For the map size, I wanted it to feel spacious and fit together well, without it feeling like everything was crammed together. I will admit that, for the map size, I was feeling maybe a bit too ambitious.
I was working on and reworking this game for a while, and I wound up making it and trashing it through a few RPG Makers, so I may have been too easy on the tf part and didn't force it more. Something that could be a simple hard mode setting, or a lore/hard mode.
As for why, it was in-world; we can go with just to escape.
Thanks for the feedback, i worked this over abit and wound up kinda losing my mind doing some of this coding for it. I'm working on another one atm in Godot. But it's very much in the alpha stages.