Avoiding dragon attacks on cities.

[Gore gro-Gijakudob]

Well that sucked. I arrived in Riften via fast travel and a dragon attacked. Which was great fun until I realised I had failed three quests because the dragon had killed the NPCs. I reloaded, and the dragon attack happened again, 3rd time I left Riften immediately and the dragon spawned and killed the NPCs outside of the gate! 4th time I reloaded I fast travelled to a random location and then back to Riften and luckily no dragon. It's no problem having to face a dragon in cities but wouldn't it have been better scripting to have unique NPC's run to their houses and leave the guards to deal with the problem? I hate having to reload games but no way am I going to have quests ruined because of a random encounter, no matter how awesome it looks. Bad game design there. But anyway, the above solution worked for me, hopefully it will for others who don't want NPCs killed/Quests failed without being able to do anything about it.

 

[brandon]

dude i like the fact that random people can be killed. i dont mind losing quest. the thing i hate is unkillable people. when i was playing morrowind everybody was killable. and some quest would have you kill someone who gave you a different quest. i miss that. after the civil war is over your last mission is to clear out enemy camps. but how can you do that if the officers are unkillable? i just wish more towns would get screwed up a house or two destroyed after the dragon attack or a couple houses on fire. then you can help with rebuilding them.

 

[Norminator]

am I the only one who haven't had a dragon attack a city? I have two characters, both over level 50, and never seen anything like this.

 

[brandon]

am I the only one who haven't had a dragon attack a city? I have two characters, both over level 50, and never seen anything like this.

SPOILER ALERT! the attacks are random. the only city that ive never seen get attacked is markarth. and the jarl will tell you it would be suicide for a dragon to attack them. and dragons arent dumb. i think a cool dlc would be a dragon uprising. after you take out alduin and whether you decide to let paarthunix live or die then the dragons would have a fight to see would lead. then the dragons just attack every hold one at a time and force everybody to run. where would they go? markarth. the stone structures wont be hurt by flame or frost. i havent seen a dragon shout for lightning yet so thats nothing to worry about. so we as people would stage our counter attack from there. our last line of defense.

 

[M'aiqaelF]

that sux and it happened to me last night, I just got back to the mage's college and I had to talk to the arch mage to further a quest, what should happen is that the eye thing explodes w/ an energy pulse and you wake up outside and he's dead. Instead I warped outside as I was talking to him before furthering the quest, a dragon attacked and the archmage got killed by the dragon but there was a quest arrow marker hovering over the pile of ashes that once was the arch mage. I had to go back to a previous save so I could complete the objectives.

 

[Norminator]

SPOILER ALERT! the attacks are random. the only city that ive never seen get attacked is markarth. and the jarl will tell you it would be suicide for a dragon to attack them. and dragons arent dumb. i think a cool dlc would be a dragon uprising. after you take out alduin and whether you decide to let paarthunix live or die then the dragons would have a fight to see would lead. then the dragons just attack every hold one at a time and force everybody to run. where would they go? markarth. the stone structures wont be hurt by flame or frost. i havent seen a dragon shout for lightning yet so thats nothing to worry about. so we as people would stage our counter attack from there. our last line of defense.

I know the attacks are random, just find it strange that it has never happened to me in 190 hours, yet it seems common for a lot of other people. I didn't even think it was possible until I came to this site.
Before 1.4 I had a dragon spawn every single time I fast traveled to anywhere outside a city.

 

[Gore gro-Gijakudob]

I know the attacks are random, just find it strange that it has never happened to me in 190 hours, yet it seems common for a lot of other people. I didn't even think it was possible until I came to this site.
Before 1.4 I had a dragon spawn every single time I fast traveled to anywhere outside a city.

It's only happened to me once, after having a little look around the interwebs it seems that it does have a lot to do with fast travel. I don't fast travel a lot so hopefully it should be manageable.

dude i like the fact that random people can be killed. i dont mind losing quest. the thing i hate is unkillable people. when i was playing morrowind everybody was killable. and some quest would have you kill someone who gave you a different quest. i miss that. after the civil war is over your last mission is to clear out enemy camps. but how can you do that if the officers are unkillable? i just wish more towns would get screwed up a house or two destroyed after the dragon attack or a couple houses on fire. then you can help with rebuilding them.

I do see your point, it certainly adds an extra element of realism. But the problem is that you really have no way of avoiding the outcome. In other words, If I spent 3 hours searching for all the ingredients to complete a quest, enter the town and get "Mission failed" in 10 seconds because a dragon hits the NPC before you can do anything about it, well, frankly that just isn't very much fun. Anyway as I said, I think you can work around it.

 

[Mystalvision]

I don't know about Riften, but whenever I go to a minor hold, I go directly indoors. When the dragon music starts, I wait until 10PM or later. Then I go outside and usually there are no civilians outside and I can fight the dragon with the guards.

 

[Quanah]

I encountered an Ancient Dragon in Whiterun right in front of Jorrvasker.

 

[Su8tle]

I've had dragon attacks in winterhold college, riverwood and solitude. Quite common.

 

[Xiomn]

This is why i don't go to Jarl Balgruuf at the start of the game. Logic wins again.