC

I had this issue and it's solved pretty easily. Go to the nearest major city that's controlled by imperials and get arrested. Pay your bounty or whatever just as long as they're not doing the "wait I know you" and he'll stop :)

wow thanks for the hot skyrim tips

Cool, I remember reading this thread when it was new in 2011.