Baldur's Gate 3: Shadowheart not following - fix 'Companions not following' issues in BG3

Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 4 launched yesterday, introducing color-blind mode and more than 1,000 fixes and improvements. However, ever since, some players have been experiencing issues with Shadowheart (and other Companions) not following their party.

Companions not following is not a new problem in Baldur's Gate 3, but there seems to be a resurgence in player reports about the issue after Patch 4 dropped. The issue could be due to several reasons, so here are some tips on how to solve it.

Why Is Shadowheart (or another Companion) not following in BG3?

Companions in BG3 may stop following you due to one of the following reasons:

• Party Split feature - the game lets you separate members from your party, and then they'd stop following; you may not know about this feature, but it's very easy to trigger it accidentally by dragging the portrait of a Companion away from the rest of  the party
• Alignment conflict - every Companion has a certain alignment, which may come into conflict with the decisions you make throughout the campaign, which may, in rare cases, lead to a Companion either abandoning your party or not following you.
• Patch 4 issue - some players have reported that Shadowheart (and other Companions) have stopped following them for no apparent reason after installing Patch 4 on PC.

How to fix 'Companion not following' issues in BG3?

Regardless of what's causing the problem and which Companion is affected, there are a couple of things you can do to fix the problem.

The first and most basic thing you can try is to regroup your party. To do this on PC, just drag your character's portrait over the stray Companion's portrait on the left-hand side of the screen. On PS5 (or with a controller on PC), you press L2 (LT) and then triangle (Y) to group. This should normally fix your problem.

If you still have the 'Companion not following' issue, especially after updating to BG3's Patch 4, you should do a quicksave and quickload to fix it. To do a quicksave, press F5 on PC, or with a controller, pause the game and press Y (triangle on PS5). To quickload the game, press F8 on PC, or A (X on PS5) on your controller while in the pause menu.

The quicksave/quickload method will most likely solve the problem, and you'll have any stray Companions follow your party again after the quickload.

Other BG3 players have reported that making a new regular save and than reloading from there also fixes the issue, but that does not seem to work for everyone.

Now that you have your party regrouped, you may want to check some general Baldur’s Gate 3 tips, a guide on Hirelings in BG3 or our complete list of all Companions in BG3 and how to recruit them.