Horses for Followers
Horses for Followers will make new horses available to buy at the city stables and enable your followers / hirelings to ride them. To make them mount their steeds, all you need to do is mount your own and they will promptly follow suit. If the horse bolts, it will come back and follow your own (player) horse. Tired of leading all the time? Ask your
Horses For Followers
Hotfix available (ver 4.0.2): While on foot, prevents follower from following too closely and bumping into you.
VERY IMPORTANT! Menu bug has a solution – but needs you to implement it.
The bug that caused the Bill of Sale Menu to not show now has a solution. It only affected users who upgraded to 3.9.0. This bug does not affect new users or those who re-installed over a cleaned save.
This is what to do when the update (ver 4.0.1) is installed :-
Go to the stable where you bought the follower-horse. Don’t go to the wrong stable because the topic will not show.
Speak to the Ostler and select new conversation topic “I need a new Bill of Sale”.
The old Bill of Sale will be removed, and a new one will be given to you. This will reset the attached script.
Read Bill of Sale to confirm it works.
NOTE: This will not work if –
1) you don’t have a Bill of Sale in your inventory.
2) Your follower’s horse is not from this stable or is dead.
3) Followers Horse came from Riften, where there are no Ostler topics (see known issues)
4) The original Windhelm Ostler has been replaced.
If so, then your only option is to re-install the mod over a cleaned save.
Horses for Followers is now a standalone mod.
NOTE: Users of versions prior to 2.0.0 Read Cleaned Save Install below before deleting Better Follower Improvements.esp
New in this version 4.0.1
A. Bug fix: When the Horse Management Utility (Bill of Sale) had its menu restructured, this caused an error so the menu would not display if the user had the old version in the save. New topics added to the stable hands (Ostlers) will fix the problem.
B. Added pop-up warning about the problem and how to remedy it by speaking to the correct Ostler.
Horses for Followers will make new horses available to buy at all the main stables. To make followers mount their steeds, all you need to do is mount your own and they will follow suit. Mount/dismount will take anything up to 2 seconds max. Any faster will take resources from the game, plus appear robotic. When combat ensues, followers will engage in combat as normal. The horses are set to avoid combat if possible, unlike the vanilla players horse. Now that you have two horses to pay for, you will appreciate their increased survivability.
The horses will be owned by the current Follower Faction or Player Faction, which means that even if you change followers, there is no need to buy a new horse for each one. Hope you enjoy and let me know of any bugs or mod conflicts. If a follower refuses to mount, use the Bill of Sale in the inventory (Books) to switch to ownership more suitable for your companion at any given time. TIP: Double-tap the tab key will get to the menu quicker.
Follower as Leader: Speak to your follower to set a destination.
1) If you dismount the follower will ride back, then dismount and switch back into the normal follow routine.
2) Draw a weapon, and the follower will temporarily switch back to normal follow routine. Use this to catch up or if your need aid.
No horse hunting! Horses will follow the players horse. This feature support A Horse call feature which is being developed which you can test out via Bill of Sale. Also you can use a dedicated horse call mod such as Whistle.
Fast Travel: Follower will mount after teleporting.
Fast Travel to walled city: Problems solved. Horse will be in the stable.
Followers horses will return to stables if the follower is dismissed.
There is a ledger book in all stables (but is a deprecated feature). Activate it as an alternative way to buy the followers horse.
Bill of Sale: Doubles as a Swiss army knife for horses. Check out for new features.
Download, endorse and… enjoy!
Cleaned Save Install
Skip this process if A) You never installed it before. B) installing over Version 2.0.0 or higher.
This update (v2 or higher) has many changes , it is advisable (but not mandatory) to make a safe save and a partial clean save to ensure the mod works correctly.
A. SAFE SAVE: Make sure follower is dismounted. Empty any saddlebags (if applicable). Use Bill of Sale to refund horse. Save then exit to desktop.
B. Unselect Better Follower Improvement + Horses For Followers in the mod switcher so they won’t load. Load the Safe save. Ignore complaints.
C. SAVE again. This is your Partially Cleaned Save which no longer has any data from Horses for Followers / Better Follower Improvements plugins.
D. DELETE the Better Follower Improvements plugin. It has been made obsolete and will cause conflicts.
E. Reselect Horses for Followers in your favourite mod ‘load order’ switcher.
F. LOAD the Partially cleaned save – and enjoy the improvements to this mod!
Some people are having problems buying a horse, even if the ledger book is used. It’s becoming apparent that this mod works best using an updated version of TES V: Skyrim. Older version may not work correctly.
Installing Manually:
If you don’t wish to use the NMM, simply unzip (7-zip) contents to the data folder. File should include 1 BSA archive, 1 plugin, readme and a SEQ file. Note: A SEQ file is for all mods that have dialogue in start enabled quests. You may not need it as the BSA archive also has a SEQ folder. I included a loose one in case there is a problem with archived one.
Known Issues
[New issues]
A) If you sell a player horse, the old horse may not return to its stables. [Workaround until fixed] mount old horse once more, then new horse. Cause is known, and fix will be in next update.
B) Horse Utility (Bill of Sale) will not appear when followers have been replaced by temporary companions. Working on solution soon.
C) Companions don’t horse ride during a companion quest. Although they would if they become proper followers later. No plans as yet use them as followers. Will consider in future.[Old Issues – mostly fixed]
1) FAST TRAVEL: If a follower is dismounted and player fast travels to an “walled” city, their horse will teleport. Best result is when both horses are mounted.
2) Teleporting to Dragonreach. follower spawns at gate
3) Reminder: Riften ostler has no topics to sell a followers horse as it was removed due to an incorrect understanding of the Dialogue bug. Use Ledger until added back.
4) The Follower’s horse old will not return to stables if you buy another follower’s horse. [Solution] Sell old one using Bill of Sale functions.
5) The follower & their horse will now fast travel with the player. However, there are restrictions:
– Player & follower should be both be mounted for best results.
6) If, for some reason, you have more than one followers horse, all horses will teleport with you. [Solution] Sell one of the other horses via the Bill of Sale.
7) Fast travel to enclosed citys such as Whiterun. Problem resolved (see 1).
Question & Answers
Q: My follower will not ride the horse I just bought for them. Why not?
A1 Read the Bill of Sale given to you by the stables and switch the horse to a different owning faction.
A2 Some Followers are not added to Current Follower Faction until late. Try switching to another owning faction in Bill of Sale.
Q: My follower / companion is from another mod, will he/she be able to ride these horses?
A1: (updated answer) If following Bethesda model and not a hireling, the follower needs AI Packages with riding enabled that includes Current Follower Faction == 1, and Global follower count >= 1. , They should be dynamically added/removed via script to/from the Current Followers Faction. No need to give a rank. Also increase/decrease global follower count and set teammate as true/false. Best results if player horse is vanilla (so stables should work), or special mod horse from a esm.
Q: I noticed the dialogue for buying the horse is the same as for buying the player horse – where’s
the variety?
A: Alternative dialogue will be in a future update when I edit the sound files. [Still plan to do this]
