Maps

[Potjeh]

Normal cliff tiles get highlighted too.

[Lothaudus]

I gave up after I made half a dozen or so. Now, if one mapping cost maybe a jar or so of ink and gave you a full local map then maybe it would be a bit different. Wherein the benefits of actually going into and exploring the map in person are the ability to mark caves and check resources. As it stands those acttions are more useful and done faster than making an actual map. See the Brodgar iron mine thread for the Codexian map. Where they only bothered to make maps of relevant intersections because full mapping is never worth the bother.

Yeah, I think you can only do like 3 bits of normal map before you run out of ink or your quill dries up or something? Then there's the paper. I know every time I mapped I had to bring a full inventory of ink, feathers and parchment and I still never had enough. You constantly had to stop for additional resources or hope you'd come across some chickens or inkweed soon. In the end, screenies of the river junctions (or just screenshots in general) were far more effective. And meant you could actually bring some useful tools along as well (like rustroot for mine exploration). Oh yeah, not to mention food. There are some huge swaths of apple / mulberry tree free land and if you're not able to kill something in one hit, all your meat just runs away.

... or you can spend an hour fishing. :/

[jorb]

I actually had some of my greatest fun with this game when I did the Xanadu map, for the exact same reason you mention, Lothadus. It wasn't trivial.

[Neruz]

I have to say, given the amount of resources mapmaking uses up, it would probably be nice if it mapped a larger area and perhaps placed little notes on important places, such as high water\soil\clay\sand quality areas and caves.

[Souai]

It only takes two chests or one cupboard of Inkweed to map 1% of the world. The feathers and leather are almost trivial in comparison. A large grassland field (5-10k tiles, or 2-4 maps) supports at least half a chest per spawn cycle, just go grab an inventory full and then do whatever your real skill is a while and return. Gather your materials before you map and have a plan for how you're going to map beforehand.

While I do wish there was a skill to be developed through making maps and an effect of quality on maps other than letting them degrade, I don't think the resource demand is too high. One herd of cows and one flock of chickens are both more than enough leather and feathers to map 1% of the world.

The key is probably handling your other needs (food! defense! shelter! trade goods(silk for more inventory space?)!, alcohol!, dreams!, water!) and finding your first big grassland before undertaking a mapping project. Once you have a foundation, it can go quite fast.

A solo player could probably map the whole world in under half a year on his own with spending ~4-5 hours a day on it. I think it'd take about 800 man hours to do it if you take it at a relaxed, chat with others and do things besides play H&H while mapping pace. Throwing out numbers like 6250 inkweed! 2500 maps! 100 chests! makes it seem daunting but you don't likely have to map everything. Mapping your own super grid with a foundation should only take 32 hours or just about a week if you take it like a dedicated hobby shrug. I suppose it may take longer if you're not sure where you're located as a result of the new update but it's pretty easy to identify super grid boundaries once you map over them. From there you can probably triangulate with TW to the RoB in some parts to find out which one of the possible super grids you started on.

[Lothaudus]

I think the specific issue I had was that I was mapping a river path to Retardo Land. Given rivers cross multiple local maps (especially when they're on the edge of a join) I was surprised at the amount of paper I needed (incidentally the path I was taking turned out to be a whole supergrid across). I think for my first attempt (not knowing what I would need) I took 4 or 5 sheets and used 'em up in half an hour simply following one straight river (which did cross a boundary line). In the end, screenshots of a handful of junctions did the trick, saved me hauling an ass tonne of parchment and let me get on with what it was I actually wanted to do. I agree with jorb that there's certainly fun that can be had with it but if you're not systematically working your way through each local map at a time and are just sticking to the rivers, I found it a real pain TBH (compared to hitting the print-screen key).

If I didn't have print-screen, I simply would've defaulted to drawing the junctions on a real bit of paper (which is pretty much how I map caves).

Then there was the issue of working out which local maps lined up with which and either screenshotting those and combining them or putting them onto a Regional (and hoping you didn't cross regions or were on the edge of one).

Maybe if you could mark the rivers directly on a regional map somehow. So when you mapped, you had a choice of making a local or a regional map. Then if you just want to know the rivers, you map it straight to the regional (and save some resources). If you want all the detail for a given area, you go for the local. At the moment, you need a lot of paper if you're following a long river and exactly how much depends on how much that river twists and turns (and therefore how many sections it crosses).

Some way to name maps so you know WTF they're for would also be handy. There's nothing quite like a cupboard full of maps in some random order with no idea what's for what or forgetting the order they were in.

I guess the skill will always have an issue when there's a way to meta-game maps. But like eating every 5 minutes, I just found it used an incredible amount of resources beyond what I might have expected game-wise. Having the Quill dry up (I'm sure it's only after 3 bits) was also a bit of a shock the first time. And it might help to know my first experience was with 2 urns in a boat (didn't have spare straw for baskets) and no backpack because I took my archery gear to hunt food as I went.

[Souai]

I guess I avoided this issue by methodically preparing an entire chest before I began mapping and being systematic in my mapping process. I have a labelled paper in each chest I map that states what quadrant of which supergrid that chest represents. I walk the border between each map space so that I can move 10 tiles up or down usually to map both sides. The ideal path I take over two each map includes only 4-6 waypoints and you zig back and forth to get both sides. If you have a backpack and especially if you have merch robes you can set up your gear with something like a bucket, flask, dream, four feathers, six ink jars, 1-2 resource maps to make sure you begin in a new area, and 2-4 new maps to put information and one jar of rustroot. This only takes at most 24 slots so you'd have six left over for flexible slots if you have a full inv or can just fit it in if you only have a backpack. I have the maps in my inventory in the positions that they will be in if I move them back into the chest. I have never asked myself where which map should go. A free hearthfire and association with a village to have a second teleport is pretty important even if it's just you and a bunch of alts is pretty important to be able to have a pause button and to manage boats.

The game could be better about letting you annotate maps or sew them together into a supergrid ingame without the requirement of image cropping for sure, but it's definitely possible to keep everything straight with what is provided.

[Caradon]

I actually had some of my greatest fun with this game when I did the Xanadu map, for the exact same reason you mention, Lothadus. It wasn't trivial.

Yea but you have the ability to teleport like a fairy
Something, I may add, we would all like to have very much, You know, to blink to a location a minimap or so away?

[sabinati]

um, i'm pretty sure he only has that ability on his admin account, not his regular playing character alt account

[jorb]

I actually had some of my greatest fun with this game when I did the Xanadu map, for the exact same reason you mention, Lothadus. It wasn't trivial.

Yea but you have the ability to teleport like a fairy
Something, I may add, we would all like to have very much, You know, to blink to a location a minimap or so away?

If I say I did something, and then present a small exposé of how I felt about it, odds are I didn't do it using god powers, because that would be meaningless.