started a new character...at lvl 23 now and ive only seen one random dragon encounter on the greybeard mountain. ive got a bunch of shouts to unlock and havent seen any dragons....

the other character i have , i was encountering dragons all the time

Different parts of the MQ stop the dragon attacks happening. IE if you dont go to Whiterun and fight the first dragon, they wont show. Later on in the MQ you are told that that Delphine knowns where the very next attack will be, meaning that no other attacks can take place in the mean time.

i did that quest

still no dragons..... oh well

Fast travel more - that usually triggers an attack. Try fast traveling to Dawnstar for the best chance. If you've got to that stage of the MQ then attacks should be a bit more common than before the very early stages of the MQ. If all else fails, go to the walls.

They probably lowered the chances of them spawning after 99% of the people on this forum complained that they spawned too much.

So be happy that they listened.

thanks

this worked

What I've noticed is that if you do the MQ as far as killing the first dragon, but no further, the only sort of dragon attack to you seem to get are the random encounter ones of a dragon attacking another creature. In these cases, you get the odd situation where the dragon is hostile to the target, but not the player - it doesn't show a red dot, and doesn't attack you. Which makes killing it a pain because you don't have Dragonrend and the damn creature won't land. Having polished off the designated enemy (giant, troll or whatever), the dragon just keeps randomly circling looking for any target apart from the player. I've had three of these so far in this game. The most recent one attacked the waiting Stormcloaks as they were massing to take Fort Sunguard. It continued to circle and strafe that battle, then headed off towards Rorikstead, whilst attacking the wolf on the way. I chased it all the way there, and it still wouldn't attack me. It had a go at the guards there, and a couple of villagers. It finally landed, but instead of fighting me it attacked the guards behind me. But I was in close and killed it. I assume that these encounters have different settings for the dragon compared to the ones you get later in the MQ.

i think you are right. this has happened to me as well

My previous two characters fast traveled a lot, got a LOT and I mean a LOT of dragons. My current character never fast travels and I had two random encounters so far, with the same amount of playtime. I guess there's a theory in that.

I'm not starting fast traveling again though, this character is way more fun since i RP and stopped fast travel.

Blast- i wasnt getting enough dragons as i don't fast travel at all -.-

I don't fast travel too much but I get a fair amount. Though honestly I haven't just sat down and played lately... Spent like 90% of my time modding, and not playing.