I always give her a bow. She will stay out of the way then just firing from a distance. The monsters will also focus on you rather than your archer standing farther away.

Not to me, she sounds more condesending then the other Housecarls IMO.

I can't stand having followers. My stupid scary horse kept running wild all over the place attacking stuff that I wasn't interested in fighting (before it finally met it's end in a big battle between Stormcloaks & Imperials when I fast traveled in and it ran off from me), so I figured Lydia would do the same. She just stays in my house waiting for me with the fires lit, like any good woman should. Although I wish I could move her to a better house with me... is that possible??

Definitely after awhile i started noticing Lydia was starting to get outmatched and she died a couple of times and i had to restart. Ive just started leaving her at home now with my wife maybe they can do things while im away and stuff lol i need to find another companion though.

Keep her in your house or level up before you get her.
Give her some [censored]in armor too

The only time I use them is for mules to haul my stuff and loot. I hate babysitting companions and having to watch so they do get killed every 2 seconds. I have hated escort quests and companions ever since that moron Natasha in GoldenEye. I finally would just leave the dumb b***h in the cell till I was done killing everything....lol

I don't bother with a side kick they just get in the way when trying to fight , anyhoo I have a Sanguine Rose Staff ..

I gave her a broom, kettle and ladle, but she still just sits around doing nothing. How do I get her do the housework? What's the point of having a housethane if she won't cook and clean?

I did not buy the Breezehome

Just give her healing potions and she will be fine.

On a side note there is a post somewhere around here about using the console to change a followers class. I did this for Lydia and changed her class to a spellsword and then used addspell to give her close wounds. And let me tell you with these changes and a few healing potions, Lydia was almost a demigod.

Lydia is home, guarding my two kettle's with gems and my five (and counting) dibella Statues and one of the falmer eyes.. While am out, heisting for more stuff

I'm wondering if you can fix that the same way I got rid of her horrible hunting bow she kept using instead of my better ones I gave her, which is to remove it from her 'outfit' inventory.

Removing her steel armor would really nicely improve her carry ability if thats the issue.

Excellent! Thanks!

I don't care for any of the housecarls. Cicero is the only companion I need.

I love Lydia and take her everywhere well her and Vigilance. I have found that if i set up the fight with just a bit of pre planning they are almost more powerful than i am. One has to undertsand the matchups, as a pure non weapon waving mage my magic is limited against certain adversaries like the aforementioned bath robe wearing dragon priest who is able to blow off alot of damage from my best spells, but Lydia or Vigilance with thier melee attacks just crushes him. They have problems with other melee and especially archers, BUT i do not so i cover them while they cover me. It is like any other RPG there are classes that are stronger versus other classes. I fought a dragon priest the other day and kept getting my ass kicked this guy is jamming me for an ass-load of points while i for all intents and purposes may as well been hitting him with my purse. So i set the fight up a bit i aggroed the DP, dragged him back to where Lydia and Viligance were waiting. Now i kid you not they destroyed the DP, Lydia in epic hand crafted buffed ebony armor waving Dawnstar in four whacks she cut him down. She hit him 4 times and killed him while my dual cast inferno just tickled him. Granted i hid behind her with dual cast Healing Hands and was able to out heal his DPS but i spent close to an hour of replays trying to be the hero when i just needed to try a different tactic and was done in less than 5 minutes. I grabbed a quick save and rolled on.

Sure the Ai is a bit wonky but you know that in advance, you also know what the enemies are going to do in advance, one dragon priest is not really different from any other dragon priest so if you understand it use it to your advantage. Skyrim does involve thinking you can not just "run and gun" or at least i have not been able to much to my delight. If i could just figure out how to put a few packs on Vigilance man that would be awesome. And yes i will restart no matter how much content i have to redo if either of my buddies die in a fight, i would rather have to redo a fight i know how to do than to continue with out my most valuable assistants. So valauble is Lydia to me that i have kind of decided to have my female mage and Lydia hook up as Lydia's reward for her valuable service having hid behind her many times as she killed and i healed our way through a difficult dungeon.

Asai

Tonight I thought I lost her for keeps. We were on our way to recover a Shield for the Jarl of Markarth and I went over some rocks or a steep area and didn't see her anymore. It happens all the time so I didn't worry about it because she'll always reappear when I enter a door or fast-travel. This time she didn't though and I had to fight alone. I made it through and recovered the shield and intended to go back and reload so she wouldn't be dead because I was sure she must be dead. I fast-traveled to Dragon Bridge one last time to be sure and there she was! I was so happy. Then....then...I got my first Elder Dragon. Wow, that was a battle but she died a couple of times until I changed my tactics after reloading and then it ended well. What a great night of gaming!

Her health is so low, it takes some work to keep her alive but she keeps me alive too so it's fun and now I'm stubborn enough to try and take her to my endgame. She does the best when I give her great staves to fight with.

Good news is that followers eventually do leave the home and go exploring on their own. Aela is my follower, and we've run into other companions on the road, or even Lydia out and about away from Whiterun. And each of my characters (seven total) has a different follower.

I really like having a companion, for one I like having a buddy when I'm out traveling the woods. To a point I feel like I got some back up when I'm out their traveling with some one knowing they got my back. Lydia is basically the first companion I got and like others have said shes been through so much with you no point in cutting her loose when you don't have to. Some people have mentioned of telling her to wait when there are traps involved. Typically if I can sneak by a pressure plate so can she and I find it to not really be a problem for me. She does really well during sneaking situations and usually follows my path to the T with out any trouble. I did have one situation in a dungeon where we were both in a sealth mode and we were behind some bad guys and all of the sudden shes says this random sentence and sure if enough they all turn around going "What was that?" LOL sshhh lydia we're trying to sneak remember?

I've only had her die on me a few times and I know some of those deaths were accidentally my fault. It's pretty rare for her to lose me while traveling up a mountain for example. I can climb up mountains like it's nothing and but then shes tends to like to take the easy breezy scenic route and calls it good. It may take her a extra 5 minutes to finally reach me but he get's to me eventually. Some times it takes her forever to reach me and once I get through a door and it loads up the level, she there and ready for battle right behind me.

The only real problem I got with the companion is I wish she would carry more of my burdens. There's lots of times where I'm maxed out on carrying some thing and so is she. It's frustrating because some times I don't feel like going to a store and selling it right then and there. Then there's always that moment where your in the middle of a dungeon and you find a shiny new sword only to find out you can't run any where and then on top of it you can't pawn it off to lydia because she's maxed out. So then you faced with either leaving your new item you just found to be worth like 1,200 gold or some thing OR part with that sword you've been using for the past 35 hours. I want to keep my sword but I want to take this item because I can get a ton of good at the shop. lol

My Lydia is now dead.. she fell off a high bridge while fighting a skeleton, I had killed her a couple of times.. she kept getting in between me and the enemy and got hit by fire spells so she was getting a bit annoying ! So Kali shed a few crocodile:) tears.. and looted and sold the armor.. well a Argonian girl needs to move on we don't show emotion well

There's a funny video on Youtube of Lydia getting mauled again and again by a spike trap. I never travelled with her a lot but when I did, she usually fainted on the floor when her health dropped low. I think she can die only from firendly fire or 'natural causes' (falling from a high cliff, for example).

EDIT: see the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH-okOFLIpk

The other way around, Lydia can just be killed by you not by enemies, some reports that she can be killed in traps to however enemies can not kill her, just knock her down.

However then she is down on her knees she has very little health left and will be killed by any area effect spell you cast even ebony mail and spells with aura damage around player might kill her.

However I find her a decent tank for my stealthy archer, she hold off enemies much longer than I'm capable of and usually draw agro while I do sneak attacks.

Give here a melee weapon with absorb health and make sure she use a shield, she has an tendency to replace legendary steel with dwarven or do simlar stupid things with armor and weapons.

I played with her carryweight, but whenever I go out of the game, come back in and check it again it's set back to 300.00. Is there something I need to type in console to make the change permanent?

LOL Sounds like you like your Lydia as much as I like mine, although I've taken the role of Lydia-protector while you've found a way to actually use her to good advantage. My character is a battlemage who uses a greatsword when spells stop working... great on mages and Thalmor spellswords... and my general gaming playstyle is solo, always has been. Guess that's why it's hard for me to appreciate Lydia's combat abilities, since usually she destroys my go-at-it-slowly-and-carefully playstyle by barging in guns a'blazin' do-or-die. That may be heroic on her part, but it's not particularly bright, since there's no telling what baddies may lurk past our vision.

Really? Excellent! And so much more simple than all the console stuff. I saved before I played with the console commands, and haven't actually played since then, so I'll go back to the pre-console save and try that. Thanks!

Exactly what I'd like to do! At least if she's going to mope it could be somewhere in style. LOL