Farkas the Confused Companion-Blade-Follower

[trukittn]

I have searched through forums and mod topics for this issue, but it seems I have officially broken Farkas in a supremely unique way. I beg the wisdom of ye bug and glitch smashers to aid me because I don't want to start all over again - and I'm afraid even that might not fix the problem.

 

Here's what happened;

At the time the oddity occured, I was happily playing with several mods intact. The ones that affect Farkas and followers are: UFO, Tales of Lycanthropy, Horse Branding and Followers can relax. At the time, I had Farkas and Vilkas following me and neither were mounted. We were investigating some dead chick floating nekkid in a puddle near Markarth. Being the good samaritan I am, I rolled her body into some bushes and dropped some cotton flowers around and was about to continue on my way to some unexplored dwarven ruin marker in the distance when I noticed Farkas was suddenly MIA. I did a quick look around and I couldn't find him at all.

 

So I opened the handy dandy console, and warped myself to him. Come to find him following 2 other Companions (Athis and the drunk guy whose name I can never remember) with his sword drawn. It wasn't too far from the puddle so it seems I had stumbled into one of those random Companion encounters and Farkas thought he should be part of that. He still counted as my follower, even though he was following them, (Show Playerfollowercount returned 2.00) and even when I told him to bugger off, he returned the same dialogue options as if he were still my follower. So I thought once the random encounter had run its course he might start following me again, or worst case, he'd return to Sky Haven Temple since I'd made him a blade earlier in the game and have regretted it ever since.

 

I waited until the encounter was over, using the wait command and then entered a cave to see if he would show up. When he didn't, I checked my follower count and it was still at 2. So I warp to him again and find him in Sky Haven temple, staring into space. He tells me "We've stopped, what is it?" as if I'm to blame for all this. But when I walk away, he still doesn't follow. I try to dismiss him, and I get the "Your follower has left your service" notice, only his dialogue options still don't reflect this. And that is how he is now. I am unable to get him to actually follow me. I can infinitely loop the "Its time for us to part ways" option and get the confirmation that he has left my service... only he hasn't, because he already has.

 

So began hours and hours of trying to fix this through all means known to me. I dismissed Vilkas, made sure my follower count was 0 through the console, then uninstalled UFO via the firefly. I uninstalled all the other mods listed above as well, and renamed my script folder. When that didn't work, I disabled every mod I have installed even the ones that don't affect Farkas or followers. When none of this fixed him, I tried resetAI and even RecycleActor, which put him back in the Companions Hall as a non-blade, but he still had the strange follower-but-not-follower dialogue/behavior.

 

And then, I tried loading an older save from far, far before the weird companion encounter, only to have Farkas immediately walk away from me with the same follower dialogue. I'm not even sure how that is possible and that's why I'm worried starting over might not even fix him. So I'm hoping someone here knows of something I haven't tried yet.

[trukittn]

An update - I managed to work through and get a save working where Farkas behaved again without the weirdness and oddball follower bugs. Unfortunately it is so far back I may just start over. The only save I was able to get working was from before I took Farkas to be a Blade. Oddly enough, it works with every mod enabled that I had on the current save, whereas the current save still has the issue even with every mod disabled and completely uninstalled. So, at this point I'm inclined to think that its actually a crazy glitch within the vanilla game itself that I stumbled into with the combination of Farkas being a blade and a companion and me running into the random Companion event. After all, Vilkas is a Companion too and he had no issues.

 

Unfortunately I doubt its likely enough to happen with the nature of the random encounter that it can be reproduced readily to test. So from here on out I'm just gonna make sure anyone I take to the blades is someone I'm quite happy with never seeing again.

 

So, just a heads up for anyone who happens to be wandering out there with a Blade&Companion Farkas on your heels.

[GrayTank]

I know this is almost a month old but I'm digging it up because I have this same issue and I need a fix...

I can't reload a save so I'm hoping someone can help me out.

 

Two of my companions won't follow me even though they still have their follower dialogue options... can someone please help me out?