I thought that be able to use a shout command you need to absorb a dragon soul? Is there a bug were as when you absorb the dragon soul it doesn't charge your shout command?

Or am I missing something ? What might I be doing wrong? So far I have killed two dragons - it says I absorbed their soul but I am unable to use this dragon soul to use for shout powers... please help!

Have you tried using the dragon soul to unlock a word?

Press X on the controller while hovering over the shout to unlock it, or square if your on PS3, not sure what it is on PC.

you unlock new shouts with souls, which then just recharge over time.

Go into the Magic menu and select the Shouts sub-menu. In the bottom right corner it will say how many souls you have available. If you have any spare, select one of your greyed out Shouts and then press the "unlock" button (R on PC, not sure for consoles, look in the bottom left corner). Then select the Shout and press the Shout button (Z for PC, no idea for consoles) and you should perform it.

you need to have read the word walls you find at various locations.e.g-dungeons,top of mountains,caves etc etc.

you then go to your magic page and go to shout...then >unlock shout and you will use a soul.

you also need to see the greybeards on the throat of the world,this will help you get started

If you try to select a shout that you havn't spent souls on to unlock, you will get a misleading message about not having any souls to unlock the shout.


You learn new words to shouts by visiting different word walls. They are pretty much scattered all over.

The main quest will also have people teach them to you.

Simply killing a dragon won't teach you a new word of power. Each Shout consists of 3 words, which can be acquired by learning them, either from the Greybeards or other NPCs, or from Dragon Walls hidden in caverns throughout Skyrim. The dragon souls themselves are used to unlock the Shouts in the magic menu once you have learnt them. Good luck!

I don't read the instructions either...