Map generation in the asphalt mines

[JRB]

One aspect of zone generation in the asphalt mines is very conspicuously dependent on whether you arrive by stairs down or stairs up. The stairs you arrive by are typically surrounded on all sides by liquid (asphalt or lava depending on depth), whereas the other stairs are typically not. Maybe this is by design, but it's very noticeable if you explore by, say, descending through the central zones, then transferring to one of the others and coming back up: on the way down, all the upstairs are on islands, and on the way up all the downstairs are.

(I know that, strictly speaking, the dependency is on whether the zones immediately above and below have previously been generated, rather than the actual direction of arrival.)

By the way, I have just spent a considerable amount of time exploring the asphalt mines (hunting king crabs for Baetyl-ish reasons), and I found myself wondering why all the zones at every level are completely isolated from each other. Seems like it would be more convincingly mine-like if there were access tunnels or something.

(BTW I hope you won’t eventually just turn all the outer zones into generic underground biome, as you did recently for the similar case at Bethesda Susa, which I was a bit sad about.)