So after two solid hours of following Karliah back and forth at walking pace through Nightingale Hall, stopping just as she asks me to take up position on a plynth after she opens a gate...and then proceeds to walk off out of Nightingale Hall completely...I finally get her to approach the gate. This was after searching online for a fix that involved positioning my character in a certain location. Imagine my joy as she finally walks off towards the gate, instead of towards the exit...only to pull the chain once to open the gate, them again to close it. We are all trapped on the wrong side of the gate and the NPCs continue to walk face first into it.

Amazingly, jaw droppingly buggy. And in something I consider to be a pretty major questline. How did this get past testers??

You might consider reloading and trying again. It sounds like the game wigged out, because the quest was issue-free when I went through it.

I havr the same problem but where do you stand to even get her to open gate once I can't get her to stay in there at all.

I'm on PS3 and din't have any problems with it. But at the end of the quest, Karliah never returned to Nightingale Hall like she's supposed to.

The title of buggiest quest probably goes to Blood On the Ice.

But when I the issue with Karliah pulling the chain twice - spamming her with the 'talk' option once she pulled it the first time did the trick.

I have a similar problem. She just walks away and won't pull the chain even once. I reloaded a save and it still wouldn't work.

Yeah Blood on the Ice holds that title strong lol.

Indeed I've only been able to compete it once

Whether she pulls the chain or not shouldn't matter, because you can fast travel with the lid closed. If you just leave her alone, she should just load up where she is expected to load up next.