Well I'm now lvl 12 and almost never fast traveled... did some Companions quest and well, practically never left the Whiterun Hold.. problem is I never met a dragon during my travels... I did kill two others besides the first MQ one ..... but -both- showed up when I fast traveled to the Western Watch Tower of Whiterun.. and to be honest, it kinda svcks.

These things were announced as being random creatures but thus far they seem to be far from random. Are there actually random dragons? or are they all scripted to a certain location?

They don't seem to be that random imo. I have fought a few random dragons though, sometimes they fly down than fly away, kind of pointless if you ask me. But for the most part I only see them when their standing on the word walls.

It seems to vary from player to player. I've seen where people have said they haven't seen a dragon since the fight at Whiterun. As for me, I get attacked by at least 3 for every 30 minutes of wilderness ventures. Maybe it depends on the level of difficulty you're playing at.

weird, iv'e had about 12 random dragons attack me while just exploring including some dragons attacking whiterun, riverwood, the college of winterhold, (which was pretty epic as the whole fight took place in the courtyard and my school-mates came out to help ). I've also had two encounters with TWO dragons at a time. I didn't survive either encounter..

No trust me, they ARE 100% random. You just have to be patient.

Yes, they are random. I once saw a Dragon circling overhead in the mountains, only for it to leave to a different area.

Other times, I've been attacked by 2 dragons almost at once.

definitely random
i have more souls than i know what to do with
gets kind of annoying when they attack settlements though
i like keeping npcs alive in games like skyrim, and dragon attacks dont help at all
dawnstar seems to be a fav for them
ive had to kill 3 that have chosen to land there

I don't know if they're truly randomized, but I come upon dragons pretty frequently. A couple times they surprise attacked me, the other times I have seen them first, far in the distance.

actually it happens quite methodically and predictably. right after you buy a horse because yours died in the last battle you had with a dragon. every. flippin. time.

After something like twenty hours of playing, I haven't seen many, either. There's that first one and one that let my char be known as dragonborn, but other than that I've only seen one shadow and had one skeleton dragon drop from the sky, nearly on top of me.

Maybe I need to get out more.

i dont know about u guys but every place i go there r dragons. i was just exploring the wilderness and i cam upon a imperial camp . i was like oh maybe i can sell stuff in there . all the sudden 2 dragons appear and start attacking me and the imperials .here is a pic of them flying over us

http://steamcommunity.com/id/sinpkr/screenshot/596954040445142251/?
needless to say nearly all the imperials died

edit: nvm it looks like there were actually 3 dragons in that pic. that was taken 30 saves ago.

Not counting the scripted fight at Whiterun, I have fought about eight of them in my forty-or-so hours of playing. About three of those were from dragons who dropped right down on me, unnoticed. I was also in a fight with two at the same time, though I was near one of their spots, so only one of them was actually random.

I've run across five or so in around thirty hours of play. But I haven't actually explored that much around.

Wow bad luck I guess, start traveling more near big mountains, lots of dragons there, dragons love mountains

I've played maybe 10-15 hours or so and Ive run into 2 random dragons. Both of them were only an hour apart from on another. How far are you into the main quest? Because it seems that the further you get into the quests, the more dragons show up. I had just visited the greybeards to learn the 'ro' in fus ro dah, and all of a sudden dragons started spawning all over.

I have fought one random dragon. I used the trees as a shield from his flames, lol.

im level 26
have done a few MQ quests
and for a while dragons wouldnt leave me the [censored] alone
recently i havn't encountered any
besides the MQ shouts i found one other shout through a quest lol
so i have a few extra souls lying around
so ya there are def random dragons u jus havnt been so lucky


This was directed to OP lol

Progress the main quest to the point where you find out how the dragons are coming back. At that point just stop doing the main quest and you will have dragons galore.

there are two types of dragons.
Dragons that hang out at the peaks where u get new voices

and random world dragons who just show up flying over head. I was just dropped in on by one not 5 minutes ago. Not even a wing flutter just BAM! HERE I AM LETS GO [censored]ES!

The college one happened to me to but everyone was asleep so I had to do it solo ... damn mages sleeping through a battle!

OP - I find them very random and always show up when I'm least ready for them!

I was on my way up the throat of the world to talk to the Gray beards when a dragon attacked me out of nowhere... The only way I can explain that is that it was pretty damn random.

The random dragons are fantastic.

Especially when you're skirting the edge of a Giant encampment, and let the two parties clobber each other half to death, run up, hit the dragon once and get his soul.

Mighty handy that.

I run into some, but not enough for me to say that they're 'common'. Once i had a dragon hunting bounty and headed towards the location...and wouldn't you know, i ran into a dragon when i got there! Me and some guards killed it, it was pretty cool because it was my first blood dragon. And then the mission didn't update. Oops, the actual dragon was just sleeping...=P

The most ironic random encounter i had was during a mission where you have to give up most of your gear temporarily. I had ditched my weapons, leaving me with nothing but a quest dagger that did about 10% of my 2 swords...and i thought to myself, "Wouldn't it svck if a dragon showed up right now?"

...what do you think happened literally 10 seconds later? XD

Luckily it was right outside solitude, so the guards helped me take it out, but it was still one of the best dragon fights i've ever had. With my dual swords I can take out out in literally seconds once they land; with this i actually had to think and use dragon shouts and all sorts of stuff to kill it. It was very fun xD


As for the actual question at hand, random means actually RANDOM. Random means that you can sometimes get the same music twice in a row, or not hear a song for an entire year. Theoretically you could go a whole game without a single random dragon encounter...i'm pretty sure the exterior shout walls are a guaranteed spawn point, however.

Also, a question: are named dragons any different from unnamed ones? i got attacked randomly by a named dragon, it was odd...but not any harder than any other dragon encounter. Anyone have any idea?

Dunno about you but I can't get rid of those greasy lizards. Lvl 30 Nord Barbarian! Did the MQ at level 5 until I reached the greybeards (after 20 minutes of trying to kill the troll lol) Stopped there and went full explorer/adventurer. Needless to say I was getting about a random dragon every 30-45minutes (have 4 non MQ shouts maxed, 6 with two and 7 others with 1 soul and I still have 9 souls to spend lol) and still have souls to spare :S. Even got the kill 20 dragons achievement in the first 10 hours of play time (in game time, not the time steam counts when you go afk from the keyboard but leave the game running). But from what I came to conclude, dragon spawn increase A LOT as you progress through the MQ (and seems to be tied in together with your level). Hell, last night I was forced to revert to an auto save since I had 4 dragons (2 blood, 1 black(?), 1 white) attack me at once (as in all of em attacking me, not just waiting for the other to move away) Needless to say it was fun for a while.

So I guess you can try progressing to the point where you learn...

SPOILER ALERT

Dragonrend


It seems after that point in the game, I just now can't get rid of dragons. That and after that point in the MQ I reached level 30 which was the big FML moment for me during this save. Hell the dragons are almost as common as walking into a pack of wolves (highly exaggerated lol) Although I have to admit, after level 30 and playing on expert, dragon fights (as pure melee) are now becoming progressively more challenging. Can't wait to start unlocking the higher level dragons.



This is just my experience by the way. On other saves finding dragons is a job and a half. Just seems that one save the game accidently smashed the DO NOT PRESS button and forgot to fix it.