Frankly, I cannot believe that I, or anyone else, feels that they have to make a guide such as this.
The game map is diegetic and I can hardly believe that anyone ever played any game with a map of the game world, when they can't even figure out that if you can use the obvious starting island building and the big thing at the center of the map to figure out how to get to the closest x representing a town.
I'm sorry for not being sorry about being rude to you people specifically who have been infantilized by exploration games that include illogical and non-diatomic GPS.
Now read the next section where I am hopefully much more patient now That I've vented my anger over this try to keep up with the idea that a big, visible object can be used for navigation.

According to Wikipedia, a map is a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc.
This means that upon a map, such as the one you are able to receive at the beginning of the game, there will be a shape with many symbols, representing recognizable or important locations.
(The map you are able to get at the beginning of the game)

On this map alone we see the entire game world, two towers on opposite sides of it, something big in the middle, and a lot of x scattered across. This map is consistent across all sessions.

When you start the game, after the first fight you will always find yourself on an island with a tower consistent with the two on the above map. Looking at this tower and the one on the map, you can determine that you are in one of two places, since you are not an entangled pair of particles nor are you an omnipresent force, being, or idea.
A feature of many decently made games is an accessible tutorial. Pressing escape brings up the pause menu, upon which there are 5 buttons, the second of which from the top is tutorials, viewing these the second tutorial talks about a feature to help you find your way, Bird's Eye.
(The Tutorials section of the pause menu, highlighting the Bird's Eye feature)

This feature is useful for locating specific spots and objects nearby, such as plants, dungeons, towers, THE PLATEAU, resting places, and villages. You press the up arrow under your traditional enter key and a bird goes up, to go higher keep doing that, to go lower, and stop being bird you simply press down arrow until you are no longer bird.
(Anymore here and I might just put the entire thing here.)

With map and a good high spot to look at the world from we can now try to find where we are. The first step, look for something recognizable. We shall call this our "landmark"
This can be almost anything so long as you can find it on your map.
A specific island, a town, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ massive plateau at the middle of the game world, a dungeon, etc. all can be "landmarks" so long as you can find it on a map that you have, you can use that map to navigate the area it shows.
Make sure the map you are looking at actually includes your "landmark," this requires the use of multiple "landmarks", luckily the game provides one massive "landmark" at the near center of the world that can be seen rather easily from almost anywhere, the MASSIVE plateau in the middle of the mainland.

This massive landmark literally in the middle of game world is the single greatest landmark for finding out where the ♥♥♥♥ you are because you can almost always see it, but because it's usually so far away and so indistinct from different angles, we need another landmark.

This is where we start looking for other things such as villages, towers, rest places, and unique geology. For this example we shall attempt to locate to the area marked by the x existing on this map of the area around Hork, working from the assumption that we just got the map and are thus at Hork.

The spot marked by an x on the map is supposed to be another village it seems, that may have been wiped out by the fog since it was on the mainland. If we want to reach this site to (dis)prove this we must first figure out in what direction it is. Since we know the plateau is in the middle of the mainland, and we can see the mainland from the island upon which Hork exists, we can figure out the general direction we need to go to reach the x marked spot.
Now to figure out exactly where to go, we can look at the Hork map again for more landmarks we can see. There are 3 towers on the map, 2 of which we can see from Hork, the one on the right side of the map has an interestingly shaped body of water near it which we can also see and take note of. Looking a bit to the left there's the delta upon the banks of which is the location marked by the x.


You can do the same to figure out where you are so long as you can see some landmark and find it on a map.

YOU CAN IMPROVE BIRDS!
When you see that, GET IT!

HIGH SMOKE IS A VILLAGE
LOW SMOKE IS A REST STOP

MOST LANDMARKS ARE REALLY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ UNIQUE
If you're having trouble orienting yourself to one, go to the side opposite the middle of the map and then do it again. Also many can be seen on the world map as well as the local maps.

YOU CAN ALMOST ALWAYS SEE THE PLATEAU
There are 4 quests in the game and 3 of them create at least one marker on the plateau that is always visible from anywhere on the map (as far as my will to experiment goes).

IF YOU SAIL OUT INTO THE INFINITE OCEAN, USE THE BIRD TO SEE YOUR QUEST MARKERS
There is nothing out there and you will never run into anything heading in one direction. If you sail out into the sea use the bird's eye to find your quest marker and then sail towards it, and go do something else while you wait for your party to return to land.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT ANYTHING
Every enemy in the overworld has a border around it indicating it's detection radius where they will begin chasing you. If you avoid it then you will never get into unneeded fights, and even if you cross it, if you run away for long enough they will stop chasing you.

To everyone in the discussions tab who actively complained that the map isn't a GPS, to everyone who thought of making a guide here and didn't.
And to everyone who shall be enraged by me implying that they are infants by using the word "infantilizing" in the first section.
They may claim either "I did your mom" or something in a similar vein, which is the weakest argument, my mother's sex life is not my domain and mine is not her's. And anyone with just enough logic and anger might claim that by making this guide I am infantilizing players, when really I am attempting to make you indepenedent from GPS maps by teaching you how to use them when they don't spoonfeed you that info.

Being "spoonfeed" something is infantilization, like how every map in video games seems to show exactly where you are and where everything else is at all times, never letting you figure out where you are. I am attempting to free you, now it's up to you to do the rest.


This has been the annoyed gamer Lucarvee, passing the hecc out



Also special thanks to my friend Muffin for vibing with me to help me calm down a little for the rest of this. Couldn't have done it with them.