I just realized something today when I was playing around with some settings on single-player. On the Exiles map the sun rises in the south and sets in the north.
Does anyone know why, has this ever been asked & answered by FunCom?
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It was chosen that way because of how it affects lighting. East to West makes much of the map dark when they donât want it to be dark.
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It could be that the sunrise and sunset are in the correct position and the map is simply sideways, so south on the map is actually east.
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Snow globe.
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I have asked this question many times and never received a satisfactory answer (in game reasons at least). As Deacon suggests - the most likely answer (in my view) is the theory that the Exiled Lands are not a real place. Personally, I go with âThe Outcastâsâ explanation, though I know others prefer other versions of the same theory (and others still argue that the Exiled Lands are physicially located within the Hyborian map).
I always find that I have difficulty accepting that explanation (though it at least on the surface conforms to Occamâs razor). The problem is that it simply does not conform to other information - not least the fact that it then puts the snowy wastes in the west and desert in the east, which is not really how such zones tend to work. But more than that - the temperature shift within a matter of a couple of kilometres (tops) makes me doubt there can be any possible âreal worldâ location that could match. (And thatâs without getting in to issues of the relative positions of Lemurians and Stygians on the mapâŠ).
The never-ending debate of where exactly the Exiled Lands are (or arenât), or if they even can be real, is always a fun one 
But I doubt weâll ever see a single concrete answer.
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Thatâs not how it looks in the dev kit. Up is North.
The sun is literally told to rise and set in the direction it does. And it was done that way for the optimal shadow casting they wished for the environment. This has already been toyed around with by modders. The map looks way different when the sun goes from East to West.
So Iâm forced to ask, have you seen that answer from an official source at FunCom, or is that speculation by yourself? Or possibly that youâve seen from a source that you deemed trustworthy even if they werenât with FunCom?
That same argument can be made for the sun moving at any angle, so it seems a bit odd if thatâs FunComâs official response.
Personally, I am one of those who think the Exiled Lands are not a real place. However, I do have to point out that neither the desert nor tundra are natural biomes.
The desert was created by the sand elemental stuck in its time loop and the snow likely originates from the Disjunction (while the Disjunction being the source is somewhat speculative, we do know the snow is unnatural).
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Both. There was a discussion years ago pertaining to siptah and how the angle of the sun wasnât casting shadows the way it was supposed to, making it perpetually dark, even during the day since the shadows actually wouldnât move.
In regards to Exiled Lands there was a modder who did tinker with the sun and managed similar results when going from East to West.
I would point out that neither of those are relevant. North by definition is perpendicular to the travel of the sun. It was defined as such before compasses and magnetism were even known about. Sun rises from your right and sets to your left, you are facing north by definition.
In a video game, north = up on a plane and everything is oriented around that. The sun is a light source designed to move at a certain angle so that it can cast dynamic lighting. Its not the result of a planetary body revolving around it.
What we have in CE is the plane being oriented and the primary light source (sun) being told to move at a weird angle in regards to the flat plane that is our gaming space. It was kept that way due to the mapping of the terrain and other bits.
It was a gameplay decision. Any lore stuff came after that. Which is the only part of this which has no official confirmation. Though Iâd imagine it would if there was lore behind it, Conan crossing over the ghost fence and suddenly the sun is at another angle would have risen some questions. Not just by Conan, but also by the Stygian Army and every other individual who didnât wake up on a cross.
Considering that in early access the sun was rising in the west and setting in the east, that it was fixed at some time to rise in the east and set in the west (most likely when they overhauled the fog and lighting) and that in both scenarios nobody complained about any odd lighting or permanently dark areas, I think this is just a mishap that either was unnoticed or is way too unimportant to be fixed.
I still say deliberate. It goes the correct ways on Siptah, and Exiled Lands got a lighting rework when Siptah came out. So they intentionally chose to keep it that way. Couple that with the devkit internally calling the map âDreamworldâ and all the other evidence pointing to the snowglobe, and it starts to make more sense.
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Welp⊠as I said. It used to be west to east and was changed to east to west (although I canât tell when it happened exactly). And somewhere it got changed a second time so now itâs south to north. So even if those changes were made intentionally, I highly doubt that it was made for lore reasons 
Oh, the things the uninitiated say.
You canât even get through the main story without interacting with Nyarlathotep. The fact they got it right on the Isle of Siptah which is established to be in the material world, but deliberately wrong in the Exiled Lands, a place that none of my critics have yet to concretely locate is just another point in a long list of evidence for the snowglobe.
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On Siptah, the situation is almost the same: the sun rises in the South and sets in the North-East (I remember exactly that this was the case two years ago).
As for the reality of EL, it is as mythical as all the other tales about Hyboria. There is no reason to turn it into a myth squared.
I didnât challenge your theory about where the exiled lands are located.
I just doubt that the sunâs orientation started out reversed and was then changed TWICE for lore reasons. 
The idea of a dreamward is irrelevant. By definition the direction a sun rises is East. Thatâs what East means. The direction it sets, is West. Again thatâs what West means. North is the direction you are facing when the sun rises from your Right, and sets to your Left. South is behind you.
In game development the sun is nothing more than a moving light source. If they wished to orient the map to match the light source, it would look like this:
They choice not to. They made the map, and then oriented the light source to move in a way that looked âbestâ.
Iâm going to say it again. If the Exiled Lands was a fake world. The sun would still rise from the EAST. Period. Thatâs what East is. It would set to the WEST. Thatâs what west is. East is defined by where the sun rises, west is defined by where it sets.
No, it moves in a proper east to west, with a minor azimuth shift.
Hyboria is still on earth. It follows earthly solar movements.
If Iâm reading you correctly youâre saying that:
a) your source for the movement of the sun on Siptah is from an official FunCom source and
b) your source for Exiles is from a modder who drew their own conclusion based on their observations of what happened if they altered the movement of the sun.
Am I reading you correctly?
I think the guy in the video I linked below makes a pretty convincing argument for where the Exiled Lands are located in Hyboria, and the location matches up pretty nicely with the combination of biomes that we see on a single map.
Probably the biggest detail that supports the snow globe theory over his chosen placement is the seemingly bizarre behavior of the sun on the Exiles map.
By no means do I consider the theory put forth in this video to be conclusive, but itâs a pretty good one.
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I am reading this question years in this forum and i feel exactly the same way.
All i can say here is that i love sunsets from the hills of northeast jungle and sunrises from the hills of exiles lands over the starting river.
On Siptah i love to build in the northeast island because i can see the sunset south east. So i donât believe that sun is correctly moving in Siptah too.
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