Originally posted by Fzanco:

Did you have a cartography table?tried using the cartography table? and checking the cartography table options in the map screen? And I know you said same character but are you definitely sure about that?

Thankfully I built a cart table and it has most of my progress, but probably set me back 5 - 10 hours since I didn't update it last time I played.
That isn't a perfect solution though because those areas are still grayed out instead of being discovered. But it helps

I'm 99 percent sure this is the character I used since I just got the root armor on this world. I also spawned in my base, not at the spawning stones
But I can go through the characters I have and check. I'm just afraid of doing that an losing more progress for those others characters
I'm trying to figure out why that would happen before I start testing a bunch of things