Pretty sure that this is a bug. I noticed that when you give a follower armor, they wear it if it is better armor than what they have on. If you then dismiss them, leave, and return to that follower, they are equipped with the original armor that they wear by default. Rather, they are not wearing the upgraded armor that is given to them.

I wouldn't be so sure it's a bug, if you tell them to follow you, then walk outside and they have equipped the good stuff again.

It just means they return to default gear after returning home.

Lothar is correct however on my copy they never equip rings nor bows I knock-up for them. It's their loss loss but I would like to see these items utilised.

Also, anyone had named weapons given to followers revert to default? I.e. Chopstick (for example) reverts to Ebony Sword and so on, quite irritating too.

I chose Lydia as a companion. She'll accept almost any armour that's better than her original steel armour. But, when I gave her armour that was of a lower rating than her original set, say leather or hide, she took it from me but refused to hand it back once we reached a shop. I keep being told that I cannot remove her original armour - even for the items I gave her. She has several hide armours stacked this way and stuck in her inventory. I don't know if it's related to this extra 'weight' but she can't or won't accept a suit of Daedric armour by saying "It's too heavy." She'll take Daedric boots, gauntlets and helmet but not the suit. Stripping her of everything that I can and giving her the suit still results in a "Too heavy" message. This doesn't happen for weapons though, anything I give her, she'll give back to me again. Other than bows, she never wants to use the Daedric one I made for her but always uses the original wooden bow she started with which was rather annoying as I was relying on her archery skills to wear down dragons for me.

Empty "your" inventory.... theres a bug that combines what your carrying and she is carrying... I ran into this last night. I empty my inventory (accept for the armor I wanted to give her) and she took it just fine.

Hope that helps.

I dont understand that even though i gave Lydia a ebony bow that she always seems to be using that crappy looking hunter bow >.<

She has no other bow in her inventory ( i made sure of that )

Right, but did you give her Ebony Arrows? I heard there is a bug that they will not use BOTH better arrows AND better bow. If you give them JUST the better bow, they will use that. If you give them better arrows, they use the arrows with the default bow. Just something I read a while back, not confirmed. Test it out.

Unfortunately not. Possibly because my inventory contains those bugged quest items like the Bard's instruments, a book that the Mage Guild librarian won't take off me and those weird gemstones relating to the Theives Guild all of which I can't drop.

Three bugs with Lydia
1. Does not use the best bow in her inventory
As someone mentioned above, I too have also noticed that Lydia (I only use her, so this bug could be with other followers too) that she will ignore any bow you give her, and only uses her default 'hunting bow'. However, if you give her the 'forsworn bow', she does actually use it, but this seems to be the only bow she can upgrade to and does not use any other better bow type (e.g. elven/dwarven/ebony, etc). This is tested with different arrow types already in her inventory, of which she does actually choose the best arrow type to use. For example, given 10 glass arrows, 10 elven arrows and 10 ebony arrows, a dwarven bow, glass bow, ebony bow, and a forsworn bow, she will select the 10 ebony arrows and the forsworn bow to use (noting that the forsworn bow is better than her default hunting bow, but worse than the glass, dwarven, ebony bows also in her inventory). If you then remove the forsworn bow from her inventory, she uses the ebony arrows and uses only her default 'hunting bow'.

2. Enchantments have no effect on followers (tested with Lydia). Followers can be equiped with enchanted items (armour, rings, necklace, etc) but their magical effects are not utilised. For example, I tried enchanting some boots for Lydia, with 'fortify carry weight', and she equips them. However, the amount she carries was still exactly the same. E.g. with no 'enchanted boots+fortify carry weight' in her inventory, I gave her as much as she could carry. Then, I gave her the enchanted boots, (ensuring that the weight of the boots was much lower than the additional carry amount the boots provided), and then I gave her something else to carry (of weight 1), and she still refused to carry the extra item of weight 1. Therefore, 'fortify carry' does not work. I am now wondering if any enchantments work for followers, or in fact, giving them enchanted rings, necklaces, armour simply has no effect? (Note that she does wear the necklace, ring, etc, but the effects seem to be ignored.

3. Lydia does not choose the best armour (in her inventory) to use.If you give her 'ebony armour (flawless)', and also give her 'ebony armour' without any upgrades (from a workbench), she chooses the ebony armour without the upgrade! Thus, it looks like that Lydia will upgrade to better armour types, but will not be able to differentiate between better armours that have been upgraded using the workbench, and simply uses the standard (i.e. non upgraded) armour of the best type (types being ebony, dwarven, etc)