This is more of an addendum to my post about mapless runs. Another convenient thing about mapless runs is that the game's sky is pretty realistic - you can easily orient yourself with it.

Before everything, while it sounds obvious, you should know that not every part of the sky will be visible to you. Obscuration via rain, sandstorm and other things are pretty likely, so this won't work every time. Unlike reality though, full moon does not dim stars, so that's a relief. You can also technically turn clouds off in the settings.

You might think you need calculations to find out your latitude and then find out those small fucking stars and shit. I mean yeah, but you don't have to do that for basic stuff, such as orienting yourself with it. Thankfully, the game does not do hard calculations for the angle of the planet itself.

How to find north:

1. Make sure you can see stars, any stars. The clearer the better.

https://preview.redd.it/xjjv9vivff0h1.png?width=1819&format=png&auto=webp&s=ffb2b38646638b1240b8c9e7dc52567f8ca15537

2. Look closely at the stars. They are moving. See where they're moving, up or down.

Game simulation sped up x16 for demonstration purposes

3. They are moving down here. The planet turns counter clockwise to the north, and clockwise to the south. I am looking at the west.

https://reddit.com/link/1t9t24a/video/t467atwgif0h1/player

4. I have successfuly found around which point stars turn, which is called the south pole. This is the direction of south, as shown with the compass.

As for your latitude, it's easy to determine. The higher the visible pole is, the higher your latitude. As in, one you can see, not obscured by the planet. The one shown in the video is obscured, for reference. That means that as you move towards the equator for example, the north pole will be moving downward gradually the closer you are, and the obscured pole will be moving upward.

You can use that in mapless runs to traverse great distances in preparation for the winter for example, or while traveling to story locations. If you don't do mapless runs, at least you will be able to determine your latitude without using console commands.

Listen up. Navigation can be exciting when actually incorporated. This game rewards patience. And thanks to some modders, as well as features in vanilla, you can fairly confidently navigate yourself all the way, not even getting lost while traveling to the story locations.

I will now explain just how many things you can do for a smoth mapless playthrough.

Vanilla

1. Mark important stuff with dirt or cob pillars

2. Use signs and signposts to signify where things are

3. When skies are clear at night, you can orient yourself using stars (yes, it's a feature)

4. Things on the ground are always oriented one way. You can find out cardinal directions that way, albeit it feels like a cheese.

5. You can write things down on a piece of parchment.

6. The sun will obviously tell you cardinal directions if you remember the school.

7. If you're thinking about vanilla quest maps, don't worry, you can still find the marked thing. You'll know how when you use them.

Mods

Oh boy there's a lot.

1. Salty's Reborn. It reworks death, so you respawn where you died, but the cost of that is time. How does that relate to this? Well, you now HAVE TO find a way home. For people that like to keep inventory on, this is an alternative challenge.

2. Salty's Bird's Eye. In short, it zooms out a lot, so you get lost less in early game. I find it funny that I've used it more often to spot bowtorns.

3. Cinders And Embers. Those add chiselable blocks that perpetually burn. Coincidentally, they work as very good smoke signals, letting you spot things easier. They are very expensive though.

4. Craftable Cartography. Ironically, it's meant to be used with an actual map. It adds sextant, which is a very inconvenient way to find out coordinates. It only works when you're under the sun (day, no rain, takes like 10 seconds to lock in) which is pretty balanced. It also adds a compass.

5. Realistic Surveying. Provides tools for small scale surveying. You can survey areas and draw maps that connect waypoints. Due to how it works, it's very bothersome to treat it as a normal map, it's easier to make several maps that connect in "checkpoints".

6. Wilderlands Waymarkers. Adds pretty markers and even buoys, so you can mark paths. Only takes pebbles to make them.

7. Critcher's compactor. When you hit dirt with a hammer, it becomes compacted dirt. Basically a nice tool to mark roads. You don't have to turn every single dirt piece. Adds a flint hammer too for compacting purposes.

8. Trail mod also works, but roads you make become dirt if you don't use them, which sucks. Mod 7 is better for this.

9. You want more landmarks for better association. River mods are a good example of this. Vistas Beyond is a relatively recent mod that adds a shit ton of variety to worldgen.

10. Tentbag plus. Make your tent with dirt and pack it up. The vanilla settings are very easy considering how overpowered it is, so I suggest making the hunger cost higher for packing/unpacking.

11. VS Paint. You can draw your own map literally in the game. There's not a lot of purpose behind it but it's really cool.

12. Billposting. You can pin your parchment on the wall and it'll display its contents. You can even change fonts via hypertext.