Sulfur
Material · MaterialOre0★Turns up around volcanoes and similar places. Gunpowder cannot be made without it.
Sulfur feeds 7 different recipes, which is why it is worth farming past the point you think you need it.
Details
It stacks up to 9,999.
Where to Find Sulfur
Sulfur comes out of the ground: there are 655 sulfur nodes on the Palpagos Islands, and each one grows back a while after you break it, so a good cluster is worth remembering.
1 Pal drops Sulfur when defeated or captured, which is usually the faster route if you are already out hunting — the drop list below is sorted by how reliably each one gives it up.
It also shows up as world loot — field drops in the Mount Obsidian, usually 1–3 at a time.
Sending a team on the Blazing Cavern and Eternal Pyre's Forbidden Market expeditions brings some back without you leaving base.
You do not have to climb the volcano for it. Counting every sulfur node on the island against the fast travel network, the statues that drop you closest to a worthwhile pocket are Whisperwind Hill (10 nodes inside roughly 180 m, 27 if you widen the loop to 360 m), then Ancient Ritual Site, Dustview Coast and the Free Pal Alliance Tower Entrance at 8 apiece, then Cold Shore and Ruined Fortress City at 7. Deep Bamboo Thicket only has 5 on its doorstep but 22 within a short glide, which makes it the easiest full circuit of the lot.
Mount Obsidian is about volume rather than convenience. The single densest sulfur field on Palpagos sits north of the Mount Obsidian Midpoint statue — 47 nodes in one continuous spread, 25 of them inside a 360 m sweep of the statue itself. Nothing else on the island comes close, so it is the run to make once you have heat gear and something to carry the weight. If you want sulfur on the volcano without the hike, the Second Ascent statue has 6 nodes within about 180 m.
There is a way to stop travelling for it. The Sulfur Quarry sits on the Technology tree at level 46 and costs 5 Ancient Technology points, and once it is standing in your base a Pal with Mining suitability will keep pulling sulfur out of it forever — no volcano trip, no waiting on nodes to come back.
| How | Where | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Mining and gathering | Palpagos Islands — 655 sulfur nodes | Respawns after you break it |
| Expedition | Blazing Cavern | Normal · 45 min · 100% chance · 20–40 at a time |
| Expedition | Eternal Pyre's Forbidden Market | VeryHard · 120 min · 100% chance · 10–20 at a time |
| World loot | Field drops in the Mount Obsidian | Grade 1 · 11.9% chance · 1–3 at a time |
Using Sulfur Well
The quarry is not a shortcut past the first haul: putting one down costs 100 Sulfur, 70 Stone, 30 Paldium Fragment and 10 Ancient Civilization Parts. Mine the first hundred by hand in the Mount Obsidian, then let the building cover everything after that.
Bring the right Pal or you will do the trip twice. Digtoise has Mining 4 and its Drill Crusher partner skill is built for shattering boulders, and it is rideable so you cover the gaps between nodes fast. Weight is the real limit though — sulfur is 3 a unit, so the 100 you need just to place the quarry is 300 weight on its own. Cattiva in the party adds 100 to your max inventory weight at the first rank and 200 once its partner skill is maxed.
Before level 46 the answer is a second base parked on top of the nodes. Mining Pals will break gathering nodes that fall inside a base circle and carry the sulfur to a chest, so an outpost on a tight pocket keeps producing while you are elsewhere. Measured across all 655 nodes, the tightest pockets on Palpagos are: roughly 175 m out from the Whisperwind Hill statue, where nine nodes sit inside a 50 m circle and ten inside 100 m — the pick if you do not want to gear for the volcano; about 160 m from Sand Dunes Entrance and about 210 m from Cold Shore, ten nodes each inside 50 m; and the Mount Obsidian side between the Trail and Ruined Fortress City statues, which is looser at 14 nodes inside 150 m but sits beside the big fields.
Run the sulfur outpost as a single-purpose camp. Assign nothing but Mining Pals so no worker wanders off to a crafting job, drop the chest inside the node ring rather than at the edge, and on the volcano fence the buildable area off from the lava — base Pals path straight through it. If you host the world, the Gatherable Objects Respawn Interval slider in world settings is the other half of the fix: it is a multiplier, so dropping it below 1 brings the broken nodes back sooner and turns a camp of ten into a real supply line.
Its 5 ancient points come out of the same pool as weapon schematics and the other quarries, so it is worth deciding early whether sulfur or coal is the one throttling you. If gunpowder for ammo is the bottleneck, this entry pays for itself faster than anything else at that level.
Alternatives and Upgrades
Other crafting materials at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:
