It would be worth checking with copyright owners where possible, for some 'free' things are not as free as they give the impression they are. Most are free to use, but not necessarily commercially as (for example) VTT tokens for redistribution.

I'm not trying to put a damper on your project. Only concerned that you shouldn't accidentally fall foul of people who can turn out to be unexpectedly nasty. I've had experience of that kind of thing. A completely innocent mistake on my part was loudly and very publicly declared to be blatant theft and I was compared with a very real and rather infamous map thief! Fortunately for me the accusation was transparently a laughable exaggeration, but others have not been as fortunate.

My accusers have continued to make my life pretty uncomfortable on other forums ever since, so please don't do this to yourself - not by mistake at any rate. I've been persecuted for so long that sometimes I almost wish it HAD been deliberate, because then at least I would deserve it.

In addition to Remy's explanation of the first point, and as a suggested alternative cure, you could move the frame you've added to the MAP BORDER layer, and make sure its on a sheet of it's own at the very bottom of the sheet list.

Your effects aren't broken. They are just scaled really tiny - so tiny you can't even see them.

I've just been through the whole set and discovered that you have them all set to Percent of Drawing Extents Width as the Effect Units. This means that whatever figure you had in the Edge Width box (these were also really tiny before I started on the map) is only that percentage of the map width.

I've changed them all to Map Units and given them about 10 map units Edge Fade Inner. I've also moved that piece of scrubland fill to the TERRAIN DESERT sheet because it was on the same sheet as the grassland behind it. That was why it wouldn't edge fade.

You will probably still need to adjust them all to suit your taste, but at least you are on the right track now.

To edit a sheet effect you need to pick the sheet in the list on the left and then pick the effect you want to edit and click the Edit button on the right.

Speed, and how much you can put on a map.

However, the situation isn't so bad the way it is. CC3 has a very efficient way of dealing with symbols and fills, so you can do a lot more with it as a 32 bit app than you can with other 32 bit apps.

There area couple of new videos that cover point lighting here:

Night and Day Time, by Remy Monsen:

and the Live Mapping session called "Lighted Dungeons", by Ralf Schemmann:

It is probably better to do a small practice map before you start on your main map, or at least save a copy as it is and then work on the lighting in a new version.