I play stealth characters almost exclusively. The real problem is that the Falmer, unlike most other humanoid enemies, use poison. So, if your followers go down on one knee, they will oftentimes die because the poison continues to take effect, armor or no. When you are a ranged character, and they start to detect you, and that follower of your's starts that suicide charge (you all know what I am talking about), there sometimes isn't a thing you can do to save them. Especially in a place like Blackreach.

There is a mod for improving followers that I use, and I love it. It allows you to poick up to three followers in one group, also use hoprses for all. It allows you to scan the statistics and skill values, so you can see where there strengths and weaknesses are and at what level they are and their armour rating. It allows to give them additional commands, and to tell them whether they should favour one or two handed weapons, two daggers, archery, magic plus sword, and so on. It also gives you a quick command to tell them that they should always equip best equipment/armour, you know that they often switch back to default when you entered a new cell in the game. You can also tell them to hand over all equipment in one rush. It is very good a mod.

If you do not use it, give orders to followers. When I was on default, I left them behind in dungeons, usually in halls or big crossroads with plenty of space. I then advanced alone and enaged in stealth attacks. If I was successful in mowing them all down, I went back and picked up my gal. If I was not so successful, I retreated while staying engaged, at the location where my gal was waiting, and when I had arrived there I possibly had shot down one or two enemies more. What was left then, my follower took care of, with plenty of space around so that I could stay behind her and take care of my own business as needed. The distance between you and the follower should be not too short, so that even when he/she starts to go on rampage still some time will go by before your battletankl appears on the scene.

Give them health potions, I can see that they sometime consume them - the inventory shows. I am not sure aboiut anti-poison, though, but I think I saw these disappearing from the inventory as well. But I am not sure. the important thing are health potions, it allows them to compensate poison effects.

The follower mod is one of these, cannot say right now which one, I have all three active:
- XCE - Xenius Character Enhancement
- Amazing Follower Tweaks
- General Fixes to Followers

the levelling mod is
- HigherLevelEnemies

These mods I use:

http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/3577/fsscr020u.jpg

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/1998/fsscr020l.jpg

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/6287/fsscr021.jpg

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/844/fsscr022.jpg

Well, no, you won't have any problems if you travel with a small army of followers. But, yes, I do miss giving meaningful commands to mine. I was hoping that something like the Companion Wheel from New Vegas would have made it's way into Skyrim, but no joy. :down:

Always tell them to wait at a dungeon entrance. They just cramp my style. Lot easier to sneak around. :yep:

Well, from some level on it does not matter whether you have a full gang, just one, or none. Even when monsters level up along with you.

I'm using UFO, altho I rarely have multiple followers it's worth it for the other stuff it does.

Like Sky's mod it lets followers ride horses when you ride (if a follower horse is available), lets you tell them to "train" which levels them up to your level (including their individual skill stats). It also gives complete control over their inventory, meaning you can remove their crappy default gear if you have something better to give them.

It also includes 4 commmands that work like Shouts and are added to the Shout menu - they let you order all followers to stop fighting, relax, wait, or... something else, I can't remember. The only one I really use is Stop Fighting, which is great if you are trying to get from one place to another and your follower hones in on some "threat" that you don't care about and would prefer to outrun.

I was doubtful when I first tried it because it seemed so complicated but I wouldn't do without some kind of follower mod now that gives me those or similar options.

I usually leave them at dungeon entrances. You see, I just like to have all that beauty around. :D At level 40 now and maximum gear, it does not make a difference whether I fight alone or with a group - no enemy has a chance anyway.

Well, it keeps coming back over time. A real PITA. Or does your mod supress this reliably now?

Ive stuffed up the marriage thing, i use that command 'divorce master' after downloading those bat command files and adding them into skyrim folder then ingame click on wife and type in divorce master and shes no longer your wife. That worked but now I cannot marry another i get as far as arranging the marriage in riften and how he says come back tomorrow but it never triggers to the marriage ceremony. :/\\!!

Yea i got sick of my old wife, she was a good cook and knew how to make money but she let me walk all over her, that was her weakness so she had to go. So im single and cruising the skyrim streets for another :rotfl2:

Yes, UFO allows access to their complete inventory, by allowing you to tell them that they could "dress better." Afterwards if you ask them to trade some things with you, everything they have will be there for you to manage, including their previously respawning and hidden "default" gear. If you take it from them it will never respawn unless you uninstall the mod.

There is still an issue with them sometimes equipping stuff that you give them to carry if it improves their armor or damage stats, or with equipping a basic version of an item when they have a custom improved one already in their inventory. But that's easy to manage, I mostly have them carry ingredients, books, and raw materials anyway. If I give them something and see them equip and I don't want that I just take the item back and give them something else (assuming I'm that desperate to unload some weight).

To be clear here: the mod I use, amongst others has an "always equip best" option and a "let me chose your equipment" option, and I also can take away the default gear. Hower, after some entrances into different cells of the Skyrim world (entering a building for exmaple, or a dungeon), they tend to respawn these default items. I then have to tell every follower to wear best equipement, and then they wear the one I gave them - until they enter a new cell next time and respawned default gear gets worn again. :/\\!!

Your mod reliably supresses default gear respawning?

:yep:

I've been using it on the last several playthroughs with many different followers, and yes. I have taken default armor and weapons away from them and given them better, and the default gear never respawns. From that point on they will only have what you have given them (or allowed them to keep) even if you dismiss them as followers.

All my housecarls are currently walking around my various homes dressed in fine clothes and boots, with a sword or axe hanging from their belts, as befits the devoted servant of an up and coming young noble. :O: Their "default" armor was removed by me, improved, and stored away in their rooms along with whatever bow and arrows and other traveling supplies I want them to have should I decide to take them along on an adventure someday.

From what I understand, when you invoke the "dress better" command their default inventory is removed completely, by which I mean they are no longer coded to have a default inventory at all. Everything is switched over to the inventory that you can see and trade with them. They still have the stuff they started out with, but you have access to it just like everything else and once you take it away it's gone unless you give it back.

That's why the mod has a special "in-game" uninstallation procedure - before you disable it, the default inventory for your followers has to be reset and returned to normal otherwise if you leave the game and take the mod out and reload you find your former followers walking around naked because they no longer have any default gear at all. The mod has to tell the game to start spawning/respawning it again before you remove the files that made it stop doing that.

Must try that. The game itself even respawns default when using the console command to remove all items. And when I give them two equipement sets, they often respawned the first one given even if the second one was better.

UFO, via Steam, or is it from an independant site and must be installed manually?

UFO,

as frau said a solid mod if you want to customize your followers without problems, use it myself too.

I've got it from skyrim nexus

HunterICX

:otried it this afternoon, but no joy.

I took all special equipment from by followers and stored it away, then dismissed them all from service. I then saved. I installed the new mod, and deactivated two other mods that are related to followers. I then went into tha game and recurited followers again. But the new additional commands did not do anything, and the one follower I forgot to skip before, could not be fired anymore. Also, I was missing some of the useful commands the other mod was giivng me, especially to tell followers in which way to fight. The "build camp" command also seemed to have gone, which is a nice one when using the frost mod.

I u-turned and returned to the old mods. My three babes are back, and despite that I need to tell them often to wear best armour, we all are a happy family again.

I had some issues getting it to work right the first time around as well.

It's best not to tinker with most other mods that affect followers after you've installed UFO, unless you also uninstall UFO (using the correct in-game procedures first) and then reinstall it after you've made the other desired changes. Many other follower mods also conflict with it, or must load with it in a particular order otherwise there will be conflicts. I ran into the same thing - commands didn't work, or followers could not be dismissed or reacquired. If that's what's happening then you've either got a mod conflict somewhere or something went wrong with the installation.

There is also a possible issue (from what I've read) about some launchers not loading mods in the order you designate every time, not sure about all the details. The UFO modder recommends that after installing it you launch the game the first time from the Steam launcher, after checking your Data Files there to make sure they are in the correct load order. You only have to go as far as the main menu screen then you can exit and after that just restart the game from your launcher of choice if it isn't the default Steam one.

Not sure where you got your copy of it but there's a great deal of info on compatibility, conflicts, load order requirements, and other possible installation issues at the Nexus page for it (which is where I got it).

Edit: if you forgot to dismiss someone before installing UFO that can definitely cause problems. I always check my follower count in the console to make sure it's at zero before saving and doing anything with UFO. If it's not zero I set it to zero.