Atlas progression help

I got 16 stone,

now I need to put 4 stone into a zone to spawn a conqueror... but I seem to be unable to progress..

Let's say I have a map lvl 12,

do I put 4 stone in that zone but the map now is not the right level

or
I put 4 stone into the adjacent zone ?

Honestly I'm kinda stuck on my map progression, I want to avoid buying maps lol

You need to put the stones in the region where you want to spawn the conqueror. (Make sure the conquerors that can spawn still have a stone available in that region; you can only get a color once in each region.)

Then you need to run maps of the tiers that are showing in that region with those stones socketed.

If you don't have maps of the correct tier, you will either need to choose a different region where you do, or you will need to get at least a few maps of the correct tier to start working in that region.

Yes, once you have 16 stones, things may slow down a bit.