Craters

Craters is a 192x192 standard-difficulty map featuring a landscape sculpted by ancient impacts, creating a series of bowl-shaped depressions and elevated ridges that define the terrain. The main river flows from high ground in one corner with a current strong enough to overflow single-tile channels, creating a dynamic and sometimes unpredictable water flow pattern. The crater formations create natural basins that collect and retain water, providing multiple reservoir opportunities but also complicating water routing between different areas of the map.

One of the key challenges on Craters involves managing water flow at terrain forks and bottlenecks. When attempting to divert Badwater at the fork near the starting area, the diversion route contains several single-tile bottlenecks that can cause overflow, allowing some contaminated water to spill back into the main river channel. This means that simple diversion strategies may not be sufficient during Badtide events, and players must build wider channels or multiple diversion paths to handle the full flow volume. The crater rims create natural dam points, but the strong current requires reinforced barriers to prevent water from breaching containment.

The 192x192 size provides a moderate playing field that is larger than the compact 128x128 beginner maps but smaller than the expansive 256x256 options. This mid-range size concentrates the action and makes resource management tighter, as players cannot simply spread out to avoid problems. The crater terrain encourages vertical building along the rim edges and efficient use of the basin floors for farming and water storage. Both factions can succeed on Craters, though the water flow challenges favor players who are comfortable with precise floodgate control and multi-path water routing. Craters teaches valuable lessons about handling high-pressure water systems that apply across many other maps in Timberborn.