All,

I unlocked dragon stuff by doing the first scripted quest. Then I went and did the greybeards initial stuff, talked to Delphine, but I didnt do any of her stuff. I just went and finished up with the intro to the greybeards, then went on to do other adventures. But I decided to not pursue the main quest. And I have not seen even ONE dragon attack. Other than the ones I find at the altars on my own, I've not seen ANY random attacks at all.

Right now, I am in my mid 30s and I have seen nothing.

Now, the only different I can think of is that my previous character, who also did not do the main quest, did not actually do the Jurgen Windcaller quest or talk to Delphine or anything. He saw tons of random dragon attacks, even though I never even spoke to the greybeards on him until I had done just about every other quest and maxed out my skills or close (I'm level 78 or so). That original character saw tons of dragon attacks.

So I guess, I am wondering, does talking to Delphine turn off random dragon attacks? Or is my game bugged?

Thanks!

No, but until you do "A Blade in the Dark", dragons generally only spawn around dragon lairs and word walls; if you don't happen to visit (or at least get close enough to be seen from) those areas, you probably won't get any dragon attacks.

On my first character, I got a crap-ton of dragon attacks, at Riverwood, at Dawnfire, and at Winterhold. Anywhere really. It was almost annoying. On my current character .... not even one. Not a single one.

So something has to be wrong. I cant be in the 30s on my level and have no dragon attacks, considering that i've been wandering all over.

And to be clear, my first character got tons, and never did A Blade in the Dark.

With my second character, I've gone through the Whiterun quest, after that, I went off to do other things, and I'm in my late 20's/30ish hours in. I've yet to do the Greybeards quest, but I haven't seems a single random attack yet, either. :/

I'm in the same situation as you, first character saw a lot second has seen one random dragon, and my second character is at the same point on the mq as you and thee only random I've seen on it was before the windcaller quest.

Maybe we need to do Delphine's quest to get randoms going again

The word right now is that Random Dragon Encounters get paused until you go kill the Dragon that Delphine told you to go kill.