Hi, I just accidentally killed my essential Lydia, how the hell I hear you ask, well, I'm unsure, but I'll explain the circumstances.

I left Faendal and Jenassa outside (archers not needed in tight caves), so it was just me and Lydia, I was ahead of her in a one man wide tunnel, and the bandits were pouring in from the far end (I shot a couple arrows ahead to draw attention, I like fighting in confined areas, or atleast I did), anyway, killing away at the bandits in front, Lydia was just stood behind me doing nothing really, just there watching, when a killmove proc'd, except, not against a bandit, I had teleported to behind Lydia and stuck my sword through her back, I wish I had a picture of my face as I was frozen solid with god knows what thought going through my head, definitely a mixture of "OH MY GOD NOOOO LYDIAAAAA" and "WTF HAPPENED" with a little bit of "LMFAO that was unique I guess".

Anyway, just be careful out there guys, essential doesn't mean immortal? Apparently.

Ps. I reloaded, not losing my Lydia to a sneaky backstab. (The one where you grab their hair and pull them back a bit, poor Lydz )

Lydia isn't essential...

lydia isnt essential...you can kill all your housecarls and i kill lydia as soon as i can to shut up that snobby mouth

I should have mentioned, I set Lydia essential. So yes, she was essential. As are all my current followers.

Edit:



I did mention in the first sentence that she was essential actually.

Did you do it correctly?

I used UFO to set my 3 followers as essentials, and so far I've had 0 problems. And that having in mind they've "died" many times (mostly due to traps).

also used UFO to set essential status, using the "you know.." menu, "you are important", or something. Then I checked it with the console. She was definitely essential.

I am blaming the killmove for picking the wrong actor for whatever reason.

Here is how it looked, sorry for bad drawings...
> = Enemies/bandits
* = Me
< = Lydia
>>> *<

I was facing the bandits too, so yeah, I sorta backstepped through her then stuck my sword through her.

Poor creature

I've never killmove'd or killed myself any of my followers, so maybe I've just didn't run into that issue....well, in the worst case, just load a previous save, and be a bit more careful in the future.

Which version of UFO are you using? I'm with 1.0h (the latest so far).