it will work with un-named thralls as well as long as you know their reference id.

i have no idea but i wouldnt be suprised if they could benefit from 100% magic resistance- though it is impossible to enchant this because ive yet to find npcs who wear unenchanted rings/amulets. the best so far was enchanting magic resistance on mele thrall shields.
as for damage resistance , magic absorption, elemental resistance someone would have to test it.

You can summon any Thrall with the "moveto player" command. You just have to note down their reference ids. So named or somewise don't factor for this. The missing Thralls issue is restricted to x360 and ps3 users. (or lazy PC users like me)

As for armor capping, it should be same rule for the Followers and Thralls. Thrall Lydia in her Legendary Ebony set should have far exceeded 100% damage reduction if not capped. But Thrall Lydia was not immortal nor significantly harder to kill than Lydia.

As for Magic Resist, no idea, but it should be testable on Thrall followers.

Okay, guys... I'm getting a better handle on this now. As you might have guessed, this is more unknown territory for me (like Alchemy), as I don't use followers.

-Loth

PS Can you think of anything else I should add to my list concerning this subject? I gather that you have thralled NPCs who have probably hit the armor cap... what's the best MR you've been able to achieve (besides Orchendor, of course)? I think that it's safe to say that the right DW thralls can absolutely pwn just about anything, so the damage aspect of crafting for them is sorta a moot point. I'd like to know how good the defense can get for followers when the player steps in and helps kit them out. For example, what's the average AR for a forsworn ravager you've decked out in enchants? You know... that sort of thing. It always looks better when we can post up numbers (even roundabout ones) to back up our assertions.

Also, stuff like what's your favorite enchant build for forsworn or vampire thralls? Do you notice any effective difference from giving caster thralls fortify destruction gear x2?

yep just tack in the ID for whoever and bingo. Well with console sorcery you can technically bring in non-named enemies of the type you want as well. (spawn then click then kill)

It looks like I have to add the console command for followers/thralls summoning to the list. It's just too damn handy.

[ref ID].moveto player

This is correct, yes? The placeatme command is for spawning non-named NPCs, I assume.
-Loth

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console#Targeted_Commands

scroll down to the "moveto" entry for both methods (plyer moving to object and object movign to player.)

moveto player [ref ID] It looks like.

Also note the "placeatme" command for spawning non-named NPC's to be killed and thralled.

Thanks, Andaius.

prid [ref ID]
moveto player

Got it.
-Loth

Edit: Removed after comprehensive in-game testing invalidates some of the statements here.

Early posts regarding NPC wars test results are still valid.

Ok some numbers. I made some legendary iron armor, Lydia's total armor is 837. I enchanted +33 Fortify Heavry Armor and +54 Fortify One Handed on gloves, she now has 1002 total armor. I killed and Thrall Lydia. Her total armor drops back to 837! So Fortify Heavy Armor enchantment does NOT work with Thralls.

Health enchantments does not work as well. Unmodified, Lydia at 50 level has 671 Hp. Equipping an armor enchanted with +83 Hp, she has a total of 754 Hp. Thralled, she has a total of 771 Hp due to Dark Souls perk.

Magic Resist does not work as well. As a follower, she uses her shield, amulet and ring to achieve 125 magic resist. All magic attacks are resisted. Apparently followers can exceed the magic resist cap. When I attacked her, for unknown reasons she switches to her default shield, thus reducing her magic resist to 66. When killed and thralled, her magic resist drops to 0 although her necklace and rings are still equipped.

Hence my conclusions are thus, only enchantments that count are those on the weapon. You can leave the rest of your thrall's gear unenchanted, it does not matter. Smith is the most important factor here. In light of this, it appears follower Thralls are not significantly more powerful at all as their difference is now only health.

More numbers:

Forsworns are considered Bretons. They actually come with basic 25% magic resist. Couple with ability to wear all 4 pieces of armor, Ravagers are ideal Thralls. However their HP is on the lower side at 547 after Darksouls bonus. Not using necromage/vampire combo, their total armor is 426.

Ravagers will equip Ebony Swords when given. However they will not duel wield two Ebony Swords for unknown reasons. The best they will do is one ebony and one forsworn sword.

When equipped with Ebony and Forsworn Sword with 81 fire and frost, their battle record is defeating two Dragur Death Overlord with 140 average health remaining over 3 tries.

When equipped with Ebony and Forsworn Sword with 29 absorb health and 33 absorb stamina, their battle record is defeating three Dragur Death Overlord with near full health remaining over 3 tries. Four Dragur Death Overlord killed them too fast and straggered them too much to win.

Conclusion: Chain dual power attacks using absorb stamina weapons work just as well for Thralls and Followers as it does for the Dragonborn.

Update: When two helmets and necromage/vampire smithing is used. Ravagers get 645 armor and massive damage. They can now solo 15 Draugr Death Overlords and emerge with full health when using Absorb Health and Absorb Stamina weapons.

When tested against two-handed bandit chief, they didn't fair quite that well due to the straggle. For 5 chiefs, the chiefs were crushed within 5 seconds but against 10 chiefs, Ravager took out only 3 before dying.

On master mode, the Ravagers appears to be able to kill a fully armor and resist capped dragonborn with 700 health with a single power attack (or 1/3 of the dual power attack). It wasn't easy to test that but I just spam like 3 ultimate potions per second and suddenly I will be dead when he does a 360 backhand slash.

More awesome posts, wtflag!

This is exactly the kind of stuff that I wanted to post in the Guide... assertions backed up by testing are always better, because we've discovered over the past couple of months that there are a lot of things about Skyrim mechanics that don't make sense.


I wonder how many other players of this great game know about these things? Thralling a follower is pretty much a gimp if it negates their enchanted armor bonuses... why does this happen? It's weird, man!
-Loth

Do fortify damage enchantment work with thralls, what about fortify cost reduction for schools of magic.

There is no easy way to test those. By observation, Thrall Ravagers are not visibly more powerful with two Fortify One-handed Enchantment as compared to without. Going by the trend, chances are high that neither will work.

I can easily test that when i have time.

I have thoroughly tested fortify destrution (sum=100%) and the stupid cat(j'zargo) still does nothing but sparks before somehow running out of mana.

I would like to see chief yamarz mano-e-mano a bikini clad ravager. one thing about shield thralls is that they tend to block way too often even if the enemy is relatively weak and/or poses no real threat.

True, blocking actually makes them weaker. That's why I prefer duel wielding Thralls.

It requires a lot of work to set up that fight.
1. Get a Ravager Thrall with upgraded equipment.
2. Spawn a Yamarz. Kill, take and upgrade all his stuff. Enchant only the weapon.
3. Spawn another Yamarz. Select him in console and use "removeallitems" command. Then "modav health 1300" to mimic effects of Dark Souls.
4. Reverse pickpocket all the upgraded stuff into him.
5. Stand back and dual cast Frenzy on Yamarz.

Ah... the plot thickens...

This is proof that NPC combat actions are semi-random/scripted, and do not take actual magicka values into account

OR

Fortify Destruction enchants on followers do not work.

Keep it coming, guys... this is brand-new game mechanics info (as far as I know), and has real relevance on what kind of smart decisions you can make for your kitting your followers. Very big ups to lendial and wtflag for unearthing all of this and sharing!
-Loth

Edit: LOL, I wonder how long it will take before this follower/thrall stuff shows up in the UESP wiki? Do they even know that followers have no MR cap? I saw that they have a list there of what enchants work for them, and the list is kinda small. Only a couple of followers can benefit from fort destro gear, it seems.

why do you have to do all that for yamarz, are you implying enchants dont work unless you reverse pickpocket?


Loth:
Dont mean to toot my own horn but lots of info here was provided by yours truly.
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_Thrall
well it seems j'zargo was losing magicka and indeed stopped casting once it hit zero. i think it just means fortify destruction had no effect. as for why he only casts sparks at level 81, blame beth.

Nope. How else would you be able to get Yamarz in legendary gear vs Ravager in legendary gear otherwise? Thralls don't fight each other and a normal Yamarz vs a normal Ravager is not indicative of their performance in legendary gear.

I have also observed a very strange thing which I hope someone can independently check. A naked Ravager is shown to have 25% magic resist when I used the command "getavinfo magicresist".

After I outfitted him with unenchanted legendary forsworn set, for no explicit reason, the "getavinfo magicresist" command now returns 35!? Where in the world did that extra 10% come from? Changing cell does not seem to correct this. Neither does killing him. Only if you loot him of his equipment does the magic resist drop back to 25.

were both test cases done when the ravager was alive? their breton racial bonus gives them 25 mr, being a melee type gives them another 10, (20 if they are archery type).

i noticed that innate bonuses like armor rating from cloth wearing mages is 120 when alive but zero when a corpse.

So possibly it is due having some hidden perks which is only activate when alive? We will be able to see for ourselves when the CK is released then.

For sure, these innate bonuses comes back when the dead are thralled.

Man, it seems there's a lot of little hidden junk with these NPCs...

My revised list for what we can confirm regarding NPCs (thralled or otherwise):

• There is still an armor cap, but no magic resist cap.
  
• Enchanted weapons work exactly as you would expect without any bugs.
  
• Some armor enchants do NOT work -- fortify one-handed doesn't, for example, but it can be argued that this is no big deal, as high-level NPC thralls can go super-crazy killing everything with just the right weapon enchants (absorb health/absorb stamina).
  
• There are hidden perks for NPCs that de-activate when the character is dead... what exactly these perks are we cannot confirm yet.

-Loth

Oh, we can also probably safely say that testing of enemy AI confirms that AI takes stat values like stamina and magicka levels into account, and does not "cheat" with scripting -- for example, when NPCs run out of magicka, they stop casting spells. I know this sounds silly to make a note of, as this should be common sense... but this is Skyrim, people. DO NOT ASSUME.

-Loth

Their magicka regeneration is extremely high. I believe they are not affected by combat regeneration penalty.

Also note that they have extremely "cheaty" spells that have very little cost and lots of damage. Madcat posted a test in one of the destruction balancing threads, and noted that not only did the caster NPC have extremely high Magicka pool but the spells they cast where only kncoking off like Lightning bolts and other such hig hcost spells wiht only single digit costs.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1339848-i-am-level-46-destruction-is-at-70something-with-lots-of-perks/page__view__findpost__p__20204448

is the post. Looks like Bandit mage shot two fire balls and magika went from 268 to 265. XD

Do any of these tips need to be updated post-patch?