How do we want to "Find" the starting town?

[CollinHerber]

My first thought is we would have a NPC that the player found very early in the playthrough that had a NPC dialog option to "Show me the way" to the town. Once they found the NPC in the world it would move in with them.

Once they visited the town they would unlock the waypoint system so so they would be able to travel using that.

[GabeHasWon]

I'd personally aim for having a like, background element that looks like a path between trees or something and a faded sign saying "Ravencrest" that the player then travels to, placed on the surface.
The idea of an NPC moving in is fine, but town NPCs generally have more rng associated with them. That being said, someone like the Travelling Merchant, let's say the Wanderer, could be guaranteed to come by spawn by some day after starting and would add a bit more flavor than a static structure.

[CollinHerber]

Had an interesting thought about having that sign that you mentioned.
I was thinking about the NPC that would come visit you was actually a Raven that would guide you in a direction after maybe ur first night on the main world? The raven would lead you to the path in the world that would take you to Ravencrest.

I thought that was kinda thematic. I am unsure what the traveling area would be though. Would it just be on one of the edges of the world? Would it be some underground path?

Or maybe we just go with the traveling merchant approach at that point. Or the raven is interactable like a NPC and one of the dialog options is "Follow the Raven" or something goofy.

[SernoGer]

We could introduce the player to the raven after the first boss is defeated, and after another night passes, dialog will automatically appear telling you to speak to raven in the quest book. The raven has a glow around it to indicate that it is the raven (or we could have the ravens location on the map)

[GabeHasWon]

I think the Raven would definitely work. I don't know about mysterious dialogue after a night, and I think it'd be best for players to be introduced to Ravencrest and the whole waypoint/town/quest mechanics as soon as possible. Making it after first boss means a lot of the mod is simply nonexistent, which could be weird for incoming players.
Raven could definitely just appear naturally on some premade structure, and something like a glow would work yes. I'd put a lot of emphasis on making it a surface structure, since underground is prone to rng and simply being ignored by the player, whereas most players explore their surface entirely before doing any boss.

[CollinHerber]

My intention with bosses is for them all to have their main introduction/start of the boss be replaced with a quest or map instead. IE "There is an extremely large slime that has been a menace to the town.. take care of it please..." having it locked behind the first boss fight is likely not a good idea. I'm thinking just after the first night the raven would begin showing up.

I like the idea of maybe the structure including a broken version of the Arcane Obelisk (Waypoint selector) that the player needs to fix or just simply activate. Then the waypoint to Ravencrest would be "pre-programmed" into the obelisk.