Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Rivellon Map Project

Dear Larians!

You have made up such a wonderfull world that I again and again love to explore.
It just grieves me that I just cant find a map that shows your whole world!
I wanna know where in the world fort joy and all the other places like hunters edge or cyseal etc.. are located.

I assume there isn't an official worldmap public. Please show us fans how it looks!

I don't get the impression that they have one.

Saw someone say they don't want a world map for fear of limiting the design of future games. That seems like a weak excuse to me though. Plenty of ways to make portals to travel from area to area if that's a concern. Makes Rivellon seem less concrete.

I did try to figure out where things were in relation to Divine Divinity and Ego Draconis since there's at least Aleroth in common, until I heard that the geography had changed somewhat because of whatever unpleasantness ensued in the intervening time. Or something.

So yeah, as the others say, it doesn't seem there is one.

That's pretty much the exact same thing Terry Pratchett said about Discworld. And then he made a map and discovered that wasn't the case at all.

Well if they have none......
I am a pretty skilled cartographer myself! Shall we work on a fanbased map?

I think that a good point to start is to make a list of all known/heard of places.
I am pretty sure that I don't know all the places, so if you folks wanna join me with this I would be very grateful!^^

Here is an example of how it could look:

(Divine Divinity map based)
Aleroth:
Since it is the very first location you get to know in Divine Divinity, I would make this the centre of the map
Flussheim (is it the same in english?:
Capitalcity of the duchy Ferol, located south-east to the Aleroth surroundings
Teneb Tiriel:
Forested region in the south of Ferol
Yuthol Gor:
Wasteland region. Lays east to Ferol and Teneb Tiriel
Tanoroth:
Mountain range to the west of Aleroth and Ferol
Verdistis:
Big city in the north of Ferol

etc....
you know what I mean^^


EDIT:
I took a few minutes to sketch out a very rough image of some stuff that I know. Have a look here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/18vjmhruwrhv0qn/Sketch.png?dl=0

That looks like a reasonable start to me, and is similar to what I concluded a while back. I'd assumed that the mountain range west of Aleroth became the coastline during the chaos after the time of DD, although I'm slightly questioning that as the Orobas Fjords seem like they're probably older than that. But it is similar to my own assumptions from a few months back:






Luculla might be a bit of a stretch and it may be nowhere in the vicinity, I was just hazarding a guess...

Yeah I would also locate Luculla around that place but not based on any knowledge.

I know that yuthul gor has a coastline, because sailors in OS speak of never sailing to yuthul gor anymore.

So Luculla Forest and Cyseal woud fit into that area pretty well

I made a new sketch with terrain:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bcb0cstjoyyy4rk/Sketch2.png?dl=0

I think the only slight spanner in the works is that I'm sure I recall Cyseal being described as an island; but then again, things like peninsulas and other knobbly bits are often described as such, so it still works for me.

The main challenge seems to be the uncertainty surrounding the permanence of Rivellon's landscape, though I suspect that's a convenient story element and one I'd be happier to ignore if at all possible!

Cyseal lays on a peninsula? Okay, thats noted for later terrain definition
I think that it isn't an island for you have access to luculla from which you can enter the dark forest (teneb tiriel isn't it?) If that is true cyseal must be a city on the mainland.

I'm not sure, that was just me hypothesising out loud! Though it seems plausible judging by (potentially) various comments and from the map itself: there seems to be coastline around most of it except for where it meets Luculla to the north. It's not certain of the dark forest and Teneb Tiriel are one and the same, again that's just hypothesis, though I personally think it's a fairly compelling idea.

I guess it really depends on whether or not Larian view our adventures on Rivellon as taking place in one cohesive area or whether they're only tangentially connected facets that could be geographically distributed all over the world. Since a lot of what we see is quite ancient (even D:OS being pretty ancient history compared to much of the rest of Divinity has its own ancient ruins and legends) there's a reasonable case for the latter, but I prefer the idea of a smaller, more easily mappable region.

Of course D:OS2 brings in a whole bunch of entirely new regions which could be absolutely anywhere. Part of me thinks Fort Joy could be near Sentinel Island but then again it could just as easily be on the other side of the world. My (possibly incorrect) impression is that they may focus more on game lore this time around, but whether or not that will include any commitment to Rivellon's geography is anyone's guess. Doesn't stop us speculating, though, in which case I've decided that Fort Joy is part of the same archipelago that includes Sentinel Island. So there.

You would put Fort Joy near Sentinel Island? That would fit just fine, although I see that Island more in the south, for the tropical feeling it gives me.

And then there is Arx, a bigger City that is mentioned in a Vlog of Larian. (Meet our new stats system).
I would believe that the party takes the ship to that city in Act II for a big city would make sense to go after getting off that remote Island.

I would go that far and say that Arx is located north of Fort Joy since the map designers decided to put that exiting Harbour with the Alexander Showdown facing north of the Island (This gives the Player the feeling of heading north.

I hadn't noticed the tropical aspect: interesting how different people get different impressions! If anything I thought Sentinel Island was more hot and desert-like, whereas Fort Joy felt to me more like a sort rainy part of northern England. Which is probably not very imaginative of me since that's where I'm from.

You may be right about the harbour, but on the other hand it seems it is the only useful harbour on the whole island: the only other harbour is also on the north side next to the fort itself, and judging by the number of wrecks it doesn't seem especially safe... so I'd hazard a guess it's not necessarily indicative of the direction of sea traffic, but it may be.

One thing that does occur to me is that in Ego Draconis, there's no port or coastal town shown in the Fjords but there probably would be one somewhere, I would guess more likely to the south as the north looks to me to be increasingly impassable: given that it is a major inland route to various other settlements my river, road and zeppelin there must be one somewhere, and the Champions' fort doesn't count as that seems to be dedicated to a military stopping off point. Whether or not Arx might be that coastal town or city is anyone's guess, but there must be some fairly major coastal town(s) in that area.

I almost forgot the harbour in the fort itself^^
But that it also faces north strenghens my conclusion, that the mainland coast has to be nort of fort joy.
I know that Island harbours almost always get build into the direction of the mainland, if said mainland is near that island.

From the images of sentinel Island I would identify that biome more northern, at least in a temperate, and salty (wich explaines the desertish look) climate.

Fort Joy Island seems more tropical to me based on the vegetation and even the sand and water.
The sand has a warm and yellowish color.
The Water is pretty clear and light blue, which also indicates a tropical climate.
Carribean Islands are a good example.

I once said that Larian's process for establishing the lore of their next Divinity game seems to be that everyone is given a quiz covering established facts and information from previous games in the Divinity series, and whoever gets the most answers WRONG is put in charge of writing the lore for the new game.

Trying to work out a map from that is like trying to glue back together a vase using pieces of 18 different vases of varying sizes, shapes, and designs. And also a lot of the pieces from the vase you actually are trying to glue together have been removed from the pile.

Well I strongly believe that this vase is worth the glueing! ;-)

I grew up near the seaside: it had the most gorgeous golden sand, and often really bright and hot sun: I remember the latter, because my skin got really badly flayed by sunburn in my youth. But this was facing the North Sea which was absolutely bloody freezing. Didn't stop me swimming in it, but I was young and foolish! And the most wonderful aquamarine sea I've ever seen was off the north coast of Scotland. Looks can be deceiving...




It does seem a bit like that sometimes. I've also attempted to map other areas based on literature with varying degrees of success (admittedly varying between "none" and "little" most of the time...)

It occurs to me that I may have sounded more argumentative than I'd intended: I hope not, I was just highlighting the way I saw things. I guess the point was that we have our own perspectives, and I'm not really sure what Fort Joy's island is supposed to represent in terms of locale and climate and stuff.

It is okay!
Having different perspectives can be a very constructive factor!
Shall we talk about other places that can be located more precisely?

The other places bit is starting to get a bit gnarly: I just don't know! I think we can at least have a fairly reasonable idea of the locations of Ego Draconis in relation to the original DD map (I think Farglow is somewhere we didn't mention, which would be somewhere further inland of the Fjords towards Aleroth, probably; and we've hazarded a guess as to where the D:OS map may be located, but other bits I suspect are yet to be revealed.

Actually one thing I did wonder about is the possible proximity of Fort Joy to Cyseal on the basis of its architecture (well, inasmuch as we can tell from some ruins) and that it was Braccus' playground. I guess that really depends on the size of Braccus' kingdom (or empire) though, and whether or not he preferred to remain around his seat of power. But I think that's a starting point and it would fit in with your theory that Fort Joy is at a more southerly latitude (that is of course assuming that the bit of Rivellon we're familiar with is in its world's northern hemisphere, unlike e.g. Thedas where all the game world we've seen so far is in its southern hemisphere) but I think we can probably take that for granted as Yuthul Gor, the hot and arid bit, is to the south.

I'm still working on the basis of the places we've seen so far being on the same continent, which is possibly a bit naive considering the dimension-hopping we've already seen in the series, but it works for me. I suspect some of the places mentioned so far in D:OS2 may be further afield, though I'd guess Arx may be intended to be in familiar territory.

Farglow is noted on the sketch now.
I believe that Arx is located on the same coastline as Cyseal but thats just my mind.
In OS2 Saheila and Amyro talk about their home "shoulder". Since they beg the player to bring saheilas amulet there, I think thats also a place to visit.

If I remember correctly Ifan comes from Hunters Edge, also a coastal area. But I can be horribly wrong.
I need to test that in the game soon. I just believe to remember stuff like that.

On the sketch I will draw Fort Joy Island near the coast of Cyseal, perhaps to the southwest of it.


On what are you working exactly? I might not have understood that correctly^^

I'm working purely on a hunch! It has absolutely no substantiation behind it at all other than Arx seeming like it may be familiar to us and Shoulder less so, but both are very arguable. I think if I had to commit myself to just one thing from D:OS2, it would be the theory that Fort Joy may have some proximity to Cyseal.

Ah okay^^

BTW: Here is sketch Nr.3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2seyewi82v1erox/Sketch3.png?dl=0

Well it might be very speculative....

But when I went through the main menu of OS2 I saw this image of a Harbour Area:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....C7C354BF5E6A1DD7210E4F5997A0093B8BEDE07/

Could this be the place the party is heading to after Fort Joy? Is it perhaps Arx?
In any case this gives us a peak into the architectural style of atleast one place in the OS2 World.

That's quite interesting. Wherever it is, we can see it's probably a fairly lowland area unlike Cyseal and the Fjords where cliffs seem to dominate, so maybe it isn't necessarily along the west coast of the usual landmass.

While the scene on the screen seems to be uncomplete (white background at some places)
We cannot determine th geographical situation at all, except that it is coastal^^.
The Area that is covered by the two buildings seems to be around the size of the harbour area of cyseal.
If there will be a more complete map we could see more buildings on a flat area or perhaps a rocky elevation....

It might be just some asthetic thing but when you switch from main menu to options and vice versa you can see that the secene with the fortress and the statue of the main menu is divided just by some big rocks which lets me conclude that these two scenes could actually be one area although I dont really believe in this since it seems that both areas are viewed from different perspectives (camera angle and height in this case).

Okay I did some quite big steps now and granted me a good amount of artistic freedom.
I defined the coastline more precisely and took reference from all the maps that we have from the game series.
I used the maps to define riverflows and also started to define baseheight of the land.
Here you can see this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gy19rgmuv9viep6/Sketch4.png?dl=0
I decided to go with a topographic mapstyle at first for having a base to work with.
When the heights are done, I will go over to the terrain composition (mountains, hills, plains, farmlands, forests)
You are welcome to give me some feedback on this fourth sketch.

Blimey! That's some quite serious work. If they still haven't decided on a map, maybe they should use yours.

It is giving me slight flashbacks to the time I spent joining and mapping various provinces in Oblivion, though: perhaps not that intimidating a job in itself, at least for somebody who knows what they're doing; but it's a skill of which I had no knowledge or experience. My head hurt quite a lot afterwards.

I'm also just thinking with some amusement that one of the main features of Rivertown was the absence of any river in its general area, so that's something to bear in mind when compiling the map!

Here comes sketch Nr. 5!

- Oceanlevels have been adjusted
- mountain ranges have been advanced quite a bit.
- the overall map has much more depth now
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfepjvy5hdejnhs/Sketch5.png?dl=0

I'm impressed, and it's actually making a lot of sense as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you very much for your positive reaction! ^^
I am starting to like that landmass either! I wonder what some of the larians would say to this.
Well until one of them does react, I have no choice but to work on the map further!

Now I've got a terrain update although the heightmap isn't finished, so keep that in mind!^^

This new sketch covers settlements, forests, wastelands/deserts, hilly/mountainous areas, coastline

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5s02skswp73vpg0/Sketch6.png?dl=0

This terrainsketch must not be mistaken to be the heightmap!
Everything here is partially only based on terrein and not height, except the mountains themselfs.

Very nice, though I'm a bit confused about which settlements are what. Bottom left is Fort Joy and Cyseal right? Is that little red dot just northeast of cyseal Silverglen? And above that the dark forest town? If so, seems like that area should be forested.

Also my impression is that while Fort Joy is probably fairly near Cyseal, I don't know if it would be THAT close. I base this mostly on the feeling that I don't think we'll be returning to Cyseal, and that would the obvious place to escape to from Fort Joy. Then again, it could be crawling with magisters and we could sail north or south along the coast to some other city I suppose.

There's little way to say for certain where anything really is in relation to each other, except areas within one game. So basically I wouldn't put to much faith into the notion that we can really "accurately" map Rivellon. But an interpretation like this is satisfying nonetheless.

I think the map is looking really good so far. I think my only reservation is that I think that the corner with Cyseal should perhaps be somewhat larger: I'm not totally sure it's to scale, though I could be wrong.

It's good to see the location of the settlements, that really helps a lot with visualising things.

And Baardvark, you may well be correct about Fort Joy's proximity, but from the general feel of the place, the ruins as well as Braccus' presence, I think it's in the right general location. The matter of game worlds and scaling is always a bit of a knotty subject.

Of course this can never be an exact map with all the places officially mapped.
This is my interpretation of how rivellon could look like.

To the size of cyseal:
I took several maps as referencepoints and scaled down the map of cyseal so that its buildings have around the size that the buildings of the ferol overview map have. So in terms of scale they should fit well^^

In which case I apologise for being so presumptuous! I think you actually taking the time to measure it trumps my vague idea that it might look bigger.

As much as it's based on guesswork, it's really nice being able to look at a map and see where everything might be. Especially as I tend to completely wrongly remember the Broken Valley area: I obviously need a map.

Regarding to the broken valley there is much to be done so please hold still your remembering and dont throw it away!
The most of the work was focused on the heartlands and the soutern coast so far.

No, you really don't want whatever is in my mind, for some reason I always seem to remember it upside down!

One thing I've always been intrigued about is the structure above the Champions' harbour: it appears to have either a road or possibly even a route for zeppelins. I'm guessing it's a quicker route to Aleroth without going all the way round the fjords, though I suppose it could even be related to the Council of Seven's citadel thing as that might also be in the general area.

Well since we can't know that we can only guess, and if we have to guess we have artistic freedom!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lcw21pv2svu92uw/Sketch7.png?dl=0
I made some progress again today. This time I focused more on the southern fjords and the coastal area in general.
Again, with much freedom I granted to myself^^ (as kinda most of the time)

In that case, I think I would hazard a guess that the Champions' fort area and the Council may possibly be one and the same. The bit that you're not allowed to enter (I spent some time seeing if there was a way around the guard!) could potentially be the way into the Council building.

I was also just trying to place Hunter's Edge on the map: I suspect that you may probably do a better job of pinpointing its exact location! But the more I think about it, the more I think that actually works as the location for D:OS in relation to DD and ED, another reason being that Hunter's Edge and Cyseal are within easy raiding distance for orc ships sailing from Yuthul Gor whereas you don't really see them up in the Fjords possibly thanks to the navigation-unfriendly Fort Joy being in the way.

I have found something.

http://images.rpgnuke.ru/divinity_original_sin/concept/worldmap.png
Could this be the official map of the OS1 area?
Much stuff fits just well here and when I try to decipher it, the letters are readable.

Edit: Okay it seems to be that this map is part of the OS collectors edition! That makes it official and the map can be integrated into the worldmap it seems!

Edit2:
I was now able to decrypt the letters.
These are the words:

LATIN - English

URBS CYSEAL - City of Cyseal
ORA PRAEDATORIS - Hunter's Edge
LAPIS SACER - Sacred Stone
PALUS UMBRARUM - Dark Swamp
VALLES ARGENTATA - Silverglen
SILVA LUCULLA - Luculla Forest
PLANITIAE MAGNAE - Great Plain
SILVA LARUM - Seagull Forest?

Oh, sorry, I'd just assumed by what you'd done so far that you must've known about that map! Yes, it's the CE edition cloth map, though it was somewhat criticised for being a bit brown and sludgy; it's not that bad, though admittedly it's not that exciting either. I never attempted to verify exactly how accurate it is. I suspect "a bit".

I'm slightly mystified as to what Silva Larum could mean: I can see where you got "seagull" from but unless it's an in-joke (which of course Larian never do ) it seems its meaning is a bit more opaque.

No I did not know about that map until today^^
It gives some good points to add into our project map.

But it seems I have done a good job so far without even knowing the official map
Well, I will integrate it with its coastlines and stuff into the whole thing.

What does intrigue me the most is that rough landmass to the south of hunters edge, right under the compass rose. I will add this shape into the map aswell, perhaps we'll see on OS2 release what this can be.
At least Fort Joy is not alone in the southern sea anymore

Update 8:
I used some of the information from the official OS map to alter the terrain around the southern coast a bit.
We now have more forest and swamp terrain there and hunters edge has its landmass now.
Additionally I altered the sea, so we have this unknown island and a bit of an archipelago.

Here is the link to the sketch:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r2z5byq2k5x773q/Sketch8.png?dl=0

PS: Can I somehow edit the thread title? I think the current does not fit well anymore.

You're more observant than I am, I hadn't noticed that extra bit of land before. And more disciplined, as part of me was just "meh, ignore it!" when the whole point is to collect ideas! I wonder what's the nature of the landmass, whether it's another island or if the sea south of Yuthul Gor is like the Mediterranean and the land sweeps all the way back around with this as its spur?

ISTR the title can be changed by doing a full edit on the OP, but if the window has passed (they become uneditable after a few days) just let me know and I'll change it for you.

how can you change it? Do you have somekind of special rank here?

Forum janitor.

Well nice to know!
I think something like Rivellon map project would sound nice, but theOP would also be misleading now since this thread is not about a question of mine anymore but rather a project to work on a fanbased map.

What also bugs me a little is that I can't put the updates into the OP post to show the advancements directly instead of having the reader to go through the whole thread.

Yeah, that's a forum feature that can sometimes be quite inconvenient. Not something I can change myself and I'm not sure it's configurable (or if they would even want to do so, for that matter).

But if you want the subject to be changed I can do that, and add a note to the OP if you like. I wouldn't worry too much about the OP accurately predicting the evolving scope of the discussion, it's just what they do!

Okay in that case: "Rivellon Mapproject" would be fitting better, what do you think?

Oh and I almost forgot to answer to all of what you said before:
Yeah I am very observant regarding to maps. I'm kinda obsessed with them!^^
I am mapping for years now, even created a whole world on my own.
It is just a thing that I can enjoy everytime I do it^^.
So things like that unidentified landmass under the compass just jump straight into my eyes.

I just hope that we'll find out what this landmass is looking like, when OS2 releases.

Okay, done. I additionally thought perhaps "Rivellon Mapping Project", but either will do, I think!

I enjoy looking at maps to see where places are in relation to each other, but my cartography skills are rather lacking, so it's nice to have someone around with the inclination and skill.

I'm also interested to see what the various in-game maps look like. Hopefully something that'll fit in with what you've put together so far...

Thanks a lot for editing the title.
I think project to attract more attention than requests and questions. Hopefully this will lead to more people being interested in this and sharing their knowledge with us!

I still dream of one of the larians getting interested in this and telling us if this goes into a good direction, even though the current sketches are just for informational purpose and the artistic stuff is yet to come!

Update 9:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxv8skhyk9bovt9/Sketch9.png?dl=0
The broken valley and some areas in the fjords just got a bit rockier.

I am wondering if I should just strech the yuthul gor wastelands to the eastern end of the map to get a nicer closing.

PS: This is going to be the goal for the artstyle of the map:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/snpnsd2rvgaqv8y/Industa%20PNG.png?dl=0
(sorry for the file being so big^^)

This looks really nice! Looking forward to the final map, even if it's just one (though maybe the best) of all possible maps of Rivellon.

thanks for the positive response^^
I will do my best to ensure that this is gonna be a high quality map, even if its just fanbased!

There is a guy on steam who has kinda made it into Gamemaster mode.
He made a couple of screenshots and explained that these pics come from around a hundret GM maps.
With them we can get a further view into the terrain variety of OS2

I decided that the graphical style that I showed earlier is not what I want to establish on the Rivellon Map. This is why I experimentated a bit and this pixelart style is what I think would fit well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnuxpvzyclfvy3n/Terrain%20Test.png?dl=0

Right now it is based on a baselayer, a light layer which brings lights, shadows and therefore depth onto the surface, a texture Layer and as additional element a Layer with trees.
More elements will add more variety and fancyness to the composition! ^^

BTW: This current style is not the final result. there will be tweaks for each layer to create harmony between current and coming elements.

I really like the effect that you've got going on there: your description of how you've achieved it sounds like it's a lot better planned than the one attempt I made at mapping where I just used a haphazard pile of layers and brushes in Gimp to end up with a result that wasn't really all that great in the end!

Didn't Dragon Commander feature a world map?

I'm more interested in a detailed timeline.

Divinity games tend to be relatively self-contained so world details are not that vital.

I was also intrigued by the idea of Dragon Commander's map, but apparently it doesn't really represent anything especially useful, unfortunately.

And though the Divinity games do exist quite happily on their own, there are some locations in common so I find it interesting to consider how they might join up.

In one of the latest Kickstarter videos there are many maps.

So we now have a snapshot of a bit of the D:OS II map, which at least shows Fort Joy in relation to what I presume to be the usual landmass.

Wait a Minute. Is this Picture "official" or is this made by you?
If it is made buy you - amazing work. If this is Offical. DAFUQ how big will Act2/3 be...

No, that was just me pressing the print screen button. My understanding is that Act I is about 20-25% of the game.

And RenWex may be able to create a map like that, but my graphical skills are rather indifferent! I extended a map for Oblivion ages back but it was a bit meh.

Oh okay. I mean i didn't beat the first Act yet, so i suppose you will see this Map once you get your Ship. Amazing - the Art of the Map is awesome and the World seems pretty big to me!

I think Mapmakers will be pretty popular in DOS2 due GM Mode and the Importfeature =D

Cool map. Looks like we get to sail from Buccaneer's Den to Verity Isle!

Well now we have a new map to add (if only we could figure out which direction is north! ) that could make things interesting. I'm guessing that the island with Fort Joy probably needs to move a bit to the east and that Reaper's Coast is probably the main landmass to the east of Cyseal... though its exact orientation is a bit vague.

Perhaps time to resurrect this topic after I monumentally screwed up with Renwex's final(?) version of the map from way back, having forgotten it was created before the remainder of the game after Fort Joy was released and mistakenly labelled Hunter's Edge as Driftwood. Bugger.



So I've been thinking about trying to do it properly, even though I have no 1337 skillz in this area at all. What I have done is to attempt to superimpose the in-game map (swiped from one of the guides... erk) over the artistic map and finding that... well, they're kinda alike but also not. I knew the art map was rotated by about 75⁰ but it seems that the scaling is also random, not least the distance from Fort Joy to Driftwood, but the rest while it kinda sorta fits, doesn't do so especially well.

Though I suppose I view the ingame terrain as definitive maybe I shouldn't be too picky with the compass as Original Sin's was at a jaunty 45⁰ angle and I seem to recall some weirdness with Divinity II (as in Ego Draconis) too.



But it gives a rough outline of the landmass and the likely relative position of things. Does that fit with the above map? Dunno. Can it be made to fit? Well anything can with a big enough hammer.

If I do attempt it, I'm inclined to leave Fort Joy where it is because it's clearly wrong on the art map (even without the tilting, it's still much too close) which is also different to the cutscene.

Hmm.

Quick experiment. Well quite slow given that I'm doing it, but wondering if I can splat the DOS2 map into the existing attempt. I think it works, in principle, though the scale and/or exact orientation are maybe a bit off. As a quick proof of concept I think it's not unreasonable though.



The main thing is that the entire peninsula/blob/whatevs containing Driftwood, the oilfields etc would have to be extended in the general south-east direction to it scales reasonably well, I think.

Various other thoughts and observations. First, considering the cut-scene map posted earlier in this topic and the "cloth map" shown later on, they don't totally agree with each other. The scaling is a bit odd, so I guess the latter is a reworking of the former, or they at least have a common ancestor. Not that it helps very much. Obviously the position of Fort Joy in the cloth map is ludicrous since it's barely two ship's lengths from Driftwood.



So what do I do with that? I dunno really.

The other thing I was pondering is if the Driftwood-Arx peninsula can be crammed between Cyseal and Yuthul Gor. I was starting to think it couldn't, and maybe it should be a separate landmass anyway. Both might be wrong. First, does it fit? Oo-er missus etc. Here's the "cloth" map outline superimposed over the above map. It reveals nothing useful in terms of how it might be integrated but it does show that there's room for it, using Fort Joy as a useful reference for scale.



But that does leave the gnarly issue of the gnarly coastline in the "differences" picture. I'm not really sure how to view that. Was it simply for dramatic effect? Actually, I think it was. But I also can't help noticing the huge oval that the outline of the coasts and islands creates, as illustrated a bit more clearly below in my inept map-merging effort: seems to be a design decision, but I dunno if that was with something in particular in mind or just a convenient way of arranging things. My inclination is to go with the "dramatic effect" explanation because it's more convenient!



And why not make it another landmass? I may have misremembered the comment that Arx is south of Aleroth, or taken it much too literally as meaning due south, but I rather like the idea. I also like the idea of DD's Dark Forest and DOS's Haunted/Phantom/whatevs forest being one and the same, which is what I'd originally suggested, and actually I think the scary forest to the north-west of DOS2's map with its werewolves and deathfog and so on may also be a part of the same murky and tangled woodland. I'm sure there was other stuff but I've forgotten in the time it took me to type this.

It does seem that there's a lot of interpretation involved, so I could theoretically squash it in wherever I want: "all I need is a big enough hammer". I'd just prefer to do so in a way that actually makes some sense.

Have you seen this map ? https://www.deviantart.com/makotomitsunari/art/Divinity-Original-Sin-2-Map-of-Rivellon-778063021
Him/Her talked about using your map for inspiration. Maybe this helps you as well .

Divinity Original Sin 2: Map of Rivellon by Makoto Mitsunari

I have seen it and it's an interesting take on things. I don't quite agree with it but that's as meaningful as saying to someone that I don't agree with their favourite food! They're a subjective take on something that isn't well documented, what there is tends to be inconsistent (especially e.g. compass directions) and even if there is an official world map behind the scenes, I suspect that it'll never see the light of date and is probably revised (i.e. substantially changed!) every time they work on the story.

Makoto's vision of a map featuring multiple landmasses vs. a single one is particularly noteworthy to me as is that their map represents Ferol on a more realistic scale as I feel it's disproportionately large in "our" map.

It might be interesting for me to get their thoughts, whether for this particular project or just my own curiosity.

I should also add that the map isn't mine: I came up with some of the suggestions, though I forget how many and whether any were especially novel without re-reading the entire topic again, but the actual cartography is by Renwex. He seems to have some experience with regard to mapping and I think the intent was to produce a sort of topological map as the first stage in creating something much grander and more detailed, but for whatever reason (because people have other commitments like RL, most likely) it went unfinished. I've recently attempted to get hold of him both on and off forum; we'll see if he replies, though I'd rather not harangue him!

In the meantime I may turn my own hand to some interpretation of what I've detailed above. I think my problem isn't so much a lack of vision and creativity (though the lack of any usefully competent image editing skills is a bit of a hindrance!) but that I tend to not be bold enough when I think "actually that could work", and tend to leave it to someone else to make the difficult decisions! But actually the above could be made to work if I would stop asking myself "does this really work?" and simply get on with it.

Edit: included Makoto's picture. DeviantArt certainly doesn't make it easy to link to people's images...

Some experimentation in order to try to properly integrate Reaper's Coast into that tidy little space between Cyseal and Yuthul Gor. Easy, right...? *cough*

So what I've done, based on my merged cut-scene and cloth maps, is that I've scaled and straightened up the Reaper's Coast area according to the lines of longitude and though it created its own awkwardness, a couple of interesting things became apparent. First I could move the Cyseal/Phantom Forest area actually placing Hunter's Edge where there's a settlement shown on the cut-scene and the coastlines overlap quite well, so I'm inclined to go for that.

This opened up a sort of liability but also an opportunity for where to place Yuthul Gor: I needed to finish off the bottom jaggedy bit of Reaper's Coast with something and... well, there it is. My reasoning also being that as it has a not totally dissimilar climate to Fort Joy, its latitude makes sense, plus it's definitely close enough to Cyseal to explain those raiding parties. It comes at the cost of moving it away from where the original DD map places it, but given that there's no actual detail I've decided I have the artistic freedom to interpret that as "vaguely somewhere in this direction rather than actually right here".

Obviously it's extremely poorly finished and I would need to work on at least the coastline's details but my instinct is that they kind of "feel" about right.



Todo:

• Check the orientation of Fort Joy is still correct: it looks a bit off to me.
• Decide on that awkward blob of land south of Orobas Fjords: I'm ambivalent about that, might work, might not.
• Properly integrate the Hunter's Edge map with the outline of Reaper's Coast.
• Join the Phantom Forest and the Dark Forest as I've always asserted they're one and the same. And probably very big.
• Look at real-world maps to see how coastlines actually work in detail and add, well, details.
• Properly follow contour and other demarcation lines, both of existing maps and new areas.
• Add rivers, lakes, other details in hopefully likely places.
• Add missing settlements and label everything.
• Argh panic etc

At present the main thing I'm uncertain about is the exact placement of Arx. I'm still inclined to try to move it all around a bit so it is more south of Aleroth, but in order to create a convincing bay/whatever-it-is-that-Arx-is-in as well as having room to continue the Dark Forest southwards (albeit with a western detour) I may need to make the map even taller, which I'm not 100% certain about.

What the map doesn't include: Nameless Isle and Hiberheim, as my understanding is that they're on different planes of existence, and places like the lizard empire which I'm fairly certain is on a completely different continent. Red Prince was looking to the west, for example.

Another quick and no less dirty attempt to see how it would look. Actually I think I prefer it.

Latest update on my glacial but oddly time-consuming progress. I realised some angles and stuff were off so I've corrected them. Seems that the DOS2 in-game maps now seem to fit into their respective locations a bit better, shown here overlaid onto the thing I'm working there (they probably won't be in the final version... if a "final version" ever happens!) though I still need to properly adapt the bits of coastline to a greater or lesser extent, in addition to the above list of various stuff I need to do. I've annotated this one as anybody still following has probably completely lost track of what I'm on about.

I also need to find a better font: my installation of Gimp can find eleventy billion variants on the same bunch of stuff but has nothing vaguely interesting so I think tidying them up is another major project for me to do. Ugh.

Various random tasks still happening as the fancy takes me, in no particular order, which is I suppose much as expected. My current one is integrating the city of Arx into the coastline which has proven awkward. I have half a dozen different options which fall into two broad categories, which are whether I gnaw away at some of the surrounding islands so that there's sea where there's supposed to be (which looks a bit artificial... then again, a RL city may well have that sort of artificialness where water access is important, and Arx is criss-crossed by waterways which may be natural rivers or canals or a mixture of the two) or to leave the "flamboyant" islets around its periphery alone; though I felt both will need the coastline between the city's south and the mainland to be a bit more coherent, and for their to be an albeit perilous route to the harbour.



My inclination is to go with option 1, which involves the smallest amount of changes to the land as represented by the cloth map if I'm just going to stick with the current red splotch style of showing a city, which I may as well. In addition, as the final published map will be something like 800-1000px across unless anyone really wants something bigger) then any details in the actual city overlay will be completely lost anyway.

And if I do find an overlay I'll need to do a bit more work and find one that I'm allowed to use and doesn't have big red dots highlighting points of interest! This one I swiped from a game guide (I forget whose--sorry!)

Edit: oh, and the landscape is completely unfinished; in fact unstarted, really, as this is an exercise in finding the outlines of the relevant bits. That'll all be wiped and redone.

Edit 2: also for the record this is the part of the DOS2 cloth map I used as the original outline for the coast and islands. I had to rotate it 76⁰ anticlockwise in order for it to match the outline of the in-game city, which is a similar (but not identical) rotation required to get the "welcome to Reaper's Coast" cutscene to align properly (-67⁰).



I'm also hoping I'm not going to need to retrace the outline, my map's outline seems a bit more fuzzy than it did compared with the cloth map.

Turns out that my outline was fine, I'd just messed up the map with too many select-by things when working on getting Arx to fit. But fortunately the outline itself is (seemingly) okay.

I've no idea when (or if) I'll be close to finished, though. I'm kinda knackered now: doing something I've no real experience with using only Gimp and a mouse isn't really the most easy nor productive way to get stuff done. I spoke to Makoto who suggested that map creation software might be helpful. "Hurrr, never thought of that!" I think to myself and then continue to do things the hard way. Why am I an idiot? I suppose everyone needs a pastime.

Today's endeavour was choosing what I considered to be sensible fonts for labelling stuff rather than the generic Ariel-esque I've been using so far, which looks quite out of place. I should read the terms and conditions before I release it though.

Now I need a curry. This may be why I'm feeling fat.



Maybe it's time to look for that software that makes life easier, even though it means something new to learn. Actually, no, order curry, then look at software. And font licensing terms.

Yes, 1 looks fine, especially since it will only be a small part of a larger map.

Cool, thanks, I'll do that then!

Still working on an actually coherent coastline but slowly getting there. I hadn't expected it would take so long! Hopefully now mostly a case of joining up the respective bits and making the new areas not look like they were drawn in crayon by a two year old...

Latest in my rather random and piecemeal updates. Still much to do but working through it in no particular order. I've decided it's a good time to pause for reflection as I've just done the central mountain range (this may or may not be the Dragon's Spine) and I'm left feeling it's a bit namby-pamby. There is a reason for that, I mean other than the fact that I'm often not bold enough and I remember my art teacher telling me off about that very many years ago. But the reason is my idea about having the Dark/Phantom/Haunted/etc forests being one and the same, a giant impenetrable mass of green scariness. So I've prioritised that and I'm now scratching my head: the mountains don't seem to pitiful if you imagine the forest also being on a lot of the higher ground, but I dunno. I still think it needs more mountain. Anybody have any thoughts?

I think I'm about done with the basics. Assuming I haven't seriously messed something up, next stage is probably that open-ended thing of adding more detail to it which is something I could faff about with forever.

At some point I may also use the various outlines I've stored away to do a more traditional looking "mediaeval fantasy" style map. We'll see. Right now I'm just glad to have got something in a tentatively finished state even if it is a bit plain at the moment. Once it has more than the basic minimum I'll upload a more high-res version, but given my not so efficient approach to working on this I've kinda slightly broken myself with the amount of time I've spent in the past week! I suppose it's what I do.

So much for giving it a break and moving on with other stuff... sigh. A very rough idea of what I'm aiming to finish with, but obviously extremely incomplete as I got fed up. I need to actually do RL stuff some time though!

Update to previous image as I'd realised rather late in the day that I'd marked Verdistis as Rivertown. Oopsie.

Anyway, I think that it's about done, broadly speaking. I would be happier with more detail, especially woodlands, grasslands, rivers and so on but aside from that I think it's pretty much ready for me to release, unless anyone has anything else to add. The released version is much the same as this except a larger scale (I'm thinking about 1000-1200px wide, the 3000px working copy is much too big) and includes discreet-but-noticeable outlines about the named towns to avoid ambiguity.

Er, well, as I'm feeling impetuous, as I tend to be, a tentative release. Though some caution exercised in that I've decided it's v0.12!

clicky for download; inline image is ensmallified for bandwidth etc.



Edit: apologies for the temporary gigantic file size of the download as I neglected to resize it. Especially combined with the "seemed like a good idea at the time" of overlaying it with the in-game map of Fort Joy (or Reaper's Eye if you insist). Detail was nice but I didn't like the rather smudgy-looking overall effect so I've removed it again.

Maps need a compass. I'm just not sure this is the compass that they need. Anybody with any concept of aesthetics like to comment? My main concern is the Ego Draconis dragon overlay: I think it belongs there somewhere, but I'm not sure if that somewhere is exactly where I put it.





Edit: I apologise for my website being somewhat pedestrian lately.

...or maybe it's just too much brown.

New "release", if only for the fancy (or not) new compass. I'm still undecided about the exact design, e.g. colours, dragoniness and pointiness. But it's what it is until I decide otherwise. No other progress as I've spent the rest of the time writing a version of getopts that doesn't suck.



linky to big version

Well remember that Rivellon is a planet with more than one landmass and four powerful nations. If you need help then I'd be glad to help with a map of the Ancient Empire.

True, that had occurred to me. I've only included those that I think seem to be likely to be in reasonably close proximity and have deliberately left the others out of the scope of my particular map: my personal goal (which may or may not have been shared by Renwex) is to do a detailed map of the areas I'm familiar with.

But that's just me. This topic isn't solely for my thing, as vocal as I've been pretty much every step of the way! If anyone else wants to add or discuss their stuff then please feel free. I'm interested to see what other people have come out with, even if I am likely to end up feeling a bit over-awed by anyone who seems to know what they're doing.

So the orcs armies sailed around whole continent from Yuthul Gor to Dukedom of Ferol? Maybe Yuthul Gor should be little closer? I'm not criticizing, just asking. Great job overall.

I spent a while wondering about the whole thing and it is a bit awkward as both Cyseal and Ferol had problems with orcs and this is pretty much the most likely arrangement I could figure out, though that's in general terms and some of the details may be incorrect.

My reasoning (apart from the way the various maps can reasonably co-exist anyway) is that Yuthul Gor must be very far to the south given its climate, which seems to be more in common with the albeit slightly more temperate Cyseal and Reaper's Eye than the much more lush and verdant Ferol. My impression is also that the orcs had more of a presence around Cyseal, which was within much more convenient raiding distance, and were just making an incursion into Ferol near to what would be the coast in my interpretation of the map. Trying to navigate Reaper's Coast before even getting to that axe-shaped area west of Arx and Paradise Downs is certainly... well, quite intrepid. The axe-shaped bit is also not from any map, I just thought it seemed quite appropriate (and it didn't occur to me as being axe-shaped until after I'd done it). I dare say they'd have at least one staging post probably in that general area.

But that's all my interpretation. Yuthul Gor could conceivably be somewhere to the east of the Reaper's Coast area, for instance, making it approximately equidistant from the two areas in question.

Oh yeah, and the matter of "so how big is it?" is something I've avoided as video games do tend to compress things into a much smaller size than the "true" version would occupy, but I have absolutely no idea. Given the climate differences, maybe a couple of thousand miles top to bottom, but it could be more or it could be (much) less.

I'm also aware that one shouldn't read too much into climate e.g. Sentinel Island, as I'm currently playing Ego Draconis again and have been reminded that it was a green and pleasant land much like Broken Valley and Ferol (in fact probably very much like them, so for "pleasant" also read most *un*pleasant with lots of things trying to kill you!) and it was the dude with the creepy nose who made it red and barren. That said, apart from the volcanic activity it doesn't look all that warm to me, whereas Yuthul Gor does seem pretty scorchio.

What game was Ft Joy first mentioned? I'm thinking DD or OS1? It's just that I have this memory of a large river south of it and I hate dangling memories so I want to investigate further. Seems I remember Cyceal being described in OS1 as on the south side of an island, once center to trade but no more. I guess the march north could have been on a large island as opposed to it being a peninsula as you both concluded early on.