Dead Thrall



 is a Master-level Conjuration spell in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Casting it raises a dead body of most humanoid beings level 40 and under to fight alongside you. The thrall follows and defends its master until banished, killed, or turned. Unlike other reanimation spells, thralls that die will not turn to ash and can be raised again.

Spell Tome locations

 * Phinis Gestor sells this spell after the completion of the Conjuration Ritual Spell.

Equipment
Upgrading your thrall's equipment can increase their effectiveness.

Thralls will use any weapon you give them as long as it matches their proficiencies. For instance, mages will prefer to continue using their spells and wielding staves rather than equip powerful melee weapons. Most thralls, regardless of proficiencies, will also use shields you give them, provided they have a free hand available.

Thralls are much more picky about the armor and clothing they will wear, however.

Here are the details:


 * Thralls will only equip the clothing they spawned with. It must be the specific item, it cannot be a duplicate (e.g. if a thrall spawned with an Iron Helmet, it will only wear that Iron Helmet and will not equip any other Iron Helmets found in the game.) An exception is reanimated Forsworn who will use any Forsworn armor dropped by other Forsworn.
 * Thrall equipment can be improved. To do so, loot the desired gear from the thrall's corpse. Modify the gear as you wish through enchanting and smithing. Return the gear to the thrall's corpse and reanimate it. The thrall will equip the gear upon leaving the current cell.
 * Thrall gear can be reset by removing all their equipment, reanimating them, then moving to a different cell. They will generate a new set of equipment from the list of possible gear they can spawn with. Note that this gear can be different from what they previously had. This trick can be used to re-enchant thrall equipment, obtain better versions of leveled gear a thrall may have equipped, or duplicate rare equipment.


 * Thralls will not equip items in slots that were left empty when they generated their gear.
 * It is advised to rename thrall gear when enchanting it so you can more easily keep up with their unique equipment.
 * Any enchantments on the armor or clothing will interfere with and negate the Dark Souls perk. Consider whether enchanting a thralls equipment is worth the loss of the 100 health gained from that perk.
 * If the thrall dies after the first time it has equipped enchanted gear, when it is reanimated the enchantments will not take affect even though the thrall still has the gear equipped. To remedy this, every time your thrall dies make sure to loot enchanted gear and then give it back to them, allowing them to re-equip it.

Notable Thralls
This section lists thralls that have been deemed exceptional in some way by the community. The first three sections deal with thralls of different class and the final covers thralls that retain their vocal clips upon death. All thralls listed here are able to be thralled at any level unless otherwise noted. Some of the named NPCs listed have unique abilities while others are effective and easy to find.

Mages
These thralls will use destruction spells and readily wield staves you give them. Some will even conjure allies using their own spells.


 * Orchendor level 40 (100% magic resistance, teleportation spell, corpse never resets, 2 enchantable items)


 * Malkoran level 40 (55% magic resistance, spawns shade upon death, 1 enchantable item)


 * Kornalus level 40 (30% magic resistance, 1 enchantable item)


 * Sebastian Lort level 14 (25% magic resist, 1 enchantable item)


 * Vampires level 48* (50% frost resistance, 50% weaker to fire; affected by Necromage perk*, 1-2 enchantable items)
 * Master Vampires level 42* (50% frost resistance, 50% weaker to fire; affected by Necromage perk*, 1-2 enchantable items)


 * Master Necromancer  level 38 (30%-55% magic resistance, 1 enchantable item)


 * 

Melee
These thralls generally make good tanks and use melee weapons effectively. They will also use ranged weapons you give them when fighting at a distance.


 * Chief Ymarz (wears full set of enchantable Orcish armor)


 * Champion of Boethiah (wears Ebony Mail)


 * Northwatch Guard (wear full set of enchantable Glass armor)


 * Forsworn Ravager level 34  (wear full set of enchantable Forsworn armor, dual-wielding, 35% magic resistance)


 * Dremora Markynaz level 36 (retains vocal clips)


 * Bandit Chief level 24 (wear full set of enchantable Steel Plate armor)

Archer
These thralls most effectively use ranged weapons. They will switch to melee weapons in close quarters.


 * Northwatch Archer (wear full set of enchantable Glass armor)


 * Forsworn Ravager (wear full set of enchantable Forsworn Armor, 45% magic resistance)

Retain Vocal Clips
These thralls do not switch to the standard moans and groans of reanimated corpses. They instead continue to use the unique vocal clips they had in life.


 * Ancano


 * Cicero Level 40


 * Arondil


 * Velehk Sain Level 4


 * Skjor


 * Dremora Level 36

''*Vampires can be thralled above the level 40 cap of Dead Thrall if the Dragonborn has taken the Necromage perk found in the Restoration tree. This perk affects all spells that target vampires including Dead Thrall. With this perk all versions of vampires found in the game are thrallable except Volkihar Master Vampires (level 53). Of note are Volkihar Vampires (level 48) and Master Vampires (level 42), the two highest level natural candidates for thralls in the game.''

Useful console commands

 * openactorcontainer 1 - lets you place and take items without having to kill and resummon your thrall. Note it will not allow you to take their base equipment.
 * disable, enable - lets you reset their base items. Note they will lose what ever base items they had before even if you enchanted it.
 * resurrect - Revives the thrall and also resets their items to base.
 * player.moveto  - Teleport to your thrall's current location, useful for when they disappear after fast traveling. The ref id can be found by opening the console and clicking on your thrall.
 * prid , moveto player - Teleport the thrall to your current location.
 * tai - Shuts off their AI effectively freezing them in place.
 * resetai - Resets their ai. In conjunction with tai, this will allow you to stop them from fighting with your follower and other thralls.
 * getlevel - Checks the name and level of the creature.
 * dispelallspells - Dispells all non permanent active effects which includes dead thrall. Useful if you do not have any dead thralls but the active effect still persists.

Videos
A video showing the spell being cast can be found here.

Bugs

 * Loading certain areas may cause persistent and repeatable crashes to the desktop due to poor dead thrall pathing. If you experience CTD when loading a new area, try summoning short term summons, wait until they expire, then try loading again.
 * Casting any of the elemental cloaks on yourself will immedietly kill any active thralls.
 * While fast traveling, thralls may disappear from the game entirely. This can be fixed by loading a quick save and retrying (Note: Sometimes if they dissappear they will reappear much later when fast traveling if they weren't freed).


 * Waiting can sometimes cause missing thralls to reappear beside you.


 * Meridia's shrine can cause thralls to dissapear unless you kill them before placing her beacon at the shrine.
 * Thralls may dissapear and still show up in the Active Effects menu. Some solutions are to conjure other temporary allies, casting cloak spells, or changing into a Werewolf which will remove all Dead Thralls.
 * If you have two Dead Thralls that are of the same type (such as two Bandit Chiefs) then you will lose one when traveling between areas.
 * Thralls will lose the graphical reanimation aura upon leaving the cell in which they were reanimated.