Okay, so 40 hours in, and loving it. I'm playing a Spellsword type of character, and I love how magic works here.

Anyways, I'm thinking I'll get into the main quest, beat it, and get started on a new character, I'm thinking a thief-y/assassin-y Dark Brotherhood Khajiit. But my question is: when do random dragons start popping up?

In Oblivion, Oblivion gates didn't start appearing anywhere until you did the Kvatch quest (the Kvatch gate being the only one in all of the map). Is that how it is in Skyrim? That random dragons don't appear until you get started on the main quest? Or do they appear from the very beginning of the game?

Just something I was wondering about, since I imagine it being a little more convenient being a sneaking, thieving murderer without having to deal with a dragon every so often. :b

I think they start appearing after you have killed the first scripted one

QFT

In other words, they WON'T appear if I don't do that quest?

I got attacked by a random one after about 5 hours into the game.

Did you do any of the main quest before that?

i saw one flying around before the first "scripted" dragon, but i did not engage.

after a quest where a certain something gets revived by a certain someone is when flying random ones came aroud

I got one when I was climbing a very very long stair and was forced to reload because I cant kill it alone at level 9. I encoutered another one on another quest but hopefully there was some mammouth around and they shared the aggro.

I thought the one on the stair was scripted, now I am unsure...

How to fight/evade a dragon with a rogue/stealth/sniper ?

When I killed a dragon I just kept shooting it with my bow until it landed then used dual swords to hack and slash while spamming potions.

That's what I'M worried about. My character's half-tank, half-mage and can take on a dragon no problem at level 11. But I'd imagine that killing a dragon with a stealth-build would be pretty hard.

Are you playing on master? JW people never post the Difficulty. My GF plays on Novice and if i forget to change it i like 6 shot dragons at level 22 but when i turn it back to master it's a good decent fight even hard a fair amount of times

My second Dragon encounter only came after the first scripted one.

I'm playing on whatever the default difficulty is.