I held off the dragons till I did everything else because I got so annoyed with them killing townspeople in Skyrim.

Morrowind taught me to take over some asshole dark elf's house in Seyda Neen, and powelevel all my skills to 100 before I left the first town so that a random cliff racer, or kwarma forager didn't take out me and any random NPC around me.

Oblivion, beeline to Anvil, buy the house, and again just max out all my skills. Mostly so that the random encounters didn't kill me. I don't remember having issues keeping NPCs alive in that one.

I'm entirely uncertain that any of us normal non magicka wielding randos would survive long in any of the most interesting times of mundus.