I'm playing Skyrim again. This time I'm completely ignoring the Dragonborn quest line and just improving skills, doing side quests, making money, and exploring the game.
I don't use fast travel except to go to the holds. So I have only a handful of locations to which I fast travel and kick rocks the rest of the way. It's a self imposed rule. I'm also using Frostfall.
This time, I've gone for high armor and low health so I spent a lot of time improving my armor skills and investing in smithing and my load out. I'm something of a red mage. I'm a swordsman, but I also cast a lot of healing spells. But I have a darkness mod that makes travel at night almost impossible so Night Eye is super useful for staking out a campsite. I'm also mining a lot of iron because I got Transmute so I can convert it all to gold and smith it into rings. I also cast Equilibrium a lot so I carry no potions. It's a cool way to play because you're not stopping the action to drink 12 potions in a row.
Also, I determined if you want to make money in this game, be female. I found that most of the merchants you deal with are men and Allure in the Speech tree gives you 10% better prices when bartering with the opposite sex. I spend most of my time in Whiterun. The merchants I deal with most are Farengar, Adrienne, Ulfberth, Eorland, and Belethor. Only one of them is a woman. Clavicus Vile's Masque also helps