Land

Use the Land door on the World tab to place whole landforms. Select a landform, tap the map, and it is placed complete. The dials and switches on the door reshape it. Two tool buttons, Raise and Land steps, are in the page’s header beside the red Erase. Under the dials, one row of picture tiles holds the grounds you paint with: the five grounds and Yours ▸.

Eleven landforms

The eleven kinds are small picture tiles. One is lit. Tap a tile, then tap the map:

• Hills, Peaks, Island, Valley, Meadow, and Ridge are the rolling kinds. Several placed together overlap into a range.
• Lake digs a basin and fills it with water, with a sandy shore and a low rim. Pond is the small one-tap version, with a sandy lip: a Small pond is one water square and its lip, Medium is a larger pool. Placed on rolling land, a Lake or a Pond digs in: its water and sand replace the raised squares under it, and the land around it does not change.
• Plateau is a flat top with a short stepped skirt, sheer with Cliff edges. Mesa is a high flat top on a wider low one. Canyon is two walls either side of a dirt floor, open at both ends.

Buildings and figs stand on a flat top as they do on the ground. The land never digs below the floor: a canyon is land raised around a floor.

The dials and switches

• Hilly sets how tall the land rises, up to eight levels.
• Rough sets the surface: low is rolling, high is bumpy.
• Snow line starts at Off. Turn it up and every raised square from that level up has snow: a peak gets a white cap and the slopes below have none.
• Edges: Soft slopes or a sheer Cliff rim.
• Size: Small, Medium, Large, or Huge. A Huge landform is 21 squares across and needs the Vast stage, set on Setting › Base floor.

The three dials update while you drag, and 100% is the starting amount. Every change reshapes the selected landform.

Shuffle rerolls the landform’s shape and keeps your settings. With no landform selected it says Select a landform first. Shuffle generates a new variation.

Top and Sides

The Top and Sides wells set the landform’s surface: any ground, or any of your patterns . Classic clears the well. With a pattern on, a Top size or Sides size row appears (Small | Medium | Large) to set the pattern’s size.

Adjusting this land

Tap a placed landform and the door says Adjusting this land. Every dial and switch now reshapes that one. Tap Done to return to placing new land, or tap open ground to place another. The selected landform also shows on its Picked page in the World deck, with its name and the same Top and Sides wells.

Shape and paint it by hand

The square-by-square work has two parts. The tools are buttons in the page’s header. The grounds are picture tiles on the page.

The tools in the header. Raise and Land steps are two buttons in the Land page’s header, beside the red Erase. Each is an icon and a word. Tap one to arm it (it lights), then tap or drag on the map. Tap it again to turn it off.

• Raise raises the squares you drag over by one level. While it is armed, its two switch rows show on the page, under the ground tiles: the profile (Smooth, Blocky, Rolling, or Facet) and the corners (Square, Cut, or Round).
• Land steps cuts steps into a slope, so figs can walk up it. These are steps cut into the land. A building’s stairs are in Build, under Stairs & ramps.

The grounds on the page. Under the dials, a caption reads Ground: choose one, then drag on the map to paint it. The row of picture tiles under it holds surfaces only: Grass, Water, Sand, Snow, Marsh, and Yours ▸. Tap a tile to arm it, then tap or drag on the map. Tap the armed tile again to turn it off.

• Grass, Water, Sand, Snow, and Marsh paint the ground. Each square you cross takes it.
• Yours ▸ opens the ground and pattern picker. Select any ground or any of your patterns , and the drag paints the ground with it.

Erase removes a painted square or raised land. It is the same red as Remove. It is always at the right end of the header, the same on Land, Build, and Scenery. Raise and Land steps are in the same row, the same size. They stay in one row with the title. When the window is narrow, each button becomes a small square with its icon over its word. Arming a tool or a ground turns landform placing off. Tap it again to turn placing back on. Water painted onto raised land stays at that height (a few Water squares on a plateau make a mountain lake), and the cliff below it shows a waterfall. A tapped square’s Surface dropdown on its Picked page repaints it too. See Cliffs and stairs .

Land works on photo scenes too: place an island on the photograph and figs stand on it.