Hey, everyone. Been playing the game for 50+ hours and loving it. There were a few glitches I had to work around early, but for the most part I've had a fairly smooth New Vegas experience. Not many glitches reloading an old save couldn't fix. This one might be a bit bigger, though.

I just got Lily as a companion. I like to sneak and snipe and am playing on hardcoe, but I heard her companion quest required her to take a lot of damage. As that's not likely to happen with my playstyle (unless we both die), I decided to carefully get her into a situation were it would trigger, then I could quickly eliminate the enemy and keep her from dying.

So, I send her at some cazadors and lie in wait. All goes as planned until afterwords when I notice that her HP is suddenly extremely low. I open up her companion wheel and use a stimpack, but instead of healing her, her health drops to -650+ and she drops dead. Crazy, right? So, I reload and try again. This time I constantly check her HP after the fight and find it's constantly dropping. She's been poisoned, something I never had a problem with before. It shows no signs of stopping so I try a stimpack again. Doesn't work. Dead Lily. I try yet again, this time putting an antivenom in her inventory but she doesn't use it. Even from full health, the venom takes her all the way down to zero and she dies.

Granted, this is avoidable: save before fighting cazadors (the cliff racers of New Vegas, I tell ya) and radscorpions, don't let your companions get hit. That said, a more fluid, less frustrating fix would really be a godsend. Any ideas?

EDIT: Just like to note, I've never had this problem before. Maybe a recent patch did it, as it's also been a while since I fought cazadors (thank god).

I don't play on Xbox, but I've seen at least a couple people now who've reported this issue on the PC. While companions have some poison resistance they could always be poisoned...however the stimpacks not working to stop it/stimpacks actually killing them should not happen, definitely a bug. No solutions Ive seen yet. You can try fast-traveling to another area and see if that resets the ability to use a stimpack, or save/reload for the same reason, but that's not much better than saving and reloading to avoid her becoming poisoned in the 1st place.

I've never seen them use anti-venom themselves, btw. Very occasionally they'll use stimpacks/food in their inventory when at low health, and they like buffout sometimes, but yeah...they don't use a lot of stuff in battle.

This is an issue I've been having as well. To save my companions I've been asking them to travel to the Lucky 38 (while they are poisoned), teleporting them there prevents venom from killing them (giving my companions antivenom has not been shown to work on my games). You can then use stimpacks to heal them at the Lucky 38 as they damage over time affect should be cleared. Slightly annoying but better than letting them die. This assuming that you have the latest patch (which you probably do as this issue is associated with it). Good luck.

Edited for clarity.

Thanks for the tips and input, guys. Decided to do a test after hearing that fast travel/dismissal works, and I found another temporary fix.

Did the same thing as before, only this time, I sprinted back to the entrance of the cave I was in before Lily could die, and viola, the venom effects ceased and I could use stimpacks properly. So basically, it seems any sort of travel stops the venom effects be it fast travel or simply entering or leaving an area. So, if it happens to anyone in the future, either fast travel to somewhere near by or find a building to duck into and that should keep your companions alive.

There's going to be situations where this is going to be either very annoying (if I'm just roaming the wastes) or impossible (if I'm really deep within a cave or building), but hopefully this should put a band-aid on it until it's properly fixed.