I'm asking, has anyone actually managed to recruit any of the random encounter merchants and actually manage to have them remain at the settlements?

Recently, I encountered the scribe and recruited him for the Castle. However, upon waiting and then fast travelling, he had disappeared and was no where in the Castle despite the game saying he was there in the population counter.

Furthermore, when I sent him to a nearby settlement of greentop, it looked like he would stay there. However, doing anything like waiting or leaving the area would mean he would disappear yet again. Even creating a store for him there would result in him straight up disappearing.

Does anyone else experience this? If so, is there a fix. I am on console so PC fixes won't work.

Should I reload before even meeting him until this gets fixed? Should I just accept the Scribe is disappeared when I sent him to the Castle until it gets fixed? What should I do?

I wouldn't let it hold up your playthrough. The game is ultra dynamic and super unpredictable because of it. If you can go back to a save and try various other actions to avoid the issue, i don't see anything wrong with that but if it's before they spawn don't count on a random encounter occurring again in the same place at the same time. there are lots of other traders too and they are not necessarily any better than the traders you can count on being where they always are. Not to mention you can turn any settler into a trader by setting up a booth.

I had the same problem with the vault 81 traveling merchant. I told her to go to Covenant. Over a dozen hours have passed IRL and I've never seen her again.

For a second I thought you were talking about this guy.


https://i.ytimg.com/vi/T9l_XYNYczI/maxresdefault.jpg

I've heard of there being some kind of glitch where apparently the merchant's ID is locked to that specific cell and thus when they leave that cell, instead of going where you ordered them to, they apparently get returned to the cell where the random encounter characters are kept.

Thus, I'm guessing the merchants return to the random encounter storage cell instead of going where they are supposed to go. Hopefully a patch means that they'll return to the settlement as I'd like to get t4 items

"Whadaya buyin'? Whadaya sellin'?"

Is this even the case with fixed characters? Because the V81 lady is found in a fixed location, but leaves shortly after you arrive. I'm not sure where she goes if you don't talk to her and assign her a settlement, but then again, I don't know where she goes if you do assign her one either.

You're probably right. Them disappearing to a storage cell would explain their complete absence from the game world. A shame. I liked the idea of a vault dweller living in one of my towns. Would've made for a nice unique character.

Had one, never turned up.

So nobody else has managed to get the Scribe into one of their settlements?

The only person I managed to get to my settlement was mr yellow hat in goodneighbor. And the only reason he showed up was I walked him all the way to my settlement. Past him I have never had anyone else show up ive recruited. I think it's broken and needs a patch badly.