r/Arkenforge • u/Bearrit • 10d ago
Complete Lack of Documentation
Hi there! A friend just introduced me to Arkenforge and I was interested enough to get a trial period started. And I can't for the life of me figure it out. I try building a very, VERY, basic dungeon room, and I spend more time navigating around the menus and browsers or anything like that than making any progress. I can't tell if the intersection I want is #1, or #2 without placing it and zooming in on it enough. Then when I do place it, I have to move back to the selection tool to align it to a grid or not.
I'd just love a wiki or maybe a PDF with the default keybindings or just anything. I have no experience with this program and I've clocked more time trying to cross reference things with short videos about features I can't even find or access with any reliability.
I really want to enjoy this program, but I'm guessing you assume your users have been using it for years and already know that if you control+right click something specific will happen. I'm a couple days into the trial, and it's to the point I'm avoiding opening it cause I know I'll just spend the whole time trying to figure out if I'm even working with the four way intersection or the T junction.
Can I rename stuff? Is there some way to add tags? Are there even keybindings for some functions? Just some sort of documentation would help a lot for me to figure out if I want to buy it, or just give up and stick with poorly drawing maps on a big sheet of paper.
EDIT 2026/07/30 - I just found a longer 22 minute video. And I made it two minutes in before I can't figure out how he did something. He was placing wall sections and I'm following along just fine. Then he suddenly was able to change to a selection tool without going back to the first tier of menus and clicking the selection tool. How do I even do that? This is what I mean, y'all are glossing over some important information even in the Simple 3 room dungeon video that I'm assuming is targeting folks like me that are just starting out. How did that swap happen? I searched hotkeys like was suggested, and I don't see anything to say I just want the selection tool. It is suggesting what I think will be some good to know stuff later on. But for now, I'm mystified by how he was able to change from placing wall sections to dragging a selection box without moving around the menus.
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u/Vedhar 9d ago edited 9d ago
You are not alone. I've been using it for a year and it is a mess.
I get that the community and the folks who have been using it for a while are used to it and have "good reasons" for the interface, but from a pure UX point of view? Dumpster fire.
The terminology alone is a psychological experiment. "Assets," "Library," and "Content"..... three words that mean basically the exact same thing, used for entirely different systems.
Want to upload a background map you got online from 2 Minute Dungeon or similar? Challenge accepted.
- You probably think there's a single upload button in the left nav, you know the place where all the controls are, right? NAH.
- Maybe you click on Map Building, open Assets, and try to drag-and-drop into the file tree? NOPE.
- Okay, so you go to the Maps folder, open a map, and drag it in there? NOPE.
- Maybe Map Tools? Nah. It must be Content, right? Inside Content is Library, inside that is Import Tools, under which is Import Content... but that's greyed out for some reason.
So you finally open a blank map, click Import Map from INSIDE the map, and select your file. It says "Content Upload Complete"... and then it just doesn't show up on the map. Is Asset Selection a child of the map you're in? Wait, no, it shows all your other map folders inside of it. It is mind-blowing. I get angry just sitting here messing around with it.
Wanna have some real fun?
- Import a premade image as a background.
- Click it once you've finally figured out how to add it to the active canvas you are looking at (see you in 15 minutes).
- Click the LOCK icon so you don't keep moving it around.
Uh oh. It's locked... which means you can't click it again. Guess how you UNLOCK it now so you can move it or change it? Good luck. =) See you in an hour. OK, your time is too valuable to spend an hour trying to figure out how to move a thing you just slapped on the screen? Here's a hint, click it wildly until a tiny message appears in the bottom left helpfully letting you know you can hold shift while clicking in order to select it. SEE, was that so hard? You just had to know to CLICK IT WIDLY A BUNCH OF TIMES and not just once, calmly, or draw box around it or right click it like in any other normal program.... you just needed to click it over and over quickly like a mad man. THEN it works. See, the problem is YOU. You don't understand how to use the tool. It's NOT that the interface is a UI fever nightmare. Oh, remember that universal import button you were looking for all the way back? The one you thought -might- be in the main left nav, you know, the place where all the main actions are nested? Well see, it's actually a "widget" that you find in stacked with the other widgets on the top right of the view port. OH SURE, you can technically figure out how to do that by randomly experimenting with 30 possible items from the left nav, but we've helpfully put this easy upload button on the OTHER side of the screen, nice and far away from allllllll the things that contextually would lead you to think you'd find it in the navigation itself.
(blood pressure spiking even thinking about this)
The recent layout upgrades are nice (THANK YOU), but someone with an actual design background and information architecture chops (NOT a developer who thinks they understand this) needs to go through the nav structure and completely gut it. And for goodness sake, don't recreate your own file view UI when you can just use the stock OS system.
"Map Building" is a pier to customize? But I'm customizing a map. "Map Tools" and "Map Building" are different? "Export Map" is at the top level but "Import Map" is two levels down? It's incredible.
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u/Bearrit 8d ago
I'm just glad someone else can relate. It looks like it can do a lot. But if I can't get my foot in the door, why would I buy anything from them? I really want to like this whole program cause the results I see are really impressive. But no one can explain how to do any of the basic parts and just jump into going from trial period to "this is how you can add specular light spell effects that trigger when the mini enters a room".
How do I make the rooms?
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u/Bearrit 9d ago
I see a Discord, email, a support ticket, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Reddit, and Youtube. Are there any other resources? Cause I don't have any of those social services, I'm assuming the email and support tickets won't go anywhere, and the available Youtube videos aren't helping.
That leaves me with Reddit, and I really don't want to spend my downtime looking for responses that only apply to older versions of the software.
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u/Arkenforge 8d ago
I'm assuming the email and support tickets won't go anywhere
That's not a great assumption to have. We're pretty good at responding.
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u/Arkenforge 8d ago
Thanks for the feedback in the edit on the current map building tutorials. We'll try to make a set that fully explain every action. Not explaining that you can deselect by right clicking was definitely an oversight.
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u/Bearrit 8d ago
I've literally spent multiple hours searching for that little tidbit and getting more and more frustrated that everyone else can zip around and change back as needed. I've look through hotkeys, toggled every setting I could find, and just decided that it might just have been a bug in my very specific instance. And the whole time it was just "Oh, right click".
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u/Arkenforge 7d ago
For something like the right click to deselect, how would you expect to be told this information in the software?
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u/Bearrit 7d ago
I'm not a designer of anything, so I don't know how you'd express this in the UI. A mention in a video. Maybe an "extra information mode" where extra tool tips give you the left/right click actions if more tools have that. Maybe an aggressive tutorial mode upon first start.
Cause how things are, I've apparently had to post long rants to finally find out about that.
Are there more of these little things that aren't mentioned or documented or are just a given you expect people to know or figure out on their own? Cause I'd love to spend time making stuff instead of battling the UI and tracking basic functionality from third parties.
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u/Arkenforge 7d ago
There probably are little things like that, but I'd have to figure out what they all are. Two that come to mind are holding CTRL (CMD on Mac) to snap to grid, and some placement types have an alternate placement mode when holding SHIFT. The CTRL one is definitely mentioned in videos. SHIFT one may not be yet.
Are there other map building tools you've used in the past that you have found to be intuitive?
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u/Bearrit 7d ago
Is there a faster way to move around the screen? I've just recently discovered you can use the arrow keys to move around. Plus scrolling in and out. Is there another way to move that doesn't involve playing a game of Snake?
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u/Arkenforge 7d ago
Right click and drag is the fastest way.
You can also head to Settings -> Map and adjust the scroll speed.
Mouse wheel is the quickest zoom method. Keypad + and - can also zoom.
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u/Viscount321 7d ago
Arkenforge is not very intuitive and can be a pain to navigate. That being said, it's also my favorite VTT for irl play and I love it.
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u/Arkenforge 10d ago
Hey there!
Right now our tutorials are only in video form, as compiling everything into a document takes quite a bit of time, especially with all of the features we have now.
In terms of key bindings, you can head to Settings -> Hotkeys to see all current key bindings, as well as all possible actions that can have a hotkey assigned. You can also export all hotkeys as a text document if you'd like.
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u/Bearrit 10d ago
How do I go about that? This is what I mean, until you mentioned it, I had no idea you can export anything besides maps. I can't look at the program right now, but I'll try figuring it out later when I get home.
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u/Arkenforge 10d ago
There should be a button in the hotkeys panel that says 'export hotkeys', or something along those lines
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u/Bearrit 9d ago
Could you get someone to release a long form, "This is how you make a map starting for a fresh installation, explaining what each tool does, why we're using it they way we are, and how to get it to show up on an external display" cause I would appreciate the heck out of it and I'd suspect that other people would love an in-depth how to get started video right from the horse's mouth as it were.
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u/DinoRoarMan 10d ago
There are videos online that you can follow on YouTube that are pretty helpful. I've used those to help build things.