Roaming Skyrim yesterday, and as I was leaving Proud Spire, a dragon began to attack INSIDE Solitude. The same with Markarth. Any advice what's been happening, is it a bug , or what?

Dragons attack inside cities...

Why would it be a bug? Dragons could attack you in the cities from day 1 (or not - but it's nothing new)...

Thanks, It never happened to my Level 49 Imperial, but always to my 26 Orc..

i was shocked when this first happened i believe it starts to happen after level 25, i was leaving understone keep when i saw a dragon carcass on the path way with guards cursing at it... lesson learned markath guards dont [censored] arounds

That's why in my new playthrough, I don't plan on completing the Dragon Rising quest until I've done everything else I want to do in the game, then I'll complete the Main Quest. Dragons don't randomnly spawn before this quest. When they do randomnly spawn they kill far too many NPC's, a lot of them questgivers as well.

This has never happened in my games. Maybe it's because I rarely fast travel? Right now I'm 3 souls behind for the words from the word walls though so I was thinking about doing some fast-traveling. I'll be sure to go to more remote places and hope that'll keep dragons out of the cities. Fingers crossed.

It does seem to be related to fast travelling (I never fast travel though), or using carriages to travel to smaller cities (I always use carriages). Almost every time I got a carriage to a smaller city a dragon would spawn and attack it, this was fast depleting my world of NPC's, merchants and ore merchants..

Kicenna - You say you never fast travel, do you often ride carriages ? If not then how often do you experience lockups ? And how large is your save file and how long is your playtime ?

i've killed dragons inside Windhelm,Whiterun and Markarth! It was awesome but it is tiring running from district to district and try to keep everyone alive

After 3 characters, I have yet to see a dragon attack inside a walled city. If it were not for threads like this one, I would say it isn't possible.

Happens all the time, in every city.
At least in my experience.

Has only happened once to me. I wrote it off as a bug.

It's not that. I FT everywhere and in all my time in this game I've only seen a Dragon attack Solitude and Markarth once each. IIRC, I've only seen a dragon attack Windhelm once or twice as well.

But if you do want to make dragons appear, fast traveling to CoW is your best bet. Sometimes they show up immediately, sometimes you have run around inside the courtyard a little. But they will show up.

Push them back !

It happens. Not very often for me, but it happens. In bigger cities if the Dragon isn't directly aggroed on you, it can become a game of cat and mouse as you chase the dragon across the city. It can be either thrilling or annoying depending on your perspective.

I finally had it happen in my game last night, after numerous characters over hundreds of hours of play. Was playing the Thieves Guild main quest line and was up in Solitude, had an OCD moment where I felt the inexplicable need to loot EVERYTHING in sight and since it was all marked stolen in that quest location, needed to get to Riften to sell everything off to be able to run again since I was at like 1270/350 encumberance.

Walked to the carriage in Solitude, used it to get to Riften and appeared at the stable there, heard the far off wail of a dragon incoming but figured it would wait me out. Oh how wrong I was. Walked into the gates of Riften heading for the guild and all of a sudden the gate guards start going "gods above, a dragon!! everyone inside" and oh hello there Mr. Ancient Dragon buring down the market stalls. Was a rather interesting dragon fight while unable to run, no... um special dragon shout and all of the Riften City guard wailing away at it. Good stuff all around.

It's definately fast travel related as time does pass when you FT and if you bounce all over the map and haven't fought a dragon in a while, the timer will run down and you'll get a random dragon spawn. If you happen to FT or move inside a city when that happens... yeah there you go.

I always fast travel directly into cities. Maybe I would see the city dragons if I were to travel to the stables, then open the city doors?

I've fought dragons in Solitude before, but I'm sure they aren't meant to be able to get into Markarth. I'm sure the NPCs say they aren't scared of dragons because its too hard for the dragons to reach them. However, in all honesty it doesn't seem difficult for a dragon to get in, its seems fairly open.

210 hours of play on my one character and never witnessed a Dragon attack within a walled city. And I fast-travel all the time.

After hundreds of hours with multiple characters, the number of dragons who've attacked inside walled cities:
Riften: 2
Markarth: 1

and that's it, although one flew over Whiterun and caused the guards to panic, though it didn't attack.