Overview
Just a personal map I made and use to determine where I should be careful and where to expect difficulty from my experiences.
The Map.
On the map…
Red areas are areas with a large quantity of hard enemies or enough enemies to be troublesome, these areas suck and are usually a bad area to get trapped in, but not not the WORST places on the map… just inconvenient places. Bottom left red mark is swarming with beak things and bottlenecking paths, bottom right has a large number of hostile bugmen (whatever they are called in lore), with a black mini area there because of the “King” that is at the Southern Hives main base. The Southern Hive area does seem to bottleneck you getting out through a village with guards, but I haven’t fully scouted alternative routes. The central right red mark is where a base of slavers are that will capture you and force you into their army, the reason I am marking this is because they are everywhere and there are a TON of bottlenecking areas in that zone. The Top Left Red Mark im marking due to robot spiders. You may be able to navigate around them, but its pretty much almost a black spot due to it needing a high level to actually do anything there and low levels will have to outrun the robo spiders.
Black areas on the map are areas that are rather impossible to settle in due to the annoying neighbors. The Top Left Black Marker is just FILLED with swampy slowness and death spiders, youll die of boredom trying to navigate through there if the robot spiders dont murder your face off first. The Bottom left two Black markers are a pain because of the Skin Bandits… Basically they are high level robot swarms that can overwhelm you, capture you and peel your skin off in a giant potato peeler so they can make their next big fashion trend out of your hide… fun.
The Yellow areas I marked are very situational. From left to right, the left is filled with military checkpoints for the Holy Nation. Really chill guys if your a human male traveling without any skeletons. If your a skeleton however, they will murder you on site. If your a non human without a human male in your party, they will try to enslave you. If your a non human with a human male in your party, they may or may not try to enslave you depending on a speech check. If your a woman human, they will be hilariously sexist towards you and this probably wont end well. So that area is best with an all human group with at least 1 human male, preferably with their holy book in his possession. The Middle yellow mark is the Black Desert of death or whatever… In this zone, it rains acid, poison gas and is generally not very livable for non skeletons. The skelebros are fine since they can handle the environment and I hear that the environment can be used to fend off more organic attackers, but I havent tried myself, I will however suggest that you pass through quickly with the organic races and stop in shelter at the city to regen health if you must pass through this zone… id also suggest having only FAST characters pass through here and risk the damage. The Right Yellow Marker is interesting… Its got swarms of robots that want to murder you and during the daytime, deadly lazers will be shooting down everywhere giving organic races REALLY bad sunburn. It will drain about half the health on every body part and a second blast is usually lethal… hard to get through here in the daytime. Best wait for night.
The Green Area Markers are areas that arent too terrible. The Right Green Marker is a good starting zone. Base building here is difficult due to Empire Taxes and lack of water, but the threats in the area arent too unmanageable, the big bugs should be your biggest threats other then the occasional pleb hunting noble. The Left Green Marker above the lowest one Is generally a pretty decent area, not much you cant outrun at a low level, not too much you cant really out tank with a good fortification, teh Shrecks… shecks? Take food tribute, but the area itself isnt too terrible to travel through other then the occasional hulking bat/ape thing that will chase you along that river thing with the Western Hive villages. The Lowest Green Marker is the swamp… Its annoying to navigate and hordes of killer ant things will murder you, however building a base here and making friends with the hounds gang by running drugs for them by talking to their leader in the city will make this place a decentish place to settle down if you dont mind growing drugs for the gangs in exchange for protection. Other gangs will attack you and the bugs and animals will have to be kept at bay with a lot of crossbow turrets, but its not too harsh of a place to settle considering the protection you get from the hounds gang that other factions across the map dont provide… so basically your getting exploited by a faction just about anywhere, but at least the hounds give something back in return.
The Orange Marker Is a GREAT zone if you can cheese the AI. This area is an absolute nightmare of chokepoints and SWARMS of crazy canibalistic bugmen with low level stats and an incredibly dumb AI. Id recomend setting up in the city of Mongrol there and building a base as close as you can with walls blocking off areas to control the flow of bugmen and direct them into a “killzone”. Keep in mind they go for the gatehouse almost always, so having a multilayered gatehouse with turrets perhaps aimed at a courtyard between gates, you can make a good killzone this way, but make sure your turrets arent behind the gate since they may hit your workers doing repairs on it… Id also recomend 3 gates with the first one open unless repairs on the other two are needed to prevent friendly fire during repairs… attacks here are consistant and having a killzone that is effective is key to not having to worry about repairs or problems.
The Last thing of note is that red crater area, I didnt mark it, because im not 100% sure if thats the zone, but I believe the Bugmaster and swarms of hundreds of big spiders swarm that zone like a Starship Troopers movie. Id just flat out avoid that until endgame.