Mini guide: scouting, exploring, rules of map generation

pein · 2018-09-25 00:28:15

The experienced people got something in common: they know how to explore
Once you know what items do what in the city and why are they there, you get a much better sense of imagining how your city looks like
where is the food, where is water, tools, etc.

the city is mostly connected stuff on the ground so generally people can explore the city

but what is outside of the city?
while a city that makes compost can generally survive a long time without going out, its still nice to make firewood runs, cactus collecting
gather flat rocks, get more clay, more baskets, etc.
find the iron vein

first and foremost, make your home marker, somewhere near food but not near structures so it wont block the tile, generally behind the leaf tree next to kiln is ok
now when exploring there are a few techniques which help:

1. run in spirals
go around the city then increase the distance but go in circles until you know what biomes are each side of it

2. leave marks, like lines of flat rocks, limestone, branches, even milkweed seed pointing to city

3. diagonal running
you see a much bigger part of the map running diagonally, also biomes are generally created diagonally
when i checked a few high resolution map parts, i seen that most cases you got the same type of biome diagonal to previous one
so if you see a desert near a green biome, but no swamp, you might need to run NW to see there is another desert next to green biome but maybe with water
if you see a few tiles of badland, go diagonal and you might find a bigger badland with iron
there are even more combinations i cannot set a rule to, but generally if a green biome is NW to another green biome, the badland will be NE to another badland, seems more likely that savanah and green follows each other and desert/badland is the other group, so they generally are opposite sides
ice is useless and swamps im not really sure about them
you might feel that running west does the same thing, but then you might have south the same biome, and those two are smaller and the big one is diagonal to it

4. running around biome edge
if you see a green biome, just follow the edges of it, you will get a much better sense of how does it look like
and you end up in your city doing so, from other direction

5. look for fragments
when you see a few things like green trees in the arctic, in a small spot, on the edge of it, you can be pretty sure there is more of that on the other side of the ice, 90 degree to the line it creates

you can read the wiki what belongs to what biome
you cannot search for food in swamp and you cannot find water in savanah
you will not find iron other than badland
and you will not step on snakes in ice

there are exceptions, but this are due to map generation errors, which are good errors generally, a pond in a desert is very useful for farming, clay inside green biome can save you from a long run
an update made animals stay inside their original biome, so a muflon wont ever run out of badlads, a snake will stay inside the desert and if you put a wild horse on a small desert patch it will stay there so you can reuse lassos
there are bad ones too, which are very bad like swamp trees on green biome or such

there are some exceptions, where a map is fragmented, this are dangerous cause players wont expect it
the biomes cover each other and while seemingly its not a swamp, it belongs to the swamp territory
or two small deserts are considered one big
so you can see snake or wolfs in green biome, or boar in desert, you need to deal with them fast or can surprise the players
but generally you can explore badlands running in sides of it and the wolf wont run into you in the ice or whatever is next to it

bigger biomes are safer because of this

the monoliths are central figures on the map, there are multiple monoliths and generally they are in a straight line next to each other
they are first to generate and the map around them is very fragmented, which can be very good or very bad, so if you see a monolith try to discover the map around it going in spiral movement
so if you find one, and find another, chances are there is some great spot in between or some very bad biomes
high risk high reward

do not run in a direction hoping that you will find a spot, run from edge of biome to edge of biome and explore a bit before running straight, chances are you wont find a spot running straight north or west
you might find a spot running NW, adjusting your direction based on the edge of the biome which is diagonal

use bells for triangulation.
all that i told above might be situational based on which edge of the map you are
might be that biomes on the NE part of map go NE from each other and they are diagonally situated but mirrored, so the badlands and deserts are NW in this case
you can see bell towers on main page and longer lineage families, when you see a bell tower ingame SW like 30000 tiles away, chances are that you are NE from the center of the map

this are based on my experience, it would be nice to see the original code for it or do some experiments
i often end up on a good spot by running diagonally from a desert to other desert and people are surprised how do i know
sometimes i eve direct my eve mom using my predictions and end up right about them

Last edited by pein (2018-09-25 00:29:04)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-09-25 00:28:15

Mini guide: scouting, exploring, rules of map generation

Board footer