Online, no one seemed to have found the real size of the map of Death Stranding. Screenrant, Gamerant, Techbriefly and many others very confidently say that the map is between 200 and 500 miles squared. This is very, very wrong. So, I decided to figure out the size of the map myself. In this article, I give you the full breakdown for the investigation of the REAL map size of the game. You’ll get the answers, as well as how I calculated them.
How big is the Death Stranding map?
The Death Stranding map size is about 21 km2, or 8.1 miles2, when combining the sizes of all three maps. The approximate sizes of each maps are as follows:
- Eastern Region: ~ 2.5km2 (~ 1 miles2)
- Central Region: ~ 18 km2 (~ 6.9 miles2)
- Western Region: ~ 0.5 km2 (~ 0.2 miles2)
I did these calculations myself, since none of the answers I found online were even remotely close to the actual number.
Below are some annotated maps to give a visual sense of scale, as well as the steps I took to calculate the map sizes. Light map spoilers for those who have not finished the game. However, note that only the locations of UCA facilities are marked. Prepper locations are not shown.
I made the maps by screenshotting MapGenie’s Death Stranding Interactive Map, and using Photoshop.
How big is the Eastern Region?
Death Stranding’s Eastern Region map size is about 2.5km2 ( or ~ 1 miles2) of actual, navigable terrain.
How did I calculate this? This map was a little tricky since it is diagonal and has a weird shape. So, I resorted to in-game measurements and good old pen and paper.
First, I took the distance between Port Knot City and Capital Knot City in game, by placing a marker and using the Odradek. This was 3.625 kilometers, or 2.25 miles. Then, I printed out the map and measured the meters per centimeter scale for the printed-out version, with the distance that I already checked in-game (3,625 km). The scale was about 489.86 meters per centimeter.
Then, I traced a rectangle that contains most of the walkable terrain of the map. Then, I measured the right side of the rectangle (1.7 cm, so 685.81 meters).
Finally, I multiplied 0.68581 km with 3.625 km to calculate the area, and got 2.486 km2. I rounded up the result to 2.5 km2, which is about 1 miles2.
You might notice that the rectangle does not contain all of the walkable terrain. However, this is accounted for, as some of the rectangle also contains non-walkable terrain. I tried to make it so that the amount of walkable terrain outside the rectangle is roughly the amount of unwalkable terrain inside the rectangle.
How big is the Central Region?
Death Stranding’s Central Region is the biggest in the game. The size of that map is about 18 km2, or 6.9 miles2.
To calculate this, I fast traveled to Lake Knot City, stood on the entrance to the private room/Garage, then put a marker on the Distribution Center North of Mountain Knot City. Finally, using the Odradek, I looked at the exact distance between these two points.
Then, I traveled to the Distribution Center North of Mountain Knot City, and stood in the middle of the entrance to the private room. Using the grid of the in-game map, I went straight down, and placed a marker on a specific mound south of the map (the same mound that the vertical arrow is pointing to in the map below) and directly south of me. I looked at that distance again, using the Odradek.
I know that the calculated area doesn’t contain some playable area left of it. This is taken into account, since much of the area in the bottom right, in the area that I calculated, is not actually playable terrain.
As such, the terrain on the left not taken into account is roughly accounted for by the empty space on the bottom, bottom right and right side of the area I calculated. In other words, I tried to make the two cancel each other out, much like for the Eastern Region. The spaces left outside the triangle are accounted for by the empty space within the rectangle.
How big is the Western Region?
Edge Knot City is by far Death Stranding’s smallest area. It’s under 0.5 km2, or 0.2 miles2. To be honest, I think it’s smaller than that, but I was pretty generous with my measurements.
For this one, I measured the distance between the Distribution Center North of Edge Knot City and Edge Knot City (898 meters). Then, I eyeballed it. The map is basically a straight line. So, taking the beach into account, I determined that the width was about 1/3 or 1/2 of the length.
Since this is the smallest map, and getting this one wrong would not have much of an impact on the overall map size, I decided to go with about 500 meters2, even though the size is likely to be less than that.
Why did I do this?
How big is the Death Stranding map? This is a question I had before playing the game. However, because of the current state of SEO and bot-written articles, the answer you get when you type “Death Stranding map size” in Google is an answer from a Gamerant article: 230 square miles.
This is obviously wrong to anyone who’s played the game. I also haven’t been able to find where the number comes from. Plus, I found it weird that no one seems to have attempted to calculate the true size of the map since the game came out, especially since the game gives you a very precise way to calculate distances between two points. So, I decided to do it myself.
Death Stranding is a great game. When I first got to the Central Region, I was disappointed, as it felt really small. But I eventually changed my mind. The map is the perfect size.
I wrote articles / did SEO for a website for about a year. I did rather well but it taught me a lot on why Google sucks SO hard rn, and doesn’t actually give answers to questions.
So I wanted to write an article in somewhat of an SEO-friendly manner to give people a more correct answer to the question “how big is the map in Death Stranding?“. It’s about 21 km2, or 8.1 miles2. Bigger than Skyrim, but slightly smaller than Breath of the Wild’s map. Not 230 miles2. Seriously Gamerant.
On a different note, if you’re looking for another great game to play that’s free or less than 5 bucks, I highly recommend Vampire Survivors.
Keep on keeping on ✊
FYI: according to your calculations, the Western map would be 500,000m², not 500m². 500,000m² corresponds to 0.5km², which you correctly wrote at the beginning of your article.
Good catch ! I only caught my mistake recently. I corrected the measurements accordingly.
Robin, I’d like to comment on one of your videos I saw on Youtube as well as some of your journalism stuff. Don’t you have an email form that I can use ?
Hello Gary, feel free to contact me at the following email: linkardchannel@gmail.com