I think i recall reading in past posts that some people prefer NOT to fast travel? What's the reason for this?

For some people, it isn't realistic.

I don't fast travel on my barbarian character.
It ruins rping.

Because I'd rather play the game for 30 minutes running from Riften to Solitude and encountering new things along the way than go from Riften to Solitude, to Markarth, to Windhelm, to Falkreath, Winterhold, to Whiterun in 30 minutes but 20 of those minutes being nothing but loading screens.

I'm one of those.
When I played my first TES game (Oblivion) I fast traveled all the time. I missed out on so many things, I now refuse to use it at all. It is tempting sometimes though, especially when you get a bunch of quests that send you clear across the map. If that's the case, I might hire a carriage, but I try to limit that too.

I only FT using carriages, or if I'm on a horse and heading to a settlement. It's much more immersive, and there are lots of fun things along the road that are missed if you rely only on FT

I don't use fast-travel because I actually like open-world games. I want TES gameworlds to be like realistic virtual worlds... not just sandboxes where I can beam myself straight to the action whenever I please.

In my mind, walking around everywhere and finding quest locations on your own or with limited help in the form of NPC directions / signposts, etc. is a completely different experience to receiving a quest, looking at the marker and beaming yourself as close as possible, completing the objective, then beaming yourself back /repeat.

Besides, Skyrim is tiny. You can walk from one end to the other in hardly any time at all. I'm used to walking around in much larger open gameworlds than that.

As I said in another thread, I installed a mod to disable fast travel by clicking icons because it's funner for me to ride horseback around the province. I have not disabled fast travel by carriage because I still occasionally use that if my destination is on the far end of the province and I'm not in the mood to ride across it. It's just that after a while, clicking icons to fast travel seemed a bit off to me.


This is a good point too.

LOL - i like that response the most. I'm pretty sure i came up the idea for this question because i realized the advantage slow-traveling would have for realistic RPing. Loading screens ARE a wretched bore so i know what you mean. It seems to me that more of the purists of this game opt out of fast travel. I might give it a try. Hope i can hack it. Maybe i will use carriage travel on occasion to ease myself into it

I generally don't fast travel as a rule, but I also don't rule it out. It really depends on the mood and how much time I've got to play. If I've only got half an hour spare or whatever, I really don't want to spend the majority of that time travelling across the entire map for example, if I wanted to do something in that area.

Because travelling is the appeal of the game, not a drawback for me. As long as the game doesn't make me do it senselessly

I tried it once and it was pretty fun for a while. After some time, though, it began to become tiring traveling to and from the same places over and over again. Now I just allot some time to exploring randomly. It's much more productive.

Morrowind didn't have fast travel.... I got along just fine in that.

I don't fast travel unless a glitch makes me load way back and nothing interesting happened. No need to walk for half an hour through an area that wasn't interesting if I already did it.

> Fast travels exclusively
> Complains that the game is too short

Number 1 thing to do in Skyrim is explore. Fast traveling is the number 1 exploration killer. My friend and I just yesterday got in abig Nerd argument over this He said he was bored playing Halo Reach by himself and wanted me to play with him. I told him no, because I was having fun on Skyrim and didnt want to get bored playing zombies or playlists without armor lock, because that is all he does. He took offense and started insulting me for playing a boring game.

I told him the game wouldn't be boring if he didnt fast travel everywhere going from mission to mission like a FPS game, and his playstyle for an open world game is wrong, and the final outcome is most certainly boredom very quickly. He took offense to that and said my playstyle is boring because I'm always a nord that pretty much looks the same every time. I said I pick this character because I like it for rp, and not fast traveling and exploring helps keep the game interesting, and if my playstyle was so boring, how come he was the one complaining about boredom and I wasn't? He makes countless characters over and over, and gets bored with them very quickly. He never explores a cave or anything unless a mission is tied to it, because he fast travels everywhere, and this just breaks the point entirely of an open world game like this.

That is how I keep the game interesting along with rp, and that is why I refuse to fast travel. If I did, there'd be no way in hell that I could put in so many hrs of play.

I don't entirely rule out fast-travel, especially when I'm in a very goal-directed frame of mind because of a quest, for example. However, I do a lot of exploring on foot, where I just pick a direction at random and see what I encounter. There are so many things that are easily missed if you fast-travel too much.

Sometimes I don't. Along the way - when I choose to make the long walks - I end up getting a few skill levels, loot, and souls. Plus sometimes it's just more enjoyable to see the countryside rather than skip it all the time.

And it makes the game longer.

Immersion-killer at its finest, for me. I enjoy taking in the game's beautiful scenery, exploring a cave or ruin when it hits my fancy, and generally jusy playing at a pace that doesn't involve solely fast-travelling to complete fetch-quests. Even full-fledged quests practically become equivalent to fetch-quests by doing this, with only a sprinkling of combat in between.

I think of fast travelling as "not much happened on the way to so-and-so".
Like in books and movies; you skip the parts where nothing important happens.
So I sometimes fast travel, and sometimes I don't. Like, if I've walked from Whiterun to Riverwood and I'll return to Whiterun, I might fast travel back.

I try to stick to wagons for realism's sake. But I do use FT from time to time. Especially through pacified areas, like going from the Blue Palace to Katla's Farm, or Palace of the Kings to Windhelm Stables.

I never fast travel.
I don't use carriages either... they're just another form of fast travel.

Teleporting doesn't fit in the TES universe and I don't understand why anyone would fast travel.

Are you in some sort of race? Trying to finish the game in record time?

I have about 5 years to play Skyrim before the next TES game comes out. I'm in no rush.

thanks for all of the input/advice. You all have me convinced to give EXPLORE-Traveling a try. Maybe i will run into that werewolf i have been waiting so long to find.

Oh, but it does. It's just that the game doesn't call it "fast travel" and you can only go to certain locations. With no "fast travel" it sure is quick to get from Molag Mar to Khuul.

However, I have stopped fast traveling in Skyrim. When I first started playing, I fast traveled everywhere. When I quit, I noticed that you miss SO much by fast traveling. I only use it for carriages or if I die after already making the journey from Solitude to Whiterun and getting killed by *insert ridiculous reason for dying*.

I seldom use fast-travel. Skyrim's game world is immensely detailed, beautiful and teeming with life. When you're walking through a valley, surrounded by mountains, the world can feel utterly huge. Exploration is, IMO, the Elder Scrolls series' greatest strength. Quests eventually come to an end, but a good game world can make the game last forever.