My wife and I are both playing the game, and she's having a strange problem. She's started to notice that lately people seem to be killing Shadowmere extremely quickly. Even those random encounters you occasionally happen upon (Like the "Hi, I'm a random Nord and I'm going to beat you up for no reason" encounters") are killing him.

She tested it by attacking him herself, and spells seem to do almost no damage because of his regen. But then she attacked him with her bow and she practically killed him in a single hit.

Now, she has no points in any archery related skills, and is lower level than I am (58ish compared to 63 when this test was done), and her bow does less damage. I, on the other hand, have completely buffed my archery in every way possible and when I tested it on my game, am still barely damaging him.

It's basically come to the point where she can't take him into battle at all because he dies so quickly. We read somewhere that Shadowmere respawns after like 15-20 days if he dies, so she tried that, but unfortunately after waiting like 25 days, he still had not shown up where he died.

Any one have any ideas? She's starting to get a bit frustrated with it because she liked bringing him into battle with her.

What platform are you on PC/Console?

I'm playing on the PC, she's playing on the XBox360.

What level were you when you first obtained Shadowmere? There is a similar bug with followers that wont level along with you. So if you got Shadowmere at level 20, shadowemere will still be at level 20 even though you are in your 50s/60s.

So if your wife got shadowmere much earlier than you that could explain why she can kill it so fast.

this is just a suggestion as I have no idea if this is a bug or what, anyway, hope this helps.

Can probably fix it on PC. Is there a way to transfer her file from the XBox to PC?

I could do that yes. Its what I had to do with mine when I realized that we were going to battle over who gets to play the game each day on the XBox.

OK great let me write up a how to for you, gimme a min.

The odd thing is it just started happening in one shot. Like one day it was fine, the next he was dying left and right. It's not like he was getting progressively worse as it went along.

Hopefully Mar'Tok's solution will work. *crosses fingers*

** Make sure you backup the file before you do this **

Note: Do not use quotes "X" with whats in between the quotes. Just type in whats in between them.
1) Copy last save from XBox to PC.
2) Load up her game on PC.
3) While her NPC is facing shadowmere press the "~".
4) Click on shadowmere (specifically his head), a hex number will appear in the console.
5) type "disable".
5) type "player.placeatme 0009CCD7".
6) take shadowmere into combat and see if it works.
7) move file from PC to XBox.

You will have to do this about every 10 levels, followers (dogs, companions, horses) do not level up correctly with you so you have to manually level them with this approach.

that is odd, MarTok solution should work, it will 'reset' Shadowmere

Thanks Mar'Tok, going to try this as soon as I get home tonight.

What I want to know is how Shadowmere became a male all of the sudden. six Change!?!? LOL or just the male oriented gaming community as usual. Shadowmere was and is a female. Even in the guide and on wiki they refer to her as a male horse. But the people who wrote the guide are morons anyway. They do not refer to Skyrim as a province of Tamriel, they refer to it as a realm like it is its own world or plane unto itself. As someone once posted even the guides have been dumbed down and simplified.

Shadowmere in Oblivion was female. In Skyrim Shadowmere appears to be male... I believe even Astrid says "he".

Mar'Tok, your solution worked perfectly. My wife thanks you as she again has a Shadowmere that can help her slaughter enemies.

Glad it worked, happy hunting!

This has been brought up many times, I think the consensus is the reborn Shadowmere is a gender-less demon horse or something.

I have this same issue with Shadowmere, he can only take about 3 hits with my Bound Sword before he dies, whereas when I load a save file from 10 hours before that he can take an infinite number of hits with the same Bound Sword. I only gained about 5 levels in those 10 hours. I noticed it happening after he helped me to defeat Volsung for the mask. I remember he got caught in the blast of my Marked for Death shout, but I really have no idea if that is what caused it or not. If anyone has a solution that doesn't require the PC version (I'm using PS3), that would be great as I'd rather not lose those 10 hours of playtime, but I got lucky and at least it was only 10 hours.

I tried to reset his status by killing him and sleeping for a month, and he did come back to life, but with the same health issue.

I believe I read somewhere that using the wabbajack on him might fix the problem.

I'll try it! Do you happen to know what effect I'm aiming for?


Update: I've been trying it and it doesn't seem to be working. He's turned into a crab and a rabbit a few times and even got KO'd by Wabbajack and it doesn't look like its changed anything. He also had the effect that looks like its supposed to heal him a few times, but that didn't work either.

I never found a way to fix the problem but it did happen to me again. I really believe I caused it by accidently hitting Shadowmere with the Marked for Death shout, because that happened before this glitch both times. Shadowmere gets purple marks all over him and then about an hour later anything can kill him with a few hits, including me.