Didn't get quite as much done as I'd hoped before reporting back here (though that's often the case), as sometimes tweaking the effects or making subtle colour changes just needs more time that you can easily predict. However, a bit further forward:

The basic cave outlines were swiftly converted from their previous white outlines by simply using the "Change like draw tool" option under the right-click list of the :CC2MCHANGE: button, although the floors had to be moved to their correct sheet for the effects to work after that too. I also added a "Solid 30 Bitmap" fill over these new floors (by simply copying the existing floors to a new sheet, and changing the properties of the floor piece so-created), to try to give an impression that the floors aren't attached to the hex-rooms on these upper levels. Note that two of the exterior exit upper levels in the lower right corner haven't had their new fills added yet, because they have to be drawn in freshly, as the tunnel floors are really floors at the new level, with a ledge where they begin. That's all still to sort out.

The hex-room walls were simply converted to their thicker, coloured versions by changing properties of the original white versions. I've also changed the "identified" room colour in the upper cavern to be less jarring, though I think now this may be too subtle! Suitable floors, hopefully looking enough like the cells in a beehive, were added by again copying the hex-walls to another new sheet and amending their properties accordingly. I also added an Inner Glow effect to this sheet to alter the look of the floors a little more. I've not added doorways (which may include floor hatches - haven't finally decided) to the upper levels yet, as I wanted the basic room shapes to be completed first. Cutting the walls beforehand would have made this problematic.

Possibly one of the more important, yet least discussed, skills with CC3+ drawing creation is understanding what things can be repurposed beyond what their titles alone may indicate. Textures like this are just one element, as symbols can be reworked/rescaled to look like something completely different too. And then tweaking items using the effects as well. Remembering, or finding, the key thing when you need it is, of course, quite another matter!

Me too!😁

Forgot to mention last time that I'd deleted and created a new beyond-map mask on the SCREEN sheet after laying-down the final terrain segments, using the same typed commands as mentioned back in the mists of time in this topic (end of the May 8th notes for the Bee Caverns map 😊). I do this for almost all CC3+ mapping, as I generally extend such areas well beyond the map border, to ensure any effects on their sheets won't create an unwanted edge-of-the-world outline look inside the map's frame. Similarly, any drawing tools I'm using that will run beyond the border need to have their "Restrict to map border" box unchecked, and then the tool saved so it'll remember I've done that. Thus for the River, Current Width tool:

Which of course is a not-so-subtle clue that things have progressed to drawing in some rivers now!

The next stage of the process began by sketching the base line for the road through the Pass, and the rough river lines, all hand traced from my inserted bitmap image design. All of these are going to be changed as the mapping proceeds, as they now have to fit the new terrain that's already there, so the lines are very approximate to begin with. More minor river lines will be added, others removed, for instance, as well as some new trails added. Plus to get the river and road lines right, the various randomly-located map features also need to be emplaced, as they'll help identify where such things need to be.

While the random allocation of features to squares is fine for the planning stage, they have to be moved around to suit the look of the map now. If two (or more) things are in adjacent squares, I might keep them separate, or combine them at one place, depending on exactly what they are, for instance. Some creatures or monsters have preferred habitats, such as woodlands or marshes, so that provides an opportunity to add some smaller patches of woods, aside from those the base map had already indicated in the lower left corner. Consequently, this part of the process can be quite complex, fairly slow, yet also fascinating, as there's a lot to think about, and try to be creative with.

Hence the limited amount of new features added or changed so far in this image (all the texturing options have been turned off for now):

As this shows too, labels need adding (mostly so I don't lose track of what each thing is meant to be). Red are creatures or monsters (in the RPG sense), green is vegetation, brown are occupied Dwarf settlements, grey unoccupied or ruined places, and blue unusual water features. The accompanying notes will clarify this in the final Atlas version, though I may add a map legend as well. The limited range of symbols has meant all have been repurposed so far beyond what their "official" titles suggest - those very popular circles are listed as "Hamlet", for example. Luckily, all have varicolor options, so identifying what's what becomes fully practical.

My original intention was to use the Gaeilge 1 font for the labels again, as with the Bee Caverns map. However, I couldn't get that to look sufficiently legible at reduced size, so have switched to the good old standby of boldfaced Arial for now. Place names were selected from a pre-rolled list of random options constructed from the name-tables in North Wind Adventures' "Hyperborea" RPG, adjusted or added-to in places, as those tables generate what are meant as personal names, based on a number of different Earthly cultures (although I ignored those tables for the more recognisable Greek, Latin and Old English/Anglo-Saxon ones in this case).

As usual, all that's been done till now remains subject to change, including the exact locations of the various features - aside from those sketchy, unadjusted river lines away from the area developed so far. I'm not happy with the look of that patch of Cedar Woods forest either. I've heavily adjusted the effects on the FOREST sheet already, and ran out of time to do more. I'm thinking currently to add a new sheet to outline the woodland area, so I can make the inner part, still on the FOREST sheet, transparent enough to show the contour lines for the rising mountains. There is a Transparency effect on that sheet now. Unfortunately, Transparency's something of an odd effect, which tends to interact poorly with glows on the same sheet (which is what's presently outlining the wood), so it's no longer properly see-through. I've had to set the Transparency to 90% opacity just to stop the glow from doing all sorts of unwanted things to the whole polygon to get this appearance. Then again, even if the opacity is set to 100%, objects on a sheet with only Transparency active look more washed-out, and sometimes slightly transparent still, than if the effect is turned off entirely.

Still, a typical level of progress so far!

Rather a longer gap between posts here than I'd hoped, but such is the way of things sometimes.

However, coming back to the map with fresh eyes, it was obvious the symbols were over-sized for its scale, so I resized them all, changed one and moved a few others, and then had to move all the labels to reflect their altered locations. The usual two steps back and one forward; all part of the process!

Plus I also changed the look of the woods in the manner suggested last time, adding a new outline sheet, copying the wood onto it, and setting it to a suitable solid green colour of a satisfactory width, so the main woodland area could be made transparent enough to still show the rising contour lines in the trees. After which, I added another segment of map symbols in the lower right, tweaked the northern line of the pass road more, and added a few smaller river lines. This is how it looked before I started adding the next batch of labels (still with none of the texturing active):

The two new purple symbols are the entrances to a pair of subterranean Gnome settlements. That nearest the southern border has been moved some distance west of its original location, as the mountain tip there from the side-on symbols didn't make the cut into this topographic view. I had been treating those tips across the map as the northern side of what would be shown - which also explains why so many of the symbols in the northeastern quarter have migrated southwest, to be in the northern slopes of where those mountains were drawn here, of course. Those pictorial symbols can be so misleading sometimes 😉.

Before I added the labels though, I grew distracted by some of the contour lines, which didn't look quite clear enough in places. So that took up a bit more time, tweaking and re-tweaking, to get to something more satisfactory (I hope!). And then I changed some more river lines, mostly in the southeast quarter, to be nearer their final versions.

And finally, I added the next batch of labels!

A couple of new stretches of woodland have sneaked into the lower right corner as well, and I suspect there may be a few more before this is finished 😁.

Ricko's provided you with plenty of information on how best to go about resolving this, but if another example might help, I used Sue's cliffs in my Embra - Bright Eye Well map in the Community Atlas a while ago.

That has the map's FCW file you can download to see what I did. The map was also discussed on the Forum here, or you can find a larger version in my Gallery alternatively.

There's always something... Been there, done that, have a wardrobe of T-shirts to prove it 😏.

So a closer view of places just like Mirkwood in the maps Ralf's been working on from time to time then? 🌳 😎🌲🕷️🌳

To an extent, this depends on what the entities are you're trying to attach to one another. With lines for example, they have a specific thickness, and that can cause the edges at the end of one line to not align with the other, which looks untidy. Usually the only way to resolve that is by-hand minor adjustments with Attach turned off, and in some cases adding a tiny polygon to smooth out the joining point.

For things such as river lines, I rarely use Attach at all, and simply zoom in and adjust the line position by-hand after it's been drawn, to get the "tributaries" to match up into the "main river".

Attach also has its oddities, like attaching to the wrong entity or node sometimes, and that can be irritating too.

As Helen suggested, the book makes clear the place is almost a ruin. Essentially, Charn's entire global population and all other life was destroyed in a single, momentary event a very long time ago, leaving just one living humanoid there (the person who caused it). The buildings are all pretty ruinous, as having been left quite unattended ever since, to the point where bits simply collapse if there are any louder sounds, and some have done so already, so there's rubble in places, etc. It's all looking pretty realistic to that currently.

Glad to be able to kelp a little 😊!

I'm not averse to hydrothermal vents myself, of course, if on a larger scale of mapping (so far).