Assuming the tunnels and caves have been burrowed into the tree, you might want to start with a blank sheet and draw the tree-rings onto that first (and maybe add the current outer bark layer as well, to fix the tree's size), so it doesn't look as if the rings have somehow retrospectively fitted themselves around what would have been nonexistent internal features when they were laid-down. (As drawn, the web and misty (?) caves would have been in the air outside the original tree when the rings were being laid-down, which would have been tricky at least, I'd suggest!)

I seem to vaguely recall we may have had this conversation previously, but the mountains look a little insubstantial right now, as if many of the arête limbs are only paper thin. I appreciate that wasn't necessarily what you were asking about right now, but it is what first occurred to me!

Zooming-in to the enlarged image, I agree with the notes made earlier, where it looks as if the canvas effect is more pronounced on the paler colours, and not at all (as far as I can tell) on the water. Oddly though, the effect is quite obvious on the tree symbols, which is a curiosity, given they're the darkest objects on the whole map. That could suggest it may be more an issue with the texture on some of the bitmap fills which is causing the canvas effect to disappear, rather than simply the darkness of the hues.

I'd agree that it would be useful to have the canvas effect as an option, rather than a fixed default.

Just to be contrary (well, not JUST...) I rather like the pale desert, but then I can see that would be interesting to use as a cloudscape texture (especially the way the mountain peak seems to be coming up through it), which I suspect may not be everyone's first choice as a setting.

☁️🏰☁️

Not really seeing too much looking "wrong" with your map, to be honest.

As with most styles, there will be things that seem to work better than others sometimes, and it's often just a question of knowing what options there are, and what (sometimes quite small) tweaks will help make things look closer to what you were hoping for. Sue already covered your points regarding forests, settlement placement, and terrain fill blending, I think.

For your point 3, symbol scaling, sometimes the "correct" symbol scaling just doesn't look right - or maybe not for all the available symbols - so you simply have to rescale the ones that don't look so good to fit more with how you envisaged them looking at the scale of the whole map (not zoomed-in though!).

Point 5, unknown areas. You could add areas of a standard terrain fill with no symbols or other features, and maybe add a new Sheet with a pale single-colour polygon - like a grey or white - drawn over the unknown region, and add a Transparency Effect to that, perhaps with an Edge Fade as well. Or you could try a Blur Effect on the terrain fill itself - again set it on its own Sheet so it's not ALL the terrain that does this! Blur can make the file uncomfortably large if used too frequently, however. Just trying things out with the Sheet Effects is always worth doing, so you get a better feeling for what they can do. If there are terrain features that must be in the region too, you can also partly hide them this way. It really depends what you want the area to have the players might know about in advance.

They always were Quenten; just becoming increasingly difficult to conceal that fact 👽️🦑

After installing Update 26, I needed to add some fresh text along a curve to a map I've been working on, and found the dialogue box to do so had changed, primarily with the addition of three new checkboxes.

If you set up your text along a curve as previously however, the default settings in these new checkboxes mean your text will now be INVERTED on the map. I spent an irritating ten minutes experimenting, trying to work out why, and managed finally to reset the checkboxes so the tool worked as it did previously.

Then Update 27 was issued; installed that and the dratted checkboxes are back to what they were, so I've had to do it all again!!!

There's no help or explanation for how to get the new system to work as previously, so to maybe assist others, what you must do is uncheck the "Align Text Upright" box (yes, this didn't make any sense to me either, but doing so is the ONLY way to unlock the other two new checkboxes, and they MUST be unlocked first to get the tool to function as before). All Align Text Upright seems to do is INVERT the text, not PLACE IT UPRIGHT at all - Inverse Logic, certainly!!!

Once you've unlocked the other two checkboxes, "Use Other Side of Curve" and "Reverse Curve Direction", deselect both, and Text Along a Curve will then function exactly as it always previously has. Far from clear what the point of either of these options is, other than to make the text !desrever (= reversed!).

It would have helped if the little graphics that show where your text will be placed in relation to the curve changed with the different checkbox options, in the absence of any other help regarding this tool adjustment. Beyond that, I'd hope Update 28 will at least have the default settings amended to actually make sense again. Please...