Making Reasonable travel
So my first two sessions of the game have been completed and now I am getting into the adventure proper (the first two were just to intro the setting and were more linear) my players have met Danika and next session after a long rest are going to get her quest to hunt chingwas. I am now trying to figure out how much to open up the game so I can have time prep it and still make it clear that this is now a open world and they can proceed how they want to. Got some main question that I’m hoping I can find answers to here
-Should I give them the option to go to multiple towns or just send them in one direction
-I am running winter survival rules and want to know how difficult/long I should make the travel to the towns at this point.
-how much should I seed the main two plots?