After 20-ish dragons, I crouch and hope they just fly away.
Dragon bones are so heavy to carry, and I can't help myself but to loot everything I come over with a higher price than 10x weight.

Get Breezehome in Whiterun and store your scales and bones there. It's forge adjacent so you can always make some dragon armour later on, or sell it to the blacksmith, or the shop just off the market

I don't get how you guys keep finding dragons. In over 100 hours I've encountered around 20 dragons, the vast majority of those being scripted/boss/dragon wall guardians. only around 5 or 6 have been random spawns...

I really wouldn't mind encountering MORE random dragons

I've only killed 23-24 dragons, myself, I just don't see what all the fuss is about. I want more dragons, but I know that's not going to happen until I get further in the main quest, which I'm not doing for now. I might have to get it done, though.

Well next character I am going to wait on the MQ till I want to use their bones and scales for armor. That way Half the people aren't dead in the open towns. In that instance the AI is completely vapid. Nooooo the NPCs don't run into a building to protect themselves, they hide behind a frikkin tree or log and think the Dragon can't get them. At the moment in my game half the main NPCs in Riverwood are toast, The smith and his Wife, Sven and a couple others.

yes, I know, also you might want to spoiler tag that

One thing I am certainly thankful for is that Skyrim is different from Fallout. Deathclaws & rad-scorpions could wreck a town & kill off important NPC's/traders even when you were across the map. It didn't happen often but it did happen. It was awesome that events like that were happening but it svcked at the same time. There were a couple of times I ended up with quests that could not be completed because the NPC I needed was dead. It happened in Oblivion too a couple of times where an important quest related NPC got randomly killed in the wild but not to the extent that it could happen in Fallout. If dragons could wipe cities while you were off doing something else, Skyrim would be a really hard game to complete.

Odd. Some people claim they see too many dragons, others barely see any. I finished the main quest and I barely see them now. I do get the feeling they follow me though. I sleep at the College of Winterhold a lot, and that's where they come for me mostly (one of the bastards managed to kill J'Zargo ). Note that I NEVER fast travel, I've first used a carriage after the main quest, now about 3 times or so. I do seem to find some dragons at their old spots (at the dragon wall mountains).

Weird because I rarely fast travel and I see them all the time just exploring the world. It's like, return to town to ditch the heavy old dragon bones, sell a few things, and off out again.. 10 mins later - another dragon. Been happening more and more frequently now as I progress the main quest. I do agree though that Fast travelling will seem to make them more frequent, but thats fair enough since you lose time when you fast travel.

I kind of like the numbers I'm seeing now, but I wish they were harder and more varied. Just more epic in general. Shadow of the Colossus style.

Since latch 1.2 I have not fought any dragons randomly flying. I have seen three one was the backwards flying dragon. All he did was fly in circles backwards. The other two just went right over my head. I an on the 360 and do not have 1.3 yet.

It does sometimes seem like dragons are spawning frequently, but other times I wonder where they all went. Last week, I probably saw a dragon once or twice for each hour of gameplay. (I didn't fight each of them, some I saw from a distance.) This week, so far, I might have seen 1 or 2 dragons in total. Right now it's not a big deal because I still have 4 or 5 unused dragon souls, so it's not like I'm needing to gain more.

What cracks me up about fairly frequent dragon spawns is when they happen over a town, like Riften, for example, where I've killed probably 5 dragons up to this point, and the NPC's in the area keep using the same dialog for after the dragon is dead. A guard comes running up and says, "If I hadn't seen it, I never would have believed it!"

So I turn to him and say, "Dude, please. Lay off the Skooma. This is the third one you've helped me kill this week."

- S -

Don't forget that every time you fast travel days are going by. Even though you feel like dragons are popping up every time you move, weeks are passing in game time.