I don't really know why people act like those of us who use fast travel somehow miss out on enormous chunks of the game. You've still got to go to places in order to FT, you've still got to explore them, and you still get the same experience as the other guy.

I loved doing this in Oblivion especially, and have found it to be a joy in Skyrim as well...especially when you cast spells the enitre time to up your skills

Indeed, no fast travel = awesome.

Skyrim is too pretty to rush through, and there are often little things that you miss by fast traveling. The ES games are ones to be experienced, not rushed through.

My Nord is an alchemist, and I'm always on the lookout for ingredients, which I'd miss out on by fast traveling.

When I do rescue mission. I feel nervous about escorting the person all the way back to the destination after escaping the dungeon. What if I meet a dragon, or bandits, or a troll?

If you meet those enemies, kill them. Stick to the roads and save every so often. Usually, the rescued npcs stay away from the combat, and you never have to enter bandit forts where you'd be surrounded during these quests.

^This

I enjoy exploring and in fact I have a reroll after the last patch who isn't completing any factions (HAS to start mage and thief faction quests GRR) but rather leveling through simple exploring and spelunking. Why? Well, I don't agree with either side of the war... the war itself is playing into the thalmoor hands so she doesn't want to take part in that. Don't want to become a werewolf. Not a mage and even though I need to start the quest to get the Saarthul amulet I'm not going to become the "Archmage"... it just isn't thematic. I would actually take down the thieves guild if I had the choice but will settle for having yet another incomplete quest line instead in my log instead.

Anyways, point is, wandering around exploring and traveling are all fun enjoyable parts of the game.

However.... sometimes you'll take a nice stroll across half the continent on a quest and you finally get there........ just to get sent on an errand quest back where you came from? Yah.... I JUST saw that terrain. No thx on immediate repetition, I'll fast travel now.

On my current playthrough I'm using fast travel very little. I will use it whenever my character's inventory is full and I have to sell some stuff, so I'll zip over to Whiterun and sell it and then continue.

Before moving to the PC, I limited my fast travel. So i thought...Now I have mods that remove 90% of the HUD and show an actual paper map, in lieu of that damn 3D Sat image. I hate that thing.

I also have a mod installed that was an option file with the paper map. It removes all the mam markers, including your current location. Now I am forced to NOT use, or be tempted to use, fast travel. I must say, it has changed they way I play the game. Even from just using it "sometimes". Like taking a carriage to Winterhold. There is no ride back. If you run an errand there, you are stuck, or start walking. You plan more and prepare for more.

I use carriages a lot more. I am forced to use the sun, stars and terrain to navigate through the game world. If they just put moss on one side of a tree, I would be using that as well.

I will never go back to using fast travel.

Playing without fast travel is great...up to a point, after my hundredth trip between Whiterun and Winterhold I finally said screw it and installed a 'more carriages' mod. I prefer to use the major cities as hubs (only using fast travel, or in my case carriages, between them and nowhere else) and explore out from there. Keeps the excitement of exploration without the tedium of tracing my own steps and fighting the same enemies over and over...and over. Although it is awesome having the location markers turned off. and just stumbling onto new locations. Unfortunately I had to leave quest markers on because the directions given by NPCs or in quest descriptions are completely worthless.

I just started to not use Fast Travel. The one thing that irks me is just how slow the PC walks. Which is why I play on PC because I adjust my walking speed to 200, of course the down side to that is now my running/sprint speed is ridiculously fast.

I also downloaded the Real Carriages mod that allows you to ride in the back of it. While it is sometimes goofy and comedic the way it bounces around it definitely makes it more enjoyable. Now, if they would just get mounted combat hashed out, Skyrim would be perfect.

I have played this game since release day (actually two days prior to it) and I have yet to fast travel one single time. I'm probably pushing 300 hours.

I have never had this problem but I have heard a couple of folks here mention it. Do you know if there is a UESP page describing this bug? I cannot find anything on it with a google search. I have noticed that it has been ages since I have seen a random dragon. I have about eight shouts and only two souls to use them on, so I have been saving those souls for a shout I really want.

I like fast travel cos I like to get things done, but I should do less of it ^^

playing without fast travel creates a game breaking bug -,-.. found this out the hardway.

There's a way around it though.. just fast travel from time to time, so things properly reset..

What is that? You have my interest.

There's a smelter in Shor's Stone, just a couple of minutes' walk north of Riften.

So that's why the roads are so empty now. At around 40th level, there's literally nothing on the roads. Good to know.

I never fast travelled, which means quests can take months to complete.
Overall it has been awesome.

So, the more you don't use fast travel the less people show up on the roads when you don't fast travel? That makes absolutely no sense at all.

But, it does explain why I asked about Population mods earlier this past weekend. As, the roads were completely empty for me.

I sometimes do this, and even increased the default weight allowance so that I don't get over-encumbered after looting just two locations, but I doubt I could give up fast-travel entirely. Reason being, I don't see any point in 'manually' walking back and forth over the same cleared area, within which nothing is happening since everything is either dead or harvested/looted, when I can use FT instead. After all, I can't miss anything if there's nothing there in the first place.

Which is why I am always skeptical about claims that you 'miss out' by using fast-travel, since experience indicates otherwise. For one, in order to fast-travel to a given location you have to discover it first, which means you have to go out and explore. Thus, you actually don't miss anything by fast-traveling, since you traveled there the 'long' way at least once already and saw everything along whatever route you took while doing so.

It's not a bug. The game was designed this way. It worked this way in Morrowind and Oblivion and I'm sure it will work this way in TES VI too. The reason there are timers is so that dungeons and exterior cells don't respawn enemies over and over unrealistically if the player spends a lot of time in one cell.

I never fast travel. Yesterday is a prime example why:

I embarked to Windhelm to join the rebellion from my home in Whiterun. I bought a horse and stopped by Ironbind Barrow at the request of an alledged "friend". By the time I exited the barrow it was about 10pm, so I walked down to a nearby, rather secluded, inn. I left my horse by the lake and went in for some shuteye. The next morning I decided to follow the river down to Whiterun in hopes it would take me straight to it (only going off of waypoints as well--no map), but as I'm travelling a dragon shoots out of a burial mound next to the road and begins to circle above my head! Epic battle ensues--horse survives! Upon absorbing the soul I had enough to unlock the new shout I got at the barrow.

The following may contain a spoiler, so I'll just tag it to be safe:

This was a pretty big turning point in the evolution of my character that I didn't calculate, and certainly didn't expect to happen but let happen. For the first time he was able to relate with one not of his own kind and deep down he felt troubled by this stigma to his customs. With this chip on his shoulder, I then move on to Whiterun in order to fulfill my duty as a son of Skyrim and join my old friend Ulfric in his quest to liberate the Nord's land.

For RP purposes especially, negating fast travel has been the single most beneficial thing that I have changed in my game play to increase immersion and my experience as a whole.

Never fast travel.
It is great not to.
So much more immersive.

Glad you enjoy playing that way. Me, I like exploring the world too much to stop using FT..... if I did, instead of getting to spend my time exploring and appreciating the world, I'd instead be burning myself out because of all the time I'd spend doing the same exact "walk back to my house to dump loot/walk back to the region I was exploring" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over....



edit: also, I don't believe in this "immersion" thing that people keep talking about. Partially because the word's been vastly overused and devalued by people throwing it around to complain about every random game feature they didn't like, but also because...... of course, I'm playing a game. Why would I ever think I wasn't? And I've certainly never pictured myself as the character I'm using - that's just the game piece I'm moving around on the game board.

FT ruins immersion. Any loading screen ruins immersion really. I agree entirely. I play as a 'hunter' living off the land type and forcing myself to explore has made me find many beautiful areas of the game, and I also can navigate the map without needed to look at a map almost entirely just from the seperate landmarks. It's great actually.