What's new in Hexer

General

• FixThe travel heatmap and route planner now work at a zoomed-in map scale, starting from any hex with terrain, not just hexes painted at that scale.
• FixThe travel heatmap now follows you as you pan and zoom, instead of stopping at the edge of the screen where you set the starting hex.

Help

• NewHelp is built into the editor: search and read how-to articles without leaving your map, from the new Help button or the “?” next to export, sharing, scale levels and fog.
• NewEvery help article is also on the web at hexermap.com/help, and you can tell us whether it helped.
• ImprovedWhat’s new now lives in the same window and loads faster.

General

• ImprovedYou may now use exported maps commercially; the help center explains what needs crediting.
• FixErasing a hex, or deleting or cutting a selection, no longer reveals it to players on a fogged map.
• FixCutting and pasting an area keeps the connections between hexes inside it.
• FixThe player Hex Key no longer lists Secret point-crawl locations or ones hidden from players.
• FixUndo no longer reverts map settings, the map’s name or the party marker.
• FixCtrl+Shift+Z redoes on Windows and Linux, and Ctrl+Z while typing undoes your text, not the map.
• FixOn the free plan, maps no longer stop saving after adding a third scale level or a party marker beyond the 3-token limit; both now show a lock instead.
• ImprovedThe travel heatmap shows costs with at most one decimal.
• ImprovedThe keyboard shortcuts list now includes every tool and the Select tool’s keys.
• ImprovedThe eyedropper button now shows on phones and tablets, where it is the only way to pick terrain from the map.

Select, copy and paste

• NewA new Select tool: paint over hexes, then copy, cut or delete them, and paste the block anywhere you can paint, on any layer or scale level your plan reaches, turned or mirrored.

Player Journals

• FixPlayers can no longer write journal entries on hexes still hidden by fog. “Visible hexes” now means hexes whose land players can see, including on zoomed-in scale levels.

World generation

Generate now builds a world the way geography does: land first, then mountains, climate, rivers and the people who settle along them.

• ImprovedGenerated maps have real mountain ranges that swell into massifs and peak along their spines, climate zones with ragged borders, rain shadows, rivers that grow as they join, lakes, and towns and cities placed where people would settle. Generating takes under a second.
• NewGenerated worlds now include kingdoms with drawn borders, glaciers, and named sites such as ruins, lairs and hazards.
• NewGenerated coastlines are jagged and irregular, and landmasses reach out in peninsulas and long limbs instead of rounded shapes.
• NewPro: generated underdark levels have branching cave networks, underground lakes and rivers, and underdark settlements.
• NewPro: ten new underdark terrains, including flowstone, flooded passages and ice caves.
• NewPro: each underdark level holds several drow, duergar and svirfneblin holds, named in their own tongues, with a DM note on who lives there and how to get in. With World History, some lie in ruins, recorded in the Chronicle.
• ImprovedFree maps can now generate every surface terrain, including glaciers, jungles and deep ocean.
• ImprovedGenerated maps now use the full terrain palette: marshes, deltas, fjords, volcanoes, reefs, farmland around towns and more, placed where the land calls for them.
• NewGenerated maps now name their kingdoms and realms, and each culture names the places it holds in its own tongue.
• NewEvery generated site and settlement comes with a DM-only note describing what is there.
• NewGenerated maps now show mountain passes, ore deposits, straight roads with trails that join them rather than running alongside, and sea lanes between islands. Pro maps also get a harbour at every coastal town.
• NewPro: World History gives a generated world a past. Wars, plagues, eruptions and floods leave ruins and battlefields, told in a Chronicle note, alongside hazard zones and magical sites such as portals and ley lines.
• ImprovedMap templates generate the world they describe: the Frozen North is tundra and glacier with sparse forest, the Desert Wasteland is desert with oases and canyons, and the River Valley stays inland.
• NewNew Mountain Pass and six resource-deposit icons in the palette.
• ImprovedGenerating a map now replaces your notes and regions as well as the terrain, since generated maps come with their own.

The Generate workspace

Generate opens a full-screen workspace with a live preview of the world your choices make, so you can steer it before you commit.

• NewStart from a template, then shape the land, climate and peoples with picture cards, a climate pad and simple word choices. Generate places exactly the world in the preview.
• NewThe preview fills in rivers, roads, towns and their names as the world builds.
• NewReroll, Surprise me and a dice on each topic shuffle the world. In Advanced mode, lock the choices you want to keep.
• NewAdvanced mode adds how many landmasses and how large the main one is, how many rivers, what size of towns, how many roads, how many cultures and which naming style.
• NewPaint land, sea, mountains, or a hotter, colder, wetter or drier climate onto the preview to steer where they go.
• NewPaint wins over the Water setting. Anything the world cannot keep, such as land painted into an ocean edge, is named in the preview.
• ImprovedA generated map starts without scale levels, instead of keeping the ones the replaced map had. Tokens move onto the map’s single grid.

General

• FixFixed memory that kept growing while zooming a map with many labels or editing paths.
• FixThe minimap now updates when you switch which grid the party sees from.
• ImprovedThe note editor now opens with its settings and delete confirmation closed each time.

Points of interest

• ImprovedLey Line Nodes now place like any other point of interest, on any hex, instead of having to be placed in linked pairs. Draw the ley lines between nodes with the connection tool, as many per node as you like.
• FixPlacing a portal on an unpainted hex no longer paints plains under it. The hex stays blank.

Connections

• ImprovedThe connection tool can now link two hexes on the same layer, and works on unpainted hexes, so a point of interest on blank ground can be connected too.

Underdark

• NewA new Solid Rock terrain for the underdark: impassable unworked stone that also blocks line of sight, so the party sees the rock face and nothing behind it. Cave generation places it too.

Detail scale levels

Working at a detail level now behaves the way the map above it does: fog, walls and your sense of place all carry over.

• NewA subtle outline shows which hex of the scale above you are currently inside, so you never lose your bearings at a detail level.
• FixDetail cells now follow their parent hex’s fog. Players could previously see clear patches inside a hidden area, and cells painted under a hidden region stayed dark forever.
• NewA new “Follow parent” option in the fog brush puts a detail cell back to tracking its parent hex.
• FixWalls are visible at detail levels again instead of thinning to a hairline the further you zoomed in.
• FixLine of sight at a detail scale level now follows your exact position on the detail grid, instead of lighting the same area anywhere within the larger hex you’re standing in.
• FixZooming into a detail level and back no longer permanently reveals hexes the party could not see from where it stands — what gets remembered is the same however far in you were looking.
• FixA prominent place within sight of the party is now lit in a shared view, with its own ring of light, the way it already was for the DM.
• FixShared views now draw the party’s line of sight at the detail level you are looking at, matching what the DM sees, instead of a coarser outline traced from the map above.
• FixExploring at a detail scale level marks the hex above as visited without revealing the detail you haven’t walked — and revealing that hex from the wider map then lights the rest of it, however many levels deep you are working.
• NewProminent places on a detail level are spotted from a distance the same way they are on the map above, at the matching real-world range.
• ImprovedFill map is unavailable on a detail level too large to hold the result, and says how many hexes it would have written.
• FixHiding the map for players while a detail level is open now hides the wider map, instead of darkening a scatter of unrelated detail cells.
• FixReveal by region works at a detail level again, and reveals the detail cells the region actually covers.
• FixPlaces on the wider map now appear on detail levels two or more steps below it.
• FixResizing a flat-top map no longer shifts detail-level content off the terrain it was painted on.
• ImprovedAdding or removing a scale level now warns you when it would move explored ground onto different hexes, and says how much.
• FixHexes along one edge of the map no longer lose a quarter of their detail cells, which could not be painted or fogged and were missing from exports.
• FixDetail levels no longer show a fringe of cells past the edge of the map that looked paintable but had no hex above them to take their terrain and fog from.
• FixDragging a token, the party marker or a label on a detail level now takes the same hand movement as it does on the wider map, instead of several times as much.

General

• FixClicking a token with a paint tool selected no longer leaves the brush painting every hex you move over after releasing the mouse.
• FixMenus and popovers opened near the edge of the window now stay fully visible instead of running off the screen.
• FixTapping a hex on a touch screen now reveals a place name hidden behind a larger one, including with the Pan tool active and in shared games.

Exports

• FixPNG and Foundry exports made with a detail scale level selected now include terrain and place icons.
• FixExports and map thumbnails no longer come out missing icons or tokens that had not been shown on screen yet.

Shared games

• FixMoving the party at the widest sight ranges now reveals fog for players, instead of silently revealing nothing.

Performance

• ImprovedPainting on a detail scale level is no longer sluggish, especially with larger brushes on big maps.
• ImprovedTerrain and place icons are no longer drawn when they would be too small to read, so zoomed-out maps are faster and less cluttered.

Paths

• FixThe path order controls no longer cover the path point they float above, so points can be hovered and dragged again.
• ImprovedThe path order controls are smaller, and no longer appear at all for a path that crosses nothing.

Farmland

• NewNew Farmland terrain for fields of crops — the worked land itself, separate from the Farm point of interest.
• ImprovedThe Farm point of interest now uses a sheaf of grain, so it reads clearly against the new Farmland terrain.

Detail levels

• FixRemoving a large detail level no longer crashes the editor. Very large removals cannot be undone, and the warning now says so.
• NewScale settings can now find and remove hexes left behind by an earlier change to your detail levels.
• ImprovedA detail level too large for the map to load again is refused when you add it, instead of after it is generated.
• FixTerrain and POI icons no longer disappear after an autosave while you are zoomed into a detail level.

Large maps

• ImprovedLarge maps load faster, especially ones with a detailed scale level.

General

• FixCrop to content no longer trims tokens, or content on detail levels, off the edge of the map.
• FixA resize whose only change is clearing a stray off-grid token now applies instead of doing nothing.
• ImprovedThe resize warning now also counts point-crawl connections that would be lost along with a removed node.
• FixYour Pro status and favourites no longer disappear when the server briefly cannot read your profile.

Points of interest on detail levels

A place you put on the world map also appears on the detail levels beneath it, in the middle of the area it covers. That icon is now a real handle rather than a picture: drag it where the place actually belongs, or rename and remove it from there.

• ImprovedDrag that icon to put the place exactly where you want it, instead of taking the spot the map picked.
• FixDragging it no longer paints a row of copies across the map.
• ImprovedRename and Remove on it now act on the place itself, so a removal sticks at every scale.
• FixDragging it out of its area now moves it on the world map too, instead of leaving the two views disagreeing about where it is.
• FixRemoving its only copy on a detail level now asks first, instead of quietly putting it back a few hexes away.
• FixMoving a point of interest no longer leaves a duplicate of it on the detail level below.
• FixEditing a settlement on a detail level no longer sometimes renames one of its outlying places instead.

General

• FixAn expired or already-used confirmation link now says so, and offers to send you a new one.