Skyrim:Dead Thrall

	Dead Thrall
School	Conjuration	Difficulty	Master
Type	Other	Casting	Fire and Forget
Delivery	Aimed	Equip	Both Hands
Spell ID	0007e8df	Editor ID	DeadThrall
Base Cost	1000	Charge Time	3.0
Duration	999 days	Range	188 ft
Speed	50 ft/s	Max Life	~3.76 sec
Magnitude	40	Area	0
Tome ID	000a26f9	Tome Value	1270
Purchase from (after Conjuration Ritual Spell)
Phinis Gestor

Reanimate a dead body permanently to fight for you. Only works on people.

Dead Thrall is a master level Conjuration spell which raises a dead body permanently to fight for you.

Other reanimate spells are temporary, and after the duration of the spell, the undead minion disintegrates into a pile of ashes, forcing you to look elsewhere for a new minion. However, Dead Thrall minions are permanent and can be raised again as many times as needed if they die.

Obtaining the Spell

• Level up your Conjuration to 90.
• Complete the Conjuration Ritual Spell quest to be able to purchase the Dead Thrall spell tome from Phinis Gestor.

Obtaining a Thrall

Any humanoid level 40 or below may be reanimated to become a permanent minion. However, there are some considerations which might guide your decision in choosing a minion since the thrall is permanent and can be raised again if killed during combat. Note that some leveled NPCs may become unusable once you reach level 40, as they keep leveling while risen as a thrall, which may make the Dead Thrall spell ineffective if the thrall happens to die in combat and you attempt to raise them again. For this reason, you may select a thrall that has a level cap at or below level 40.

Types of Thralls

• Unique NPCs and Followers
  • Many unique NPCs will retain their unique abilities when reanimated, such as Orchendor's teleportation or Ulfric Stormcloak's shouts.
  • Some unique NPCs are leveled so care should be taken when enthralling them, as they might cross the level cap.
• Generic NPCs (bandits, vampires, etc.)
• Dremora

Permanent Thrall Corpses

Only a few NPC corpses will not de-spawn if you leave the cell and return later. This can be beneficial for players who want to collect and store the bodies of useful thralls for later use. This applies so long as the NPC was initially killed via conventional means and was not decapitated, dismembered, or turned to dust; via skill perks or via lesser reanimation methods. A list of them may be found here.

Non-respawning named NPCs can be turned into permanent corpses by placing a permanent item onto them. As long as the item is in their inventory, they will not disappear. Respawning NPCs and creatures cannot be made into permanent corpses this way.

Notes

• Dead Thralls will equip any weapons and shields that you place on their corpse prior to reanimation (requires a loading screen or engaging an enemy to initiate equipping). Just like other followers, they will prefer weapons according to the quality of the material rather than the smithing level of improvement. They will also use staves, including those which summon or reanimate, and will often prefer them over melee weapons.
• Dead Thralls will only equip the exact armor that they spawned in, so a corpse wearing a full set of elven or glass armor may be more durable in combat than a bandit in fur armor. You may take the armor from the corpse in order to improve it, enchant it, and even rename it and then replace it onto the thrall, but it must be the very armor the thrall spawned in for them to re-equip it, not just a similar item with the same name. As a result, corpses which had more equipment slots filled in life make optimum thralls since more armor pieces can be improved and enchanted to enhance the thrall's survivability. Unnamed NPC thralls spawn their armor and weapons based on different loot tables. Taking all the equipment on a thrall corpse and then using the dead thrall spell will cause the thrall to respawn its armor from said loot table, upon entering any loading zone. Multiple attempts at this is a way to acquire multiple copies of a certain type of armor, as well as a way to try to acquire slight variations of armor type or design from that NPC's loot table.
  • Forsworn and Dawnguard thralls may equip any Forsworn or Dawnguard armor given to them, respectively, due to the sharing of loot tables.
  • Nightlord and Nightmaster vampires from Dawnguard will likewise equip any vampire armor and boots.
  • Equipping your thrall with any piece of enchanted gear negates the bonus from the perk Dark Souls, which normally increases your thrall's health by 100. However, if you enchant that gear with Fortify Health enchantments that are greater than that +100 health value, it makes little difference.
  • Thralls can only take advantage of the same enchantments as standard followers. Using a Fortify Unarmed Damage enchantment on bracers, it is possible to make Khajiit Bandits or Bandit Outlaws fight unarmed in preference to using a weapon - a rarity for NPCs.
• Some thralls do not groan and may either be silent or retain their original vocal clips as when they were alive. Typically, these are named NPCs associated with a particular quest that would not exist outside of that mission (such as the dead mages in Nchuand-Zel). Notably, Dremora and many unnamed vampires retain their standard vocal clips as thralls. Among these voice line-retaining thralls, Cicero is the most notable. Generally, NPCs that have unique voices do not groan and moan when reanimated, or voicetypes that were added by add-ons also do not groan (such as vampire voices added by Dawnguard; vampire voices that appear in the base game do groan).
• Dead Thralls behave the same as other reanimated NPCs.
• When you fast travel to a major city, your thrall is left behind at the city stables to be picked up later, if they don't run into the city to find you.
• Like all reanimate effects, the level cap is boosted by 25% with the Necromage perk. This allows you to reanimate NPCs up to and including level 50, but only if the NPC was undead prior to being killed and reanimated, such as a vampire.
  • This can be further increased to level 62 by having the Bone Wolf pet or Bloodworm Helm, allowing you to permanently reanimate Nightlord Vampires, or to level 78 by having both, allowing you to permanently reanimate any generic vampire and any named vampire with a maximum level, Arch-Curate Vyrthur being the highest with a max of 75.
• The Dead Thrall spell is also subject to the Twin Souls perk, effectively allowing you to have two permanent thralls at any given time.
• You can summon a third dead thrall if you use the Staff Of Worms while wearing armor enchanted to increase the number of undead minions by one.
• The Wabbajack will exclusively deal elemental damage to Dead Thralls, and cannot be used to transmogrify or instantly kill them.
• If you can no longer find your thrall but the Reanimate effect is still active in your Active effects, return to the area or dungeon where the thrall first spawned to get it to follow you again.

Bugs

• Dead Thralls use the same code to fast travel that applies to horses. This means that when you fast travel into a walled city (e.g. Whiterun, Riften, Solitude), the thrall is transported into the town's stables even though you are dropped within the city walls. Depending upon the distance from the stables to the location you fast traveled to, the thrall will attempt to run and catch up to you after a brief period of time. However, if the distance is too large, the thrall will remain at the stables until you exit the city and get within acceptable follow range. Failing to get them in follow range before fast traveling out of the city to another location will often cause them to completely glitch and reset to another area.
• The spell has an innate 1.25x Fortified Healing effect that allows thralls to heal over time (otherwise they have a heal rate of 0). However, this effect is not applied upon resurrection and the spell needs to be re-cast on an already resurrected thrall to take effect. The effect is also lost on every loading screen or wait command and needs to be reapplied.
• If you have two Dead Thralls that appear to be identical (having the same name, the same gender, same hair style, facial tattoos, etc.) then one of them will usually be lost when you travel between areas. The cause of this bug is unknown, but it may be related to the thralls having the same BaseID. If you can discern any difference at all between the thralls, even slightly, then this bug will not be apparent. ^?
• Meridia's Shrine may cause thralls to disappear unless you kill them before placing her beacon on the gem pedestal. ^?
• Thralls will regenerate their default armor upon being reanimated, or by traveling to another cell after reanimation if they have no armor or clothing equipped at all. This can be exploited for infinite copies of equipment from them, including unique equipment from NPCs who have unique armor defaulted.
• Casting any cloak spell will cause all thralls to die, regardless of distance from you. ^?
  • The Dawnguard DLC fixes this bug for vanilla cloak spells. This bug may still happen with Mara's Wrath^CC.
• Casting this spell can result in a permanent effect becoming stuck on you even after the thrall has been killed.
  • The Unofficial Skyrim Patch, version 2.0.2, fixes this bug.
  • The thrall that has gone missing may be back where you last had it, or where the NPC originally spawned. Finding and killing the thrall will remove the effect.
  • This bug can be fixed by entering in the console player.dispelallspells.
  • Transforming into a Werewolf or Vampire Lord can fix this issue.
  • Going to jail will remove the active effect
• Casting with the scroll of dead thrall may cause the spell to fail on otherwise eligible targets.
• Thralls may become hostile for no discernible reason on fast travel or after going through a transfer point. ^?

See Also

• Reanimate Spells
• Reanimate Effect