Just tested this and it is completely untrue. She is still broken, even if you've never spoken to her before. I just did the same thing, reloaded an old save before ever discovering the tower. Cleared to the top, finished the quest, had her join me. Dismissed her, and she immediately begins with the "Need something?" response and no dialogue options. If you managed to get her to work for you, great, but it is likely unrelated to anything done in this patch.

hehe

Sorry bud...but its true...i commend you guys and gals for being my beta testers!

I remember when patch 1.2 came out, i went against my own better judgement and installed it right away.....boy was that a collosal mistake on my part...the resistances things, etc it totally broke the game for me...i had to delete my saves, delete the patch and use the instructions on here to roll back......im not doing that again.

I feel snake-bitten, as Bethesda really put a hurting on me with that 1.2 patch and whenever Bethesda says patch i cringe like a scared puppy LOL

However what i have looked at online its seems about 50/50 that those instlaling the patch on Xbox are experiencing a lot of locks ups and freezes..... i havne't palyed any games in two days, but i planned on playing skyrim tonight...looks like im pulling the Cat-5e cable out of the Xbox before i turn it on....

no way im instlaling this patch until i find out what exactly is causing these issues, and what the remedy is(if there is one) or if we have to wait for another patch.

I commend you beta testers! keep up the good work....If i could buy you a round i would! Cheers!

Yes, she is broken but Restricted-Access isn't entirely wrong either. I tried something last night and discovered what seems to be the actual cause of the problem:

Illia recruitment Bug Details
When you recruit her, you can dismiss her and recruit her repeatedly without problem (during your current savegame). I tested this by having a savegame where I hadn't discovered darklight tower before. Next, I completed the quest, and then when she waits in the chair for you to talk to her, I recruited her. Immediately after, I dismissed her and then recruited her again. I did this repeatedly without problem. I then travelled to Whiterun, and then returned to Darklight tower to find her at the bottom of the tower. I then recruited her again, and dismissed her repeatedly without problem. I did further testing by travelling to different locations (with and without her) and tried dismissing and recruiting her repeatedly. Still no problems occurred (noting that if I dismiss her from a distance away from darklight tower, e.g. Whiterun, she doesn't make it back to Darklight tower, even after many days. Or at least, I couldn't find her in the tower).

However, if you then save the game and then reload that save, and then dismiss illia, she cannot be recruited again.

Thus, I would conclude that some of illia's data is not being stored as part of the savegame. Therefore, if you recruit illia at any time, you can dismiss and recruit her repeatedly until the next time you save and load.

Hopefully, this will narrow down the cause of the problem so the developers can find and fix this bug.

Sorry guys. I made a HUGE mistake with the above post. I have a few games/characters going and got confused. The quest DID NOT work for me after 1.4. I was on a different character/game. Windhelm is now under Imperial control and the quest DOES NOT INITIATE post 1.4.

1.4 also did NOT fix the error in Markarth where I keep getting the "Im Igmunds uncle" talk when trying to buy Vlindrel Hall.

So again, 1.4 will NOT make Blood On Ice work for you if that quest never initiated for you before. May help new games going forward, but for those of us who already had 150-200+ hours invested in a game where it didnt begin can forget about it.

Actually some people it has worked I believe it really depends on how it was broke in the first place, some ways no matter how its patched will ever fix it

on her not getting back to dark tower... it might be related to this - http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1347320-dephline-vanished-well-not-really/ Dephline has a habit of vanishing as well, not really vanishing but if you didn't know where to look you'd never find her.

on the save game thing... i'm guesing with fast travel you have autosave off, else you'd probably get the same thing as creating a save... least one would think...

and... what if... you recruit her.... save game... and load the save? what happens then if the data is being lost? curiosity... i've avoided recruiting her with my current character.

It's on reload where the glitch comes to lilght. You can fast-travel all over the place with your auto-save on and still not encounter the glitch because you're just saving, not loading anything. The glitch doesn't come into effect until the moment you load a save after acquiring illiya as a follower.


Assuming she was actively your follower at the time, she'll continue to be your follower, but once you dismiss her, you can't recruit her again.

I also gave that a go. And the results are..............when you load it back, illia is still a follower (as expected), but when I dismissed her I tried to recruit her immediately afterwards I couldn't, i.e. no menu appears. So, it breaks in the same way.

It really looks some data isn't being written out to the savefile, which prevents her being recruited again.

Edit: I just noticed Little Beard's post. So, my results back up his findings.