How do I find Meridia's Beacon in Skyrim?

I started the quest "The Break of Dawn", but when I set the quest as active it won't give me a quest marker. It also did this with the "The Legend of Red Eagle" but after a few hours, it randomly added a marker.

Will it do this with Meridia's Beacon as well, or do I have to restart?

Solution 1:

The Beacon will spawn in a random chest after you reach level 12,hence it has no set location.

You can use Clairvoyance to find the beacon. Alternately, you can go the Statue to Meridia and speak to Meridia to begin the quest. (This will set a way point to the Beacon.)

More detailed guide here.

Solution 2:

Please see Arremer's answer which is accepted. But if you still have problems then follow along:

I started the quest "The Break of Dawn", but when I set the quest as active it won't give me a quest marker.

There are two ways to start the Break of Dawn quest. The required level for this quest is 12.

1) Either you find Meridia's beacon while questing. It does spawn randomly.

2) The other option is to visit Meridia's statue, in which case she asks you to find the beacon in some camp. IF this is the case then the quest marker activates as long as your quest journal has that quest active. In this case Clairvoyance should help as long as this quest is active in your journal and no other quests are active.

If you used console commands advlevelor setlevel to get to the level 12 requirement for this quest, it will not start at all. To correct this, use player.setlevel 11 to get to level 11 and then level up normally or use incPCS to level up some of other skills to level up to 12. Source

Apart from this I have not encountered any bugs related to this quest.