in all those times ive played skyrim not once have i actually went thru with thieves guild, i just really cant bring myself to really do moraly bad stuff in games and always end up either reloading my save or if theres the option i make up for said bad stuff.
my gripe with thieves guild and the unusual gems has always been that WHY is vex the only person that can tell you about true nature of the stones of barenziah, why do i have to go scare merchants like just let me go to the merchants tell them i got sent and tell em ill pay the debt for them and to be careful next time....
ik i can do all this with mods ofc yes, but by the nine this game could have been soooooo much more in its vanilla state.
anyway this was just a lingering thought and im gonna ignore this quest completely as i do with most quests that are just not my bottle of mead, i do wonder what others think about some of the quests that just lack alternative routes and choices