Hey guys,

Just a quick question, has anyone tried equping any NON-DAWNGUARD related followers with crossbows? I have tried giving Aela a enhanced dwarven crossbow which she happily equips ( which I thought would fix the follower using default crappy bow problem) but all she does is aim it over and over again ( you see the animation of her as if shes about to shoot) but then lowers it and raises it again over and over again. Obivously I have given her dwarven bolts both enchanted and un-enchanted so im a little confused what im doing wrong.

Sounds like she wants to use it but some glitch is preventing her.
I bet she'd be a boss with a crossbow.

Have you tried it on other vanilla game followers?

i also gave a crossbow to a follower and the same thing happened. sad face.

Wait we can enchant bolts?

Do the dawnguard sidequests, you learn how to smith pre-enchanted bolts with stuff like fire/ice/lightning

I gave Jenassa a enchanted crossbow and steal bolts and she uses it. Only thing I notic is they run out of bolt unlike arrows.

Ok well at least that means they can use them/are intended to be able to use them.

I use Cosnach give him all hte armor too heavy I use the normal crossbow and steel bots and it work find with him.

I havent tried giving other followers crossbows, as I dont really have need of followers at my level by for RP purposes I let Aela ( my wife) tag along. To me its an issue of getting Aela to use it rather than ' a follower', I gave her PLENTY of each type of dwarven bolt, incl all enchanted versions... and still the same issue.

aela uses the enhanced crossbow i gave her very well. i gave her like 200 steel bolts

Steel or dwarven crossbow, I will try giving her a steel one one... better work....

I've had 3 followers use the crossbow and enchanted crossbow (haven't got the other ones yet) with steel bolts and they use them even more than when they would have a regular bow.

Partners and crossbows work fine. The trick is that unlike bows and arrows, they do use up any bolts you give them using a crossbow, so you need to give them lots of them. Also, Aela still switches from her crossbow to her bow from time to time. She uses either of them whenever she feels like it seems.