Discoverable landmarks with map pins, fast travel and achievement hooks.
Locations & Discovery
A location is a landmark a player finds by walking near it. When they do, they get the "Location Discovered" card, the place is pinned on their map for good, and any rewards are paid once.
This is the loop that makes a map worth walking across: every corner might hold something that fills in a little more of the world.
Where to Author
Two places, and you need both:
1. Database → Content → Locations — create the landmark itself: its name, icon, radius, rewards and fast-travel rules. 2. Map Editor → Events — place a Location marker on the map, and pick which landmark it is.
Authoring the landmark separately from its placement means one landmark can appear on several maps and still be edited in one spot.
Setting One Up
1. Open Database → Content → Locations and click New. 2. Give it a Name — this is what players read on the card and the map pin. 3. Set the Discovery radius in tiles. 10 is a good default; use more for a mountain range, less for a hidden shrine. 4. Pick an Icon for the map pin. 5. Optionally set Rewards, Fast travel and an Achievement. 6. Save. 7. Open the map, switch to the Events layer, pick Locations from the palette, and click where the landmark sits. 8. In the event properties that open, set Definition to the landmark you just created. This is the step that links the two — a marker left on -- unlinked -- is never discovered. 9. Publish.
Location Fields
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | Internal name, and the fallback shown to players |
| Display name | What players actually see, if different from the name |
| Description | Flavour text for the journal |
| Icon | The map pin and the discovery card's icon |
| Category | Groups the entry in the journal: landmark, dungeon, town… |
| Discovered by | Walking near a placed marker, or Entering a biome |
| Discovery radius | Marker triggers only: how close, in tiles, a player must get |
| Biome | Biome triggers only: stepping on any tile of it discovers the place |
| Map | Biome triggers only: which map counts. Empty = any map with that biome |
| Clears minimap fog | Tiles of fog burned away around the place when found. 0 = none |
| Notification template | Overrides the default discovery card for this one place |
| Show on map | Off = discovering it fires the card but leaves no pin |
| Acts as a spawn point | Off by default. On = every placed marker of this place is also a respawn point (see below) |
| Fast travel | Whether players can travel back here, and what it costs |
| Achievement | Ticks that achievement's discovery criteria |
| Rewards | Silver, skill XP and items paid once, on first discovery |
Regions: Discovering by Biome
A mountain range or a swamp is not a point, and ringing it with markers to approximate it is miserable. Set Discovered by to Entering a biome instead: stepping onto any tile of that biome discovers the place.
1. Set Discovered by to Entering a biome. 2. Pick the Biome. 3. Pick the Map. Leave it empty only if you truly mean any map painted with that biome — otherwise the first such tile anywhere in your world discovers it. 4. Publish. No marker is needed.
The pin lands wherever that player first entered the biome, so two players can have the same place pinned at different spots — which is usually what you want, since it marks where they found it.
Clearing Minimap Fog
If your minimap uses fog of war, a discovery can burn it away — the Zelda shape, where the map fills in as a reward for exploring rather than as a by-product of walking.
1. Set Clears minimap fog on the location to how many tiles it should reveal. A mountain range should clear far more than a shrine. 2. Open UI / HUD Editor → Minimap → Fog of war and set Reveal mode:
| Reveal mode | What clears the fog |
|---|---|
| Reveal as explored | Walking only — discoveries do nothing |
| Reveal by discovery | Discoveries only — walking uncovers nothing |
| Explored + discovery | Both |
The radius does nothing under Always visible, Reveal as explored, or Event-driven only.
Fast Travel
Turn on Fast travel and a discovered location becomes a destination on the player's world map (N), where selecting a pin shows what the trip costs before they commit.
Who is allowed to travel
One world-level rule, set from the Fast travel access dropdown above the Locations list.
| Rule | What it means |
|---|---|
| From the map | Players open their own map and travel from any discovered pin. The default. |
| Only from a travel NPC | Their map shows pins but no Travel. Only an NPC running Open Fast Travel can send them anywhere. |
| Both | From their own map, and NPCs can offer it too. |
| Off | Nowhere. Pins still mark the map; the shortcut is gone. |
This is enforced on the server, not by hiding the button — so Only from a travel NPC genuinely means it.
Travel as a service someone provides
Put the Open Fast Travel command (Scene / MMO commands) on any NPC page — a ferryman, an innkeeper, a wayshrine. Everything above it on that page is your gate: charge them, check a quest, turn them away. When it runs, the world map opens with travel unlocked.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Who's offering | Shown on the map's banner — "Ferryman Aldric" |
| What they say | One line under it — "will take you to any port." |
| Only these categories | Limits the offer to those location categories. Blank = everywhere they've discovered |
A ferryman who only sails to ports is a better fiction than one who teleports you anywhere, and the restriction is checked server-side — a player can only reach what the offer actually covers.
The offer lasts five minutes or until they travel, whichever comes first. One crossing per conversation.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cost | Silver charged per trip. A player who can't afford it is refused, not charged |
| Cooldown | Minimum seconds between trips |
| Minimum level | Gates travel behind character level |
Players can never fast travel in combat, and never to somewhere they haven't discovered.
The Description you write is shown on the map's detail card, so it's worth writing — it's the line that makes a pin somewhere a player wants to go.
Respawning at a Landmark
A player who dies comes back at the nearest spawn point on the map they died in (then the nearest one on a neighbouring map, then the world's starting location). Normally those are the map's SPAWN markers from the zone editor. Turn on Acts as a spawn point and every placed marker of this place counts too — a wayshrine, a camp, an inn.
1. Open the location under Database → Locations and tick Acts as a spawn point. 2. Make sure it is placed: Events layer → Locations → click the tile, set the marker's Definition. 3. Publish.
| Rule | What it means |
|---|---|
| Nearest wins | The map's own SPAWN markers and every opted-in landmark are one pool; the closest tile to where the player fell is used |
| No discovery needed | A respawn is not a reward — the player comes back at the nearest landmark whether or not they had found it |
| Marker triggers only | A biome-triggered place has no marker tile to stand on, so the toggle does nothing for it |
| Instances and arenas | Keep their own rules (checkpoints, entrance, team spawns) |
Achievements
Two criteria types work with locations:
- Discover location — find one specific place
- Discover count — find any N places
Gotchas
- Place the marker, or nothing happens. A marker-triggered location with no marker on any map can never be found. This is the most common mistake. (Biome-triggered locations need no marker.)
- Pick the landmark on the marker. Placing a Location marker is only half of it — set its Definition to the landmark. A marker left unlinked is inert.
- A biome trigger with no biome picked is refused on save, because it would otherwise match every tile and discover the place on the player's first step.
- A marker pointing at a deleted location is inert — it won't error, it just does nothing.
- Discovery happens once per character, forever. Walking back through the radius does nothing, and there is no way to "undiscover" a place from the editor.
- Undiscovered locations are never sent to the player's client, so nobody can datamine your map. That also means the pin genuinely appears the moment they find it.
- Publish after adding locations. Markers reference location definitions by id — publishing a map without the definitions leaves every marker inert.
- The radius is a circle measured from the marker tile, and it ignores walls. A radius that reaches through a cliff will trigger from the far side.
- The whole system sits behind the Discoveries feature flag.