Dragon with no soul absorbed?

[aMYTHa]

Is it possible? I just killed a dragon at near Steamcrag, Bone___ Crest, and I was only able to lot but no sould absorbed?

[Hamsterbytes , bits and nibbles]

it happens every once in a while. I don't know why, but as long as it is not every time, I am still happy when I get one.

[Alembrik]

Did you kill that same dragon before, got its soul, and now have to kill it on a quest?

I managed to kill a dragon near a Word Wall, got the Word of Power and activated it, and got the dragon’s soul and looted the dragon.

When I killed it again (same location near the same Word Wall), this time on a quest, the dragon died but didn't disintegrate or give up its soul, and the Word Wall didn't activate. (I don't remember if I was able to loot the dragon the second time, but the quest finished successfully, and that was that.) My guess is the dragon courteously reincarnated itself to allow me to do the quest, then with the quest successfully concluded, went back to Valhalla to live out its afterlife. Dragons must have a truly estimable code of honour.

You can apparently kill a dragon multiple times, but you can only get its soul the first time.

[aMYTHa]

I see. . then that probably is it. Coz it's a bounty. But will there be other dragons to kill? Since, shouts take 30 souls to charge just one, right? How can we activate the other shouts if we only have a few dragons to slay?

[ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ Rat Bastard ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ]

If you kill a dragon in an area you can only absorb the soul once- if it respawns later around that area as the same type of dragon you won't get another soul, only if it spawns as a different kind of dragon. There are still spawning zones for things. Something like that is usually only an issue at a lair though (and I don't know if that is one?) I think, because spawn places for everything else is supposed to be random. So there will be more random dragons. There will only be one of each named creature though (like Paarthurnax).

[egd]

If you have the Dragonborn DLC, at least in my game, Miraak "stole" about 7-8 or my dragon souls. I guess I didn't do his quest soon enough. I got the souls back with a few more (12 altogether) when I did kill him. Maybe that's it.

[SavageBeastZero]

The end of your reply had me rolling!

Originally posted by Alembrik:

My guess is the dragon courteously reincarnated itself to allow me to do the quest, then with the quest successfully concluded, went back to Valhalla to live out its afterlife. Dragons must have a truly estimable code of honour.

You can apparently kill a dragon multiple times, but you can only get its soul the first time.

[Myo-o]

If you have the Dragonborn DLC installed, you should download the Unofficial Dragonborn patch. You should really download the unofficial patches for the base game and all the dlcs. I know my sis had an issue with absorbing the soul of the first dragon she fought, so she couldn't continue the quest until we fixed it. The patch should help.

[Alembrik]

LordHelmet — Thank you! I had fun with it!

aMYTHa — I thought it was only necessary to spend one dragon soul for each word learned. The window that pops up to activate a new Word of Power asks 'Spend Soul?' implying only one. I have a bunch of shouts unlocked, and I still have about 70 dragon souls in reserve.

I've never had a problem absorbing a dragon soul, from the very first one out by the Western Watchtower at Whiterun through all the other dragons I've killed. The only one I didn't absorb was the one I described here, and that was only because it was the same dragon, different day.

FWIW, I bought the DVD of Skyrim - Legendary Edition, so it installed Dragonborn and the rest itself. The only mods I've installed are the five Unofficial Patches (Skyrim, the three DLCs, and high-resolution). I'm running it on a relatively unsophisticated (for gaming, anyway) HP laptop.

[Richard]

Originally posted by Shining Magikarp:

If you kill a dragon in an area you can only absorb the soul once- if it respawns later around that area as the same type of dragon you won't get another soul, only if it spawns as a different kind of dragon.

This is in general false. Very occasionally, if you have killed a dragon at one of the dragon shrines and then recieve a bounty/companions/blades quest to kill a dragon at that location before it has had time to naturally respawn then the dragon you kill for the quest can give no soul. It is far more common that there will simply be no dragon present if a glitch occurs and you will have to leave and wait for it to respawn with it giving you a soul as normal.

The cause of almost every time someone has reported dragon soles failing to be absorbed is poorly set up mods. If you are running the unofficial patches make sure that they are loaded in the order specified in the patch description. Otherwise check for mods that make changes to dragons/the dragon soul absorbtion script.

[Viggo]

The Doctors Wife is right i had the same problem and installing the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch fixes it. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/31083/?