Tilemaps: Raw, LDtk or something else

Working with tilemaps seems to be a bit of a headache whenever you get to a large number of tiles.

Do folks generally work with the tilesets raw (i.e. just using the SDK) or do they use external tools?

LDtk looks awesome.

I'm wondering what people's goto is.

Haven't used it myself but I know ldtk is popular. There is a ldtk importer Lua library for playdate

This is old, but still Importer for LDtk level editor - #19 by Guv_Bubbs

I hadn't seen his video before, just the one @SquidGodDev did.

Has anyone come across an in depth tutorial with LDtk? I'm trying to use it but Biomes and advanced tiling is giving me massive grief. I've read the docs, they're either very terse or I'm reading the wrong ones.

Any help?