I have that hunter girl with me from The Companions, and I gave her this shiny glass bow to use, but she still uses her cruddy old bow, even after taking it away from her! I have no idea where she keeps those stuff... but do companions not use the bows you give them? She uses the ebony sword and shield I gave her, even the tiara I bought that increases archery. I'm pretty sure it's the wooden hunter bow she uses. It doesn't look like the glass bow at all.

Aela uses the daedric bow I gave her. I had to take her original bow off her though. Try pick pocketing it off her rather than just taking it?

My companion uses a bow sometimes and melee sometimes. There's no hard-and-fast way to determine exactly when they'll do which one...and I guess that kinda makes sense. Companions aren't meant to be programmable bots that you control, they're followers that you can give some orders to.

You had to pickpocket it off of her? I guess I'll try... It probably won't be there though since I took it out of her inventory.

I didn't have to, but I've heard that's the way to get rid of their original clothing, so it might work for you too.

I had to take everything off of her, then give her the Daedric Bow to get her to use it. If I just gave it to her, she wouldn't use it. If I gave it to her and then took everything away she wouldn't use it either. And then she kept switching to her knife when I returned it to her, so I just decided she wasn't gonna have the option to melee...

I run with Jenassa, who uses her bow all the time, but I've never been able to get her to upgrade from her crappy longbow. It's frustrating, but I don't need her stealing all my kills, anyway.

I had this problem to. The way I found to fix it was to give them a lot of arrows, my companion has over 200. Also only give then a dagger for backup weapon and no sheild. All most all of the time uses ranged attacks with the good bow I gave them. Never the starting bow they had.

Naga Cey = Death Shadow

Faendal has used stupid armor for me on occasion...yeah, Faendal, it gives you a few more health points, but you know, yours regenerate really quickly, anyway, and the other set has nearly double the armor rating. So...hello? He did use the bow I gave him, though (well, once I remembered to give him arrows, ahem)--the one from a certain quest that looks freaking awesome.

Quest source:


Magicka-reducing bow. Not useful on most things we encounter, but truly gorgeous. He finally ran down the charge, which I didn't think they could do, and took to using the elven I made.

Noticed this also. Seems companions refrain from using really good bows. They use lower versions fine but if you give them really good ones, they just use their default items which you can't take away anyway since they don't appear in their inventory.