Bug/Exploit: follower pickup items, marked as stolen & duplicated

[mbar]

Dragonborn, Dawnguard and Hearthfire installed.

If you have a follower pick up items, then take the items from them, those items are marked as stolen.

If you fast travel from the area the follower picked up the items and then fast travel back to the same place, most of the items will be lying there again. Thus items can be duplicated.

I’ve duplicated the Dawnbreaker. My follower carries one. I have two more Dawnbreakers in my chest at home.

I duplicate potions and ingots.

Procedure to duplicate any group of items:
I do this in Breezehome in Whiterun because it’s easy to get back to Breezehome by fast travel.

Drop 5 of the same item. 5 works easiest for dropping.
Have follower pick up those items.
Take those items from her. They are now marked as stolen.
Repeat. (repeat as many times as you can stand.. Each time the follower picks up items, those items will be duplicated by fast travel.)
End by making sure follower has the stolen items.
Fast travel to the Whiterun stables or anywhere outside of Whiterun.
Fast travel back to Whiterun.
Go back to Breezehome. There will be a piles of items for each time the follower picked up. There will not be the same amount though. For example if you dropped and picked up 5 items there might only be 4 items.

Fast travelling within Whiterun does not work. (Dragonreach/Whiterun)

I discovered this by accident trying to get items that were marked as stolen to be picked up by Lydia and then not be marked as stolen. It didn’t work, but when I can back from an adventure I found the item I was trying to get “unstolen” was duplicated there on the floor. It was not marked as stolen.

How to duplicate Dawnbreaker.
drop 3 potatoes, drop Dawnbreaker, drop 2 potatoes.
Have follower pick them up in same order.
Fast travel to stables.
Fast travel back to whiterun.

Since taking a picked up item from Lydia marks it as stolen, I let her keep the stolen Dawnbreaker and put my good Dawnbreaker in my chest. Potates do not get marked as stolen.

Have fun!!

[mbar]

I tried dropping a pile of 11 ingots once. It drops as one ingot marked as 11. I had Lydia pick it up. When I checked her inventory it was only one ingot.

[H3X]

Originally posted by mbar:

I tried dropping a pile of 11 ingots once. It drops as one ingot marked as 11. I had Lydia pick it up. When I checked her inventory it was only one ingot.

The ingots is a known bug with the game, I've not seen a fix for that yet.

The stolen items thing is annoying, especially since asking the follower to trade items with you can only go up to their usual inventory limit. One way around is to use one of the follower mods, such as AFT (amazing follower tweaks). That one has an option for allowing them to carry all your excess luggage, and I've not seen that bug using it yet.

[fran25]

Even before you reach the Fence perk in speechcraft the theives guild will buy your stolden Items.