Guild Wars 2

Back in Eye of the North, the manual hinted that the Jade Sea seems to have been beginning to thaw. This was further alluded to in Winds of Change. However, with the Festival of the Four Winds and the Zephyrites many Canthan-like decorations, I noticed one that’s in plain sight yet rather hard to catch due to being darker and in a corner of sorts.

It is a jade statue of a fish. This holds significance in two ways:

1. It further cements the notion that Zephyrites just came from Cantha – pretty much confirms it IMO, since it is just like the Solid Ocean Fractal, and the Jade Sea is the only known place to hold such large jade stones.
2. It indicates that the Jade Sea is not fully thawed even 250 years after the hints of thawing (if not thawed much at all).

Screenshot of statue in attachments. What do you all think this can mean?

Talking with one of the first NPC when you arrive from LA, she gives a lot of hints that they went to Cantha and the decoration idea came was based from there.
Also, even in GW1 there was The Jade Quarry, that jade wasn’t sea water that turned by the Jade Wind, that was just regular jade, so that statue could be made of regular jade.

The Jade Quarry was indeed part of the Jade Sea that was solidified by the Jade Wind. It was in fact the purest of the Jade made by that event. And I am well aware of Fade at the bottom of the docks, as I even alluded to his (it is a male NPC, not female – he just has a femenine look) dialogue.

I just noticed that was you that made the OP after I posted, so I would assume that you knew about the NPC (I’m amazed it is a male haha), and I could skip that part

There are some items made of jade and also the crafting item jadeite shard in GW1, those are probably jade from the quarry and not from the water turned into jade and likely same material used in that statue.

The jade from the quarry is water turned into jade.

As for what it means, I’d guess that the Jade Sea didn’t thaw. Unlike the Echovald Forest, the reported changes in the Sea were “unsubstantiated rumor at best.” It could easily turn out that the belief that the jade would thaw was just wishful thinking.

First thing that came to my mind: how the hell does jade thaw?!

Bellyboomer.3048:

First thing that came to my mind: how the hell does jade thaw?!

Same way water petrifies? Just in reverse.

I guess we won’t really know until we head to Cantha for ourselves. My guess is that the areas farthest from the Harvest Temple might be undergoing thawing, but the closer we get to the epicenter, the more lingering magic from Shiro’s scream remains.

Marjory also mentions the decorations are very much like ones her parents got from her grandparents… and she’s canthan descended.

IMO, I think Jade that was mined, removed from the sea, and carved (or left like that) remained as jade. However the jade in the sea itself slowly started reverting to water.

Course, that’d be interesting as it’s half and half about the creatures within the jade. They could be dead, or they could simply be frozen… cause we see some leviathans (canthan/jade sea origin leviathan, not Krytan/sea of sorrows leviathan) burst from Jade chunks and are perfectly fine.

Belzebu.3912:

There are some items made of jade and also the crafting item jadeite shard in GW1, those are probably jade from the quarry and not from the water turned into jade and likely same material used in that statue.

You clearly didn’t read my response to you in full.

The Jade Quarry is frozen Jade Sea. The shore of it, specifically speaking. To quote from the outpost description:

“Although the Jade Sea more than lives up to its name, the jade that makes up its petrified waves is not necessarily of the best quality. The Jade Quarry has been literally carved from the stretch of seabed that contains the finest and most valuable jade derived from the mineralized bodies of countless sea creatures. Mining in the Jade Quarry is extremely dangerous, as the Kurzicks and Luxons are almost constantly fighting over this valuable resource.”

Bellyboomer.3048:

First thing that came to my mind: how the hell does jade thaw?!

Same way ice melts – in this case – since though it is called jade, it is literally just petrified water (as opposed to frozen). Or the same way metal would melt when heated high enough – it turns to liquid.

Kalavier.1097:

IMO, I think Jade that was mined, removed from the sea, and carved (or left like that) remained as jade. However the jade in the sea itself slowly started reverting to water.

How does that work? It’s all the same jade, some of it is just mined out while the rest isn’t. Same materials, same magic affected it.

Only way it’d work is if Canthans are actively using magic to keep it jade, rather than letting it thaw “naturally”.

After all, there were quite a lot of statues and other art objects using that jade for materials.

Or it was a sort of side effect in that region only. IE, the magic of the death wail was fading from the Jade sea, and the jade within slowly turned back to water. But jade outside remained Jade.

OR, not the entire Jade sea turned back to water. Perhaps only a section of it did, and certain areas remain as Jade. Or perhaps it didn’t turn back to water at all, and the water was caused by something else.

Or, entirely as you said, Canthans figured out a way to keep it as jade, magic or otherwise upon carving.

That first scenario would make sense only if the jade removed from the region thawed faster.

I can float for “only a section of it did” – I’ve personally been a fan of the idea that the jade is thawing so slowly that now, in GW2’s time, we have giant iceberg-like blocks of jade throughout the Jade Sea.

With statues, it would make sense that they learned to freeze it perpetually/with maintenance.

But still, the notion that “it isn’t thawing, and the rumors are false” still hangs in the air. And I wouldn’t mind that either, because the jade statues were one of my favorite aesthetics of Cantha.

It is entirely possible that the Jade Sea is not thawing at all, and people are simply misinterpreting increased amounts of real water in the Jade Sea (from hundreds of years of precipitation and runoff) as the sea thawing, when it actually isn’t the case at all.

It could make mining the jade increasingly difficult as water levels rise though.

The rumors of thawing Jade Sea is not just in pools of water on the surface, but that there’s moving water beneath the Jade. So rather than it being rainfall and whatnot (which should have been so commonplace given 200 years of frozen sea), it would be more likely if the water only froze so far down, and the Luxons just mined far down enough.

Edit: For reference sake, the lines of the rumors:

“Over the past few years, life has begun to spring up in Echovald Forest as many areas have seen new growth take hold. Some even claim to have seen a change in the Jade Sea—small pools of water forming or even waves moving beneath the frozen surface—but these reports are unsubstantiated rumors at best.”

Kurzick Peasant 1: “I wonder…With the Afflicted gone, will the forest begin to heal itself?”
Kurzick Peasant 2: “I am certain that it will, but the question is: what happens because of it?”
Kurzick Peasant 1: “What do you mean?”
Kurzick Peasant 2: “Think of it this way: Our people have adapted to life in these petrified woods. New life and new creatures have found their homes here. What happens when all of that changes?”
Kurzick Peasant 1: “I see your point. But there’s one thing we can take comfort in. While our people may have tough changes ahead of them, it’s nothing compared to the Luxons.”
Kurzick Peasant 2: “When the Jade Sea thaws, the lot of them will just sink!”

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Bellyboomer.3048:

First thing that came to my mind: how the hell does jade thaw?!

Same way water petrifies? Just in reverse.

Yes but Jade is not a natural form of water. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the jade sea water that was transformed into jade trough magic? It seems weird to me that magical jade just naturally thaws into water, without any changes in heath or pressure that we know of.
It would seem logical to me if the magic that caused the transformation was stored inside the jade and is now seeping out, reversing the change.

If thats correct, we can probably speculate untill we can tie bubbles to the thawing…

A simple idea, but one I think should probably be mentioned, is that maybe jade already existed before the coincidentally named Jade Sea. Just because the sea turned into jade, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the only source of jade in Cantha. They named the sea AFTER jade, even before it ironically became jade, so the name came from something. Perhaps the statue is simply made of plane ordinary jade and not the jade that was formerly a sea.

I’ve always been curious about the Jade Sea and how it was used by the Luxons, how they adapted to the sea changing their habitat.

Before the Jade Wind turned it to solid Jade, the sea was a normal watery ocean and the Luxons had to change their trade as a typical seafaring nation of merchants to being more stationary and turned to jade mining.

The sea was called the Jade Sea before the Jade Wind turned it to Jade, in fact, everyone was surprised it wasn’t turned to frozen ice (which you’d expect of solidified water) but instead solid jade. There was magic involved with the transformation; so if the jade sea ever is to thaw again, will it return to water? Will it become a gooey of minerals on the seabed and the sea will just have dried out…?

The quotes of those Kurzick peasants is odd though, of course, yes, the Luxon settlements – like all those structures in Cavalon, Seafarer’s Rest, etc. will just sink and most likely the giant crabs, but many of the Luxon homes are also their old fleet that was frozen in place. I’d expect those ships to float in the water if the jade was ever to thaw. So, depending on how quickly the Jade Sea would reverse its transformation (thaw slowly? or in an instant with a reversal of the Jade Wind), the Luxons might have time to evacuate on board their ships.

I would really like a GW2 return to Cantha to touch on this as a cataclysmic event; the Jade Sea returning to its original watery form as part of a campaign there.

/equip tinfoil hat

Is it possible that when the sea was turned to jade it was infused with magic, and that magic keeps it jade? And that it is slowly reverting back to water since the magic is being drawn out / consumed by something (cough elder dragon cough)
Just a random idea I had

Most of the ships had hull breaches or damage from the suddenly wind and/or the water turning to jade and striking the hull.

Though yeah, I could buy that only so deep (still a hefty distance though) was turned to Jade, and the Luxons just got deep enough in one-two spots to see the water. Pools of water may have just been areas that got heavy rainfall and the water started to form ponds and such.

The forest is a different matter, because even when chunks of it were stone there was plant life growing. I think the ground might heal (or at least start getting enough dirt/soil to support life) but the trees remaining as stone. Or simply plants adapted to the stone… cause I mean, even in factions the forest was pretty lively at the bottom with lots of plant life <_<.

bazul.4506:

/equip tinfoil hat

Is it possible that when the sea was turned to jade it was infused with magic, and that magic keeps it jade? And that it is slowly reverting back to water since the magic is being drawn out / consumed by something (cough elder dragon cough)
Just a random idea I had

That’s what I was saying I think to only logical way for jade to thaw into water is if the magic is wearing of.
And bubbles could be a suspect.

Did the sea begin to thaw because Shiro died or was it simply because so much time had passed since the Jade Wind it began to naturally lose it’s power? Does thawed jade return to water or did the Jade Wind permanently alter it’s composition to become something else?

The little bit of info we get post Factions about it suggests to me that the jade is turning back into water, so there must be some magical process going on in Cantha that is working on the jade. Either the magic of the Jade Wind lingered in the Jade Sea after Shiro’s death and was only purged from the land when he died, or it was going to dissipate anyway.

Knowing how Elder Dragons consume magic, what if the Jade Sea was returning to water not because of Shiro’s death and the curse being lifted, but because something was consuming the magic of the Jade Wind that was causing it to remain jade? This would mean that any jade that was removed from the sea keeps its shape (and that explains why a jade sculpture survives today) but the jade in the Jade Sea is being drained of its magic by an Elder Dragon “lifting the curse” of the Jade Wind and causing it to return to normal.

I do like the idea of Canthans learning to harness the latent powers of the Jade Wind or emulate it in some way. The thawing of the jade could be a natural process as Konig suggested (no dragon involved) and Canthan magic users can somehow maintain jade/petrified stone if they want to. I wouldn’t get too invested in the idea of a human-centric present day Cantha. While we may see a lot of humans bunkered down in Kaineng City, I suspect the Echovald Forest and Jade Sea have become the domain of other creatures.

I would like to reiterate that there is nothing definitively saying that the Jade Sea ever began to thaw. In Factions, and even Winds of Change, it was only hearsay and speculation. There was no evidence to it, just wishful thinking that things might return to normal.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I would like to reiterate that there is nothing definitively saying that the Jade Sea ever began to thaw. In Factions, and even Winds of Change, it was only hearsay and speculation. There was no evidence to it, just wishful thinking that things might return to normal.

Indeed. And the talk about the Forest healing was just talk. Nothing indicated the stone was turning back… the forest simply had regrown a lot of plant life at the ground level.

It was HINTED at happening, but never confirmed or shown.

i’d imagine the thawing is an extremely slow process, one that at most has formed some lakes throughout the sea, but nothing more. think earth’s polar caps.

and since jade isn’t ice, the temperature doesn’t affect its speed, so they can take that statue wherever the hell they want, and while it is slowly “melting”, the process is likely so slow that you’d at most notice a few details have been lost after a couple years.

speculation aside, i kinda want the jade sea to remain frozen by the time we see it in GW2, but i also kinda want it fully thawed, if only to see such a huge watery expanse up for exploration (with maybe giant underwater jade chunks still persisting). as for the echovald forest… well, it never looked that cursed to me. looked like a normal, mossy forest with some goths living in it. so whether it reverts or stays stone is indifferent to me.

One thing I was thinking is the Luxons could create lakes and rivers in the jade sea. Mine jade to form a canyon, fill the canyon with water to form a river… same thing for lakes.

But yeah, the process (if happening) would be so gradual Luxons wouldn’t be threatened at all… they’d have time to move settlements and build boats before it happens.

The way I see it is that Shiro’s curse still has lingering after effects – some that just simply can’t be cured even with the removal of the curse. Powerful magic leave lasting marks even long after the magic has faded, so it may be that the jade sea will be more like canyons and ridges with water flowing through them rather than thawing out completely. same with the echovald forest – many trees remain petrified even though new plant life begins to grow.

Squee.7829:

A simple idea, but one I think should probably be mentioned, is that maybe jade already existed before the coincidentally named Jade Sea. Just because the sea turned into jade, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the only source of jade in Cantha. They named the sea AFTER jade, even before it ironically became jade, so the name came from something. Perhaps the statue is simply made of plane ordinary jade and not the jade that was formerly a sea.

This is the best answer. Why? Because if the sea is going to “thaw” or has thawed then that statue wouldn’t exist anymore if it was from the jade in the sea. Deduction: The statue isn’t made out of Sea Jade, but jade that has been and always will be jade.

side note: I don’t like the term “thaw” for the description of what the sae will do when it turns from jade back into water because thawing is the process of a liquid losing it’s frozen form and returning into a liquid state from a frozen state. They should use a made up Asura term for something returning into a liquid from just a hardened state.

Well, keep in mind that thaw comes from GW1. There were no asura in Factions, and asura were very new to the surface in EotN and had no reason to be interested in Cantha. Why would they have developed a term for it at that point?

Liquidification if you must. The opposite of solidification. :P

Or “melting”.

Alright, the jade from Jade Quarry may be from the Jade Wind, but the jade in Aurios Mines may be prior to the Jade Wind, right?
I refuse to believe that 100% of the jade from the Jade Sea region come from the effect of the Jade Wind, if both Jade Quarry and Aurios Mines jade aren’t real, where the jade came from before the Jade Wind?

(the number of “jade” used in this post is over 9000)

Belzebu.3912:

Alright, the jade from Jade Quarry may be from the Jade Wind, but the jade in Aurios Mines may be prior to the Jade Wind, right?
I refuse to believe that 100% of the jade from the Jade Sea region come from the effect of the Jade Wind, if both Jade Quarry and Aurios Mines jade aren’t real, where the jade came from before the Jade Wind?

(the number of “jade” used in this post is over 9000)

something i think it’s worth bringing up, the jade sea was probably named that after the color of the water (example). before the jade wind, they could get jade from anywhere else. remember that we only explored a very tiny portion of cantha, relatively speaking, and a good chunk of it was walking on top of an inland sea, and another on an oversized slum (neither of which we saw the full extent of). there could be jade mines in territory we didn’t go to as GW1 characters.

Aurios Mines was also from the Jade Wind. But it contains artifacts from well before, frozen in that jade.

I don’t think there was any jade before the Jade Wind, as all jade we know of comes from petrified Jade Sea. At least there wasn’t any that we were informed about ever to even potentially exist.

But then again, why would anyone mine jade from elsewhere? The jade from the Jade Sea is outright stated to hold magical properties – and the Jade Quarry’s jade held the riches of these properties (which is why it was often fought over, since Kurzicks need that magical jade for making juggernauts, while Luxons need it for commerce and ammunition in their siege turtle cannons).

@Bruno: It seems most likely the Jade Sea was named after the color of the sea, and that color is also likely why it became jade when petrified, rather than say, clear crystal or sapphires (or some other blue-ish gemstone).

JQ jade must be an awful lot better to justify the effort of going there for it… if the rest of the jade sea was remotely comparable the inflationary effects of having that much of it would be amazing and there’d be little point trading it (except out of Cantha perhaps, but the price would be almost entirely transport costs unless the Empire intentionally restricted quantities). In much the same way water isn’t particularly valuable in the real world.

What’s interesting is if the Jade Sea indeed is thawing (or melting), what happens to all the jade that has already been mined out of there and possibly sold to merchants all over the world? Does that start melting too? Can the Luxons get in trouble for essentially selling everyone just plain old seawater?

The statue of the Jade Fish that the Zephyrites had… will that melt into water too? What’s stopping this from happening?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Aurios Mines was also from the Jade Wind. But it contains artifacts from well before, frozen in that jade.

I don’t think there was any jade before the Jade Wind, as all jade we know of comes from petrified Jade Sea. At least there wasn’t any that we were informed about ever to even potentially exist.

But then again, why would anyone mine jade from elsewhere? The jade from the Jade Sea is outright stated to hold magical properties – and the Jade Quarry’s jade held the riches of these properties (which is why it was often fought over, since Kurzicks need that magical jade for making juggernauts, while Luxons need it for commerce and ammunition in their siege turtle cannons).

@Bruno: It seems most likely the Jade Sea was named after the color of the sea, and that color is also likely why it became jade when petrified, rather than say, clear crystal or sapphires (or some other blue-ish gemstone).

i brought up the naming thing because some people were using it as an argument for a jade mine existing in the sea before the jade wind, which is about as logical as expecting to find a diamond iceberg in the middle of the ocean.

i do think it’s possible, probable in fact, that there was jade before shiro screwed everything up. after all, jade is the name of a stone, so it stands to reason that if they named their inland sea “jade sea”, then it’s because they had jade to compare colors with in the first place.

as for why mining from the sea instead of anywhere else, well, that’s easy. why go through the obnoxious process that is traditional gem mining for minimal results when you have a whole sea made of the kitten thing? add in magical properties and you have the perfect reason for traditional jade mining to be abandoned.

Vesuvius.9874:

What’s interesting is if the Jade Sea indeed is thawing (or melting), what happens to all the jade that has already been mined out of there and possibly sold to merchants all over the world? Does that start melting too? Can the Luxons get in trouble for essentially selling everyone just plain old seawater?

The statue of the Jade Fish that the Zephyrites had… will that melt into water too? What’s stopping this from happening?

like i suggested before, the process is likely so slow that it would take decades to see a noticeable difference on a statue like the one the zephyrites have. it’s very likely that the jade sea’s landscape is largely unchanged, save for some bodies of water here and there.

of course, i have as much basis to argue this as anyone else has to say that the whole kitten thing melted/is melting as fast as an ice statue in the desert. i just think it stands to reason that something that big would have a very, very slow thawing process, like our polar caps.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i do think it’s possible, probable in fact, that there was jade before shiro screwed everything up. after all, jade is the name of a stone, so it stands to reason that if they named their inland sea “jade sea”, then it’s because they had jade to compare colors with in the first place.

My thoughts exactly.
There is no color called “jade”, so the Jade Sea was named after the jade stone.
Maybe the Jade Sea didn’t have any jade at all before Shiro’s “accident” but somewhere in Cantha had a jade quarry.

I hope that the Jade Sea hasn’t thawed. As much as I loved the Echovald Forest and the Jade Sea (they were among the most unique environments I have explored in any game, ever), I liked the idea that defeating Shiro slowly began to undo the effects of the Jade Wind, and I had become attached to the idea of seeing how Luxon culture had adapted to the very floor beneath their outposts slowly melting away from them. Not to mention any other implications it might have. I also very much liked the idea of exploring the Echovald Forest in all its original beauty, and I always saw a melted Jade Sea as an opportunity for Guild Wars 2 to show off its much-touted underwater combat with a region that was largely water (this was before release, I should add :P).

I’m also just opposed to the idea of hinting toward future developments, and then retconning it, if I’m honest. We also have Jade Wind Orbs, Priory’s Historical weapons, and Dragon’s Jade weapons, so it’s not like jadeite as a material isn’t still around a few centuries later; I just hope it’s because those items were separated from the “main body” of jade, or the jade is from another source (as others have speculated above).

In any event, given how much Tyria has changed since saw it in Guild Wars, if Cantha has changed even a fraction as much nearly all of our predictions are bound to be off.

Sirius.4510:

JQ jade must be an awful lot better to justify the effort of going there for it… if the rest of the jade sea was remotely comparable the inflationary effects of having that much of it would be amazing and there’d be little point trading it (except out of Cantha perhaps, but the price would be almost entirely transport costs unless the Empire intentionally restricted quantities). In much the same way water isn’t particularly valuable in the real world.

Except that you have to be able to mine it – that’s why the Quarry exists, obviously it’s not as simple as going out with a pickaxe and hacking away at any random bit of the Jade Sea. Just like anything else it’s a specialised skill, which is what enables them to make money from it. It’s no different to farming, technically anyone can get hold of some land and some cows, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to turn a profit from it.

I don’t imagine the Luxons let just anyone run around on the Jade Sea mining it. Not to mention there were extremely dangerous monsters running all around the place – which is probably one of the major reasons the Quarry functioned well and was able to turn a profit despite the abundance of Jade.

@ Tamias, the Jade Wind Orb contains “jade wind essence”, it doesn’t actually say that it is made out of Jade.

Tamias.7059:

In any event, given how much Tyria has changed since saw it in Guild Wars, if Cantha has changed even a fraction as much nearly all of our predictions are bound to be off.

off topic, but since GW2 came out, i’ve been hoping that kaineng was mostly razed/destroyed in an arson, and most of it was abandoned, leaving room for literally anything other than more kaineng to replace it.

as much as i love cantha, i am not looking forward to spending half my time in the continent navigating the ugly, brown, repetitive labyrinths that constituted kaineng city. that place was just obnoxious, and actually caused me to quit the game for months because i couldn’t stand it anymore.

So I went back to Morostov Trail, one of the greener Echovold Forest zones from GW1. More than simply new plants growing on the stone, I found roots and trees that were visibly in the process of turning back into wood. Picture attached.

What this tells me is that the effects of the Jade Wind do reverse with time. Therefore, the Jade Sea should be turning back into water. The question is: how quickly? Konig, I like your idea that parts have turned back into ocean but there are still big jadebergs scattered around, hence the sculpture.

I would presume that, given enough time, all jade removed from the Sea will return to water. However, I would also presume that there must be some magical method of preventing pieces of the jade from reverting. Surely such a method has been discovered by the Luxons over the last 250 years.

Kalarchis.8635:

So I went back to Morostov Trail, one of the greener Echovold Forest zones from GW1. More than simply new plants growing on the stone, I found roots and trees that were visibly in the process of turning back into wood. Picture attached.

What this tells me is that the effects of the Jade Wind do reverse with time. Therefore, the Jade Sea should be turning back into water. The question is: how quickly? Konig, I like your idea that parts have turned back into ocean but there are still big jadebergs scattered around, hence the sculpture.

I would presume that, given enough time, all jade removed from the Sea will return to water. However, I would also presume that there must be some magical method of preventing pieces of the jade from reverting. Surely such a method has been discovered by the Luxons over the last 250 years.

well the thing is “turning trees into rocks” doesn’t keep new plantlife from sprouting, unless the jade wind had some poisonous effect on the soil that i’m not aware of. so even if it never reversed, the echovald forest would eventually look like a normal forest again.

the jade sea, on the other hand, used to be a bunch of water that is now solid. there’s no room for more water to fill it unless that jade gets out of the way first, so the sea is stuck with “lets reverse the magic”.

Yes, that’s exactly why I went back to those zones: to see if the greenery was merely new plants growing on the stone, or if the stone was actually reverting. What I found is that both scenarios were occurring.

Presumably this means that, even if the rate of magical reversion was the same, the Forest would return to a natural state faster than the Sea would.

Kalarchis.8635:

So I went back to Morostov Trail, one of the greener Echovold Forest zones from GW1. More than simply new plants growing on the stone, I found roots and trees that were visibly in the process of turning back into wood. Picture attached.

What this tells me is that the effects of the Jade Wind do reverse with time. Therefore, the Jade Sea should be turning back into water. The question is: how quickly? Konig, I like your idea that parts have turned back into ocean but there are still big jadebergs scattered around, hence the sculpture.

I would presume that, given enough time, all jade removed from the Sea will return to water. However, I would also presume that there must be some magical method of preventing pieces of the jade from reverting. Surely such a method has been discovered by the Luxons over the last 250 years.

Maybe highlight the parts of “It turning to wood”? because I don’t really see any of the roots being wood like in that picture, just stone.

Kalavier.1097:

Maybe highlight the parts of “It turning to wood”? because I don’t really see any of the roots being wood like in that picture, just stone.

Stone parts circled in blue, wood in red. The stone in the forest is all uniformly grey, while parts here are brown. You can see the transition clearly on the root in the left-foreground of the picture.

Okay, to me the only case which I see that is the far left. All others seem to just be shades of grey, stone textures… and not wood looking.

Must be a difference in our eyes then, because I very clearly see the deep, reddish brown of wood. Particularly if you compare the bottom right blue circle (standard Echovold stone color) to the bit directly above it.

That looks like a situation of shading and lighting making the gray look different color. Some are lit up while others are not. I don’t see any wood going in there.

More important is that we were told in EotN that Echovald was changing (though it did specify that the growth was new), and that the Jade Sea probably wasn’t. If they were the same, shouldn’t they revert at more or less the same rate? And if they were different, why would Echovald changing mean that the Sea would also change?

How about this one then? Here’s a root with flat-out straight line demarcations between the grey and brown parts. I understand the shading argument, particularly since Morostov has a reddish tint to it. But I can’t look at that bit in the second picture and see anything other than wood.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

More important is that we were told in EotN that Echovald was changing (though it did specify that the growth was new), and that the Jade Sea probably wasn’t. If they were the same, shouldn’t they revert at more or less the same rate? And if they were different, why would Echovald changing mean that the Sea would also change?

You misunderstand me. I said that even if the rate of magical reversion were the same, Echovald would return to “normal” more quickly b/c this process is aided by the growth of new plants, which are not tied to the magic reverting. Therefore Echovald’s return to normal = magic fading + new plants growing in stone, while Jade Sea’s return to normal = magic fading only. The forest has a mechanism which will return it to normal even if the magic doesn’t fade, whereas the sea does not.

It’s also possible that the new plants growing in the stone have the effect of increasing the speed of magical reversion for the forest.

i might be wrong, but did ANet ever patch the effects of story events changing the landscape? even freaking winds of change didn’t get rid of those kitten ed afflicted.

i’m sorry kalarchis, but i think that if those things you’re showing us have been there since factions was released, then there’s little point in discussing it.