Land of the Eleven Tribes

[Gandwarf]

Very nice... no comments from me. Certainly up to par with your earlier work, maybe somewhat better even.

[LonewandererD]

"The Kaiga Stones. Carved from the bones of the gargantuan Miga-Junts, the surfaces of these posts are painted with intricate symbols of Junt blood and powered spirit bones and enchanted with many an ancient incantations. It is said that these posts have the power to repel malevolent spirits when they face outwards, or imprison a spirit when they face inwards, in either case creating a magical wall that block all except the most powerful of uninvited spirits. The Humans and Ithekins of Evelakaia line their villages and towns with these to protect against malevolent spirits while the Majud L'Kia (Judgement Caste) and Sol L'Kia (Spirit Castes) use them to imprison particulary violent and powerful spirit-beasts."

I thought it might be interesting to provide a little snippet of my background story with each post just to add some extra depth to my map. Anyways onto the map. I went back and played around with the thickness of the rivers and added a river delta as suggested by Ascension and fixed up the two little forests mistakes that JFJ pointed out. I also detailed more of the map and added a new layer on top of my grassland layer to make the transition of forest to grasses smoother and to make the forests more vibrant. Right now I'm experimenting with a new water texture and then I'm going to move onto to cleaning up the western frontier. All in all most of the terrain is done and I'll move onto towns and such soon. Again this shaping up to be one of those maps that you have too zoom in to see as it was intended.

-D-

[wormspeaker]

Wow! Very nice. The nearly finished work looks great.

[Tear]

That's coming along well.

One thing you could try if you want:
Instead of the soft fading from forest to mountains, put some light forest on the mountain edges, just like you did in several places when going from forest to grassland.
This way the forest till gradually thin as it goes uphill instead of fading into haze.
You'd have to be careful not to overdo it, but I think it's worth a try.

[LonewandererD]

I tired do that Tear but the problem is that the mountain peak layer is above the forest layer and the edges of the mountain peaks are faded anyway so anything that is under it would also be faded. I tried putting the forests above the mountains but the the forests seem to overpower the mountains a bit (if that makes sense) which made the map look a little flat. Also I have some small mountains that wouldn't do so well if i changed them.

-D-

[Tear]

I'd try adding an extra layer above the mountains and do some tree sprinkling there, so you can try things completely independent from your main forest.
Maybe copy the forest's layer styles over, maybe not. See what works better.

Just some thoughts.

[Ascension]

Some of the forests have some funky erasing in the top part.

[LonewandererD]

Yeah, I haven't worked alot on the northwestern portion of the map so the forests up there are still quite rough. Adressing that problem now.

-D-

[LonewandererD]

Okay, pretty much finished with the terrain, just doing the finishing touches. Along with all of the touch ups I've done to it i decided to tone down the grasslands a bit, the seond pic shows the grasses as they were, which is better? While the second pic is brighter and so makes the map look warmer the first pic blends with the forests better.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to do the town texture as well as some other little pics to signify the presence of forts and towers and the like.

While I do that I invite you all to nitpick away, find my mistakes before its too late.

-D-

[Gandwarf]

Two nitpicks, both concerning rivers:

- Some of the rivers seem to float above the terrain...
This is especially noticeable near the mountains to the bottom left (and then the rivers in the northern part of those mountains). The drop shadow near where the rivers start is too much.

- Sometimes the amount of river branches seems overdone. For example: the rivers near the mountains to the bottom right. So many branches it doesn't seem right to me.

Otherwise very cool as I stated before.