About the grid-killing, we're working on variation tiles which should help a lot there.
Len actually did some very nice tiles that i intended to use for this tileset :

- LenDesertTiles.png (58.28 KiB) Viewed 2320 times
Adarias had also made some nice desert ground tiles :

- AdariasDesertGround.png (18.24 KiB) Viewed 2320 times
I also had a try myself, just for practice (i know, it sucks) :

- desertGroundTests.png (38.94 KiB) Viewed 2320 times
We'll probably end up using Len's tiles.