So, a dragon refuses to die

[Etova Kala]

This is not the beginning of a joke, but a truly annoying bug I bumped into not a few minutes ago. I arrived at Dragontooth Crater and saw the dragon bounce up. There was much rejoicing as I expected to get a new dragon soul to sink my teeth in.

At first everything was fine, I hid in the tower as the dragon landed in front of it. I put a few arrows in the bugger and it took off again. "It'll be back", I said to myself and switched to my better arrows. Took a look outside and saw it flying off, probably to fight a rabbit or something. I ran after it and found a decimated group of orc hunters. I waited for a minute while the dragon killed everything nearby but me and expected it to come after me next.

It didn't. It was flying circles around me in the air. I conjured one fire atronach after another, since that was the only way I could harm it. Took me ages and ages, but finally I got its health down. As the final blow landed, I wasn't even surprised to find the bloody thing didn't even flinch. Literally, it kept flying without moving at all, the flapping animation had stopped. A rigid, undead dragon was gliding across the landscape and there was nothing I could do about it. I even tried to kill it through console commands but that didn't help either. Is there anything to do here or should I just go about my business?

[OH]

I came here expecting a punchline, I decided to leave this comment after not seeing the said punchline in the first sentance, goodbye.

[Amycus]

Um... try to use "resurrect" on the dragon, and then kill it again?

[mpd1958]

You might try an earlier save from before the dragon encounter if it is not too far back. This will sometimes reset the AI and allow the dragon to die normally.

[76561198133591931]

actuually had close to the same problem. Killed a dragon in the air and it kept flying around and refused to die. The solution is to leave the area the dragon is in completely. When you out of the area the dragon will literally fall out of the sky at your feet. you can then collect the loot and soul. Under no circumstances should you fast travel out of the area. The solution won't occur in that instance.

[BelphegorATS]

An ancestor of the Covenant Family, I take it?

[Etova Kala]

Well, what happened was I went in to the nearby dungeon and came out again. As I came out the dragon dropped dead right in front of me but within the time it took me to pop in and out of the dungeon it had already killed my horse. Of course the most recent save point was six levels back. One could argue that I should save more often, but one could also argue Bethesda shouldn't leave the game full of bugs.

[Prs722]

At the moment I'm writing this I'm at Dragontooth Crater with a glitched frost dragon. I tried killing it for a bounty but its stuck on the ground breathing frost at me every 5 mins if it sees me. Luckily the game still considers it a valid enemy so I'm using it to level grind.

[Prophet]

Posting from the future- found this post when I encountered the same glitch so hopefully this'll help someone else out too
Anyway, go into console, click the offending dragon, then enter 'disable' and 'enable' without changing the reference and it will reappear and stay dead once you leave console

[Anoteros]

if youre using mods that affect dragons theyve obviously stuffed things up.
without a mod list how is anyone supposed to troubleshoot?

[Vhaen]

I had this same issue, and the dragon was just stuck up in the air. What I did was turn off player collision, fly up into the air and use the command "kill" and then leave the area completely. Afterwards, I ran far away and the dragon appeared dead in front of me on the ground since it loaded a new chunk.

[Anoteros]

Originally posted by Vhaen:

I had this same issue, and the dragon was just stuck up in the air. What I did was turn off player collision, fly up into the air and use the command "kill" and then leave the area completely. Afterwards, I ran far away and the dragon appeared dead in front of me on the ground since it loaded a new chunk.

4 years later lmao