Follower (Skyrim)



Followers are companions who will fight for the player after the player earns their trust. They will travel with, battle for, and carry items for The Dragonborn.

A subclass of followers is non-humanoid followers (Dogs). These followers can neither carry nor equip items. The interaction with these followers is also limited to the wait/follow commands and dismissal.

You can only have one humanoid follower with you at a time, but in most cases there is no penalty for dismissing a follower and then re-recruiting them later. In addition, you can also have one non-humanoid follower with you at the same time.

In addition, it is possible to have a follower, a dog, the Horse Shadowmere, and the Spectral Assasin all in your party at the same time.

Some followers can also train skills for a certain amount of gold.

Follower Death
Fortunately for your followers, enemy combatants will tend to ignore them once their health is depleted. You can recognize this condition as your follower will drop to one knee, unmoving, for a short period of time. Once they have regenerated a sufficient amount of health, they will stand and rejoin you. This does not mean that they cannot die by physical attacks from NPC's. In some cases, especially when left no other target, NPC's will continue to attack a follower until death. In addition, in that near-death state, a follower is in danger of dying by being hit with an area of effect (AoE) spell or attack. To avoid follower death in this scenario, the best course of action to take is to lead attackers away from the area where your follower is trying to recover.

Other ways followers can die include:


 * Being killed by the player


 * Falling


 * Poison


 * Traps

CHEAT - Immortal Followers (PC version only)
Followers can be set to never die via Console Commands. From then on the follower will continue to kneel when health drops to zero but never die.
 * 1) Open the ' for console commands.
 * 2) Select the follower then type:
 * 3) setessential 1

Follower Commands


Permanent followers can be given Commands. Initiate conversation (outside of combat), and tell them you have something you want them to do. They can :


 * Attack another NPC or creature;
 * Wait at a given location (or just simply wait);
 * Use an object (that player can use too),
 * Open a locked door or container;
 * Pick up individual items or take everything from containers;
 * Sleep in a bed;
 * Sit on chairs and benches;
 * Leave your service.

If a follower is asked to perform an illegal activity, any bounty acquired does not affect the player.

If told to wait, a follower will wait for about 3 days before they get tired and leave the player. They will then return to their home, or the location you found them on their own.

Inventory and Equipment
Followers can be commanded to pick up items even when they are at their carry limit and their movement rate will not be reduced.

Although the player can command a follower to pick up any piece of equipment, giving them the same piece of equipment (trading in conversation menu) has a different result, since your follower might use that particular piece of equipment if it has higher stats (i.e. you can give Glass Battleaxe, Ebony Armor, Steel Plate Helmet, shield and Grimsever to Mjoll the Lioness and she will use them -- she specializes in two-handed weapons, heavy armor, archery and block, but she is also proficient in one-handed weapons).



Followers always equip the best possible weapons or apparel given to them. More specifically, the weapon with the highest damage value and the pieces of apparel with the highest armor value are equipped. Followers will not use equipment that is the same as their starting equipment unless it has been improved using smithing or enchantments.

Therefore, sometimes followers refuse to equip an item you gave him/her (like in the above example: Mjoll the Lioness prefers two-handed weapons over one-handed, but the player can give her a sword and a shield). The player can start trade, take an old item from your follower (to prevent him/her using that piece of equipment) and then drop it (by yourself), in order to exchange it with a newer/better piece of equipment.

Followers will retain their inventories after the player dismisses them. In this way, it is possible to use them for limited storage, as long as the player does not lose access to them somehow by turning them against the player. If they are killed the player can loot the stored items off the body.

Effect dismissing has on equipment
If the player sends their follower away (dismiss) and later the player decides to recruit him/her again, the player might find him/her using old equipment... The player can fix this by either leaving the area, or by simply taking away any piece of equipment from them, which will in turn "reset" them, causing them to equip their best available equipment. If the player chooses to “reset” their follower, he/she will use new/better equipment again.

Placing just a single arrow in a follower's inventory will give them an infinite supply of that type of arrow (assuming the follower has a bow), so it's a good idea to keep them equipped with one of the best arrows the player has. It can backfire against stronger enemies that use bows, as this can immediately cause the enemy to equip the one high-end arrow that landed on their body and shoot it back with an infinite supply.

Multiple Followers
Read the main article Multiple Followers.

Followers are said to be limited to one at a time but there are several ways to exploit this limit. Quest characters triggered to follow you, the Dark Brotherhood Initiate, summoning more than one Atronach, and mods on the make it possible to build a small army.

Housecarls
Housecarls are essentially bodyguards who protect nobility and important people from threats. Becoming the Thane of a Hold will grant the player a personal housecarl. All avaliable housecarls are Nord warriors.

Faction Followers
Completing certain quests for a faction will grant the player access to followers from that faction.

Merceneries
Mercenaries are typically found in taverns across Skyrim. They cost 500 to hire for any length of time. Dismissing a mercenary will send them back to the tavern they were hired from and to re-hire them will cost another 500.

Quest Reward Followers
These followers typically have a quest attached to them and it must be completed in order to gain them as a follower.

Misc Followers
These followers have no specific quest attached to them. Gaining them as a follower is a trivial affair.

Animals
Animal followers can be used alongside any humanoid follower, this means you can have one human and one dog follower simultaneously and Barbas for a total of 2 animals.

Barbas does not count as a true follower since he is tied to his quest but unlike other quest forced companions (Farkas) your current animal follower will not be dismissed. Animal followers cannot be given items and thus cannot use equipment. As animal followers die with any killing stroke, they are not recommended late-game nor for use with powerful melee players, as a single attack from a high-level well-equipped player will result in the immediate death of your animal follower.

Followers who are Trainers
Some potential followers are also Trainers, who can train the player in particular combat skills, allowing him or her to increase the skill level for those skills. The training is not free, but once these trainers become the player's followers, he or she may may receive training without any permanent cost this way: If the player asks a follower to train him or her in a particular skill, after receiving the training, he or she may access the trainer's inventory and recover the spent gold. The following followers are also trainers. (Note: All but Faendal are Companions who require the player to significantly advanced the Companions quest-line before they become recruitable as followers.)
 * Aela the Huntress, Archery expert trainer (trains to level 75)
 * Athis, One-Handed expert trainer (trains to level 75)
 * Faendal, Archery adept trainer (trains to level 50)
 * Farkas, Heavy Armor master trainer (trains to level 90)
 * Njada Stonearm, Block expert trainer (trains to level 75)
 * Vilkas, Two-Handed master trainer (trains to level 90)

Bugs

 * Some Companions are glitched in such a way that they will not use any bow other than their default bow, regardless of the quality of any bow the player might provide them with. Some Companions will only use a "Heavy" bow i.e. dwarven, ebony, daedric. Others wll only use a "Light" bow i.e. glass, or elven. Armor type seems to dictate bow type.
 * Followers can be commanded to pick up items off the ground or from unlocked container that would otherwise exceed their carry capacity and continue to move normally. In this way, followers can carry an "infinite" amount of loot. All items picked up this way will be marked as stolen item however.
 * Followers can get stuck on terrain. In some cases it is possible to free them by using any knockback effect.
 * It may be impossible to get to where the Follower is stuck. In this case the console command TCL can be used to turn off collision and position the player. Press the tilde (~) key to open the console, type TCL, press the tilde key to close the console. Reverse the process to turn collision back on.
 * In some areas, when you go through a door your follower will spawn from a different door in the same area. Meaning, if there is more than one door to enter somewhere, your follower may enter from a different door than you. This can cause serious problems, especially due to the fact they can get into a fight and you may not be able to get to them.
 * If you give most followers Blades armor before you ask Delphine, to make the follower (if applicable) a member of the Blades, they will not recieve any of the Blades armor, therefore they do not recieve a free set of armor that replaces their natural armor(s).
 * When trespassing in an area, your follower will act like owners of the trespassing area, this means that you cannot open dialog with them (they instead use a generic "You're not supposed to be in here" line for their gender and race), so you cannot perform any actions with them.
 * If selecting them from a distance so the dialogue menu won't show up, you will be able to command them to take, steal, etc., but still will not be able to trade with them since this requires bringing up the dialogue menu.
 * At some point after the quest A Blade In The Dark, potential followers might comment on you having someone with you if you ask them to follow, despite having no one with you no matter where you go or how often you reload a recent save.
 * Dismissing and rehiring Followers can result in their default starting equipment being added again every time you rehire them. Much of this equipment may not be displayed in their invetory. As a result your Follower's carry capacity will diminish every time you rehire them since this default equipment has weight. The speed at which your Followers will ultimately reach an effective zero carry capacity is effected by the weight of their starting equipment and the number of times you rehire them.
 * It is possible to have a wolf as a follower, but this is a very rare occurance. When faced with a wolf it will most likely attack you but it would run up to you and not attack you. One reason this glitch is hard to find is because most people attack the wolf not knowing it is friendly. Even though the wolf is friendly guards and allies will attack it as if it were hostile.
 * If you have a bounty in every region of Skyrim, followers will keep coming up and talking to you over and over and over as if they were guards pulling you over. During this time, if you ask them to be your follower, and then proceed to immediately kill them, then you will NEVER be able to have another follower, because the game still thinks he is following you. There is not a known way out of this glitch.