World Map

The world map is one of several preselected maps. After Oryx summons the players to battle him, the server changes to a different map. Different game servers will be using different maps at any given time.

This map shows the outline of one of the current worlds and all 3 roads:

The maps are islands and include:

• Terrain types: beaches, grasslands, forests, savannahs, deserts, rocky land, and snow. This is in order of lowest difficulty to highest - beaches have the easiest monsters; rocky and snowy areas have the hardest. More difficult areas tend to be "drier" but aren't always.
• Oceans and lakes. Oceans surround the island, and are unpassable. Lakes are in the interior of the island, and are also unpassable. Both oceans and lakes have some shallow water near the edges, which can be walked through slowly.
• Roads: They increase movement speed and make circles around the island. There are 3 circle roads in each map, sometimes they cross or have loopholes. Roads guide you to more areas with monsters of the same difficulty.
• Rivers: They decrease movement speed and run from mountains to the coast. Rivers guide you to areas with monsters of higher (or lower) difficulty.
• Vegetation: Plants, trees, and rocks, depending on the kind of terrain you're in. Each monster type prefers certain types of terrain and vegetation.
• Quest areas: Groves of trees, graveyards, towers, castles, lava fissures, and other quest areas are located all over the map. The typical pattern is a boss in the center surrounded by henchmen and minions. After defeating the boss there is a treasure chest with loot.

Build 104 features newer maps than build 100. Terrain features are generally smoother and less angular, with a more gradual transition between different terrain types. The shape of the landmasses is more complex, with more bays and peninsulas. Roads and rivers are improved. The world maps are generated every few months, and every time Oryx destroys the world one of the 20 maps is randomly chosen for the new world.

The creation of geographical features (but not quest areas, vegetation, terrain types, or monsters) for build 100 and up is described in these blog posts:

• ocean, land, lakes, beaches
• elevation, rivers, moisture, biomes
• rendering, Flash demo, source code

Build 92 through 99 had twenty maps in rotation. Earlier builds had a single map. These maps were created using Perlin Noise. See amitp's post on map creation for more information.