Why is desolation full of sulfur but crystal desert not?

[Minionman]

Answer here is probably a game design timimg. (when building prophecies, the designers just used regular terrain for all the areas, so crystal desert was a regular desert. Wehn making Elona, they needed something cool to make it stand out, so added the sulfur) However, it is interesting that the whole area was supposedly created at the same time, but the area south of mouth of torment somehow became sulfurous and craggy, but the northern area is flat.

Any thoughts on this? (I'll be back later with my own as well).

[Quintus Antonius]

The Mouth of Torment is in the Desolation, which probably has something to do with it. I believe I recall an NPC saying that the sulfur is seeping from the Mouth of Torment. The Crystal Desert is at a high elevation than the Desolation, so it's likely that the sulfar is just flowing down the gradiant and not effecting the Desert because it is above the area.

[Barinthus]

How did you figure the elevation? I figured that since Crystal Desert was once a Sea, it'd be near the sea level.

[Hadin Gar Kain]

that might help explain why the elonians had to take boats to the crystal desert instead of just walking there, cause of the sulfur content in the sand.

[Quintus Antonius]

Go to the portal in the Crystal Overlook to the Crystal Desert, then back again. To reach the parts of the Desolation that are sulfur covered, you need to go down. And remember, the Manuscripts say that the gods "raised" the Crystal Desert, so whatever caused it to dry up, also changed the land elevation.

[NameAlreadyInUse]

QA, you may be overthinking things a touch.

I assumed the gods had 'rased' the desert, meaning to level to the ground, rather than raised, or elevated the land. But I don't have the manuscript in front of me here.

Anyway, I think the sulfur has a simple explanation. Look at the map of the area, the desolation is a large volcanic expanse. The arae may be largely dormant but it is riddled with small to mid-size volcanic calderas. The entire region may itself be a large supervocano cladera similar to (but vastly less hospitable than) Yellowstone Park.

Sulfur fields and sulferous springs are relativly common in and around volcanic areas. It wouldn't require any explanation beyond basic geology. Extreme geologic conditions, sure, but that seems to be a theme in the GW universe. The crystal desert itself is little more than the Bonneville Salt Flats taken to the extreme, isn't it?

[Kinlin]

Sounds good NameAlreadyInUse. :smiley:

[Quintus Antonius]

Except that official sources pretty much explain it. I don't see how reading and paraphrasing directly from a source is "overthinking".

[NameAlreadyInUse]

Except that official sources pretty much explain it. I don't see how reading and paraphrasing directly from a source is "overthinking".

Sorry if that comment came off as insulting, that wasn't my intent. I was just trying to say that there wasn't really much need to get into elevation issues to explain things.

If it is a geologic issue, related to the past or present vulcanism in the area, then it would be quite resonable to expect sulfurous conditions in and around the caldera, but not much if any beyond the geologicly active area.

Granted, taking the walk to Crystal Overlook it does look like the desert may be on higher ground, but judging scale and elevation over great distance is difficult even in the real world, and regardless of actual elevation, most explorable areas in the game tend to be 'bowls' in which cliff faces and walls halt progress beyond the bounds of the zone (where the zones don't end in the universe's most abrupt continental shelf that is).

In any event, no harm intended there Quintus. For the record, I generally enjoy following your thought processes in your posts...

[eowen]

If you go to the edge of the the desolation, closest to the Crystal Desert, you will see there is a rift, maybe this is stopping the sulfur from spreading.

[Quintus Antonius]

The thing is, the Desolation was created by a war, it wasn't a natural occurance. I fully agree that if it were natural, that geographic explanations would be more than sufficient, but I think the intent of the OP was to find out why, when both were created by war, one was just dried up and the other was covered in sulfar. I think the answer is simply that the two things are not from the same process.

[PuppyEater]

Wasnt the sulfer supposed to be a side effect of the gods striking down abbadon in that area, nothing says taint of evil like a giant poisenous gas cloud that smells like one big fart :shocked:

[windcaller]

Wasnt the sulfer supposed to be a side effect of the gods striking down abbadon in that area, nothing says taint of evil like a giant poisenous gas cloud that smells like one big fart :shocked:

i doubt the gods defeated Abbadon by farting tbh.

And nowhere have i read about magic giving physical side effects.....

I believe the sulfur comes from the volcano. After all we have "poisoned outcrops" also.

[Goldfish God]

Go to the portal in the Crystal Overlook to the Crystal Desert, then back again. To reach the parts of the Desolation that are sulfur covered, you need to go down.

doesn't that assume the portals are at the exact same height. The ones in the crystal desert (the 4 pattern teleport shrine things) aren't always at the same height, so I don't see why it'd be something you can assume for the larger distances.



And remember, the Manuscripts say that the gods "raised" the Crystal Desert, so whatever caused it to dry up, also changed the land elevation.
Raised as in "lifted up" or as in "flattened/destroy/etc"

[Kryptonite]

I think that if he had meant razed, he would have said razed. But he said raised, so that's probably what he meant :tongue:

[Goldfish God]

I think that if he had meant razed, he would have said razed. But he said raised, so that's probably what he meant :tongue:
and the internet doesn't have any spelling mistakes :wink:

[Quintus Antonius]

Thank you for having faith in my lingual abilities Kryptonite. I do in fact know how to spell, Goldfish God. English is my primary language.

Also, I'm not assuming that the portals are at different elevations; I am saying that from the portal in Crystal Overlook, you have to walk downwards towards the Desolation. Futhermore, most concentrations of sulfar are in low areas, which is why bridges are built over these places.

[Gmr Leon]

I think of it like this really..The Crystal Desert was once a sea and,to my knowledge,the Desolation was once just another bit of desert in Elona. So what's the worse you can do to a sea? Dry it up. Worse you can do to a desert? Make it an even more deadly wasteland with the side effect of sulphur.

[Minionman]

My own view of this is that (besides the game design issues), the crystal desert in Tyria seems like the actual ocean section of the desert, while the desolation area (which has no ships) was a land area that also got hit, and the differences between thew types of rocks in both places would have caused the different shapes, and sulfur vs. lack of sulfur between the regions. (The rocks from the sea would end up being sea sand or salt, whereas the desolation rocks would have been anything)


I haven't been through crystal overlook yet, so wouldn't have a clue as to whether it is higher or lower than the arid sea, however, from in game descriptions, it seems "raise the desert" mean "raise the desert from the ocean", in which case the desert could be any height it wishes. If it were higher, it would provide an extra explanation for the sulfur.

As another nitpick, the descriptions of margonites fighting abaddon say that they created the whole crystal desert, not just desolation, and the original question at the start comes from noticing that somehow the area to the south was sulfurized, but the area to the north was not sulfurized for the same distance, even though Margonites were there as well.

The volcanic explanation makes sense, I hadn't though of that before, but it is broken up enough that it would work.

(Desolation also has its own silly questions, such as how an alkali pan could exist when the most common poisonous sulfur gases are acidic, or how sulfur fumes are poisonous on the surface, but not in a bridge crossing them, but I'm sure there's perfectly good particle physics explanation for those. :) )

[Quintus Antonius]

It may not be literal sulfur though. I doubt that they have the technology to determine what something is beyond the texture and smell, and since they can't touch it, that leaves simply the smell and color, which could be misleading, and give it the misnomer "sulfur" when in reality it's just "Abaddon's foul smelling death rocks", or something equally silly.

[Minionman]

Sulfurous gases do have a particular smell from what I've heard and seen, so even if people aren't sure that the haze is hydrogen sulfide (what is what I've heard and smelled has the particular "sulfur" smell, and makes the most sense for volcanic areas or in generla to be given off by sulfur sitting around) or something else, there is a particular smell that would show sulfur, and more sulfur would likely come from the rocks.

Sulfur has also been known about for a long time in history from what I've heard, so it makes sense that people in guild wars would know what it was.

(All this is just for a computer game though, it's likely Alkali flats were just named that way because Alkali sounds desertish, and even lore based the previous post explanation for alkalis, which may or may not have been known about for a long time, or have properties that would make them easy to recognize)

[Quintus Antonius]

The thing is, sulfur won't kill you in three seconds, I don't believe.

[Zion Farbow]

wouldnt sulfur hurt the crap out of u and like kill and erode off stuff ?? >>

[Minionman]

The thing is, sulfur won't kill you in three seconds, I don't believe.

Some sulfur gases are very poisonous. I've read that hydrogen sulfide is about as bad a hydrogen cyanide at similar concentrations (It certainly is poisonous, not sure about how fast it kills, but it does have a sulfur smell. Sulfur dioxide and Trioxide are also pretty poisonous, though trioxide doesn't have a sulfur smell. (I've smelled some of these in some chemistry experiments, and read about them afterwards, if anyone's interested in where this comes from).

If the area is volcanic, or if it's hot with some types of bacteria in the sulfur areas, othese type s of gases would likely be there, possibly in enough of a concentration to kill people walking in it, though I wouldn't know for sure. In general, though, there are some sulfur gases that are poisonous and could pretty easily be produced under the desolation conditions, and guild wars has the magic to produce them.

[Quintus Antonius]

Well I knew breathing or being exposed to it in large amounts for an extended period would kill, but I didn't think it would happen in three seconds. I suppose they could have trumped that up for effect though. However, as others have pointed out, shouldn't simply being in the Desolation kill you?

[Minionman]

Well I knew breathing or being exposed to it in large amounts for an extended period would kill, but I didn't think it would happen in three seconds. I suppose they could have trumped that up for effect though. However, as others have pointed out, shouldn't simply being in the Desolation kill you?

True on the last point, but than we enter the slippery slope of some female members of certain classes such as elementalist being excluded from the shiverpeaks, and we can't have that can we? :)

[windcaller]

Sulfur, alone as a Chemical element, won't hurt unless you stick your nose in the bottle and inspire it.

Sulfur, in some other compounds hurts.And....erm...not all sulfur compounds are deadly. You have Water with Sulfur in it, used for treatments (yes, peeps drink it) and sulfur is in our own body. When you get rid of certain gaseous substances from your body the stinky smell is actually the sulfur.

One of the harming compounds of sulfur is Sulfur Hydroxide (H2SO4) which causes some pretty burns. And if exposed completely you'll die in, yes, 3 seconds. But not due to the compound but due to the pain :)

But this lies in another chapter...hope the info helped.

[Kinlin]

It's a fantasy land with big fantasy clounds of sulfur that kill you in seconds, not much to discuss about. Visually the Arid sea seems to be located quite a few feet lower than Crystal overlook (If you have been there you already know) so the sulfur should flow down to that location, but it dosent.

I still think the desolation is due to volcanic devastation, it is the best way to reason out the phonomena. The gods open up the earth, creating mass devastation and volcalic erupitions by draging Abaddon down to the pits of whatever hell they wished him to be, leaving the resulting sulfur fields as a result.

That said, you can not explain everything in a fantasy world, perhaps people should just learn to accept it for what it is... fantasy. :smiley:

[leeto]

You can assume that the Crystal Desert is higher in elevation because since there are ruins of ships there that the past adventurers took, you can then safely assume that those areas were the shores and the harbors, which would be higher in elevation than the rest of the sea because it would be on the continental plate or whatever. The desolation pobably has sulfur because if it was underwater, there couldve been underwater volcanoes, much like there are many underwater volcanoes in RL. The sulfur then could never have reached the Crystal Desert, leaving the Crystal Desert clean and the Desolation not as clean.

[Quintus Antonius]

There is sulfur because of the Mouth of Torment. It is explain in game. Abaddon was struck down, it formed a crater, punctured Torment, and now sulfur leaks out, causing the Desolation.

[Minionman]

The problem with using only the abaddon explanation is still that the sulfur somehow went farther south than north, leaving the northern part of the desert formed at the same time clear.

[Quintus Antonius]

Well, another thing to keep in mind is that there was water in the Crystal Desert, it may have buffered the magical effects or something.

[Continumanomaly]

But there are no sulphur in Torment is there?

[Quintus Antonius]

There is actually. It just doesn't kill you in three seconds, and there isn't huge amounts, or large areas you can play in.

[Kalidri]

Actually, now I have to run back in there and get a picture, but WAAAAAY in the back of the Dunes bonus area there is a patch of what looks like sulphur to me. Lemmee see if I snapped it...


Edit: Dang it, was on my assassin and too busy staying alive at the time...could not break aggro...no piccies...

[Gmr Leon]

If that stuff is or was sulfur at one time it seems to have lost the kill in three seconds effect. Although it looks like the Giganticus Lupicus bones tell us it wasn't as lucky..

[Quintus Antonius]

The GL died thousands of years before the Desolation was created. If those giant bones are in fact Giganticus Lupicus skeletal remains, then they were simply there and uncovered, rather than being killed by the creation of Desolation.