I’ve been a paid subscriber to Inkarnate for over three years.

At this point in its development, I don’t think there’s any map you can’t make with it. Some of the most beautiful maps I’ve ever seen come from it and the addition of the line and shape tool finally pulled me away from Dungeondraft for good.

But it’s still a pain for me to use. After all these years it’s still clunky to me and not intuitive. I think the reason is because I don’t use it all the time. Every time I go away for a few months and come back, I don’t remember all the shortcuts and commands. I get a headache having to undo everything I just did and redo it with all the time.

Also, there are a million tips and tricks out there to use the full capabilities of Inkarnate. I find myself having to re-research how to do something over and over. Most of the tutorials are more than two-hour long live streams I have to search through on YouTube to find a specific technique. If I ask for something specific, I’m always told to “join the discord.” I’m on the discord. People there are helpful but I don’t love it.

My objective evidence (outside my own experience) for this are the maps on the website. There are some stunning maps there. Absolutely beautiful. But I’d say about 75% of them are made by Mati or a small group of Inkarnate experts.

Bottom line is that I recommend Inkarnate if you have (a) the time to completely master it and (b) the consistency to not forget what you’ve mastered. The subscription price is great. But as an occasional user, I sometimes dread using it because I know I’m going to spend hours trying to make a map only to have to start over when I'm done because I’m not happy with the result. I don’t mind spending my time on hobbies but I want the time to be productive within the hobby itself.

My one recommendation for Inkarnate would be to publish a comprehensive written guide with links to concise tips and tricks for all the things you can do with it and how to do those things. This way, casual users don’t have to post on Reddit, “join the discord” and ask, or search through hours of live streams to figure out something simple but not intuitive.

Just my two cents.

I don't have a map tool and will need one long term. I just don't know what my other mapping options are either.

I'm considering using Inkarnate Pro for a fantasy novel project, and I'm wondering if I'd be judged by fantasy cartographers and indie author community if I used it.

I’m thinking about getting pro, but I’m not very good with it. Is it worth it and what are some of the additions

Is there somewhere I can get sample maps? Just getting started and it would be nice to be able to play with a map versus build it all from scratch. I'm looking for something like the Four Worlds map from Shannara. I saw an old post of one and that would be a great help.

Question from a novice DM here! After a couple of sessions my campaign is approaching its first dungeon (a city catacomb), that i obviously made with Inkarnate using Fantasy Battlemaps. The map is finished, but then i realized i didn't think about how actually we're going to play in it.

Our group plays around the same table, we don't have an horizontal screen so no miniatures, we have a screen but i lack of softwares that let me efficiently manage player's movement, but mostly control the fog of war. I considered playing directly on Inkarnate but with all the HUD it's not the best experience. For the last 30 minutes i also tried to understand how Roll20 works, but i find that it haves terrible controls (no zoom on mouse wheel, really?) and in DM mode i can't use correctly the fog of war.

Any suggestion from veteran DMs? Thanks in advance!