always in the black forest

merchant should have vegvisir stones in swamps or blackforest that gives you his location, as with bosses. he is way too obscure for being the exclusive outlet for a whole category of resources, and exclusive access to certain content

On my map I didn't find him until 240 days in. He was in black forest, next to Bonemass spawn.

you need to be quite close for him to trigger, maybe on middle of an island you have traveled around? he is supposed to spawn close to inner circle, about where meadows begin to have draugr villages. always in black forest. look for those medium large full black forest islands.

if you wish. you can look at the map online. if thats to much spoiler, you can share the seed with someone and have them look and then make you some kind of riddle to find him, or vague description of his loc.

Been resisting urge to input my seed into world generator to find Haldor's spawn locs.

For sure haven't missed him in any explored area - my map reveal radius is 100 meters, base game default - but Haldor is revealed on map anytime you are within 400 meters. And I have no non-revealed areas on my map where I have traveled.

Have spread ever widening circle of completely revealed -and- explored areas - this is just a really bad rng seed and believe enough ppl have experienced results that contradict the wiki on Haldor spawns.

e.g. one wiki says Haldor spawns within 1500m of start loc but most ppl have found that technically he can spawn basically anywhere on the map, including furthest edge. Just rng.

i believe it is also possible that he don't spawn at all. i would at least get two things verified before spending 24 hours sailing around. is he spawned at all and is he on the outer rim.

on my map i was about to give up and check the website, but then i realized there was a small chunk i hadn't explored. of course, there he was, the last place i look.

what im trying to say is. if you feel you have done a just search, and actually way above effort to find him. id say that makes you eligible to check the map. exploring way beyond where you are supposed to is also spoilers in its own way imo.

if im not mistaken you can set the map generator so that only haldor will show, unsure if you can tell it not to reveal map. thats a minimum of spoilers.

oh good point about the different world generator settings - looking at it right now I see both checkbox selections to include/exclude only the spawns I want to see, and dropdown to show Full Terrain, Biomes Only, or No Terrain (Fog)

Sounds like if I only check Haldor box, and select No Terrain, I will have an unrevealed map but show generally where in world Haldor spawn locs are.

Will give that a try.

Check plains. Plains spawn in the mid section of the world, from far left, to far right, halfway up and halfway down, but not too close to the center either.

You wont find anything extreme north or extreme south.