I have gotten into the habit of starting a new game when DLC is installed or when the core game is updated, so I have started a couple of new games in the past few weeks (one after installing Hearthfire and one after 1.8 update). I like to join the Companions very early, so I am used to having Farkas welcome me to the Companions, giving me Hired Muscle and sending me off to intimidate someone. In the past couple of new games, however, he has welcomed me to the Companions and then given me Trouble in Skyrim and sent me to a dungeon way above my level. In the first case, my character was level 1, he sent me to Rannveig's Fast, minimum level 8. In the second, my character again level 1, he sent me to Shimmermist Cave, minimum level 18. I managed to survive Rannveig's Fast, but there was no way I could get through Shimmermist Cave at level 1 (actually survived all the way to the boss fight, but couldn't get through that). I finally told Farkas I didn't want that job, went to Aela and got Animal Extermination (kill a wolf in Ysolda's house, obviously more appropriate for level 1 character).
I have well over 1000 hours in this game and never saw this before. Just wondering, anyone else seen this? Farkas totally skipping Hired Muscle?
FWIW, very lightly modded game (QuickFox's Armor Fix and my own fix to put back the cooking pot in Proudspire Manor that Hearthfire inexplicably removes). Win7 64 bit, i7990x, 12G ram, GTX 580 3G vram.