I have about 30 pounds of quest items that ive completed or cannot anymore. Finn's Lute and Rjorn's drum have both been apparently returned and quest completed but still in my inventory. As well as all but one Stone of Berenziah because of the one I missed in the Thalmor embassy mission early on and now cant enter without a key. Small bug but this is 30 pounds that would be nice to dump so any help would be great.

I know your pain man, I thought it was a bug if you collected said item before the quest was given. In my case it was that fancy lute for the Bards College, but I soon realized that both the flute and the drum where still in my inventory after the quest's were completed. For those items I waited until I had the actual question to retrieve them.

Same here, both items for the Bard's College and several books for Urag in the College of Winterhold. I don't even have the option of giving him the books and all the quest markers stay and direct me to empty chests and what not. Just add another bug to the growing list. Last Bethesda game i'll buy, I should've learned my lesson from Fallout 3.

I have the same problem with the books for the college at winterhold.

I thought I had found a workaround. I had gotten arrested and let the take me to jail in order to get the jailbreak achievement. This was in the jail in solitude and was my first trip to any jail, so I don't know if they are all similar. I found crumbling mortar that opened up a passageway and located the prisoner belongings chest, picked the lock (fortunately, still had the skeleton key "effect" on my lone lockpick, could be a problem if you dont) took all my stuff, and I noticed as I took my stuff that the stuck inventory book was not in the chest. After taking everything, checked my inventory and the book was STILL NOT IN MY INVENTORY!!!

Left the prison, evaded the guards.... checked my inventory and it was back.

It's worth noting that I had 2 of the same book stuck in my inventory and after this little event, I only had one. So perhaps this can help someone get rid of SOME of their crap.... dunno.

If you guys find yourself stuck with quest weapons, they can be mounted on weapons plaques and what not. They may not stick, but they will be out of your inventory. Have not found anything for the books or other quest items that are stuck.

Does it matter what item you get pre-quest or is all pre-quest items this happens with?

It seems to a bit all over the place.
Main quest line items, for the most part, are protected because the corresponding dungeons are locked..
Some quest items actually trigger the quest when picked up...
However most quest items for the misc quests can result in having this bug.. apparently the radiant quest system seems to be the cause... It places these items randomly, but does so before the actual quest is triggered.. Result: Quest cannot be finished, item is locked in your inventory as a quest item. The same issue can be seen on some "clear dungeon x"missions.. (quests can't be finished because the dungeon was already cleared)

Two asides: Though incredibly irritating.. none of the items will encumber you. And we might see a fix in in patch 1.3. (a note is made about fixing the radiant story system) So on a new game, hopefully, these issues (for misc quests) will be a thing of the past. We just have to wait and see.. Otherwise these problems will be fixed sometime in January with, as Bethesda stated, an incremental Quest fix.

So assuming patch 1.3 fixes radiant quests issues it won't fix the issues people have now? Meaning they will have to make a new character.
Also this patch will work for current characters even if they have inventory items already. Meaning it won't fix current inventory but will stop new items from being a problem?

Not sure what you mean by "none of the items will encumber you" when the ones I am complaining about (and others) weigh in the 30-40 lbs range so far. (lbs or whatever unit of weight it is)

I have had quest item in my inventory as well, and read somewhere else here that they do not count towards your carry weight somewhere on these forums, so I decided to check this out myself.

I stood at my chest and removed everything from my inventory that i could into the chest in my house. When everything was removed that I could, the quest items being the only thing left in my inventory, I was carrying 0/whaterver I could carry. So even though they do say they have a weight, they don't count towards what you are carrying.

I was just about to say that . . .

This man speaks truth.

Running around with the 20 weight elder scroll, quest is done but have no idea why I still have it, can't put it into chests. Maybe its by design, but annoying as hell.

You can sell it to the Orc who runs the Winterhold library.

Thanks a lot I didn't know, that was a relief, seriously

You know the Bards college in particular is glitched for everyone who attempts it and tries to drop the quest items. given that its glitched for everyone and still made it to final release can only mean that Bethesda didn't bother play testing this quest line. If they didn't test a quest line then who knows how much else they didn't bother testing.

Read a lot about that, also why I haven't explored that quest line yet. Can't tell about testing, must be an awful lot of items to keep track of too, and situations to count for. Another one is the thieves quest line, just different in that you can sell the items, but without can't complete.

But atleast there should be some way to drop your quest items, like in a house chest or something safe, and not be able to sell or drop quest related items in the wild.

Or make quest items 0 and have a special container in the inventory, like the keys.

Probably what they should have done is make another category in your inventory similar to "Ingredients" or "Potions"and simply called it "quest Items" This way all quest items get put into this category and don't clog your inventory. Also making them all 0 weight would be great although it looks like they may already be 0 despite their listed weight.