WIP: World of Aethiir

[miinstrel]

First things first... I am absolutely in love with a lot of the mountains people make around here. They are STUNNING. Gotta work on my mountain technique on a later map since this one is mostly aquatic.

This is for my next D&D campaign. It's going to be ship based and set in a postdiluvian world after the elemental planes began to merge with the earth.

I just finished adding a lot of the island names and other labels. More to go, but this is where I'm at for now. Also darkened the base water color to bring out the shallower parts of the ocean where the continents used to be.

1st draft

2nd draft (label updates, add ports, unbevel islands)

Any C&C? Ideas for improvements? I want it to be simultaneously artistic and functional. The players will need to use this to navigate around the world and figure out how long it will take to travel between locations (hence the grid), so it can't be TOO busy. Is the text readable? It is to me, but I know what everything says xD

I'm planning to add a border once the map is finished. Maybe a legend along the bottom to note that the swirleys are whirlpools, etc. What color should I use for the border do you think? Overall I'd like to stick with the 'clean' style.

EDIT: The colors seem much more saturated in this attachment than they are in Photoshop... not sure how to fix that.