why does lydia levels light armor and archery

[Perraine]

Easiest way is to grab the NPC Editor and customize Lydia (or any other companion) with that, you can set as Auto-Level, set her Starting Level and Max Level, what combat style she uses, even what perks you want her to have, then save the file to your Skyrim/data folder and go play the game ...

 

I think that BGS intended us to follow a certain path of progression with the game and the Housecarls are sort of tailored to suit what your approx. level would be when you reach that city and/or become Thane of that city, the companions and housecarls WERE bugged initially and did not Auto-Level by default, however I think BGS fixed that with one of the patches, they still will have a Max level though, and of course not even the Nine would know what Perks/Stats that BGS programmed for them to choose when they Auto-Level (because BugThesda has such a great history of making intelligent decisions) so I think we were supposed to leave Lydia at home after a certain level and use maybe Jordis or Aargis

 

Manual ???? What Manual ??? I never saw any manual! A manual probably would have at least mentioned that F5 is quicksave, which you can't really play Skyrim without!

[MacSuibhne]

Perraine,

 

No offense, but are you sure (you kind of implied that you weren't) that Lydia will auto-level? I do believe I have the latest patches...so, it might not be necessary to reset her?

 

How would I tell if she needs leveling or what level she currently is, for that matter?

 

I got interested in this because she seems a bit weak lately. Maybe that's just because the enemies we face are stronger.

 

I give her healing and stamina potions, and sometimes she uses them and sometimes she doesn't.

 

I also...after reading the UESP wiki...took away her two handed weapons and equipped her with a 1H glass ax and a dwarven HA shield. But she was potent in the early levels with two handed, she doesn't seem nearly so one handed. I understood that she had a max level of 50.

 

What and where is the NPC editor?

 

I got a small manual with my boxed set and if I recall it did mention f5. that's how I found out about it.

[Rooker75]

@Perraine

They haven't fixed this, or if they did, they did it wrong. All my companions still have to be leveled up manually with the latest patch.

 

If you buy the game from a store instead of from Steam, there is a map and a user manual in the box. I'm sure the Steam version probably has a pdf version of the manual.

 

@MacSuibne

When followers haven't leveled up, their health is still at a low level, as are their levels in their primary skills (one-handed, block, heavy armor, etc.). It leaves them unable to deal with higher level enemies. So if you first met Lydia at below level 10, she only has around 100HP. At level 10, that's fine. At level 40, she should have around 400 or 500, just like the enemies that are going to kill her. Her one-handed skill would be in the 20s, when it should be in the 70s, etc.

 

It's as though you spent the entire game ignoring your level-ups, not adding health/magicka/stamina and not taking perks, except it's worse, because at least your skills go up. Try taking on a Draugr Death Overlord whose armed with an Ebony battleaxe while you're still at level 8 and that's basically what your companions are doing, because they *are* still level 8.

 

If you open the console and click any NPC, you can type GETAVINFO HEALTH. That will tell you what their health is currently and also what it should be. You can look at skill levels too, like GETAVINFO ONEHANDED, GETAVINFO BLOCK, etc. It knows what their stats should be, but it fails to increase them like it should. Setting their class manually (SETCLASS 13176) forces the game to do what it should have done automatically.

[MacSuibhne]

Rooker75,

 

Wow! You know your stuff. Did you help write Skyrim?

 

thank you for answering me. I won't be back in the game til tomorrow, so one quick follow-up if I may?

 

Will doing this once bring Lydia from level 10 to the same level I am at, ie 22? I assume it will but want to make sure.

 

(I have only one glitch that I know of--in the Companions Quest--I can't get new jobs--but I will post another thread about that. I hope you will look in on it.)

 

Again, thanks.

[MacSuibhne]

Rooker75,

 

I entered the GETAVINFO ONEHANDED at the console after clicking on Lydia and it said the current value (?) was 31.

 

HEALTH was 158.

 

Can you (or anyone) tell me what these numbers mean and where they should be if Lydia was leveled up? I am at level 22.

[MacSuibhne]

Update...exploring the issue further, I opened the console, clicked on Lydia and entered GETLEVEL.

 

The result was "GETLEVEL>>22"

 

So unless I am reading this wrong or missing something, it appears that Lydia has leveled up along with me..automatically...because I'm at level 22 as well.

[MacSuibhne]

I was really hoping someone would address what the GETAVINFO ONEHANDED (31), as well as the GETAVINFO HEALTH (158) results for Lydia I posted above mean.

 

The console seems to be giving contradictory information. I am at level 22. My health is at 230/230 and my one handed skills are at 55.

 

GETLEVEL for Lydia seems to be saying she's at 22 but her health and one-handed skills are significantly behind mine.

 

Can someone please clarify this for a Johnny-New-Come?

Edited April 27, 2012 by MacSuibne

[MacSuibhne]

Seems like I'm the only one posting to this thread, but just in case...

 

 

I'm at level 22. Several posts back when i issued the GETAVINFO HEALTH and GETAVINFO ONEHANDED commands, I got 158 and 31 respectively.

 

Today, dispairing of further guidance, I went ahead and entered the SETCLASS 13176 command for Lydia, then entered the GETAVINFO commands again and this time I got 345 (or thereabouts) for Lydia's health and 66 for one-handed.

 

Clearly, as Rooker75 said, even with the latest patches Lydia (and other followers?) are not automatically leveling up with the player.

 

I hope this post will alleviate for others some of the anxiety I felt about using the console. That said, I doubt I'll ever make a habit of it. And, of course, I still don't know the long term consequences (so many unexplained glitches being reported) but for now I'm happy.

 

and I have a backup.

[Rooker75]

The number for health is her hit points and the number for skills is what level her skill is currently. Like I said, the game is keeping track of what those stats should be but it fails to apply them for some reason. I just keep the command in a text file and load it as a batch file every time I level up.

 

You can just copy the setclass 13176 command into a text file and save it in the same folder where the TESV.exe file is located (\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\skyrim\ by default). If you save it as LevelUpLydia.txt, you can open the console, click on Lydia and type bat leveluplydia and it will do the same thing.

 

Doing that won't hurt anything, so long as you make sure you do have Lydia selected in the console and not another NPC. The only consequence is that Steam won't unlock any achievements you earn if the console has been opened until you exit and restart the game. I don't really give a damn about Steam achievements but it's something to keep in mind if you do.

[shuriken88]

Why dont you just use these console commands to set up the skills the way you want (without cheating and creating a god, but just rebalancing them to suit your needs):-

 

Lydia has REALLY terrible sneak and archery, so you could improve them a little by using:-

 

-setav sneak (then type the number you want)

-setav marksman (for some reason its not "archery", as its known in the game)

 

If you prefer light armour to heavy armour, you could lower her "heavy" skill, then raise her "light", or just swap them.

 

Another option, which is probably better, is to simply use "setlevel" followed by 4 numbers.

 

-The 1st value= the level they will be, as a percentage, compared to yours. YOU HAVE TO ADD AN EXTRA 0 to your percent. So, typing 500, will set Lydias level to HALF that of yours. Think of it as 50.0% without the decimal point.

 

-The 2nd value= how many levels the NPC will be above or below yours (pretty pointless, just leave at 0)

-The 3rd value= the minimum level the NPC can be (again, seems pretty pointless, because when do people level DOWN??)

-The 4th value= the maximum possible level the NPC can reach.

 

So if I remember correctly, you would write it like this:-

 

"setlevel 500 0 1 80"

 

The added benefit is that after doing this, Lydia will now level up EVERY time YOU level up, which is exactly what I wanted, and now she's never completely useless in a fight with other enemies on her level. I also made sure that she wasn't TOO powerful (because thats just like cheating).

 

Try it out, it worked for me. I REALLY dont know why Bethesda didn't include this as an in-game feature. It makes no sense whatsoever!