Transport in Cyrodiil is "interesting" as you've no doubt discovered.

To get into Cyrodiil, you use the Alliance War tab. To get out of Cyrodiil, you must use one of your Alliance's two wayshrines, found at each of your Alliance's gates.

At each gate, there is also a transitus shrine, which will allow you to travel to any of the forts that are connected to the transitus network for your alliance. In order to be connected, your faction has to own that fort and at least one of its resources and none of the walls can be below 50%. Some forts belonging to enemy factions can't be connected to your faction's transitus network, such as the back two home forts closest to the gates and scroll temples. This forces the enemy to ride to those keeps if they wanted to defend them.

You'll know that a fort is accessible through the transitus network when you go to the transitus shrine and there is a green line between your current location and the fort you want to go to. If there is a green line, the transitus works just like a wayshrine (Plus a chance of long loading screens, but that happens to everyone).

If there is not a green line and your faction owns the fort, there are several reasons why:

• That transitus line has a lock symbol on it, the color of a different faction. Because of the location, only the faction of that color can use that transitus line. These are evenly given to all factions based on the fort's location.
• Your faction does not own any resources around that keep, so the transitus network goes down. Transitus will be restored if your faction owns at least one resource at the fort.
• The fort is currently under attack and the front door or one of the walls has fallen below 50% health. This is indicated by a yellow starburst around the fort. Once the fort is flagged like this, transit is cut and defenders cannot rez inside the fort but must use a Forward Camp to rez and rejoin the fight or rely on fellow players to rez the fallen. Before one of the walls/door reaches 50%, you can still transit to a fort that is under attack.
• The fort was recently under attack. There is a delay for forts to unflag after a successful defense when your faction owns at least one resource, so transit will come back after the starburst symbol goes away.

Moving in Cyrodiil without transitus happens primarily in two ways.

• You can "deathport" when you die to a player or an Alliance NPC like a resource or fort guard. Death gives you access to any unflagged fort or town your faction owns, even if you do not own any of the resources (making a well-timed deathport the only way to teleport into a fort that has lost all its resources). Death will also give you access to your home gates, so if you need to get back to the gates in order to leave Cyrodiil, find a player or alliance guard to kill you.
• You can also RIDE. And you will ride, a lot, because Cyrodiil is considerably larger than any other zone in the game. With all that stuff up above about transit being cut, once a fort is flagged, defenders and attackers who weren't already there must ride in order to reach that fort from the nearest fort or outpost that their faction owns. Similarly, if a faction wants to attack an enemy fort, they must ride there in order to reach the fort. If a faction is attacking or defending a fort that they can't have transitus up for, such as trying to capture enemy scrolls, again, they have to ride to get into position.

Transitus and the access to it is a very important part of strategy in Cyrodiil. When a faction has control of most of the transitus network, such as during an Emperorship where one faction takes control of the six forts around the Imperial City, that faction's forces can move very quickly around the map. The other factions will focus on trying to cut transitus and isolate sections of the network so that would be defenders have to ride.

In this picture, AD has an emperor and full transit around the emp ring, shown by the yellow lines. They also have full transit to their home keeps, but you'll not that they cannot transit from Arrius Keep to either of the EP back two keeps nearest the scroll temples even though they own them, because of that red lock which signifies that only EP can use those transitus lines once they are active. Furthermore, Kingscrest Keep is flagged with the yellow starburst, so EP is attacking the keep and has gotten at least one wall/door down to 50%. On the other side of the map, DC is trying to take resources at Fort Ash (2 are blue, the yellow farm is flagged), which will cut Fort Ash off from the transitus network and force AD defenders to ride once the transit is cut.




Hope that helps! The transitus network is much more complicated than wayshrines in PVE, but its a really interesting part of Cyrodiil strategy once you get used to them.