I'm beginning a new character with a rather more involved role play and I have been trying to find out when the most frequent appearance of dragons occurs based on which stage of the MQ has been completed. So far my perusal of the UESP hasn't really turned up a definitive answer, so I am appealing to my fellow Skyrim goers' experience as to when during the MQ do the most dragons appear?

Extraneous info

Some of the elements of this particular role play will be:

Use only found spells (except for those that don't appear as findable spells in game). I've done this in the past and it is amazing how excited one gets when finding that one spell like muffle you've been trying to locate for what seems like an eternity.

Learn enchantments from found items only.

Amass a complete in game Library and rescue all books whenever possible (selling duplicates to Urtag for safe keeping).

A mostly non-FT play through in jog mode. (Exceptions would be, for example, subsequent trips up and down High Hrothgar after the first one).

Use only armor that I make myself or find in a dresser, that is, I won't be wearing gear from the dead (recent or otherwise).

Obtain Winstad Manor to be my place of solace in the north away from the cares of the civil war and other happenings in the world.

There's more "conditions", but I think you get the idea.

Personally I think the frequency of dragons depends more on what bugs your character is going to be afflicted with, my first cahracter had the pests constantly spawning from killing that first one in Whiterun, he finished the main quest and the things still kept appearing everywhere right up till Dawnguard was installed. Between Dawnguard and Hearthfire he got a few months peace, then Hearthfire gave him a 100% dragon spawn rate for Lakevire manor, every visit he would get a dragon, but elsewhere only a few. Whether he walked, rode or fast traveled to Lakeview Manor or to Pinewatch, made no difference. Dragonborn gave him back the dragons all over the place he could not even visit Neloth without getting one, and the 1.9 patch made absolutely no difference, he even ended up with Windstad Manor getting dragons all the time. That character has fled to the PC to get some relief from his dragon problem. Putting up with it from Nov 2011 was just too much for me, obviously that character has picked up a bug and that was not meant to happen.

Second character killed the dragon at Whiterun, went up all those steps and that was as far as she ever went on the main quest, she had a peaceful time exploring Skyrim up until the 1.9 patch suddenly gave her random spawning dragons. Seems it was a bug she missed out on that epic event, I am disappointing she has them now, and am considering moving that character to the PC as well. Both my first two characters on the Xbox 360 have problems with freezing anyway. Third Xbox 360 character had an easy time between killing the first dragon and going up those steps to see the greybeards, he now has a pretty high rate of dragons appearing, despite not having a chance to advance any further on the main quest.

My PS3 character has killed the first dragon, and there has been no sign of another since, she has not been up to see the Greybeards yet, but is doing a lot of exploring, if they were going to appear she would have them by now.

The entire thing seems pretty random to me, because I am sure most would have had a different experience to my first two characters. I would suspect once my PS3 character visits those greybeards, she is going to be fighting a lot of dragons. So it will be a very, very long time before I get back to her. I would have expected the most random spawning dragons to appear after we see Alduin waking them, I have just not actually experienced that yet. My PC character who has been restarted 3 times is just going to cheat for the third attempt and get herself some good poison for the things.

For me it has always been after "A blade in the Dark" that dragon attacks become more fequent. The only other time that dragons seemed to apear more often was on a Mage playthrough when I did "Dragon Rising" then about 1/2 of the CoW.... everytime I would get to the college ....incoming frost Dragon. Needless to say I finished the MQ very quickly, it was anoying to say the least.

@aussie500 Interesting! I've never had those kinds of issues/experiences. Usually when I do the MQ and kill the first dragon at the Western Watch Tower the next one won't spawn until the 5 day timer is up. And the frequency of dragon spawn afterwards, if I don't advance the MQ, is always 5 days. This is what seems to occur after "A blade in the Dark" as you've observed @Areial.

I know that after I've gone to see the Greybeards and retrieved the note from Ustengrav that there is a moratorium on dragons spawning until after I've met with Delphine and killed the dragon at Kynesgrove. The exception of course are dragons located at word walls. I've also observed that the first chance to witness Alduin resurrecting a dragon subsequent to Kynesgrove occurs when Delphine sends the player character to Solitude to meet Melborn as part of Diplomatic Immunity. It is after this event and before retrieving the Elder Scroll that I am unsure of how the frequency of dragons spawns changes or if it is still tied to the 5 day timer, or now occurs independently in different cells, etc.

I am hoping to find that point where the most dragon attacks occur because I'll be activating assaults on towns through the mod deadly dragons and setting the assault timer to either more frequent or less depending on how the default game operates.

Thank you both for your input and observations.

Cheers!

Bram

My current character up untill "Bleak Falls Barrow" appeared in my journal, (3rd part MQ) did'nt encounter any dragons for about 15 levels after escaping from Helgen. This is on PC playing on expert difficulty, don't know if that has an effect on it or not.

@Rodjama you won't see any dragons until after you kill the one at the Western Watchtower which is after you finish bleak falls barrow, turn in the dragonstone and the Jarl sends you to the Western Watchtower.

Regards,

Bram

Yeah, your right, I'm a new player.

No worries, everyone was a new player at one time or another! Luck and levels in your adventures!