Mapping without a map - landmarks and other features

[Zaph42nd]

As I've been playing a lot of Wilderness Survival and Homo Sapiens, noticed a trend in my building habits - without a map landmarks and other features matter way more and I'm far more driven to develop infrastructure than in other difficulties and build smaller structures closer together (if possible). Does the restriction of having no map change your approach to builds and settlement spacing/design? If so, do you find yourself building more markers, bridges, and roads in absence of a quick-access map? 

[LadyWYT]

11 minutes ago, Zaph42nd said:

Does the restriction of having no map change your approach to builds and settlement spacing/design? If so, do you find yourself building more markers, bridges, and roads in absence of a quick-access map? 

I play with the map in Vintage Story since I enjoy that convenience, but I suspect that if I turned the map off I would definitely be doing a few more of these things. Then again, I like to do some of these even with the map enabled, since it's fun to do and I don't always want to be looking at the map. When it comes to bridges and roads, these not only make the world look nice, but it's very useful infrastructure for cutting down on travel time if there are locations I'm going to be visiting regularly(like nearby traders).

I would say though, that when there aren't clear quest markers, I do tend to pay attention to environmental details and NPC dialogue more closely, rather than just glossing over it as "set dressing". That's one thing I've been enjoying about Vintage Story's story arcs--all the information you need to complete the challenges is there, but you need to do some poking around and pay attention to various clues in order to figure things out.

[BurgerDaddy]

I’ve always enjoyed building roads, pathways, bridges. It’s especially fun in a server as other players make use of what you have built. I haven’t really considered the map in vintage story causing such a change in the desire/need for such infrastructure… it’s still much faster to get from a to b on a road (especially since it gives a speed boost if made from the right materials!), but yeah… just finding the things again is a whole layer on top of mobility.

 

I like your point about landmarks. I think this will encourage me to not use the map on a future play through and see how I manage remembering where all the resources I want to come back to are.

Edited June 17 by BurgerDaddy
Typo

[Kyle Rick]

I build up a packed dirt tower of 5 to help me remember and refind important locations like caves, surface ores, clay and such.

It's interesting as there is not a easy way to find your base if you somehow truly got yourself lost, however the treasure hunter map to find him makes it where you can never truly get lost as you can use the map to always go to that location, then building a arrow to point roughly what direction your base is. You can also use the distance from it as a rough way to know how close your base is, but it is best when you have more location maps.

Works out quite well for me so far.

[Hanril]

I play with a map, but some nights are so dark you are pretty much done without a light source. I chose a few peaks near my ruins settlement and made a few 3x3 roofed beacons with oil lamps inside, so I never miss when Gondor calls. Right now I'm settling in my new base near archives and there's so much woods and cliffs, even full daylight and a map is barely any help without making a path.

[Vratislav]

There was another thread discussing it: 

I do not want to copy much there, but to answer questions: Landmarks, markers and drawing a paper map were essential. Roads not so much as I did not progress far to have resources to build them to the areas that were unknown for me when playing. The topic not mentioned yet was a necessity to bump up render distance to keep the landscape recongizable. I had to maximize it to my computer limits, and I was using the Farseer mod. 

 

 

[CastIronFabric]

14 hours ago, BurgerDaddy said:

I’ve always enjoyed building roads, pathways, bridges. It’s especially fun in a server as other players make use of what you have built. I haven’t really considered the map in vintage story causing such a change in the desire/need for such infrastructure… it’s still much faster to get from a to b on a road (especially since it gives a speed boost if made from the right materials!), but yeah… just finding the things again is a whole layer on top of mobility.

 

I like your point about landmarks. I think this will encourage me to not use the map on a future play through and see how I manage remembering where all the resources I want to come back to are.

Although creating the need to build a road system would in fact be awesome I have to ask, as you start the game, exactly how many cooper pickaxes (once you find enough copper) are you going to need to make to get the road to a reasonable place where its helpful?

[BurgerDaddy]

40 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

Although creating the need to build a road system would in fact be awesome I have to ask, as you start the game, exactly how many cooper pickaxes (once you find enough copper) are you going to need to make to get the road to a reasonable place where its helpful?

It’s true that laying down stone path costs a lot of stone, I have scavenged many of the stony areas of their boulders to save on the tool wear and tear, not to mention it’s just a faster way to get stone compared to mining with early tools. Often it’s the dirt I come up needing more of to continue paving my roads. Typically the path of the road extends beyond the paved section, in that it is a known walkable path, relatively straight, with elevation changes smoothed enough to at least jump up. Honestly I don’t know that it is always a practical use of time, but is playing a video game ever?

[CastIronFabric]

2 minutes ago, BurgerDaddy said:

It’s true that laying down stone path costs a lot of stone, I have scavenged many of the stony areas of their boulders to save on the tool wear and tear, not to mention it’s just a faster way to get stone compared to mining with early tools. Often it’s the dirt I come up needing more of to continue paving my roads. Typically the path of the road extends beyond the paved section, in that it is a known walkable path, relatively straight, with elevation changes smoothed enough to at least jump up. Honestly I don’t know that it is always a practical use of time, but is playing a video game ever?

I am currently building a road and I agree dirt is the issue. Godspeed doing all that dirt effectively with likely a flint shovel.

I am using an Iron shovel and to be fair its less about the digging itself and more about 'where exactly do I want to screw up the terrian?

 

[Comedian13]

I'm enjoying playing without the map using the sketchbook mod, I can make my own maps and heavily rely on natural features like mountains or a large tree to orient myself. would be a great addition to the game. 

[Vratislav]

15 hours ago, BurgerDaddy said:

Typically the path of the road extends beyond the paved section, in that it is a known walkable path, relatively straight, with elevation changes smoothed enough to at least jump up.

Yes. In my longtime world, I made this kind of paths, spanning about 2-3000 blocks from the base in three directions. Mostly only smoothed terrain or cleared forest. For orientaiton with about 7 block high pylons every hundred blocks or so, sometimes equipped with oil lamps and rocks marking the direction change of the path.  

[Jose Alfredo Ramos]

I don't know, I'm not very good at finding my way around, not even in real life, let alone in VS.

[Lampookie]

Speaking of mapping without a map, a big sundial would be very cool to make.

[Zaph42nd]

On 6/17/2026 at 10:53 AM, Comedian13 said:

I'm enjoying playing without the map using the sketchbook mod, I can make my own maps and heavily rely on natural features like mountains or a large tree to orient myself. would be a great addition to the game. 

Funny you'd mention sketchbook, actually it inspired my post lol. Aside from the sketchbook, I've found that the cave-drawing mechanics (charcoal drawings) provide some opportunity for mapping until you get the gear to produce leather, paper, etc... 

On 6/17/2026 at 8:33 AM, BurgerDaddy said:

It’s true that laying down stone path costs a lot of stone, I have scavenged many of the stony areas of their boulders to save on the tool wear and tear, not to mention it’s just a faster way to get stone compared to mining with early tools. Often it’s the dirt I come up needing more of to continue paving my roads. Typically the path of the road extends beyond the paved section, in that it is a known walkable path, relatively straight, with elevation changes smoothed enough to at least jump up. Honestly I don’t know that it is always a practical use of time, but is playing a video game ever?

Reminds me a lot of desire-paths, my main-save uses desire-paths (shortcuts and trails off the original roads) since I find that they save on tool-durability and work nicely if I find ore-veins later in a specific region. One limitation of that though is I find that it produces somewhat messy-roads so usually need to go and re-pave as I begin to settle into an area or build into a fork in the road