I'm at the part where I go into this cave and one of the head members gives me some pretty sick leather armor before we progress into some story activity. The problem I have is one of my npc's will just walk back to town (the redhead guy, I forget his name). Once I grab the armor, he will start to leave the cave and I can't go forward because I need him to continue the conversation with another npc. I've restarted this quest about 5 times and I can't get it to work. Has anyone else had this problem and/or is this is going to get patched?

Are you talking about the nightingale part?

Same thing happens to me but during one of the Companion quests. Now i can't even get a companion anymore because it says i've already got someone with me, which i don't. Annoying bug.

@lando1 said:

Are you talking about the nightingale part?

Yeah, the dude doesn't stay in the cave =/

Ew. You could use the console command to complete that specific step that is bugged, and then maybe you can continue without "cheating". (Someone posted it earlier).

EDIT: Found this snippet from http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Console_Commands_(Skyrim)

"Setstage <id> - Used to set the quest stage (Useful for bugged quests), requires a unique ID code; questgiver e.g. mg (Mages Guild), tg (Thieves Guild), Quest number within its questline, followed by a number (Haven't quite worked out how the value is attributed to the objectives). Usage - setstage mg01 200."

If you could figure out what number (step) is bugged, then you would have minimal interference with the rest of the quest. I would suggest saving beforehand, in case you mess up and go too far in the quest and end up missing out on important stuff.

The whole "Follow Gulum-Ei" quest for the thieves guild was borked as well. I had to use YouTube and a console command to spawn the guy at the end of the cave passage.

The whole Thieves Guild seems a little buggy. I've stopped doing Shill jobs from Vex cause they never seem to acknowledge when I plant the evidence.