Sunken Ruins, Adept (Patreon)

This week's map is the Sunken Ruins (25x30), a neat place for your player with a Ring of Swimming and a Trident of Fish Command to reign supreme in a high-stakes battle that must be finished before the party's air runs out. Did you know that the Ring of Swimming doesn't require attunement? That's neat.

Your alternate version this time is a murkier recoloring of the original map! The darker, greener waters of this recoloring will fit better in less tropical environments, or perhaps it would be useful for implying something radioactive or poisonous about the water. Either way, I would want to be in this version much less than the regular blue one, so go ahead and use that to your advantage when crafting your adventure.

1. My original sketch of this map was, admittedly, much bigger. I had plans for many tiers and crags and all kinds of interesting ruins, but not long after starting the outlines I came down with a nasty cold that threw a wrench in my plans. As the week stretched on I had to make a decision about what I'd be able to realistically do while sick, and I chose to shrink the scale and simplify many of the props I'd had in mind. Still, the layout isn't bad at all, and the thing with ruins is no one can claim they should be more or less intact, so no harm no foul I suppose. 

As I worked on the map I slowly figured out what makes a map's terrain feel like an ocean floor, and I think it's the enclosed feel of large landforms surrounding you and rocky sudden drop-offs. Knowing what I do now, I think I could make a pretty solid attempt at another map like this someday, but we'll see when that day comes.

2. I'm always on the prowl for reusing assets whenever possible, but when it comes to long stretches of rock walls I just don't have the willpower for that kind of thing, so they had to be made fresh. However, I grabbed the walls from the recent sewer map and broke them up into bits for these ruins, picking them over the others because of how sturdy I had originally drawn them, big thick bricks that could realistically still stand underwater after some time had passed. The rocks as well were reused and scattered to their places. I do this because I don't think anyone will complain about obviously reused assets and I really am sick of drawing rocks and bricks. 

3. Coloring this was tricky. The most important part was getting the sense of being submerged across, which meant a few things. First, the water reflections from above. I took the easy way out here and just overlayed a texture I purchased and modified. It came out ok, but I was short on time and there weren't better options for me. Secondly, I wanted to express the depth of the terrain. I did this by letting the outlines fade into the lighting somewhat, which typically gives them a foggy feeling but here, together with a strong layer of blue fading into the edges of the frame, stresses that there's a bunch of water above the map. 

If I were to revisit this, I would take more time on the water reflections- they're a little too obviously Photoshopped and that makes them feel off to me. Everything else turned out really well though, I think I would use this as reference next time I'm making an underwater map, no problem.