Looks great as it is, Ede :)

Hieght is always a tricky one unless you employ a careful use of shadow effects, or even draw your own shadows on a separate sheet.

A shadow sheet above the cliffs and below the trees might be best for that second option - polygons of solid black drawn to cover the shaded sides of the canyon with a blend mode effect on that sheet set to multiply and about 20% opacity and then a blur effect to soften the edges quite significantly. That's a little more tricky than just using a few shadow sheet effects on the boulders, but probably more realistic as some of the shadow will fall on the boulders rather than coming from underneath them, and I think some of the shade will be cast by steep banks rather than the boulders.

If you want to use the land shape you've already drawn add a rectangle of ocean over the whole map first using one of the ocean drawing tools, then add your land shape to the same sheet and use the change properties tool to turn the fill of that shape to solid and magenta (colour 6). When you refresh the map that will cut a hole in the sea to reveal the land.

The coastal effects are controled by the sheet effects on the Water sheet. At the default settings they aren't really doing much on a map this size, and they are slightly wrong to match the style of the example anyway.

You will need to modify them like this:

Leave the Color Key as it is.

The first Glow effect should be something like this:

The second glow effect like this:

And the final Outer Glow effect like this:

I deleted the shadow effect.

EDIT: Even these aren't a brilliant match, but once you start editing them you will learn quickly how to adjust them yourself to get things working the way you want them to.

If you've worked out how to copy sheet effects from one map to another here is a second FCW file with those water sheet effects on it.

No problem. I do tend to continue thinking about things. It's a sort of natural progression of thought.

When you get as far as adding symbols there may be a problem with getting rid of the white bits, but there are at least two ways around that.

I have to go out for a little while right now, so I'm hoping I've given you enough to be getting on with for an hour or two.

The connecting hedges should work ok just drawing them by stright line sections around a curve as long as the radius of that curve isn't too small. I think (but can't remember, and I'm only up for a brief moment right now in the middle of the night) that I might have shown them in an example map of a circular maze.

If you have the 2018 Cartographer's Annual I did a very small collection of varicolour flowering shrubs and fruit bushes for Asian Towns, though there aren't very many and they aren't my best so far, so I wouldn't buy the annual just for them if you haven't already got it.

Another place to look for things like this might be some of the other free collections from Vintyri, though I don't know what they contain these days in any great detail. https://forum.profantasy.com/discussion/10443/free-symbols-artwork

If you get stuck and I'm not around there will undoubtedly be help from others. I'm not the only person who can work this out with you :)

Oh yes, I see. I got the wrong end of the stick again. Sorry!

In answer to the actual concern you have about the regional borders - you should be able to draw them and trace the coastline just as before. The trace tool will pick up the edge of the cutout polygon as easily as it picked up the land polygon in your earlier map.

CC3 requires that you click to place nodes, or to start and end a Freehand Sketch line. It's not an app where you can just draw things with a constant line without any clicking, so the motion of the pen in CC3 is more tapping than drawing. This isn't the way other apps work with a tablet, so it can take a lot of getting used to if you've used tablets in other apps before now.

It might be a good idea to see if you can borrow a tablet from a friend just to see if you feel comfortable with the way it works in CC3 before you make any purchase.

As for user manuals, most tablets come with their own software including a startup and settings assistant. Even my little Wacom has such things despite being the second smallest and cheapest one on the market.

30 minute shout :)

It's looking really great. You're rapidly becoming a really good mapper :)