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It may be seen from the game trailer and from gameplay itself that after being teleported riders of the Wild Hunt are all covered in ice, why is this happening? The weather is also change after riders teleportation, it all become winter alike. While when Ciri travels though worlds she doesn't look all icy.

I don't remember any explanation for this in the book, maybe there is something in the game that I missed?

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  • The world where the Wild Hunt comes from will be destroyed by White Frost (as will all the worlds eventually) so I think they bring part of that climate when they teleport. Also Ciri is lady of time and space, so she has better powers than they do.
    – Zikato
    Jun 16, 2015 at 10:39
  • @Zikato, but when Geralt was travelling with Avalah to the current world of the Aen Elle, there was no White Frost. And as far as I understand, the actual destruction of their world (current world of Aen Elle) by White Frost would happen in a really distant future by human standards.
    – Kostya
    Jun 16, 2015 at 10:51
  • Then my other guess would be that the Wild Hunt navigators open portals to White Frost, like they did in the mission Wandering in the Dark.
    – Zikato
    Jun 16, 2015 at 11:25
  • It's caused by high altitude. As we all know, in the first movie, Tony Stark found a solution to the icing problem.
    – Omegacron
    Jul 25, 2018 at 17:49

2 Answers 2

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I doubt you'll find anything on it in the books.

I think this frost and cold imagery associated with Wild Hunt is the invention of the games - more precisely, it's an attempt to reconcile the more canonical image of Wild Hunt in the third game with how it was portrayed in first one, where...

...in the game's finale, Geralt is lunged into a vision of the post-White Frost future, where he battles the spectres of Wild Hunt amidst a landscape covered in snow and ice.

If you're looking for a more in-universe explanation, I would think it's part of the "lights and smoke" ensemble that Wild Hunt employs to appear more terrifying and otherworldly to the inhabitants of the worlds they raid.

I wouldn't try to rationalize it with "this is what you get when travelling between dimensions without a proper anti-frost coating on your plate armour" ;)

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I haven't read the books, but the explanation offered in The Witcher 3 is that it is a spell. At about 3:55 in the first video in the On Thin Ice quest walk through you can hear Avallac’h tell Ciri the ice is caused by a spell. You then take control of Ciri as she fights some wild hunt mooks before confronting the mage Caranthir whose staff controls/creates the ice spell. Once you break the orb in the staff the ice/frost effect is lifted (at around 7 minutes into the video referenced above), and you take control of Geralt. here is another quote from that walk through supporting the fact that the frost/ice effect is a spell.

When you whittle down roughly 1/3 of his health an epic cutscene will happen where Ciri destroys Caranthir’s staff. This breaks the ice curse that has frozen Geralt.

Once the staff is broken you'll notice that in addition to Geralt defrosting the storm frost/ice effect disappears. You can see the difference in the videos before the staff is broken vs after the staff is broken.

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