I titled this thread as such because the fast travel function is often thought of as a functional tool, but not as a strategy through which to enhance your gameplay experience. In essence, I want to know the ways people use (or don't use) fast travel in order to make their gameplay experience more enjoyable and immersive.

First note: I do not yet own Skyrim (gasp). I'm currently at school and am saving the game for my holiday break. I obviously won't be able to "complete" the game over a couple of weeks, but I will get introduced to the world. I picked up morrowind off steam (haven't had a block of time to play it yet) and have played hundreds of hours of Oblivion. In Oblivion I explored extensively and used the fast travel system frequently in order to get rid of loot and get around. However, looking back upon my time I with the game I regret feeling like I was zipping around the world. Using fast travel frequently seemed to rob me of a sense of narrative (My character having a journey). For a while I thought I would play Skyrim purely without fast travel. However, in these last weeks before picking the game up, my intuition is that this would seem very tedious for a player like myself who likes to explore the entire world (and loot it). I don't revisit dungeons in order to take every single item contained within, but I like to leave each dungeon on the edge of my encumbrance, which forces a return to a city to "dump" items.

Part 1: Fast Travel
What I Want to Know: What are your best strategies/ideas for using or not using fast travel in order to enhance your enjoyment of Skyrim? I want to know...
1. Where you use fast travel from/ where you do not fast travel from (cities, dungeons)
2. Where do you fast travel to/ not fast travel to? (do you fast travel RIGHT to your objective? to the closest city? walk there?)
2. When you fast travel/ when you do not fast travel
3. Frequency of using fast travel (do you limit yourself to a certain number of uses per time period?)
4. Which situations do you use fast travel? (for example, only when returning to a city? only from city to a quest location?)
-this may be the most interesting portion. In which situations does fast travel seem to hurt your immersion? When is this not the case?
5. Do you use carriages? How do you mix carriages and fast travel?
6. Do you use horses?

Creativity would be appreciated. Maximum utility with maximum immersion. We all know that never fast travelling will be the most immersive/realistic, but this becomes tedious depending on your playstyle.

My own ideas:
1. I would like to travel by foot/horse from cities to whatever objective I am trying to reach. This seems the best way to make each quest really feel like a journey. Making a journey to a cave to complete a quest seems to lose its charm if I fast travel right next to the cave. The fun in fetch quests is more in the journey than the fetching itself, per se.
2. I am considering Fast traveling back to the closest city when I exit a dungeon, selling my goods, and fast traveling back as close as possible to the dungeon I left from. I noticed this type method in the culveyhouse's Skyrim playthrough on youtube (he does it to avoid boring viewers, but this really helped me feel like there was a consistent journey taking place). The speed of fast travel is retained, but the narrative arc is also maintained such that your real traveling is all done normally.


Part 2: Travelling Ideas
I am trying to figure out how I want to approach the very act of traveling in the game. This includes...
1. If I am en route to a quest objective, will I use roads or venture of the trail?
-should I leave my exploring to exploration runs or try to explore on my way to a quest objective? There are advantages and downsides to both. Jumping between quests tends to be lessen the emotional impact of each quest. If I am desperately trying to save a kid from a band of bandits, am I really going to allow myself to get sidetracked en route by walking off the beaten path and exploring ruins? There is something more emotionally appealing to taking each quest seriously as if I were actually there. It also seems weird to accept a new (urgent) quest while travelling towards some objective and just leaving it for months before completing it. It seems more natural (though less efficient) to take things as they come, and only accept quests you intent to complete within short order. It helps quests feel like they are arising as I encounter them. However, in the interest of making sure I see everything there is to see, it would seem remiss to leave potential quests alone, never to see them again. At least by taking everything, you make sure to fully appreciate all the content Beth has placed within the game...

2. Do I travel at night, or should I try to rest and set out by day? (has anyone adjusted the timescale? how does that effect the feel of the game?)

What are your thoughts/ideas?

Personally, I tend not to use instant travel at all. It breaks immersion for me, and running into new sights and encounters along the way is part of the magic. I'm in no rush to finish the game in a speed run or something. That said, I will tend not to ride the horse along a route I haven't previously explored. I might if I'm strictly following the road, but exploring new areas, I find, is best done on foot with no horse to worry about. You might go more slowly but you're also not tethered to horsey grazing where you left him, and having to go back.

As for night/day, just go whenever. Either one can be tremendously atmospheric. Some of my fondest traveling experiences so far have been traveling on a foggy night, crickets chirping.