My companion is currently Derkeethus. He started with a weak hunting bow, so I replaced it with a legendary daedric bow and enchanted half his armor with +archery damage. I was surprised at how little damage he was still doing until I saw he was still using the old hunting bow, even though it wasn't in his inventory and the daedric one was. Any idea what's going on here? Is it just a bug? I'm on PS3 by the way.

Yeah that sometimes happens, it's happened to me before, usually fast travelling or something makes them equip it, other than that, not sure.

My theory was: level.

Same thing when I used console, and cast Thrall on low lvl bandits. They did not equip Ebony/Glass. But I remember once giving Iron (or Steel?) armor to a Skeleton and he equipped it.

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A note on Derkeenthus. I went all the way to the waterfall and inside the cave just to rescue him, because he's Argonian like me. I was very disappointed though as I did not like how he looks with those horns (more like a goat than a lizard/serpent), and it's not like you have any other Argonian follower to choose. Sad. Another reason why I was disappointed was his archery. I let him solo an enemy bandit and.. he could not hit the bandit once, while bandit could shoot him to minimum health. He is also more proficient with Light Armor than Heavy, and my current limited experience tells me followers need heavy armor.

If someone has experience on how to make Derkeethus useful for Stealth/Ranger or Ranger character, let me know.

Oh, and this is for Master difficulty.

Companions appear to be bugged (no surprise) with bows, and Derkeethus is no exception. I got so tired of it I just gave him a sword and shield. I've been enchanting his armor for sneaking. It works alright, I suppose. In battle, he serves more as a distraction for my targets and is my meat shield. While he isn't the coolest looking Argonian, he has a really nice voice. :3

Well, now I can get him to equip the Daedric bow if I take all of his other weapons, take the bow, then give it back to him. But, as soon as a battle starts he pulls out the hunting bow. He still does alright with it. I just saw him one-shot-kill a bandit (probably with a sneak bonus. Can companions get sneak bonuses?). It has like 1/4 the base damage of the Daedric, though, so I hope if this is a bug they patch it soon.

Also, I love how Derkeethus looks. When I was looking into marrying someone the only other argonian available was Scouts-many-marshes, and he was very ugly. Derkeethus looks especially great in dragon scale armor.

I vaguely remember someone mentioning their companion used some higher level perk.. which apprently he gained. I can't verify this.
But you reminded me of another solution - even if they don't do it themselves, I'm pretty sure you can add perk to a follower via console like you'd do to yourself.


Which brings us back to another question: how viable is Derkeethus for a stealth ranger? I assume it would require a lot of "Wait there" clicking, then getting back to him and "Follow me". In the end, would he help more than hurt?

Another question I have now run into. Do companions use up arrows? I gave Derkeethus 70 dwarven arrows, and it says he has them equipped, but after a lot of fighting it's still at 70. Either he hasn't been using his bow (I think he is), his weird non-existent hunting bow has unlimited arrows, or companions don't use them up.

They have 8 iron arrows as part of their default equipment. Just like their outfit these arrows always come back at some point in time. There was somebody who posted a work around on how to get them to equip the fancier bows, but I cannot find it.

i gave lydia 1 daedric arrow. our kills are littered with daedric arrows. so i can confirm that they will use arrows, but they are not consumable.

i also cant seem to get her to use a different bow.

Yeah, looking though the bodies I see a lot of dwarven arrows. That's cool. I should just give him the strongest arrow I can find and not worry about him running out.