All I play now is no-map, no-portal, and I really like it, but adding no-portal to no-map adds quite a bit more difficulty (IMO).

It's not so hard to find stuff, but it can be much more difficult to find your way back. Being able to portal around means that you never really have to find your way back, other than to transport ore. I don't know how far your swamp is, but you may run into some issues transporting ore back if you didn't map your way there.

Of course, it gets worse the farther out you go, but you can generally get back on track by following the tree.

One tip that you may run across. When you go into any dungeon, the game can turn you so the passage ways run a different direction than what you think when entering. This can lead you the wrong way if you use a marker in a dungeon to try to find a boss.

I've started flipping off nomap when I enter/exit a dungeon if I'm trying to get the direction of a boss. You can just flip it off, enter/exit, and watch if your arrow rotates as you enter exit and take that into account to get the direction.

If you don't want to flip off nomap like that, just know that you might be going in the wrong direction and get multiple directions before you commit too much. AFAIKT the direction is correct more than it's incorrect.

Also, I would say that your success is very map dependent, or at least can be. My previous map was terrible, in that (among other things), I had to track through plains and mistlands to get to Moder, and I didn't know about the rotation issue at the time, so I got sent all over the map.

My current map, it took a bit to find The Elder, but Bonemass was easy, I found Moder without trying on an adjacent mountain, and I found Yagluth without even trying as well. Yag is also just 3/4 of a days sail away. It would be even quicker if I didn't have to go through swamp and two rock fields on the way there.