Mostly those spikes can be get rid of using slight varriations in the fractal generation inputs. Please don´t ask me about mathematics as I don´t know a bit about that. In my experiment there where two whcih I just erased using content aware fills. Worked like a charm in this case and was probably faster than anything else considering render and world building times. Got myself a copy of vue 10 and try to learn it right now. I will start with non mapping tutorials as those are plenty at geeksatplay studios and give a deeper understanding of the workings of vue. I´ll get back at the map the time my understanding of it all is a little better. THX for the comment on lighting. It´s all about what we are used to...