Vilja refuses summons

[jgf]

We are in Aleswell cottage, Vilja puttering around in relax mode while I make potions. Early afternoon I'm ready to leave for Bravil (to meet the ghost south of town at 8PM), but where is Vilja? Found her outside, painting; decided to leave her there and do this simple task solo. About 5PM I summon Vilja, only to get a message, "Vilja cannot be summoned now". I try again every couple of hours, even while following the ghost, til finally going to bed at midnight; each time garnering the same response. The next morning I try again (about 8AM) and still get that message.

So I save, exit, and search online with a "WTF" attitude; found nothing. Back in the game I return to Aleswell, and there is Vilja meandering around the dining room, she runs up and gives me the "you didn't tell me you were going" lecture; I tell her "let's go", and all has been well since. So why wouldn't she respond to the summons?

[jgf]

Resurrecting this.

Different game, different character. Level 10, 60 game days in; reached the quest point where Vilja poisons herself (as an aside, it would be nice, and more realistic, if, after this conversation, Vilja warped home to recuperate instead of staying where ever you happen to be). This was on the 3rd of the month game time, I continued my exploration/mapping and returned for Vilja on the 12th; she runs up and gives me the "...where have you been..." speech, then we return to Aleswell ...where she doubles over and tells me the poison cure worked but she still needs time to rest (she just had nine days to rest). We sleep, next morning there are no dialog options for "wait", "relax", or "let's go", but she follows me as I leave for more exploration, chatting normally; after a few hours I look back and she is not there, I wander a bit, thinking she's perhaps taking a circuitous route to get to me, then walk a considerable distance so she will warp to me ...but I've not seen her since. Went to Imperial City and summoned her, only to get the message, "Vilja can not be summoned right now", returned to Aleswell and slept, tried summoning the next morning only to get the same message. Read elsewhere to set Vilja's quest as the active one and follow the green arrow to her, tried that ... no green arrow. It is now the 27th of the month, two weeks since I last saw Vilja; no idea where she is and still get the same message when trying to summon her (every morning, every evening).

Hopefully I do not have to bail this game (as I did the game where Runar wouldn't reappear) since I've just finished all the grinding drudge work of a new character and now ready to start some serious dungeon diving.

[valandril]

When Vilja is resting after the poison cure, IIRC you have to speak to her every so often to continue her healing process, so to speak. I asked about this (because I thought it was bugged out) a while back, will look through my post history and see if I can find the post. AFAIK she should not follow or interact with you at all during that point, other than the quick bit of dialogue when you talk to her and she says she still feels bad and needs to rest.

[valandril]

Okay, this was the thread I made about that emmates.proboards.com/thread/1141/spoilers-question-stages-viljas-quest?page=2 (linking to P2 as it has Emma's answer, posted via Colin) where Emma's response was:

The thing is that after you have given her the cure, you simply need to talk to her a couple of times with some game hours in between, and then she is fine. If you leave her for say 3 weeks ingame time, you *still* have to talk to her the same number of times before she recovers (at the time when I did this quest, I thought it would be the best way to do this; retrospectively I should have done it differently).

It sounds like you've played quite a bit past this point and Vilja is now missing, have you tried looking where she was when she first took the cure poison potion? It sounds like something went awry if she was following you at that point, though. I'd suggest reloading to a save before she took the potion and trying again - I assume it was a vanilla, shop-bought cure poison potion?

[jgf]

Thanks for the info. In the past Vilja has poisoned herself in relatively convenient locations, so I go about my business and periodically return (with an "Are you ready to continue yet?" attitude), usually five or six days is all it takes. This time we were forty miles from nowhere (a bandit camp in the far west of the map), so I figured I'd just spend a week grinding then return for her. When I did she followed me back to Aleswell, we spent the night, and the next day were mapping that swampy area south of Cheydinhall when I noticed I'd heard nothing from her for several minutes, looked around and she was gone. Played another three weeks with no sign of her, but never thought to return to that bandit camp, and had no idea periodic interaction was required (thought after five or six days she was cured); but as I was only lvl 14 I just restarted that character.

FWIW, it was a store bought potion (Vilja makes a point of telling you that); in fact, having been accompanied by Vilja for a couple of years now I keep the first such potion I find, along with a couple of sweetrolls, a couple of bottles of mead, and a certain book she asks for.