The World's First Comprehensive Map of the Deep Woods (Patreon)

Few locations in Super Mario Odyssey are as mysterious and unsettling as the hidden Deep Woods area in the Wooded Kingdom.

For those who have followed the game since its announcement in January 2017, the first look at the Deep Woods area happened at E3 2017, where select journalists were able to play an expanded version of the demo available on the show floor. While the regular attendees had access to the Sand and Metro Kingdoms, these outlets were able to enter the Wooded Kingdom, where dropping off the edge of the main map led Mario to fall down into a dark area without music, regular sight obscured by low-visibility fog. 

In this video by IGN, we can see the one big difference between the pre-release version and the finished version: while in this preview, the T-Rex is peacefully sleeping near a tree, in the version players got to experience at release, the T-Rex is awake and walking around the forest, announcing its presence from afar with quaking stomps. 

For those who have not been closely following coverage of the game, the very existence of the Deep Woods, and especially the means by which the area is accessed, could be a mystery. The game does a good job of letting the player discover it without much guidance; the most information it provides at first is this segment of the Wooded Kingdom map brochure:

Note that it does not mention how to actually access the Deep Woods. Another, though still very oblique, hint is the map of the area, which features a faint question mark in the lower right corner:

If the player asks the Hint Toad for help and one of the Power Moons revealed is located in the Deep Woods, the symbol will appear over the question mark on the map - yet even this does not actually tell the player how to get there. Only after the game is cleared does a Steam Gardener NPC tell Mario that it is possible to jump over the edge of the main area, but given the abundance of NPCs in the kingdom, it is also very easily missed. 

In the end, this has led to many players completing the game's main story without ever having set foot into the Deep Woods, lending an aura of obscurity to the area due to its completely optional nature. But the most important aspect of the mystique, and the reason I am writing this article, is the following:

There is no map of the Deep Woods.

When Mario is in the Deep Woods, bringing up the map screen only shows Mario's symbol over the aforementioned question mark on the main area map. By itself, this is not unique: no side areas of any kingdom have their own maps. Most notably, the entirety of the Shiveria underground section, which comprises more than half of the Snow Kingdom and consists of 6 relatively large areas, is visible on the map screen - however, those locations have the advantage of being properly lit, thus giving the player the chance to see things from a distance.

The Deep Woods, on the other hand, is a very large area with extremely limited visibility and containing nine Power Moons, nine regional coins, and a wide variety of other content. Normally, places like these would benefit greatly from a map, and one would logically expect that if the game does not provide one, at least the Official Super Mario Odyssey Player's Guide, a comprehensive 350-page book, would feature such a map.

However, that is not the case. The official guide does not contain a map of the Deep Woods. Neither did any other guides I have researched, both in paper form and online. I was unable to find even fan-made maps of the area - instead, all guide material relies solely on screenshots and video footage to show item locations in the Deep Woods.

Therefore, I took it upon myself to create such a map. In addition to mapping out the main collectibles, I have added every piece of information that was in any way gameplay-relevant to the map - all the coins, NPCs, exits, and even ground elevation - resulting in the world's first completely comprehensive map of the Deep Woods:

Although hopefully, the symbols and the text used are clear, an explanation of the elements of the map follows. Please note that if you would like any extra details to be added to the map, you are welcome to leave a comment on this post and I will edit the map as soon as possible with your suggestions.

For the rest of the article, I will go through the process of the creation of the map.

I was interested in seeing a map of the Deep Woods area ever since I first saw it in the E3 2017 previews. When the game was released and I saw that there was no in-game map of the area, I periodically searched various guides to see if any map would appear. While there have been various videos showing how to get a better look at the area using filters in Snapshot Mode, no maps were available.

While using some filters does allow for a slightly further field of view, including the ability to see the T-Rex from a distance, this is of course no substitute for an actual map containing all the collectibles in the area.

At one point, I was able to peruse the German version of the official guide for the game at a book store. I was extremely surprised to discover that the guide did not contain a map of the Deep Woods. I asked some acquaintances who had a physical copy of the book in English if perhaps this was a region-dependent situation, but they confirmed the map was not in their copies either. It became increasingly obvious that Nintendo had never made any maps of the area for distribution, and that it would be unlikely to see one in any other guide, as well.

I decided to make the map myself. For this, I have used the help of noclip.website, an incredibly valuable online resource that allows 3D models of rooms for various games, many of them Mario games, to be viewed inside a browser. Here is what the Deep Woods looks like inside the noclip.website viewer:

While this is very helpful in order to map out the terrain, the majority of objects are still missing, requiring me to find them all in-game. In addition, an interesting discovery can be made by looking at the orientation of the room as displayed by the website. Apparently, in the game's code, the side with the abyss is the southern side. In-game, there is no compass so it cannot be said with absolute certainty which side points where, but the mapping of the exit points shows that the vines closer to the abyss deposit Mario further north in the main area, while those closer to the back wall deposit Mario further south.

This suggests that the abyss is in fact the northern edge of the area, which is how I made the map. It is also reflected in the fact that on the main area map, the pit where falling sends Mario to the Deep Woods seems to end before reaching the northernmost edge, corresponding to that being the side with the abyss, in addition to falling from the side of the kingdom where the music plays (the northern side) also bringing Mario closer to the pit. Curiously, this means that the internal mapping and the "in-universe" mapping are inverses of each other - perhaps at some point during development, this was in fact the correct orientation and it was reversed later.

Some interesting properties of the Deep Woods can only be discovered by taking a long time to analyze the area. Before setting out to make the map, I assumed that the T-Rex randomly wandered around the area, as during gameplay, it seems to appear in many different places. However, actually following the T-Rex around shows it is confined to a very simple oval path around the big tree, as shown on the map. If you are in the uphill area, you are completely safe from the T-Rex as it cannot see Mario at that distance. Another curious tidbit is that if the T-Rex is despawned by letting it fall down the abyss, it respawns in the exact same place the sleeping T-Rex was in the pre-release version shown earlier in this article.

Perhaps the most bizarre secret in the Deep Woods is the heart on the western side of the big tree. On top of the westernmost root of the tree, there is an invisible Question Block with a coin in it. If Mario manages to jump on top of that block and then jump again, a second invisible Question Block with a heart will appear. What makes this so strange is how uncharacteristically difficult it is to get on top of the root, as it is both very steep and very slippery, and how pedestrian the reward for such a task is. It almost appears as though there was originally something more valuable hidden there, like a Life-Up Heart, but this was changed in development - although this is purely speculation on my part.

With all this said, I sincerely hope that my map is able to help at least some players navigate the Deep Woods or find the last few collectibles they missed. Please let me know of any inaccuracies or requests for additions in the comments on this post, or via direct messages on Twitter or Tumblr.

The Supper Mario Broth Patreon will now resume regular operation. I apologize for my recent hiatus and would like to again remind everyone of my no-questions-asked refund policy if you are not satisfied with the amount of value I provide. Upon request, I will refund any amount up to the entirety of all contributions you have ever made to my Patreon.

Thank you very much for reading.