I've taken a minute to gather my thoughts on these matters so here's my proposal and the problems I'm still facing in a nutshell.

[quote=@Zelosse]
[@Haeo] alternatively it could be a really shitty map.
It doesn't display the stuff in the way, the pace you would have to take, the stopping, the fighting, the climbing, the backtracking. There's no yellow brick road in my mind that goes perfectly down the middle.
Except from first town to bulls run.

So that's not really a big issue. We're focused on meownsters
[/quote]

This is very true and accurate.  And, as we're focused on monsters I should remember that the entire first level would count as a beginning zone and would have a very, very limited variety of monsters and items.

[quote=@Zelosse]
<Snipped quote by BlackPanther>

I was willing to let people find other animals and such. Even non hostile ones. There's bound to be more than just a handful of animals.
Vultures, hawks, giant ants, swarms of insects, giant frogs, snakes, wild horses, BULLS, etc. 
[/quote]

I think that the variety would be in animals as opposed to monsters.  The kind of things that give no experience and only food ingredients.

[quote=@Zelosse]
Puttin' a lotta thought into this and I like it. We'll roll with that since its way more plausible.
But I do wanna keep in mind that each floor of Aincrad is gargantuan. I originally had a unit of measurement that just said "hella" on it. 
What do you think would be an acceptable amount of time to travel in this area, given that teleportation is possible.
I'd thought of saying there were signposts or something that acted as a teleport location to certain safe areas across the first floor. Because walking everywhere one end to another in my mind would take up days. From start zone to the floor boss it would take a week of travel at least. I'm talking about on foot, overnight, walking.

The potential for people making camps during the initial exploration phase is very high so there needs to be areas, despite being in the forests or deep in the tunnels of the gorge, that are considered minor safe zones. 
Monsters dont come close. 
[/quote]

The SAO canon included teleport crystals and town to town portals but did not show any other forms of teleportation.  They also showed neither camping nor equipment for it, leading me to believe that towns were not far apart.  Most of the tough marathons were inside the dungeons themselves.  I'd say about a day or two at most between towns and probably simple shelter being necessary for safe camping.  Basically, buy or build a tent and use it to be safe inside through the night.  Outside the tent is full nocturnal monster turf.

This seems to mean that the level of the monsters can be anything so long as players have the same level mobility.  How flexible do we want this to be and when do we want to time-skip?  The first boss was cleared after two months.  What happens in the mean time would be pretty repetitive.