You have to slay a dragon to open up a dragon shout "item slot" of sorts. Than you can read a writing on a wall to learn the actual shout. If you go to a wall without slaying a dragon you won't be able to learn a shout. If you slay two dragons than you can read two walls and learn two shouts. So on and so forth...

Since you made a new thread, here's the response I made to your idea in the other thread:

Thanks for clearing that up I've been wondering about that.

That right there is a interesting thought. The questions I would have for that is: how would the words be assigned to dragons? Seeing as how -most- dragons are not scripted and don't have a set number.
I could see words being randomly assigned. But the problem with that is there is a chance for collecting souls to become tedious. I,e I could play for 100 hours but never kill the dragon that would let me read X word.

I've been under the assumption that slaying dragons is like leveling up your Dragon Shout ability. That is to say you could go find and read most of the words of power without ever slaying a dragon in theory. But unless you've absorbed enough dragon souls you won't be able to use them.

Or something like that.

I always thought there were 20 "set" dragons that taught a word of power and you used the walls to upgrade them. Of course the walls would be rare and hard to find but you only need to kill 1 dragon to have access to the particular shout, the higher levels are rewarded by finding the words on the walls.

That doesn't strike me as a big problem. Suppose there are dragon words A, B, and C. When you kill your first dragon, the game randomly chooses one of A, B, and C, and gives you the ability to learn that word. Suppose it's A. There are now dragon words B and C to learn. When you kill your second dragon, the game randomly chooses one of B and C, and gives you the ability to learn that word. Suppose it's B. And so on.

What if the slots weren't about what the dragons know but about what shout you are learning now? Say you have shout #1, and it has 3 parts that need to be opened, and the game is just focused on the Shout you are learning now. Then you could kill any dragon and it wouldn't matter because it will still open only one of the three slots you are currently researching.

Perhaps when the dragon dies you learn about which wall to go to to read his words, but that wall is automatically assigned (via Radiant Story) to be a wall you haven't visited yet which will now contain the words you are currently researching. So then that way, killing any dragon is always immediately useful and quest related, and no time will be wasted hunting for the "right" dragon. Because it's always the right dragon for the shout you're currently putting together.

Just my theory.

:thumbsup: I think this is probably the best idea yet, at least in terms of how likely it is to be accurate. This is because it avoids the following sort of situation: under the sort of system I proposed, it's possible to learn two words for each of twenty shouts - you'd have done a whole lot of dragon killing and wall-reading, but you'd still not have any dragon shouts. But your suggestion seems a little more rewarding, because you'd be learning dragon shouts at a fairly regular rate.