I'm crossing level 40 now and I've been using Lydia the whole way. I have two other housecarls (I'm working on buying all the houses eventually) but they don't seem to be better than Lydia fighting or skills. So Lydia dies now and then, but really no more often than I do (surprising considering what an idiot she is). Boy I could go on about tactics and weapon choice, but that's another post.

So the question is -- what are the best techniques for keeping Lydia alive when I'm fighting bad things, especially bosses. So far I have Lydia in dragonplate with about 30-40% anti frost, fire, and shock enchantment (different items) and her armor has a health enchantment. I give her potions (minor healing and stamina) but I'm not sure if they help or not. She has a big ebony battleaxe with a 40 point fire enchantment and my old bow with respectable damage. She seems to like two handed weapons despite the fact that the book says she is a one-handed specialist. Not sure why. I also give her staffs which I tend not to use (like the familiar staff) which she uses all the time which tends to distract the bad guys from her a bit. Charges go down slowly on her weapons but she burns the staffs dry pretty quickly.

Ok, so what else can I do that I'm not doing to maximize her life expectancy? Thanks.

and Bethesda, work on the AI for followers PLEASE.

What else can you do? Take away all her melee weapons and give her an Ebony or Daedric bow, increase the stats of her weapons and armour, after that you are all set.

Edit: Also if you want her to do a little more damage with a bow give her some enchanted items that add onto her ranged damage.

Just equip her will full Daedric armor and weapons (don't forget the shield)... I did this on a test run and she and I massacred all of Skyrim after I saved just because I wanted to see how well she survived... She never even got hurt that bad...

If you're on the PC, you can make her "essential" through the console. She'll go to one knee, but when her health is regenerated enough she'll rejoin the battle. And she never dies.

Go here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Followers

to learn all about followers. Includes a Google spreadsheet with plenty of data you can look at.

I give my Lydia a bow and 2H weapon, and health potions - she does use them.

Also, continue to upgrade her weapons and armor. Check and make sure she's at the same level as you are.

Good luck.

PS: If you take enchanting, make sure to do her weapons and armor, too. Same if you take smithing.

i'd look at upgrading if you got her early on. her stats are locked to whatever level you got her at. take all the gear you gave her and get a new follower who's stats would be a bit higher. then it would be much easier to keep them alive.

but if you are at level 40, i found it much easier to survive/sneak without a follower getting in the way.

She seems to be immortal for me. The only times she ever dies are when I kill her myself (usually because she has run straight under my falling axe). Against all other enemies she just goes on the ground for a bit then wakes up again.

Very weird I think. Wish you could turn friendly fire off. Having followers set up like this renders chain lightning, storm call etc. all useless as they just kill Lydia as well.

Everyone here has pretty good advice. I've never given her potions before (my lighter characters tend to need them more ) so I'll have to try that. It svcks at lower levels since finding/smithing heavy armour for her when I play my light characters means she's usually stuck with her default steel armour until about lvl 17 or so.

I do smith and enchant her stuff up. Her armor is pretty close to mine. And she must be leveling with me because I got her early and she's still "in my league". I do find that sometimes I have to take something away from her to get her to stop using it (the notched pickaxe for example). It's like having a child who is developmentally disabled. I'd love to see those algorithms. I wouldn't mind knowing more about their development process too.

Oh she uses scrolls too, but you have to give them to here IMMEDIATELY before the battle you want her to use them because she tends to use them quickly for no good reason.

I haven't lost Lydia yet. She stays in my house and keeps people from robbing it while I am away.

Followers are more of a pain than a benefit to having around. Its like babysitting a child.... who has access to large knives.

It sounds like her leveling has bugged, as mentioned above.

Equipped with the gear you mention, she should be all but indestructible, look around for leveling bug fixes I reckon.

The best advice, avoid friendly fire, if you've played long enough and taken note, the followers will go down on one knee at which point the enemy ignores them, the reason they get killed is because they get caught in cross fire, when I see my followers start to have trouble I run and make the enemy follow because they are now focused on me, this gives the follower more time to regenerate.

This, followers can only be killed by friendly fire (possible also traps), main problem is that then she is knocked down she has very little health so any hit from you will kill her.

Then she goes down move away a bit so you don't hit her, this also enables her to stand up and attack the enemies from behind then she recover.
You might also run away, she will recover and return to you attacking enemies following you.

Yea, i`m also of the view now that they can`t die unless you accidentally hit them- which is easy cos they often run straight under your sword. They simply aren`t programmed to hold back.

Bethes da have always had a somewhat `can`t be bothered` attitutde when it comes to making tacticallly good followers.

I took away her Battleaxe, it was just too slow. A Greatsword is much better for her. If you give her the right one handed weapons, she will use those over a two handed weapon. Plus, when she Dual Wields, she is pretty formidable. Especially if you give her a Staff that has some Elemental Damage on it that she can use with a Sword. The nice thing is, they never seem to use up Enchantment Charges on weapons you give them.

I really wished Beth had implemented a hardcoe mode like NV. In NV hardcoe mode also affected followers - hardcoe mode they could die but normal mode they'd be knocked unconscious until the enemies in that area were all dead.

Worked well imo and solved some other oft complained of issues too.

This annoyed me no end, in my first play through I had Lydia following, a dragon attacked outside Whiterun and I used Storm call, big mistake, Lydia and all the guards turned hostile, I guess I could understand it with the guards but Lydia should have remained loyal given that she's my characters housecarl sworn to protect with her life.

This. Most of the time, when a follower dies, it's because the player themselves inadvertently administered the killing blow, either with a stray strike or splash damage from a spell. When she takes a knee, enemies will ignore her, but she's still vulnerable.

Pick up the Healing Hands spell--this can put her back in the fight. It's cheaper and less annoying than giving her potions to chug, which she will invariably do when she least needs them.

With the following console command you set Lydia to essential, therefore make her immortal:


setessential 000A2C8E 1

I just stand behind her, channeling healing. Plus you can buff her with courage/rally.

I believe all the house carls have the same stats, btw. Lydia seems to equip a two-handed weapon if you give her one - possibly she just equips the weapon with the highest damage. If you want her to tank, don't give her a two-hander, then she'll use her shield, which should keep her up for longer.

I never liked this idea, the game pretty much lacks depth already, being responsible for your follower at least gives it some depth, I'm not saying don't use the command, but it will severly take away from the experience and you might as well stand back and let your follower do all the killing.

Since the game can't kill my follower, only I can, I usually just Sneak and let my follower do all the dirty work.

Make her essential. Need to be on PC, though.

I do that too, I sneak and let her tank and I stand back and hit them with arrows, works a charm. I use Aranea and shes been brilliant!

I don't. If they're supposed to die, so be it.

They do use up staff charges. i have to recharge Lydia's staffs all the time. And I'm on the PS3 so no console commands unfortunately. And she does (or used to) occasionally die nowhere near me -- like she charges into a battle with some super high level boss and gets killed and I only find out later. I can't absolutely rule out that she might have gotten some friendly fire from my bow or magic, but I didn't think so at the time.