I've often seen references to the gift that keeps on giving: give a follower an arrow of the type you want, and they'll never run out, but instead keep generating more. Apparently this only works on followers that are equipped by default with a bow and arrows, and it may also require that they be primarily a ranged attacker. I've also read that it's kaput. Be that as it may, it worked for me this weekend.

Be that as it may, I had about 31 Daedric arrows (vs. 600+ ebony arrows, lol!) and gave them all to Aela. I took all her iron arrows, but didn't change anything else. Soon enough she was sending Daedric arrows in and around the targets she found. I have the hunter's perk that recovers extra arrows, and it seems to work on those I haven't shot myself. I picked up the loose arrows I could find, looted the corpse, and asked to trade with Aela. She still had 31 arrows.

Woot! As time went by, I collected nearly 60 arrows. It's best to attack a fort full of bandits or Forsworn. I checked with her again and now she had 33 arrows. Then I realized she had been shot with her own arrows by an enterprising and quick-witted bandit.

I've tried this with melee followers and it doesn't work. I suspect Faendal would be another likely candidate for this as he, like Aela, is a marksman trainer.

I gave Vorstag (Markarth merc) an arrow of the type I wanted him to shoot thinking along the lines that he'd never run out. In combat I was noticing him reverting back to iron arrows and when I checked his inventory the arrow I had given him would be gone. Figured it would work since archery is one of his 'skills' but doesn't appear to be so.

I gave some to Solitude Guards on the training grounds.
I just walk by the targets and pick up dozens of them.

Also, I've done that with all kinds of "mixed class" followers, as well as rangers, housecarls, modded followers etc.
I did it with Mjoll too, even though she's supposed to be a 2H warrior or something? While she was following me, she used her bow very often.

I'm pretty positive that the "Infinite Arrow" glitch/exploit with followers was fixed with 1.4... but I'm not positive.

Only a guess.

Definitely not on the PC. And Mjoll and others just burn through whatever I give them.

<sub>I've given arrows to Lydia after 1.4 and harvested the same type from her. I found that I had to give her 2 of whatever type I wanted and strip all others from her. I ended up with well over 60 Ebony arrows within a few hours of getting my first couple. Recently though, I gave her Daedric (2), stripped all others and waited for the harvesting to beguin. So far, about 10. And she is now apparently foraging for herself because I keep stripping ancient Nord, forsworn and steel arrows from her. I have the hunter perk, which is what I credited the fairly rapid harvest of ebony arrows to, but Deadric? Not much. I've found more as loot than harvested.

As a side issue, I've been wondering what affect my mods(PC) have had on the game. After getting the mods I use (glowing ore, rich merchant, val's crafting and associated and the basemant), I restarted and Lydia gliched out ... as in not show up. As an experiment I restarted twice more and each time she never showed. Then I turned off the mods and there she was. Anouther odd glitch is the derth of smithing items found while the mods were "on". I am currently thinking the Deadric arrow famine may be a similar glitch. And at lvl 52 I've got way too much in the basemant right now to go and move everything out to upstairs just to see if turning off the mods gets me more harvested Daedric arrows.</sub>

You can duplicate arrows in your house. I did it once already yesterday with Iron Arrows ( pointless ), I forget how I got it to truly work. But when you place arrows you have equipped in a container, if the still there in Third-Person. you just dupped you arrows. But the extra arrows sadly need to be shot and reclaimed to count. Very annoying but if you have plenty of arrows to duplicate, just use them in combat.

best you do it with over 50 arrows to make it more worth your time.

Sounds like one or more mods are "dirty" and modifying things beyond their intended scope. This is one of the dangers of mods. A careless redefinition or edit can change not just what the modder intended, but every similar item in the game. The only way to tell is to examine the mod file data for what they change.

It's a lot easier to pickpocket the steel arrows from a guard who practices all day and replace them with one deadric arrow. He'll shoot them all day long.

The guards at Solitude who practice their archery is the most popular spot to do this. Works great. I have over 1000.

Yup. I sneak into the Solitude guard barracks at night and replace all the steel arrows with one Daedric arrow. I do that on every sleeping guard, since they all have steel arrows equipped and you never know which two will shoot the arrows. It's too risky doing that during the day in the open. Plus, this way, you can level up your pickpocketing skill. Watch out though, sometimes a guard will wake up and catch you. LOL

You only have to give her one Daedric Arrow and she will have an endless supply to shoot. Any follower that will use a bow will do this.

i never thought to give arrows to the guards that practice shooting haha! I suppose it would work for the thieves that pratice shooting in the cistern as well?

i'll have to try it out

Yup. Anyone who practices with targets.

AS I was leaving Riften after marrying Ysolda the other day, Lydia was preparing to head back to Whiterun, so I decided to have her follow me. She had a steady supply of Dwarven arrows (I used disable/enable to get her up to my level), and didnt seem to run out of them.
I've got hundreds of Steel and Ancient Nord arrows, and never bought any. Either looting dead enemies, or taking arrows from the targets.

Arrows are broken. No, wait, I mean they are badly realised in this game.

My bows do 200-400 damage.

What is the point of using daedric arrows over iron arrows here? The damage of arrows does not scale with the bow and so one can just sell anything better than iron, steel or ancient nord arrows and forget about the rest. The 1-15 points of extra damage over iron are not worth the effort, when one can get extra damage with fortifications on rings, necklaces and armor as well as through smithing.

Arrows are broken...

Yeah. I play on the 360, and after 1.4 my followers burn through arrows like they were psychotropic drugs... I tried on five separate Followers to give them one Daedric arrow each, and even though that was the only arrow they had, they shot it off, then ran off and picked up a fallen enemy's weapon and would start using that...

Since it would work for me before 1.4, I kinda figure that they fixed it.

I have to agree with Sdack. Who cares? Just buy Ebony arrows off any fletcher, and you're doing a whopping 4 less damage than trying to exploit glitches to get Daedric.

I think I'll have to agree with this.

At 504 Ebony Arrows, I'm not really falling short in my sniping attempts.

I don't know. It really seems like using higher damage arrows helps my characters do a lot more one shot kills. I'll stress the word "seems" though. I could be wrong; but there have been a lot of times where for some reason my character was shooting steel arrows (or some other non-ebony/Daedric kind) and the lesser damage to enemies was noticeable.

Besides, 15 points of extra damage is a lot. Especially when you're facing an enemy that can take 4-5 good good shots. That's 60-75 extra damage, which can easily mean the difference between them being dead or you having to sit through another loading screen and re-fighting the entire battle.

Not really. Daedric arrows are far too rare. By the time you will find your first ones will your bow already do 100-200 damage.

My current bow does >500 damage. It is not worth picking anything up from all the loot other than iron, steal and ancient nord arrows, really. I put daedric arrows in a box as trophy. One hit with an iron arrow and 3x multiplier and it is dead.

It's been working for me, but I don't use followers. My arrows are duplicated with guards, and other archers, like the thieves guild members.
If Beth removed that, it's really unfortunate that a harmless exploit became a priority (Oghma, cough cough) over broken quests and major issues.

The problem people are having with them reverting to lower grade arrows comes from them being hit by a lower grade arrow. This shot shows up in their inventory. You have to take the arrows from them as they accumulate to keep them using the higher grade. They'll use "level appropriate" arrows over better arrows if they're available.

But 4 damage isn't. Ebony Arrows hit for 20 damage. The only reason I can think of to really want Daedric arrows is because the quiver looks cooler on your back.

I was talking about the difference between Daedric and iron. But like sdack said, if your bow is doing such severe damage already then yeah, arrow selection is meaningless. At that point there's no real difference between 507 damage and 524.

Here's an update. I forcibly removed Aela's hunting bow and had her equip an ebony bow. Guess what? She consumes the Daedric arrows. So I gave the hunting bow back and had her equip it, and now she's an arrow smith again.

As for the damage, I'm at 100 archery, all bonus perks, +35% cowl, and have a legendary Daedric bow, and yet I swear Forsworn archers can do more damage with their crummy base arrows and bows.