How do I finish the Ring of Hircine's quest?
You've likely hit a bug.
While you've agreed to help Sinding, it doesn't lock in your choice: if you attack him at any time before the end of the quest (when the curse is removed from the ring, allowing you to take it off), you lock in your choice to help Hircine.
However, doing so is supposed to go down differently: you act as one of the hunters and chase Hircine through the grotto, ending with you skinning him. He's not supposed to appear in jail.
You can try that: kill him in jail and skin him. If that part isn't bugged, Hircine should appear and complete the quest for you. As a reward, the ring will disappear.
Otherwise, welcome to a Bethesda game, where crippling bugs like this are par for the course in the first couple of weeks after launch.
i was confused too on this quest. if you agree to help sinding take out the other hunters, he doesn't lead you anywhere, he follows you. after you talk to him while he's on that rock or whatever, there's another staircase behind him you can use to continue deeper into the area and kill a couple waves of hunters. hope i helped
I got the same bug as you, and just worked it out!
So apparently, there's a bug...
Like me, after speaking to the slaughtered hunters, you left that "cave" and saw a quest marker to some random place on the map. There, you found sinding in werewolf form walking. You have a short convo with him, and decide to help him kill the hunters. Then, he just stays there, and keeps saying "Didn't expect to see you again.".
At this point, i thought the hunters would just show up or soemthing, and then we'd kill them together. Nope, he just stays there...
So what I did, is i went back to the cave where the dead hunters were. He actually appeared right behind me as soon as i entered the cave and was a following member of my party. We roamed through the cave (up these sort-of-hidden steps) and eventually killed a few waves of attackers. After killing the last hunter together, the quest is complete.
I think the quest was supposed to make Sinding disappear after talking to him on the world map, and then the quest marker should have moved back to the cave. Unfortunately, it didn't, and you need to figure out to go back to that cave yourself.
If you decide NOT to help sinding, he will start running away from you on the world map, and you have to chase him down and kill him.
If you end up having to kill Sinding in jail, I used this technique:
- Conjure Flame Atronach in cell behind Sinding.
- Let guards attack Sinding being sure to keep Sinding close to cell gate.
- Sinding will reach 0 health, and none will attack him, at this point I used a dagger (no knock back weapon works), killed him.
- Quickly search Sinding Corpse and continue with ending quest.
The knock back of my weapon on the death blow always pushed him out of corpse search reach. Good luck.