Glad the shaded relief concept has helped - and very nicely executed too!

In case you haven't seen it, there is this Annual issue that deals specifically with watercolour-look map designs using CC3+ too. You may also get more ideas on this theme by searching through posts on the Forum by Lillhans, who was for some time our resident expert on creating this type of drawing style.

Shaded relief might be the way to go to be more convincing on the higher or more rugged terrain. There's this Cartographer's Annual from 2008 that would help in that regard, if you have it, or if not, try this free PDF tutorial by HadrianVI from 2017, elsewhere on this Forum.

Yeah, as someone who's been preparing illustrations, diagrams, graphs, etc., for print publication for decades, draw it in black and white from the start, and keep things simple. Some of the delicate lines and shading on the cliffs, for example, may not look great on a BnW print, especially if the size is to be reduced to something like a typical paperback novel page, and the mottled fill will likely end up looking just grubby. Line clarity is often key too; the use of ruled-line hatching and dot-shading in printed drawings and maps didn't end up that way by-chance, after all.

Just a thought, but did you set up the trees so you can hide the canopies, yet still show where the trunks are for use in ground combat? Of course, that also means you can hide any GM-placed traps under the canopy cover as well 😉!

I don't find it takes quite that long on my PC, but certainly it isn't as quick as "normal" symbols.

I suspect the only way you might speed things up would be to amend every one of the symbols using Symbol Manager in CC3+ so that all parts of the symbol go on one sheet, while it still looks the same. This would prevent adjusting the features of each symbol that are currently on separate sheets using sheet effects, although you could still adjust the appearance of the symbol as a whole using effects on whichever sheet the whole symbol is on.

That would be a lot of work per symbol, and you would be best advised to store the amended versions in a separate, new, symbol catalogue, so as not to change the original symbols in case you might want to use those again, or in case something goes wrong with the changes you've been trying to make.

On the whole, Shessar's excellent artwork options might be preferable all-round, however!