I want to take a Follower with me everywhere. The only exception is when I'm sleeping with my husband I make him/her wait in the foyer. I collect followers like alchemy weeds and love each and every one. Play dress up doll with the silly things. But I am about to do a quest and I am not sure if I should bring my follower along. Quest is Containment in the mage College quest chain. Reported (possible?) bug is this:

"Followers may be teleported inside the Hall of the Elements after Ancano knocks everyone unconscious, even if they have been told to wait elsewhere. If you do not tell them to follow you out of the hall before leaving the college, you will be unable to rejoin them until after completing the quest." - quote from http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Containment

I don't want to glitch my follower in any way. Should I risk taking him? I am still pretty new to the game - is there anywhere I should never bring a follower?

Nightcaller Temple. Snow Veil Sanctum.

Two examples where you can't take followers inside.

they will 'rejoin' you after the restricted quests though

When a follower can't follow, they won't, and the game will tell you so. "Your follower cannot accompany you here."

A general rule of thumb is to always keep a manual save from before you enter a dungeon or start a quest. In this particular case, keep a save before you go inside the Hall of Elements, and if your follower (or something else) glitches, you can just go back to your previous save (this goes for other things than followers, this game is full of bugs, and saving manually, often and in different slots is probably the best way to solve many of them - in some cases the only way).

But if I understand that bug report correctly, it only means you have to make sure to ask your followers to follow you again, if they show up inside the Hall of Elements even though you've told them to wait somewhere else. So it shouldn't be a big problem.

Radbthar is a Dwemer Ruin with a few Dwemer spinning blade traps that can not be turned off. The Dawngaurd added Quest "Lost to the Ages" requires navigating through Radbthar, but a PC user can always cheat and enter the exit.

I guess I'm confused on this quest as to why I might have to tell my follower to wait before my blackout? It says, "If you tell your follower to wait." Do I have to or will he ride the black out with me and still be there?

If we get separated he'll "walk all the way home." This has become a phobia with me never to let my little acolytes tread dangerous terrain to their homes ALONE and *the horror* get killed. I lost a follower once when a stupid goddess teleported me out of a dungeon after a very nasty boss fight AND THEN LOCKED BOSS ROOM DOOR. I had saved many times before the fight but I didn't want to face that boss again. He was to hard on easy mode. I ended up going back in time (save point) and loosing that dungeon (uncomplete quest) to get my follower back. The quest was The Break Of Dawn. Upon completion Loudy Pants had yanked me out and locked the door with my dropped weapons and (possibly dead???) follower behind! And to compensate for loosing a loved one she gives me her pathetic sword. That's one deity that needs a good b-slap.

Yes, I know I can save and go back but lost progress is irritating. I have learned to save frequently.

On that note - do you erase old saves? My friend told me to erase them so the xbox didn't get bogged down with to much data which she said makes it glitchier.

I keep 2 save's per lvl, 10 lvl's, except the lvl that "I" am currently on. If you pick up weapons and such it really helps. I generally manually save a lot during a quest and then keep before and after saves til I'm up a lvl or sometimes two. I have lvl'd up from 1 to 6 in Bleakfalls Barrow... I will only keep before and after their... same with the quests going to Blackreach...I lvl often, so after the quest is over I only keep the before and after save.

Bummer about Break of Dawn, I've had followers with me quiet a few times and never run into that.... I have had a follower get stuck somewhere, I just FT back and forth til they show up. If that doesn't work then I revert to a save before they disappeared.

I forget the name of the quest....errrg... but you get it on the dock's in Windhelm and travel to an island? I read that one is glitched for followers. When I did it ( over a yr ago last time) I took Erik home...to visit Dad... and then went and did the quest, just went back to Rorikstead and picked him back up.

Edit: spelling

If you ever go through The Break of Dawn again, this is how you get around that issue: take your follower with you as normal and fight the boss. After he's dead, don't loot anything in that room yet. Walk back to the entrance of the dungeon, go outside, and tell your follower to wait there. Run back in and loot all the bodies, then take the sword. After speaking with Meridia, go back to the entrance of the dungeon where you left your follower.

As for Containment, the problem seems to only occur after asking your follower to wait, say in the Hall of Attainment, or outside in the courtyard while you enter the Hall of the Elements. After the blackout, they're suddenly there in the Hall of the Elements with you (still in their "waiting" state). If this happens, you shouldn't have a problem if you just ask them to follow you again on your way out. This happened to me a couple of times, so I actually took to just keeping my follower with me. It hasn't seemed to be a problem; however, I'm on PC with the Unofficial Patches, so that might account for it. If you're really worried about it, after leaving Mzulft, but before returning to the College, take them back to their home base and dismiss them, then go back and get them before you hit the next dungeon.

Japhet's Folly. I'd definitely leave followers home for that one.

Nightcaller Temple actually isn't an issue for the follower themselves: they just wait for you at the door. However, there was an issue with crashing during the dungeon portion which some had speculated had something to do with having your follower waiting at the door. It's supposedly fixed by the latest patch, though.

Without spoiling anything, all I'll say is: I'd leave followers waiting outside Kagrenzel (it's not a huge dungeon). And don't try to sneak in from the rear exit--sometimes that causes issues with followers as well.

Also, Sightless Pit can be problematic. You have to drop down into the dungeon, which can cause issues with followers pathing. Once inside, because of the drop, you cannot exit the way you came and must finish the dungeon to get out. Save before you enter! It's a Falmer dungeon and they can be really tough, especially for low-level characters. If you've bitten off more than you can chew, you can always reload the save.

Broken Oar Grotto seems to be a place where followers get stuck when your PC exits the dungeon (although it seems fast traveling cures that bug).

All it takes is taking out the Dwarven spheres that roam after that point, wait 1 hour (far enough from the spinning blades), and your follower is next to you. This is on console and no reason to cheat.

I'm on Xbox no patches to my knowledge and only Hearthfire addon.

I took Faendal with me to Japhet's Folly (what I think of as the Pirate Quest) and he did great. I made sure he we didn't get separated and especially did not teleport away from that island which is an temp instance. Used boat only.

Erandur came with me just now on my quest chain to get the title of Arch Mage. He did great through my brief black out. I worried for nothing. But I lost him in the battle with Ancano where he's suppose to just be paralyzed on floor - he looked pretty dead to me. I mean he was lootable and that's as dead as you get. That was a reload and make Erandur wait outside. I felt bad he was missing the action. After Ancano went down and paralysis wore off Annoying Imp Dog and Tolfdir I ran outside to bring Erandur back in. He was running away from me and had a good lead! I caught up to Erandur before he ran down to the town. Clicking him set him back to follower mode and we went in to kill flying ice worms. Quest completed correctly no glitches. I'm Arch Mage now.

I guess follower mess ups / death / loss is just unpredictable as it seems different for everyone.

One more question on followers. Do they "level up" with use?

I had no problems in Kagrenzel, but I just remember how I once lost Marcurio in Dead Man's Respite, after jumping down a shaft. He turned up back in Riften later, though.

Funny, btw, there's a drop in Alftand as well, at least as high as the one in Dead Man's Respite, but I've never had problems with followers there. Last time, Vilkas even ran ahead of me (alerting the Falmer ) and jumped first.

As for levelling, yes, they level with you since patch 1.6 or something (the latest official patch, which you should have even if you're on Cbox, especially if you recently bought the game, is 1.9).

i hate that place once serana got stuck there and i couldnt proceed through dawngaurd quests had to reload the save prior to that quest

I just did The Break of Dawn, with Marcurio in tow. Forgot to have him wait outside the final room, so he got locked in. I got him back by Fast Traveling to Meridia's statue...FT in place. I would have had no problems reverting to the save right before the "boss battle" though.

That btw was over to quickly....Marcurio with staff's... wicked!

I was in the middle of doing the DG and DB quest lines. I had Serana with me and when I entered the DB sanctuary, she waited outside.

For me, it was the other way around--I've never had problems in Dead Men's Respite, but did have a problem with Kagrenzel (fortunately, my companion turned up later just as Marcurio did).

Funny how he has a tendency to do that, isn't it?

He's good at many things, but he seriously svcks at sneaking.

PC: "Hmm, these things are blind, if we move quietly we could..."

Vilkas: "Aaaargh! Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" *rushes forward*

PC:

I gave him Wuuthrad, so I guess he just wanted to put it to good use.

If you're on PC anyway, I'd suggest just printing out the RefIDs for all followers and keeping the list handy. Then simply use the movetoplayer command to bring any MIA followers to your location when necessary. I did this on my last playthrough and found it extremely useful anytime bad pathing or other issues caused followers to get stuck some place and unable to reach me. No more waiting for them to catch up via some bizarre roundabout path when I'm clambering all over the landscape in ways that should defy all known laws of physics, lol. And no more waiting for them to backtrack through an entire dungeon just because getting out the quick way requires a jump down from a ledge and they refuse to do it.

Altho I've not had much trouble with the latter in recent playthroughs, I must say... don't know if something got patched but most followers seem much more willing to make those jumps than they used to. However I've had a couple occasions where they did so on low enough health that the landing actually killed them on impact and I had to reload. Then I just used movetoplayer to get them down from the ledge before they had a chance to kill themselves trying.

I don't think I've ever had anyone get locked in Meridia's temple at the end of that quest, though. If I just wait outside after she's finished with me and deposits me back in front of her statue, they always seem to come running up on their own eventually.

I noticed on vanilla Skyrim my follower would remain inside Meridias temple. I would have to go back inside meet them halfway. But when i downloaded the unofficial patches i noticed they would spawn outside with me now. Of course i noticed other odd follower behavior come up when i got the unofficial patches, like the end of Avanchanzel.