I just spent about an hour perusing google for this, and I ended up here. I'm at wit's end with this >.>

So after taking a long break from Skyrim, I decided to start up a fresh character. I let steam install the 1.3 patch, then started up the game. I killed the dragon, reported back to the Jarl...and Lydia never appeared. From what I gather, she's broken in the 1.3 patch. You can use the player.placeatme console command to spawn her, but she then isn't tied to your house like she should be. I've completely removed all of my mods, even tried a fresh reinstall. Lydia flat will not show up. Some people said to go to Breezehome before turning in the dragon kill, didn't help. Some people say to spawn her in Breezehome, didn't help. What gives? Anyone have a fix/solution?

When is she supposed to spawn? I never followed the main quest. This sounds very bad... I do not like what I am hearing.

Like I said. You are required to kill your first dragon for the Jarl of Whitrun. After killing it, you return to him. He grants you the title of Thane, and Lydia as your housecarl. Normally, she will meet you at the door to Dragonsreach (the 'castle' of Whiterun) as you try to exit, and explains who she is. However, she isn't appearing for me.

I have found a couple mods that explain they are the culprits behind this. However, I have none of these mods installed. I WAS able to technically fix it, thanks to one of these mods. Apparently, if you stand inside Breezehome (your house in Whiterun) and type a2c94.enable, she'll spawn AND be tied to Breezehome like she should. But this still doesn't explain why she never spawns in the first place. Like I said, I've tried doing this on several characters, on a fresh clean, unmodded install, and installing my mods one at a time after that.

Some people are reporting that out of, say, 5 characters, 4 times she won't appear, and 1 time she will. It seems to be random. But for me, out of about 10 characters, she has never once spawned for me.

She is supposed to spawn as soon as you are named Thane of Whiterun... If she doesn't I don't know what to tell you...

I am on the 360. If it happens to me, I will load a save from right before being named thane. However, before loading said save, I will clear cache and remove all patches. Once I have her, I will download the patches again, and hopefully this will not cause her to vanish. If so, I will play patchless.

Most game problems are listed in the Hardware/Software forum which is broken down by platform.

I did a search there and came up with a lot of players who had problems with Lydia, but none like you.

However, one player Googled his problem and ran across a video on youtube that described your problem, but he didn't say if there was a solution.

Good luck.

She spawned ok for me. Was always waiting in my house as well. She died yesterday tho, im gutted now!

who needs her? she never keeps up with me, i'm always half a mile ahead of her...