Skyrim: is it time?

[DigitalSignalX]

I use fast travel between towns and villages but not between locations in the wilderness and my impression is that it's pretty common for dragons to spawn when I fast travel to open towns like Riverwood or Falkreath while I very rarely see them when I roam the wilderness.

An average of over 20 hours between dragon encounters seems like a lot though. I usually get one or two in a play session (maybe 4-6 hours, so perhaps an average of one every three hours with half or so popping up when I fast travel to a town). Then again, since it seems to be a random chance thing some people are always going to end up at either extreme, as you say.

It must be related to fast travel then. If you exclude the 2 quest, and the 9 or so static dragons at lairs, it's actually down to 4 or 5 dragons during 200+ hours. Not sure if that's good, or bad. Many of my shouts are un-souled as a result, but that's really not an issue. An encounter is still unique and exciting, but but I may be losing the point of the "dragons are a threat" bit because of their rarity.

[PeteC]

Yeah, I read somewhere, maybe the Bethesda forums, that their appearances are related to fast travel.

[Kadayi]

I had a chat with a couple of friends about the shouts. I don't use them myself and I generally find them useless, but this is because I play Skyrim in very odd ways. But from what I could figure, the cooldown makes them pretty useless.

Err, you could use spells, swords and shouts perhaps? That's pretty much what I do. There's no requirement to eschew spells when you use shouts. The good thing about them is that you can use them when you are in melee combat and you don't have to unequip your weapon. Your voice is effectively a third hand.