Skyrim: How To Farm Dragon Souls

Quick Links

• Slaying Smarter, Not Harder

• Dragon Spawns Are On A Timer

• Hike On Over To Dragon Lairs

• Advance The Companions Questline

'Farming' Dragon Souls in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim might sound strange, considering how blatantly apparent it is to players that you acquire them by slaying dragons. So, all you need to do is to kill dragons then, right? You're correct! That's it. That's the guide. You can close this tab now.

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We jest, of course. We're writing about this because there are, in fact, a few things to bear in mind that will make collecting Dragon Souls significantly easier than simply waltzing around the realm waiting for the winged beasts to appear from the heavens. Do read on!

Slaying Smarter, Not Harder

There are numerous ways to increase the frequency of your dragon-slaying adventures in Skyrim. While it's true that you'll gather a fair number of Dragon Souls through battling the myriad dragons that will appear after 'Dragon Rising' (they won't show up until that main quest is completed), folks who want to amass an ample number of them can take advantage of a few key gameplay aspects.

Dragon Spawns Are On A Timer

The frequency of dragon 'spawning' across Skyrim's skies is tied to the in-world clock, which is to say, how many in-game hours have past rather than the number of real-world hours you've played since your prior engagement. As such, fast traveling, which passes a number of hours more quickly, will get you into further entanglements more swiftly than roaming the countryside as the calendar slowly crawls forward.

Although you can technically accomplish this through using the 'Wait' command to pass the hours, there's a pretty good reason to go with fast traveling instead.

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Hike On Over To Dragon Lairs

Dragon Lairs are noteworthy for spawning a leveled dragon when you find them, but you might not know those dragons respawn in due time. Fast traveling to nearby locations will not just pass the time needed for that respawn, but get you rather close to the newly-awakened minion of Alduin so that you can keep farming Dragon Souls for your burgeoning collection of Words of Power.

This makes Dragon Lairs the best spots to keep up the carnage, even if you do need to advance time in some fashion to make it so.

If you've advanced the main quest up past Rebuilding the Blades, the character of Esbern will sometimes reveal the location of new Dragon Lairs. Helpful!

Advance The Companions Questline

You can also receive Radiant Questsinvolving dragon-slaying, meaning every time one pops up, you will have a guaranteed source of another Dragon Soul. To initiate the dragon-related Radiant Quests, you must first advance past the Companions quest 'Glory of the Dead'.

Before you've done so, you will indeed receive Radiant Quests - in fact, you will need to tackle a few to progress the questline - but none of them will be so grand as this.

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