Volcanic Ruins, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hey folks, I'm back once again with another alternate map but this time I wanted to try something a little different! I'm not too sure if I like how it turned out, but it's what I came up so here we are. Now I know we'll have to suspend our disbelief a little for this one, what with a couple of trees existing perilously close to a stream of lava, but I do think the effect looks pretty damn cool and the color combinations are rad as hell (pardon my cusses), so I think I'll count this as a success for now.  I'm interested in hearing how some of you would use this one actually, usually I have enemies or an encounter in mind for all my maps but this one stumped me a little- tell me about it in the comments!

Also, I forgot to mention last week that I'm now bundling the regular version of the map in the Adept .zip! As was suggested by a patron, this is a simple change that should make your lives slightly easier, so don't worry about downloading the files from the regular post anymore!

1. After last week's map, I wanted to lean a little further into certain aspects of rocky/forested maps, specifically, I felt like making a map with some denser trees, more scattered ledges, and a stream cutting off part of the map.  I feel that the result is a map with lots of cover and opportunity for stealth, and coupled with the mini-ziggurat in the center there's potential for tricky long-range combat. 

Don't even get me started with the lava river, that's an obstacle and a half. 

2. As I mentioned recently, I'm making a point of drawing fresh trees. Usually, I reuse a group of about 10 tree assets, but I've begun to tire a little of them- I think they're slightly too busy. This time I drew 3 fresh trees and a number of smaller trees/bigger bushes, all of which somewhat less over detailed than the rest of my stock (you might pick them out of the pic above, the one at the ziggurat's 8 is new). The time I save by reusing assets is massive, it allows me to make maps of this quality every week, but it has led to less incremental improvement since I spend less time drawing endless trees/rocks. 

3. Same color palette as usual, though I did try to replicate the Riverside Ruins' lighting/shading this time to partial success. Sometimes I make something cool without really knowing how I did it or how to replicate it, then spend weeks trying to do it again. Then again, I don't think what made Riverside Ruins a successful map was just the lighting and effects, but also the simple and game-like design, another aspect I tried to hit upon with this week's map. I might have strayed a little far away from simplicity, but I still feel it's a very nice map!