Map & Exploration

The **map** in *From the Ground Up* is a complex grid of 201 hexagonal tiles. Each map is randomly generated per game, and includes such features as meadows, forests, ponds and rivers, marshes and swamps, coastlines, and mountains.

## Map Features

Along with the map itself, the map screen displays other valuable information about the player's surroundings. Any tile that the player has walked over before is considered discovered; when hovered over, discovered tiles will have their information, such as ground type, ownership, and any landmarks displayed at the bottom of the screen. Beside the area information will be a preview of what the hovered tile looks like; if this tile has not yet been discovered, this preview is greyed out and blurred.

To the right of the map are overlay options. The player can choose to toggle a template of potential territories, equally distributing tiles for 3, two different configurations of 4, 5, and 6 Clans. This template doesn't affect the map, but can be used when choosing which tiles to mark. Below this is a button which toggles the visibility of territories on the map; toggling it off will clear the map's tiles of the the glow that represents the tile's ownership. This option is toggled on by default. This **does not** destroy claimed tiles; all tiles retain their ownership and territory information. These toggles are cosmetic only.

## Biomes

At present, only one biome can be chosen in *From the Ground Up*, but nine more are planned to join the Classic biome to make a total of 10.

* Ancestral Homeland
* Classic

The Ancestral Homeland is an ancient place where cats of all shapes, sizes, and species originated from. The very first Clans were born here, long before twolegs interfered with the business of cats. The landscape of the Ancestral Homeland is also what StarClan appears as, even to cats who have never been there. Outside of the game's universe, the Ancestral Homeland was inspired by Gir Forest, India, as it is the one place in the modern world where lions, tigers, and leopards co-exist, and the only possible location for the original warrior legends to have taken place.

It is not yet possible to play a game in this location, but no matter where the player chooses to live, StarClan will always appear as the Ancestral Homeland.
The classic biome represents a European woodland, the environment that the original four Clans from the books hailed from. Although it is not possible to play in any of the territories from the books in a normal game, maps created in this biome will be inhabited by the same kinds of wildlife.

## Geography

### Landmarks

Coupled with the geography, every new map generates **landmarks** scattered across random tiles. Examples of landmarks include distinctive trees, hills and overlooks, and ravines. A Clan that claims a particular landmark earns naming rights to it. Landmarks serve as good places to make Camp, Training Grounds, and Hunting spots.

## Exploration

*This section is about exploring the map alone. For information about patrols, see Patrolling.*

Once the player leaves camp, they enter **exploration**. The player can navigate the map by using the **travelpad** UI element in the bottom right corner. The travelpad shows the player their current location on the map via a map tile. If the player is inside a territory, the travelpad will have a glow in the color of the territory's owner. The player can travel northwest, northeast, east, southeast, southwest, and west, provided they are not at the edge of the map, via arrow buttons pointing in each direction.

If an adjacent tile is owned by another faction, the corresponding arrow will be pointing to a dot colored after the tile's owner. If the adjacent tile happens to be a camp, or serves as a no-cat's land for communing with StarClan, the node will be in the shape of a star instead. If the adjacent tile is a Training Ground, the node becomes a paw. If there is water on the adjacent tile, the node will become a water droplet. This informs the player of their surroundings, without having to check the map so often.

While exploring, the player can **Scent the Air** , which will show a list of scents in the area; **Claim**  an area if it is not already part of their territory; **Renew Borders**  if the tile they're in is part of their border; **Try Hunting**  or **Try Fishing**  if the tile has water; **Enter Training Ground**  if the tile is a training ground; or **Idle**, which initiates an Auto-Time Sequence that has the player sit down and simply pass time. The player can also **Fast Travel** , which will open up the map and allow them to choose any tile to travel to; however this will take time and stamina, and if the player is too tired, they will not be able to travel too far away. If the player returns to camp, the **Enter Camp**  button appears in the travelpad, ending exploration if clicked.

Each tile the player crosses costs 1 point of stamina. Each time a cat enters a tile, they become more and more familiar with it. The more familiar a cat is with a tile, the faster they are able to move across them. Tiles rarely travelled will take 15 minutes to traverse. Familiar tiles that a cat has visited 5 or more times take 12 minutes. Well-travelled tiles that a cat crosses very often throughout their routines only take 6 minutes, Cats with the Fast trait are also faster at moving than other cats, though only marginally; their travel time is reduced about 25-30%. If multiple cats are traveling together, they will follow the pace of the most experienced cat. However if the "leading" cat is Fast and the others are not, they will slow down to accommodate their compatriots; the whole group will only gain the benefits of the Fast trait if all of them possess it.

### Encounters

While exploring, the player may bump into things such as other animals or Twolegs. These special exploration events are called Encounters. Encounters occur semi-randomly, and can be handled in a multitude of ways. Some will have additional special reaction options based the Playercat's personality.

### Scents & Tracking

When the player selects the **Scent the Air** option while exploring, they will be shown a list of scents present in their current tile and some from adjacent tiles. The first scent in the list will always be an assessment of how well the prey is running in the player's current tile, followed by border information if the player is standing on a border. Scents left by predators and other cats will show their species or name respectively, given the cat recognizes the scent, as well as how fresh the scent is and the direction the scent's owner traveled in. Locations such as camps and dens also carry the scents of their owners.