Made two Daedric bows. One for me and one for my long time companion/follower Lydia. I have her in nice armor but this was the first time I had given her any new weapon other than new arrows. The problem is, every time I see her using a bow, it's her garbage bow that she starts with. I'll look into her inventory and the Daedric bow is unequipped. Is there any way to make her use the good bow?

Normally mine would take the best bow avaliable that i gave her... can't you just take away her older bow? Or maybe she despises the Daedric

It's because she knows you're a horrible craft and that bow will probably blow up and scratch her in the eye as soon as she attempts to use it.

Well, that or the companions are horribly coded. Pick one.

Lol. I'm hoping it's the second one... but it's probably the first one.

im having issues with her using the right bow also, it seems totally random, one time she uses the stronger one, other times its the crap one. the problem might be related to giving her items (any items to carry) but i havent been able to confirm this yet

I honestly want to rip that stupid bow out of her hand and hit her over the head with it

She uses it at the worst times possible too bad they gave her a default one I can't take away from her.

I have the Huntress as my companion and she will use only the hunting bow, but she will use the sword I give her.

I am having the same issue with the Huntress as well. I even took away her old hunting bow, she only has a crafted glass bow in her inventory I gave her, yet she will magically summon a useless bow and use that one instead of the glass bow... Sure would be nice if they actually created an proper inventory/equipment system for followers.

This seems to be a problem with all followers; they'll use the most powerful arrows you give them but they won't use a bow

I don't know why we can't take away their default stuff. I wish that we could, honestly. Mods will probably open this up soon enough, but bethesda could just patch that in as well. If I want Lydia to wear armor that's WORSE than her default, or even nothing at all, I should be able to do that. Let me take her stuff!

They come with default weapons and armour that you can't see in their inventory so you can never actually take them off them (unless you're using some sort of console command cheat I guess)

I find it funny that she switches to that bow pretty much whenever my character decides to use a hand weapon and uses a sword when my character equips a bow. I guess Lydia's just contrarian!

Really? For me it's they will use the bow, but not the arrows.

Mine used all Dwarven armor/weapon pieces I gave her including a sword and a bow, but she doesn't want to use a stock Ebony Bow. I remember companions to have some kind of preference system when they decide which weapon to use and the only difference between the ebony and dwarven one is it's not upgraded, so I will try it once I get an Ebony Ingot (she uses ebony arrows just fine), unless someone here already tried.

This has been an inherent flaw with the follower system in pretty much all of Bathesday's open-rpgs... I figured a new engine may help them be a bit more flexible and less messy with their follower system... Too often they select random gear that makes no sense. I used the dark elf merc in the drunken huntsman for a good while, she would always use the armor and 2 daggers I gave her, but never the bow I made for her, she would always draw a useless bow that was not in her inventory but made use of ebony arrows... I am having the EXACT same problem with the huntress; she will use melee weapons, armor and arrows but for some reason is afraid to touch the glass bow...

Here is the temp fix I have found out after some testing:

- If you give her a good bow (Elven, Glass, Ebony etc.) which should definitely be an upgrade for her she will only use it for 12 shots (her hidden quiver of Iron Arrows is 12.) then she will put it away and start fighting with melee weapons/fists.

- If you give her a good bow and good arrows too, she will refuse to use them together, instead she will only use the good arrows with her default Hunter's Bow.

-If you take away all weapons from her and send her home and then get her back and give your good bow to her again, her hidden quiver of 12 Iron Arrows will refill and she will use the good bow again for 12 shots. You may only need to send her back not taking away to bow and her hidden quiver may still reset. I have not tested this.

TLDR: So currently she will either use good arrows you gave her with her default Hunter's bow or she will use a good bow you want her to use but only when you supply her with Iron Arrows.

- Currently the only way to make her use the good bow you want to give her consistently is to supply her with Iron Arrows (this is because her default hidden quiver consists of Iron Arrows as well). This way she will use the stack of Iron Arrows along with the good bow you gave her as long as the stack lasts.

- I Also noticed that if she gets shot by better quality arrows, the arrow will be put into her inventory (same way if you shoot a mob with your arrows, some of them can be found on their corpse upon looting) and she will immediately switch back to her Hunter's Bow as long as the better quality arrow remains in her inventory. Also I noticed that she will never run out of arrows that got shot into her inventory by enemies. If you want her to use the good bow, you will have to manually remove the 1 piece of better quality arrow from her inventory between fights.

- This bug seems to be appearing on all the Followers

Lol. I actually noticed the same today. Lydia will use the default bow even though I've handed her a better one.

On a similar note. I thought I'd let her take care of a pack of wolves as I couldn't be arsed to get off my horse. To my surprise I noticed she was wielding a staff (which summons a wolf) with her default shield. All she did was shield bashing the wolves. She also wear a great hammer. It ended with me getting off my horse, and the actual horse finishing off the pack.

@Cruni

Cheers for the explanation. This needs a fix

Please fix this

As addition to my post above which I'm no longer able to edit:

- It appears that I cannot make them use Daedric Bow at all. I have tried giving them all kinds of arrows but none of them worked. Ebony Bow still does work when you supply them with Iron Arrows and no other kind of arrow is present in their inventory.

This happens with Mjoll, too, so I would guess the same is true for the rest of the followers. I'd have to test it to be sure, but I just have this feeling....

Okaaay, that's bizarre. I wondered why she wasn't using the Orcish Bow I gave her, yet she's happy enough to swing around a Dwarven Sword and Shield. I gave here a whole bunch of Steel Arrows, too. Maybe I'll take them off her and see what happens!

When I made Whiterun Thane and she joined me, I was pretty excited. I though cool, my dudes got a friend, a warrior-woman to follow him round. Excitement has turned to disappointment at the bad pathing, frequent disappearance, frequent running-in-front-of-my-two-handed-fireball and complete lack of equipment control.

Come on Bethesda...I know you can do better! You claimed to take notice of some of the mods people had made, why doesn't it show? On this as well as other things.

Do the following.


Open console target lydia

type: "removeitem 10e2dd 1" thats her bow and when item is 0.0 she wont have that lousy default bow anymore and start using your bow.

to view her equipment type showinventory use page up and down to scroll.

If you dismiss her she might get her default gear back and you will have to repeat the command when telling her to come with you.

If you cant find her type: help lydia 0 and you will have her id then do player.placeatme "lydias id" she will then magically appear at your spot.