Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-187.22.238.221-20150810184156/@comment-1918232-20150813015444

For the early game, Faendal is one of the best followers and very under rated imo.

He is exploitable with Archery training (to archery level 50, can also use him to level Pickpocket), one of the fastest followers you can get after the Tutorial (I didn't say one of the first as tehre are others you can get at the same point in the story, but take longer real time to get) and rarely gets in your way as he is an archer.

You can get Uthgerd the Unbroken a little later and she has better equipment. If you have access to better equipment might as well stay with Faendal, if not then you can exploit Uthgerd and get her killed to take her equipment for yourself.