How do you get dragon souls before the main quest line?

Answer: load warping

I did this at level 1 you can do this at what ever level I'm just showing what I did for my solstheim only challange

So what you need to do is : i have one character that I want the dragon souls on that hasn't completed the story line and another character that's in the main story line part where you arrive in skuldafin.

The main quest character does the load warping part. Stand in front of a door in skuldafin and eat enough scatheclaw while wearing a piece of equipment that gives you health until it's only the equipment keeping you alive. load your non dragon born character at the same time the scythe claw takes effect while spamming the interact button in the load screen and your non dragon born character should arrive in skuldafin.

From here you want to go with you non dragon born character to the spot where you would have originally landed there will be two dragons the spawn. After killing them and clearing the draugr, I personally used a bucket to fly up to the next level and attacked the two dragons clinched to the pillars.

Note do not approach the stairs to the very top floor if you don't want to start the end of the main quest line.

I did this at lvl1 without discovering any locations or leveling my character.

I load warped my lvl1 with fresh cut binds (I'm still on the "unbound" quest says i still need to escape and loot the chest poor hadvar) to the gallows hollow for soul gems greater or higher grabbed the bucket of flight, the void salts, orc ingots, refined moonstone, and a broom, then load warped to the college of winter hold basement ran up stairs looted any brooms salts and soul gems stole a lightning bolt staff that was on a shelf. Went back down to the atronach forge. crafted one more void salt from an amethyst, salt and soul gem. Then crafted 2 storm and frost atronach staffs and load warped my self to skuldafin to fight 4 dragons and a hoard of draugr with a bucket, four staffs, no Armour, a handful of minor healing potions, and a dream of doing a legitimate solstheim only run without leaving solstheim. As a result of this I took 250 gold from the corpses, load warped back to gallows hollow, dropped everything except the gold for the ferry.

Arrived in solstheim with four dragon souls to start my journey.

I have been working on this on and off again with no luck on finding a great solution for years until i discovered the method about july 10th 2024.

first attempt I tried the staff of worms and a draugr from arc wind point and walked him all the way to black reach, had him fight the dragon and I had 1 soul to start the mirrak quest. but then I tried to kill the two dragons in the waking dreams book but both there souls go to miraak dead or not. The dragon soul just out side of nchardak I swear had a 0.0002% chance of successfully keeping miraak from stealing it. But 2 souls was as high as I could get. But in total you can get 9 souls as far as I know. 4 from skuldafin, 1 from black reach, 1 from nchardak, and 3 from the mirrak fight.

Random tid bit I originally started my solstheim challange with no souls and had plate glitches my way into miraaks temple. With a black book I had gotten from the ebony mine in raven rock, I read it and backed out quick enough to also read the waking dreams black book. I loaded in no cut scene just miraak standing there I could move but not look around. I killed miraak tried to progress but the mobility was hard from lack of sight.

After that I couldn't read the book anymore. Until I touched an uncleaned stone and that made it to where I could read again but if I did I was stuck in place. I couldn't do the previous trick with the 2 books because it was no longer in front of me.

New method was to fish right after reading the book and I was able to move and look as normal once inside the waking dreams black book.

I plan to do a solstheim only challange and make a video with my start up to do the most legit run I could muster.

I just wanted to get this info out there and hope I get credited for the pre dragon born skuldafn dragon soul load warping find!