Yes, the numerous areas of white water seem a bit distracting, and make it harder to tell which elements among those might be more important. There are what seem to be a couple of larger falls on the left-hand "vertical" section of river, but it's not clear currently if these are more or less significant than some of the numerous other white-water clusters elsewhere, for instance.

Not sure if the wider riverbed area in the top left is part of a lake, or just a wider section of the river either. If it's a lake, the bed should probably be a bit deeper and the water flow quieter, so it would probably be less obviously boulder-covered (which works fine for shallow, fast-flowing water otherwise). What seems to be a lot of waterfalls just before (and into?) that wider area though makes it hard to be sure.

The paler shadow does indeed seem fine on the latest drawing of the cross-section through the hag's lair, although the heavy dark glow around the cave wall lines and the exterior, also helps settle it down into the landscape more.

If I've understood your query correctly, you're left-clicking the :CC2NUMBER: button and then immediately clicking the left-button again in your map.

What you need to do after clicking the |CC2NUMBER| button is check the Command Line to make sure the number you want to use is correct there - if it isn't, just type in the correct one, and then either press Enter, or right-click your mouse. The number will then appear on a large cross-hair on your map, and you can place it where you want.

As others here have suggested already, you may need to adjust the size of your text so you can see the numeral, and make sure it's going on the correct Sheet as well once you've done this (or better, before doing so!).

OK, maybe try this.

1) Set up a suitably-sized snap grid that'll let you draw squares of the exact size you need, and keep the snap grid turned on.

2) Draw an outline square of the size you require, with the line thickness you need it to be, using the snap grid.

3) Copy that square, and paste it immediately below the first one. Again, the snap grid is your friend.

4) Then paste another line of two squares to the right of the first two, with the half-square offset required. You may need to adjust your snap grid to allow this correctly.

5) This gives you a base of four squares in the correct pattern that you can then copy, making a larger area of squares with the necessary offset. Depending on how large an area of squares you need, once you have a larger part of the pattern available, you can simply copy said larger number of squares to speed things up. If you group the batches of squares too, that will make copying the groups easier.

6) Once you've filled the area you need with the offset squares pattern, save this as your base file that you can then open and re-save each time you want to draw a map using this offset grid.

By using the snap grid and basic commands like grouping the areas of squares, the whole process should be pretty quick to do, and hopefully fairly problem-free.

[Edited this where boldfaced, as I realised after posting that the pattern actually needs a four-square group, not a five as I originally suggested! (Otherwise you end up repeatedly overlapping the column with three squares in it.)]

No, I'd agree with that too @Maidhc O Casain, although to my eye it's the very strong drop-shadow on the title that's causing problems, as I don't struggle with specific colours.

You may be able to get the roads more obvious simply by widening the lines, and maybe increasing the glow effect on their edges. The pale colouring actually seems fine.

I very rarely use any of the forest fill tools, since trying to get the tree-density right if your map's not a typical size for the style takes too much time and effort for me. Plus I usually want to add features in the woods, so end up moving or deleting trees to accommodate them. Thus it's quicker and easier for me to just place trees individually!