Toxic Alliance before Scarlet?

[TheLadyOfTheRings.9148]

Hi everyone.

Why do we see the Toxic Alliance in low level maps even before getting to the Scarlet's War story? Did the alliance exist already? I was under the impression it was Scarlet that brought the Nightmare Court and the krait together and formed the alliance.

Thanks!

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

The Toxic Alliance story took place in Kessex Hills, and during Season 1 open world maps would be affected by the events of the LW Season (this also continued a bit into Season 2 but not as much), similar to how you can encounter Molten Alliance events in Diessa at any time now that Flame and Frost returned.

Unlike most Season 1 content, the remnants of the Toxic Alliance remained in-game in Brisban, Kessex, and Gendarran Fields. They were removed from Queensdale and Caledon, and severely reduced in Kessex.

The Toxic Alliance did not exist before Scarlet united them.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086
typo

[Dawdler.8521]

All LS has been the same thing so this is nothing new, in the open world you're seeing the aftermath for the end of the story before you begin the return of the story. 

[Danikat.8537]

Anet don't want to split players into different versions of the map based on which parts of the story they've completed, so each open-world map only has 1 version even though it's possible to have multiple copies which can have different events running and things. (Having played a game which did seperate players based on story progress I think that's a good choice, even though it causes issues like this, because suddenly being unable to see someone just because of your story progress is much more annoying.)

Originally all the LW stuff in open-world maps was visible to everyone, even new players, and making permanent changes to the maps was promoted as one of the features. The story was written such that it could work for players coming into it at any point and whether you'd finished the personal story or not - you could interpret it as Scarlet's attacks happening at the same time the Pact was building up to fighting Zhaitan.

Before the Toxic Alliance most of the permanent changes were either fairly minor (like adding Cragstead and North Nolan Hatchery and the steam vents around Craglorn) or in higher level areas or otherwise less noticable to new players who probably hadn't finished the personal story, like the Aetherblade path in Twilight Arbour and the jumping puzzle in Gendarren Fields, or the revamped Tequatl fight.

The Molten Alliance and Aetherblade invasion events were tempoary and stopped happening around the time the next episode came out, the Toxic Alliance was the first to stick around. I'm not quite sure why that is, whether it was purely a gameplay decision (they thought those events worked well enough to be permanent) or they thought they weren't too obviously out of place, or maybe both. But either way I seem to remember the lore explaination was that Scarlet was getting better at pairing up groups and the krait and Nightmare Court chose to keep working together after she stopped influencing them.