I currently have 15 in inventory, have used all the ones I can so far, on new discovered shouts. But the dragons keep on coming, like insane lemmings. Really big, winged lemmings. So I kill them. And the souls pile up. Thought nothing of it, until just now, when I killed another blood dragon in the rift tundra area, and it did not disintegrate and give me it's soul after I killed it. Just lays there... nothing. Kinda like my ex.

Is there a limit to how many unused dragon souls you can have on you at any time? Or is this just a bug? I'm on PC.

Edit: I restarted from save and did the fight again, same thing, exactly. No soul.

I don't know if there is a limit, but I know I've killed dragons without them disintegrating and absorbing the souls.

I was kind of wondering if my character needs strike the final hit, and if it was actually finally killed by a follower or a summons then it might not disintegrate. But I really don't know if that is the case.

I just know that I have sometimes not absorbed the souls and the with the next dragon I do.

I read somewhere that if you've already killed a dragon in an area, then if another one is spawned in that spot later in the game...the second one wouldnt have a soul you can absorb.

Not sure if it's true or not...from my experiences, I've absorbed dragon souls every time but I'm only 75 hours in....

That could be it. I did kill a dragon in that same spawn spot previously, and did get the soul from that one.

I've killed at least 15 dragons in Rivervood and absorbed their souls each time, but other dragons 'cheated' me in areas I had never been in before, so...

And btw, my first character has 52 unused dragonsouls stored. I don't think there is a limit.

I don't know if there's a limit, but it's definitely not 15. I have like 20 or 25 stored on one of my chars right now.

46 right here, and I've been able to absorb each and every one of them from each dragon kill. I don't think I'm anywhere near the limit at all yet.

Realistically, you only need as many Dragon Souls are there are Dragon Shouts to fully upgrade. This means once you have enough souls stored up to upgrade all the Shots in the game, Skyrim would no longer need to keep track of how many souls you have collected.

After all, you never lose the souls in other ways. So when you got all the dragon souls you would ever need, the game can just stop counting them. You can still get the sul absorption animation after a battle, but it wouldn't do anything really.

At least, that's the logical way of programing this..

I have 43 unused, and have killed about 3 dragons without absorbing the soul. It definitely happened with the dragon above Drela's Cottage (2nd dragon), otherwise I haven't kept track.

Wouldn't it be nice to get some content to do something with all those unused souls?

Sometimes there is a bug when the soul doesn't get absorbed. I don't think there is a limit.

That logic doesn't take into account DLCs and mods that may introduce more shouts.


In regards to dragons which don't disintegrate, that is a known bug caused by a dragon killed previously respawning. It would seem the disintegration script is either play once or fails to transfer between respawns.

Depends on how the game stores it... if it's a byte, the max will probably be 255. If it's a short, 32767...

That matches my experience. I got assigned to kill a dragon for a bounty, and had already found and killed a dragon at that location. I killed the dragon, but it didn't do the soul-explodey thing. Still got the bounty, though. And some dragonbones. And it made for a good photo-op, because you can't otherwise (easily) get a picture of yourself standing next to a dead dragon. Dragon SKELETON, yes, but dead dragon, not so much.

im at 52 with all shouts learned, so I doubt it...

my first character had atleast 27 or so unused souls, I abosorbed a soul from every dragon I fought, even respawns (didnt have many respawn fights though, except riverwood). I also had about 14 shouts unlocked on that character. I dont think theirs a limit.

Some dragons don't drop souls...I don't know why, perhaps they are used car salesman or tax officers.

You can have any number of dragon souls in your inventory. My main character is level 67, and I think I have about 50 souls saved up with nothing to spend them on at the moment.

If there is a limit, it is not 15. I have 24 currently (playing without Shouts and without perks, and it is bloody hard)