So I return to my Lakeview Manor after my usual shenanigan-filled adventures to find a bandit woman outside waiting for me. I kill her, loot her corpse, and find a ransom note telling me that they took Ysolda and brought her to Knifepoint Ridge. The quest says that you can either pay 5,000 gold or just go and rescue her. So as I am en route to get there, the game randomly tells me that the quest has been completed. I go there anyway; no Ysolda. I go back home; no Ysolda....I'm really frustrated right now, as this means that I cannot overwrite my save if I go to my house at all. In essence, my home is now useless until this is fixed because if I save after this bandit encounter then I will lose Ysolda forever. Anyone else experience this?

That's why I periodically create save files insread of relying on Autosave.

quick save ftw

Why is your house useless? You can manually save, depending on autosaves is just a waste of time. You want your autosave, just load it, and manually save at the at point. Your wife will probably turn up eventually anyway.

But you don't understand. My save file makes it so that as soon as I return to my home every single time the bandit is there and my wife is gone. As soon as I try to do the quest to get her back the quest disappears and so does my wife. I can turn off autosave but it wont help because my actual save file puts me at this situation every single time. My game is basically ruined in this aspect now.

I never said you need to turn of autosaving, but depending on autosaves is careless, you should manually save as well. There is so far nothing wrong with the way you completed the quest, lots of people solved the problem by killing the messenger, their wives eventually turned up. if you do not think she will, do you have a save game before returning to the house, or did you literally depend on just autosaves while playing.

Since you have the autosave, load it and manually save before it is overwritten, and just try it different ways. Even if you go with the first way, at least you will have the option to go back and try it differently later.

Yes, I have it saved right before it happens every time. That is the problem. If I was home then I could stop them before they kidnapped her (I think). Except I can't do that since every time I go home this happens! But here's the real issue and the real point of my problem; why does the quest randomly say: "Completed" When i'm on my way to the cave to save her? To me, that doesn't make sense at all. I really do think it is a glitch.

Nevermind. Turns out it wasn't a glitch. All I had to do was speak to the bandit woman instead of killing her. Walked right into the bandit hideout after, picked the lock on the cell door, rescued Ysolda. Case closed. Autosave is now going bye-bye for good. Thanks all for at least trying to help.

I've dealt with this quest about 3-4x now, all at Lakeview Manor, and each time they had taken her to Embershard Mine.

The first time it happened I had just come back from a 5 or 6 marathon and was like .3 lbs. of loot away from not being able to walk, so I ran inside to stash some stuff (specifically, in the cellar). All of the sudden, I see "succeeded! Rescued Ysolda from bandits!" or whatever, and I go upstairs and there she is, acting personally normal.

The next time it happened SHE REALLY DID get kidnapped, I went to Embarshard, wiped the place out, then unlocked her cell. Guess what? She was acting like a cartoon android that had faulty batteries: walking backwards, repeating things even more than usual, wandering into stupid places more than usual (oh, did I mention she was twitching and shaking the whole time? Right...), and it made the game IMPOSSIBLE. I tried a bunch of things but then just restarted before that happened (which lost like 5 hours of playing...I also slacked on saving), and moved everyone to Proudspire or something.

THEN it happened again. I'd read how people just went through it all by first making sure she isn't actually at home somewhere, and waiting a few minutes to see if she shows up. She didn't, so off to Embershard I go (I had a save that I could have used if things got ugly again). I chopped, hacked and slashed my way to the cell she was locked in, freed her, she said something like "Oh I just knew that you would come for me my love!" and then follows you out of the mine. Keep in mind there were more enemies beyond where her cell was, but I just got to her and then left ASAP. When I got home (she apparently flew there or something...) she was fine.

Man, glitchy Ysolda is such a mess it isn't even funny...

Actually in all of the times I went through this I couldn't talk to her. I quick traveled home and she attacked me, Kharjo, the Falkreath/Lakeview Manor house carl and Shadowmere the second the game loaded. and like I said, when I went to the place and just got her out ASAP, all was okay.

Maybe a good idea (for everybody) would be to just save it if you get to this part of the "plot" or whatever, try to salvage a previous save if you can (just in case), and then try to go at the Ransom quest a few different ways.

I found that if you fast travel to your home the bandit woman will attack you. If you travel normally, accept the ransom note, don't harm the bandit, then just go there and rescue her it works. It's not bugged, just you have to do it exactly as the game wants you to.

check all around ridepoint and in it. Then go back to whiterun and check her house. If she is not there, then she may have died.

I've already resolved the issue. It was my fault.

I think she would have showed up anyway in time. Seems they always do so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Sorry to up this thread, but seriously Bethesda.

FIX THIS

I can't understand how you don't even test new quests like these, I mean, it's a simple quest yet it has so many bugs.
Quest completing itself when you're near the bandit camp.
Wife/Husband walking weirdly after being rescued.

It's just game-breaking, and it doesn't make me want to buy DLC if they have to be so glitched like that.

Please make a patch for this, many players have this problem.

I didn't even know your wife could be kidnapped...... I feel stupid now!!

She should have never left the kitchen.

If your wife is one of your house Carl's can she still be kidnapped ?