Skyrim: You Can Remove a Follower & Here’s How

Are you tired of having a follower who just won’t leave your side in Skyrim? Whether they’re holding you back in combat or just getting in the way, it can be frustrating not knowing how to get rid of them. Many memes have been born from Lydia’s inability to move away from the doorway, and no matter how advanced the follower AI system is, sometimes, due to numerous bugs and glitches, some things can go wrong. We’ve decided to put together this guide in order to see how to remove annoying followers when everything else fails. 

More often than not, followers can be a distraction in Skyrim 

Skyrim boasts a rather large pool of followers to choose from. There are sellswords you can hire for a certain amount of coin. You can recruit members from organizations that you belong to. Or you can gain followers as you do good (or sometimes bad) deeds all across Skyrim as a token of their appreciation and friendship. 

There’s a large pool of classes to choose from as well, from mages to stealthy archers and tanks. There’s a follower for any situation that Skyrim can throw your way. 

At early levels, a follower can be the deciding factor between winning and losing certain fights, depending on your chosen difficulty. They are also quite useful when it comes to carrying your extra gear. You can customize them, and you can command them to perform various actions for you. 

But as you progress through the game and spend more and more time with your followers, you will notice that sometimes they can be an annoyance. Mage-oriented followers can accidentally incinerate you with certain spells. Some followers may report you to the guards if you attempt to trespass or steal why they are accompanying you. And some eternally block the doorways and pull enemies your way while you’re trying to sneak through the Draugr-infested ruin. 

There’s only one solution to that problem, dismissing them. But sometimes, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Things can go very wrong in that aspect, and you might find yourself in a situation where the “dismiss” follower command is no longer working, and you’re stuck with your follower until you figure out a solution that works. We’re here to help.

How to dismiss a follower in Skyrim

Naturally, you can dismiss a follower through their interaction menu, after which they will inform you that they are returning to their original location where you first found them. If this doesn’t work, you can always disable the follower permanently through the “disable” command, or you can set your follower count to a 0 via “set playerfollowercount to 0″ command.  

Dismissing your follower through the disable command 

Disable command should be used as a last resort since it can permanently remove a certain NPC from the game if you don’t use the “enable” command on them before their ID is lost from the console. 

This is, however, also the most surefire way to get rid of an annoying follower and the quickest one as well. To use the “disable” command on your follower, follow these steps:

1. Open the console by pressing “~” on your keyboard. 
2. Click on the follower and type “disable.”
3. Close the console, and you should see your follower fading out quickly. 

Even if you use the “moveto” command to teleport yourself to the follower, since it’s disabled from the game, it will not work. You can, however, always type the “enable” command immediately after disabling the command in an attempt to simply reset the follower, or you can spawn the new copy of the previously-existing follower by using “player.placeatme <followerID> command. Although it’s important to note, that sometimes you will not be able to ask the newly-spawned copy of an NPC to follow you. 

Removing follower with set playerfollowercount command

This command will not disable your follower. It will only remove it from your stats so you can recruit another one in case the follower is lost, and you can’t retrieve him. To use the command, follow these steps: 

1. Open the console by pressing “~” on your keyboard. 
2. Type “set playerfollowercount to 0” and press enter. 
3. Check your stats by typing “follower help 3” 

You can reset your follower’s interactions with you via “resetAI” command 

If you simply want to attempt to repair a follower by resetting their AI, it can be done rather easily, and it might fix everything wrong with your follower. To use the command, follow these steps: 

1. Open the console by pressing “~” on your keyboard. 
2. Click on your follower, and its ID should appear in the console. 
3. Type “resetai” and press enter. 
4. Close the console and check to see if you’re follower is back to their former self. 

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to dismiss the follower, but if the original game options fail, you can always attempt to deal with the problem by using cheats. If you’re interested in more follower-related guides, check out our guide on using multiple follower commands. In the case of your follower dying, check out our guide on resurrecting them. 

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