I don't believe that they're integrated at all into the game, at least in the sense that it's a real-time representation of the world delivered to us via the web. I don't think I've ever heard them talk about the D&SS map in that way. What we see is what exists at the time domains are selected. What happens in the months and years to follow will be up to us to document.

With respect to discovery, exploration of the world will always involve seeing/experiencing things at the street level. What we have on the web is a crude satellite view of it, and that doesn't tell us much other than the general geography of the land. The starting continent is also only ~30% of the world, and we know nothing at all about the remaining ~70% of it.

Generally speaking, there are two things that compete with one another here: the ability to govern lands and the desire to discover the unknown.

To choose our places in the world and to govern effectively as stewards of Elyria, the starting continent has to be relatively well known. People have lived there and families have ruled for many generations, so it makes sense that we'd know our surroundings. At least, all the civilized parts. The nobility are even supposed to get a detailed map of their domains, which again is something you'd expect for those who have the responsibility of ruling.

But there are other things players will know nothing about, like dungeons, caves, mines, ruins, and all manner of resources waiting to be discovered, including minerals, animals and plant life. And if some of their concept art is any indication, probably even monster lairs. There are also supposed to be islands off the coast where exploration is possible, if not necessary.

And if that's not enough to assuage your concerns about having enough to discover, none of the maps we have detail what exists in each of the settlements, many of which are enormous capital sized cities. Just discovering, documenting and maintaining that will be a tremendous undertaking.

Remember too that the world is not frozen in time. It will change and evolve as the game is played and dynasties rise and fall. We don't need to be blindfolded and completely ignorant of where we live to make it exciting to take our first steps into the world.

I apologize if you answered this in your post Hieronymus I’m waiting to catch my flight and was looking through threads

Basically the map as it is right now is the “history map” you can think of it as. Basically this is what the map looked like in the past, not in the beginning but in the past.

Lines will likely change, borders will shift, settlements may leave (ruins) and some will grow. Some new might also start. But this is the world prior to all of that.

Kingdoms of Elyria is the start of us trying to shape more of the history and sort of “guide” what we can of the lines and borders and sort of get a taste of the conquest side of the game (with things mostly returning to original owners) but in most part trying to push people for growth, whether that be economically or size etc.

However, kingdoms of Elyria is very early in the timeline, years before exposition and launch.

Exposition is the world building phase which means that people will be building new things, expanding settlements creating settlements and more.

The map will change in various ways because of this and that’s why (if it comes with your package) you’ll get a map of your starting area when you spark in to the game. There will be a lot of unknown in between that will have to be discovered and drawn.

Also, our “map” is just our starting continent. That is only 28% landmass of the entire server, so there is also lots over seas to travel and discover to do ^.^

I hope that our answers help you!

They've been pretty up front about the fact that we'll be limited to in-game generated maps, created by cartographers -- with only the details that the skill level of the cartographer can create, and that we pay them for -- for navigation inside Elyria. And no mini-maps. And I'm all for the challenge.

I think they've done a pretty good job of giving us the bare minimum we need to make our selections, although some would argue that it's not quite enough. If you lived there, you'd know the basic land features and resources/demographics -- mountains over that way, river down there, farms over here, etc.. I think they've made the DSS map accurate enough to guess what kind of features you'll have in your land down the parcel level (64m x 64m), as in -- is it land or water, and does it have vegetation and how much (by color), and a loose sense of the topography (by "hill" legend icons).

But I personally don't think they're spoiling the Discovery aspect, because all the exciting and dangerous stuff is still hidden or undefined: resources, caves, mines, subterranean volcanic entrances, camps, ruins, bandits, illegal settlements, etc., and creatures have no fixed spawn points. And the roads are only generally representative of where the "starter" pathing will take you, and those will be adjusted/added to during Expo. I think they've struck a difficult balance, given the intention.

As to the accuracy, if you haven't already watched the below linked video about the worlds'/maps' creation, I really recommend it. It's clear that the land masses are entirely data-driven by biome/resource and feature distribution. This procedural world generation is really a LOT of the what they've been working on for years. It's not just a HUGE puzzle, but a clever machine that makes HUGE, meaningful puzzles, at will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJR6bb9OBOc

In the link below, you can see Angelica, as an example, rendered from the World Machine app, and I would expect that to be pretty damn accurate. It's not very high-res, but it seems to be generated from the actual terrain and world data (albeit at an unknown time of year/season, and subjected to last minute tweaking just before DSS).

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/501537742979596289/514546723847274497/unknown.png

If you then zoom all the way in to the DSS map, and compare that to any section of the above feaux-satellite-like terrain, you see the idealization in the boundaries and features. The edges are simplified, and the topo details are replaced with illustrative icons. The DSS map is all about the delineation of parcels for ownserhip, and it needs to be REALLY accurate at that, even if only suggestive about the rest.

If you haven't seen them yet (and I apologize for everything here you're already familiar with) the content in the below thread was captured by community members (Morbis, et al) from the DSS map just prior to the event, and contains full resolution, naked versions of the maps. They're gigantic (composites of what you find in the DSS portal), but clean.

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/32681/all-servers-complete-dss-county-zoom-maps

Again, I think they are "representatively" accurate down to the type of land/flora feature you see on a parcel level (64m x 64m), in terms of the amount of vegetaion (color) and density of terrain icons.

I'd guess the waterways are fairly accurate as rivers or streams, perhaps roughly rendered from the dataset, but flooded/floodable areas may only reflect a snapshot of the land, in time, and may be wetter or drier at different times of the year (mentioned by the devs at some point). Also, the presence of an outline on the waterway in the DSS map indicates whether or not it's navigable by boat, and so offers a "soft" measure of depth.

The "starter" roads are definitely NOT to scale, so they may not be reflective of actual path distances to travel AT ALL -- they could, and likely do, double or triple back on themselves in the terrain within the area in which they are upscaled on the map (just to be visible). I see the road distances being the LEAST accurate thing on the map, if for no other reason than to keep us from measuring them and having base trade distances/networks already laid out and meta-gamed by now. People that are trying that anyway are likely fooling themselves.

As a lover of maps, and a player really excited about the depth of cartography in this game, I'm thrilled with what they've given us so far.

Posted By Mapkeeper at 5:30 PM - Mon Feb 10 2020

--Other Continents--

The starting continent is about 30% of the total landmass. Does this mean that the other 70% is complete wilderness apart from a few settlements belonging to the other four tribes(Yoru, Mydarri etc.), or do the other four tribes have their own massive sprawling kingdoms?

Excellent question, you should have made a separate topic for this question. But to attempt answering your question.

If we consider Tribe behavior on earth and also take into consideration the Geology, anthropology, seasons and climates, Ecosystem etc.

Then add that to what we know of the 30% in game that is known to us... Plus, if we consider that today there are something like nearly 120 or so tribes in existence on earth that still live in total isolation.

Then we can assume the 4 tribes on the 70% not yet discovered continents of CoE are each living for the most part in their own environment somewhere on those 70% continent not yet discovered. And they probably live in an environment more suitable to each tribe, etc.

Even if those undiscovered tribes have a Kingdom system, I doubt would look anything like the ones on the 30% landmass already known to us (am including and taking into consideration - us in the 30%, when I say they won’t look anything like us – I mean in being advance and so on ...). I am assuming discovering that 70% would be more like discovering America.

UNLESS we land in game and someone from that 70% not known to us yet; knocks on our door before we even have a chance to build our first ships and says: “Hey we are here too”... LOL

If that happens we are dealing with a different sort of civilization “Tribes”.

If it turns out that those or some of those tribes are more advance than us, then we all collectively got bigger problems on our hands than to worry about things like who is going to destroy our Ecosystem on the 30% landmass known to us, and how to protect it... hahahahaha... that would be very interesting... All of a sudden we have a situation where The Hunter becomes the Hunted... L O L

shuuuuushhhhh, let's keep this one between us and not give the CoE team any ideas... just kidding, it'll be all good... We are going to discover America and build it from ground up...

Each tribe will have its own biome, social structure and cultural mores. Just how much of the world they inhabit is unknown, but judging from the main continent, it depends on how prolific their biome is and how adaptable they are. It's not much of an answer, I know. We'll just have to explore to find out. :)

Posted By Mapkeeper at 12:47 AM - Mon Feb 10 2020

... The maps seem to suggest that the continent consists of one large island surrounded by ocean. I find it highly unlikely that the landmass would not be supported by smaller islands off the coast, yet D&SS does not show these probably existent islands. ...

According to the most recent SBS gossip, there are plans for nearby "adventure islands" that are accessible via coastal travel from the starting continents. Additional contents will be inaccessible until ocean-going ships become available, which will purportedly require player research and development to achieve. The inaccessibility is partly enforced by the permadeath feature of death at sea and rumors of terrible monsters and severe storms.

... You may not think this is a problem, but for people who want to buy a settlement with a wide view of the open sea(such as myself), how are they to know that the next continent is right across the bay from where their village is? > ...

Coastal real estate is a hot commodity. If you plan on buying a coastal settlement, you had better pick it out quickly and be first on the "buy" button when SoE resumes.

As for a view of large expanses of seascape, there remains a question on how the horizon will be rendered and whether the view of it will assume a flat or curved planetary surface. Perhaps the representation issue is moot, because oceans will be about as large relative to continents as they are on earth. In either case, your wide-open seascape is more likely to be interrupted by views of nearby islands than by views of nearby continents.

Posted By Mapkeeper at

Hello, I created this thread because I was wondering how the maps from D&SS would be integrated into the actual game.

--Accuracy--

I've spent quite a lot of time browsing the D&SS maps and I was wondering how accurate they are. My main concern is that these maps will kind of destroy the in-game 'draw your own maps' mechanic as players could simply go on the website and use those maps. I'm sure the webpage will be closed after SoE but users who have screenshots or copies of the source code would still be able to access it.

This is where the accuracy comes in. If the maps are too accurate, D&SS has let players preview the world beforehand thus spoiling the surprise and fun of letting them explore it for themselves. If they are too inaccurate, well...that's an obvious problem for the event of D&SS itself.

So these are my questions- how accurate are the D&SS maps, and are they partially spoiling the exploration/cartography mechanics in-game?

Honestly, the Elyrians who have been living there for centuries should have already come up with some fairly decent maps of their own by the time we enter the world. Which is more than likely what we're looking at with the D&SS map if you want to bring it full circle for RolePlay.

Posted By Mapkeeper at

Hello, I created this thread because I was wondering how the maps from D&SS would be integrated into the actual game.

--Accuracy--

I've spent quite a lot of time browsing the D&SS maps and I was wondering how accurate they are. My main concern is that these maps will kind of destroy the in-game 'draw your own maps' mechanic as players could simply go on the website and use those maps. I'm sure the webpage will be closed after SoE but users who have screenshots or copies of the source code would still be able to access it.

This is where the accuracy comes in. If the maps are too accurate, D&SS has let players preview the world beforehand thus spoiling the surprise and fun of letting them explore it for themselves. If they are too inaccurate, well...that's an obvious problem for the event of D&SS itself.

So these are my questions- how accurate are the D&SS maps, and are they partially spoiling the exploration/cartography mechanics in-game?

Any accuracy the DS&S maps have will be gone after Day 0 of exposition, aside from the existing settlement and road locations. The settlement sizes, and populations will change. The amounts of resources will change, the renewable resources might even move somewhat. As time goes on, settlements will appear, others will get destroyed, names will get changed, some counties will get counquered, others will get divided, the same with duchies and perhaps even kingdoms. Basically, the older your maps are, the more inaccurate they will become. HOWEVER, keeping an old to ancient map or two around might in the future help you to discover some forgotten piece of lore, if you have the skills necessary for the research to find that lore.

Basically, there will always be a need for explorers and cartographers, even without the undiscovered lands in the far oceans.