Terrain - illegal placements - pros & cons

Hi all,

This may be covered elsewhere but I couldn't seem to find it.

I've experimented a lot with "illegal" placements of terrain - mostly trees - to build a more dense/exciting/interesting world. In essence I'm simply placing a bunch of very small trees as close together as possible, and then I change their theme to what I really need, and boom: I've got myself a very dense and more organic looking forest than otherwise possible. This also works great if you place a small tree underneath a surface, and then change it to a taller tree - in this way I can make my hillsides a lot more interesting.

What I'm asking is two things:

Are there downsides to this "hack"? I've found that if I need to change illegally placed terrain later on, the other pieces it touches might disappear.

Are there more tricks like this - do you know of more creative uses of terrain? My (small) complaint with world building is that often you end up with rather schematic, gridlike worlds. I really wish I could place stuff on hillsides, have less regular surface terrain and so on ...

Any input would be very interesting.

Last: I've been lurking for way too long. This is an amazing community and I love the stuff you're doing. Thank you!

Seen this used in the previous games as well and it's very effective. Not sure of downsides as haven't used it much.

There's some great tips like this. My fave is making a fire or smokey ground using block pieces with the ring of fire below it

You could also try the replayer trick. Place the trees where you want them using a replayer. Then clear the replayer and place the terrain. When you play them back the trees should be on the hills.

note: I do know there were some toys in 2.0 that didn't work with the replayer trick. I am not sure if these were fixed in 3.0.

Hi there! I have used the replayer often, but it used my game to be crashed^^ I mean i used it to create some Terrain, after i have posted some mountains and walls. After reloading the Level, the replayer did not post the Terrain, because there was no space for it.

Better put first every Terrain you want on the map, then put everything arround and then transform it. thats the best way to do in my opinion.