Housecarl Lydia w/o Breezehome

[monokoi]

Where does Lydia return to, if the player does not own the Breezehome house in Whiterun? Can she be sent to other homes in Skyrim?

[steventirey]

If you don't have Breezehome, her home is the main hall of Dragonreach. Where you first spoke with her.

I'm not certain she can just be told to move to a different house. But I do know she can be assigned as a steward for one of the Hearthfire houses, which will move her to that particular house. If you marry her, I believe she can be moved as well.

[Death Approaches]

sort-of. in-game not without a follower mod to manage it, as it takes console commands; they're assigned to the house in a specific hold by their faction data, which also controls their idle chatter and questions/responses about what's life like in <hold/region>? options, and their packages data which controls where they do their daily idling... walking halfway across Skyrim to idle and come back.

the easiest way is with hearthfire, make a housecarl w/o a house follow you to one of the 3 sites, after you've built the basic structure tell them you need a steward; and they'll take on that role at the new location. it's a one-time deal though, can't relocate them again or dismiss them from that job w/o console commands again. (edit, no, you can, but that house will remain steward-less.)

there is a further glitchy situation you can get into when they have 3+ roles and you relocate them, say wife-follower-housecarl-steward; you send them back to their original house or to another of yours, they go bonkers, I guess because so many of them involve being "home", and you can only have generic NPC conversations til you fix them, they'll do none of their dialogues. takes a LOT of console commands.

[Varanus]

Originally posted by steventirey:

I'm not certain she can just be told to move to a different house. But I do know she can be assigned as a steward for one of the Hearthfire houses, which will move her to that particular house. If you marry her, I believe she can be moved as well.

She can also be assigned as the steward at Goldenhills Plantation. Which is where she usually winds up in my games. You may think that sounds like a boring place, for someone like Lydia. But its frequently attacked by dragons. And sometimes vampires or other such menaces. So she gets to have fun. :D

[monokoi]

Skyrim has got to have one of the best communities out there!
Thanks everyone!