For me, I suppose it depends on the topic I'm writing about.

When it came to writing here, I would wing just about everything. Writing fantasy gives you tremendous amounts of freedom, which I enjoyed greatly. I would look up bits of lore here and there when I wanted to incorporate long-established characters and regions, but just enough to lay the groundwork for something "believable" before adding my own little spin on it.

But for some off-site writing I've been picking away at for a few months now, I have to do a lot of research revolving around local myths and the "lake" I live near (which is actually just a gigantic hole blown into the ground with dynamite in order to alleviate some flooding from the river every year). I also have to do some site visits for the town that the story will take place in. It's probably going to be a fair bit more work than I'm making it sound, but hey, I really like this particular idea, so I'm willing to put in the hours of research.