Handiness isn't even hard to develop quickly. cheating step is probably optional. Still, I had the opposite experience, my cave was already broken into so i worried that if i tried to travel I would get locked in the quest; instead I choose the option it told me to ("Investigate") and solved the puzzle a second time, I failed a couple of times because it's been a while since i've gone through the unlock process and had forgotten the exact route...but ultimately guess-work and a bit of handiness saw me through. There /was/ a bit of a pause between getting into forgotten grotto and actually earning the quest objective...after the short walk in the cave the quest picked up as normal.