If I am exploring a dungeon and a quest items is located there, but I am not doing the quest, can I find the item?

If so, does the item just stay in my inventory till I randomly run into the quest giver?

I guess I am just worried about breaking some good quests.

There are only about 35 Dungeons that are tied to quests, some have items, some you just have to show up to trigger the quest

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dungeon_Quests

Most quest items will not leave your inventory until you have done the quest. Some won't ever leave, quest items have no weight penalty. So, if you pick up a quest item, it will stay with you. Most quest items have a unique name, so that helps.

Now, the game will randomly assign a dungeon for the Radiant Quests that are offered. So, make sure you save before asking for any of those, in case you don't' want to go to a particular place.

So if I randomly enter a dungeon that is tied to a quest the item will be there?

That I can remember, don't pick up any musical instruments that belong to someone and don't discover someone's body (forgot the name) without talking to the wife first. But those were fixed, were they?

That is why I am asking. I found a music instrument with someones name. I assume that quest is broken now.

See, those are the bugs everyone should avoid. Never pick up those instruments with a name, and books.

That is what I was afraid of.

So if I find some dungeon and come across a named item I can't pick it up. But if I do the quest later and I am stronger the dungeon will be scaled to my previous level when I entered it.

Won't the dungeon be too easy now?

Are you on PC? If so, there are quest fixes/patches available. Otherwise, I can't recall if taking those instruments has too great an impact...the rewards aren't overly flash in most cases anyway.

Quite a few of the quest related dungeons/locations will let you go through them, but will block you from the actual quest area - not all the dungeons do this though, which makes me think that they had a couple of design teams working on their dungeons - whoever worked on the quest locked ones should be used permanently, as that was a sensible and workable solution.

I am on a ps3. Yes, locking them does make sense. I guess I will just have to take my chances because I only use magic items I find.