I allways felt like this is yet another effect of map being actualy a lot biger than we see ...
I mean, if there would be some "traveling" animation between fallen Nautiloid and Druid Grove ... and some tooltip would say to us that we just spend 8h traveling through the forest ...
Nobody would raise even eyebrow.
Can confirm. My eyebrows would be lower if travel to different locations was represented by a traveling animation instead of walking for literally 20 seconds. Then, each area could be better tuned to represent ~1-2 long rest's worth of encounters.
- downed MF ship + Crypt
- Blighted Village + cellars
- the north of the map past the broken bridge
- Swamp + Hag Lair
- Goblin outpost + goblin fortress
- Underdark
All of these would be roughly appropriate for doing in 1 or 2 long rests with a campsite put somewhere in the middle that you'd have to find (maybe 2 campsites in the Underdark) . And you'd be able to freely fast travel from location to location, with the only penalty for doing so being the loading time. No walking required!
