Underdark Ruins, Adept (Patreon)

Hi again, Adepts! This week's map is the Underdark Wilds (30x30), a shadowy and bioluminescent cave with pieces of old broken buildings scattered about. I decided that I would try a new style for this one, going a little overboard on the lighting and colors, but I think it came out looking very cool and I'm hoping I'm not the only one. 

Your alternate version for this map is a nice desert recoloring and relighting- which ended up being a bit of a task as it turned out. Since I usually like to light caves with very ill-defined lighting, I had to start this version by whipping up fresh shadows and highlights, ultimately resulting in a somewhat different desert map than usual. Not that that's a bad thing, I think it turned out pretty fetching, but certainly a little different in style than the others I offer. And that's ignoring the giant orange mushrooms, which I felt were interesting enough for a desert map that they were worth keeping. 

1. Yikes, I had a hell of a time deciding what to do with this map. My original plans were almost entirely different than what I ended up with, featuring a waterfall, a broken bridge, and a crumbled watchtower. Pivoting into a different layout isn't that unusual for me, but I actually was working on that other map until Wednesday of last week when I stumbled across a picture of Skyrim's Blackreach area online and realized that's what an 'Underground Ruins' map should actually be, not some waterfall map with a couple old walls and a bridge nearby.  I put together a few new sketches and started over, figuring that I wasn't planning on making another map the week of Christmas anyway, so I had a few extra days to put it all together. 

2. By the time I decided to restart this map I had already drawn several big patches of rock walls, most of which couldn't be reused for the new map unfortunately. I grabbed what I could though and fit it together however I could, though I think there are a few spots where the contours are a little off. But when you're starting a new map 3 days late you're more willing to overlook a few things. 

I ended up using big chucks of the Desert Bazaar map for the ruins, which I tore apart and roughed up to get some multi-level ruins. Usually I just use walls for ruins, but I thought that implying a second level to a few would be kinda fun for some additional verticality. 

Oh, and mushrooms! I usually try to avoid tropes in my maps, but big glowing mushrooms are a classic that anyone can enjoy, I think. 

3. You know what's funny? I actually had settled on completely different colors and lighting for this map, but while trying out some effects for alternate versions I decided to really go nuts on the colors and contrast and I ended up with this. I thought it was so different and interesting, and the more I looked at it the more I liked it! I especially like the splashes of yellow and orange on the ground, which somehow give me a subterranean fungal vibe. I decided that even if no one else likes it, at least I think it's cool as hell, so why not take a little chance for one of my last maps of the year? Hopefully I'm not going to get a bunch of dissenting opinions from patrons as soon as I post this, but sometimes you gotta get a little weird, yeah?