I have to apologize if I missed a discussion about this, but I've been too busy playing to wade through the trolling on the forums.

Just before quitting for the night I killed a dragon near the Boneyard (a second, non quest related one.) I was unable to absorb its soul. i could loot it, but it is still lying there intact and I can't get its soul.

Happened 3 or 4 times to me.

I've had this happen before when I've had 15 spare souls unused. After missing absorbing a soul on a couple of fights, I used up a few of my spares and then absorption happened normally again.

I had the same thing happen last night, in the area with all the geothermal hot springs. Exact same situation, otherwise.

They're ginger dragons.

If they're word wall dragons, and you've killed the dragon at that word wall before, it won't have a soul.

This prevents soul-farming.

This topic came up on reddit I think, and the consensus seemed to be that the respawning dragons that are marked on your map will not have souls when they respawn, but I haven't found that to be the case. The only time I've failed to absorb a soul is when I killed a dragon in the air and he fell down a mountain. I didn't feel like abandoning my path to get it. I've got like 20 of them in surplus anyway.

Not like it really makes a difference. I have 30 unused souls right now because, for a while, EVERY TIME I set foot in Solitude, a dragon showed up.

Thank you all for your quick replies (even the snarky one :rolleyes: )

I was able to dredge up a couple of other threads. The consensus seems to be that this is a glitch. Since there seem to be plenty of dragons, I guess it's no biggie.

BTW Any use for scales and bones except cash?

I killed a dragon, walked 5 feet and killed 2 cave bears, then another dragon swooped down and i killed it. Then a frost troll started to attack me 10 sec later.
I killed it, and it was hell for those minutes of hard battle, but i got 2 dragon souls. Woo hoo!

:trophy: :trophy: :trophy:

Ding... Ding... Ding...

When you get to 100 smithing, you can get a perk to make Dragon Armor (using dragon bone/scales; what else would dragon armor be made out of?)

I think you can make Dragonscale armor if your smithing is maxed.

Here's a question - why are dragon's respawning? Sounds like the glitch isn't that the re-spawned dragons don't have souls, but that a dragon whose soul you absorbed can re-spawn at all. I remember one of the characters in the game saying the the dragon born has the power to permanently kill a dragon, because they absorb the soul, so the dragon can never resurrect again. So, if a dragon whose soul you absorb resurrects (re-spawns), that sort of violates the whole idea of you being the only person able to permanently kill a dragon.

The only problem I might see arising from that is, let's say there's a word-wall dragon that you went and killed while getting a word. Then, you go to town and their's a bounty/quest to kill that dragon - if the quest isn't smart enough to realize you've already killed it, and let you immediately claim the reward, then maybe you could be stuck with broken quests that can never be finished. That would be bad.

I'm not an expert, but I understand there are Named, quest related dragons and non-named generic dragons. To address your second question first, I think the game would treat them like any named NPC and track them. Of course, since quest related NPCs in Skyrim appear to be Essential and therefore unkillable (unlike OB) it's hard to make a judgement about the dragons.

As for the generic dragons it's a glitch one way or the other; either they respawn without souls or they never had a soul in the first place.