Quests, we need more!

[felinoel]

Millenaire is severely lacking in quests and Kinn himself has said we need more so let's discuss the quests!

==Suggested Changes==
*Give Alcohol Needed to more lone lumbermen of all the cultures
*Make Sick Kid/Delivery Needed work with more foods and apply it to all cultures but make sure each culture has different required foods
*Give Fishing Frenzy to more cultures
*Give Aspiring Trader more culture-specific requirements and/or rewards and give it to the other cultures
*Give Broken Sword to other cultures and change it for the other cultures for culture-specific items
*Make more quests like Confidential Mission for other cultures but more culture-specific
*Give Find the Eggs to one or two other cultures
*I like how Frustrated Lumberman wants a tool made from another culture, we could do more with that for the other cultures
*Give Husband's Lunch to other cultures, same for I Need A Real Meal
*More cultures could have more lone trader delivery quests like Jewel Delivery
*Missing Friend should be updated to use healing potion ingredients and it can be copied to other cultures in a similar manner, maybe using different healing potion ingredients or something
*I like how Stone Needed is written, we ordered something, it isn't here yet, go find what is taking so long, then you go there and they give you the materials to deliver. We could add a few more quests like this to other cultures
*Thirsty! is just plain enough to be applied to other cultures for other lone building people that aren't necessarily a lumberjack
*Writing Poems/Letter to Send can be added to other cultures


Also time limits need to be more rare, quests should only have a time limit when the task is time sensitive imo


http://millenaire.org/wiki/User:Felinoel/Quests#Current

[MauveCloud]

The "find the eggs" quest seemed strange to me the first time I saw it, because the Mayan village involved was in the jungle, and some ocelots had gotten into the chicken farm and killed the chickens, so how could there be too many chickens? A quest to kill ocelots might make sense if there's a way to make it only trigger in jungle-type biomes (Mayan villages can spawn in a few other biomes, and from what I've seen, maybe only a corner of the village needs to be in a valid biome).

[kjdiehl]

I agree with fewer, or at least much longer, time limits. I usually spend most of a quest's time limit just finding out how or where to acquire most of the ingredients needed. Then, time's up before I've hardly begun. (Since I spend more of a Millenaire-modded game helping the villages, rather than building my own huge base with thousands of resources. So I usually have far fewer materials on hand.)

I like all the quest ideas listed above, but they are all derivative of the general Millenaire quest styles. It would be cool to come up with some altogether new quests, with radically new styles.

What about... a diplomacy quest? Have a culture that you have a certain high level rep with, have the chief ask you for a Village Scroll from each of the five cultures- or maybe something else strongly representative of the cultures, like a culture-specific sword from each or something. Upon completion, you could even have a new building type become available: A Diplomatic Embassy! An embassy could generate something special. Like maybe 2 traders or something. What else would make sense?... Maybe that's a little too modern for the 11th century, but you get my idea. Like, it would be cool for a quest to unlock basically a new tech-tree branch for a culture or a village. I suspect an approach like this could open up some seriously fun new gameplay ideas for Millenaire, without having to add much in the way of new content. Maybe even insert such a tech-tree quest earlier in a given culture's existing evolution. Like make certain existing buildings or building upgrade levels not available until a certain Technology quest is performed. Like, maybe you have to somehow teach them to mine a given mineral, (by providing X of them, or something,) in order to unlock a Tech level.

Anyway, just spitballing here....

[felinoel]

The "find the eggs" quest seemed strange to me the first time I saw it, because the Mayan village involved was in the jungle, and some ocelots had gotten into the chicken farm and killed the chickens, so how could there be too many chickens? A quest to kill ocelots might make sense if there's a way to make it only trigger in jungle-type biomes (Mayan villages can spawn in a few other biomes, and from what I've seen, maybe only a corner of the village needs to be in a valid biome).

Ha!
Maybe ocelots need to be included in the hostile mobs that vanish the moment they enter town list because that is bordering on gamebreaking.

Ocelots currently have no drops so I don't think a kill the ocelots quest will work...

I agree with fewer, or at least much longer, time limits. I usually spend most of a quest's time limit just finding out how or where to acquire most of the ingredients needed. Then, time's up before I've hardly begun. (Since I spend more of a Millenaire-modded game helping the villages, rather than building my own huge base with thousands of resources. So I usually have far fewer materials on hand.)

Right?
Plus I personally like to gather up as many quests as possible in games and then do them all one by one, I don't really like being forced to immediately do something when I could just be enjoying natural gameplay, especially if I was doing something else at the time.

I like all the quest ideas listed above, but they are all derivative of the general Millenaire quest styles. It would be cool to come up with some altogether new quests, with radically new styles.

I am definitely interested in hearing as many new quests as you can come up with!

What about... a diplomacy quest?

Diplomatic quests are a great idea, maybe have a quest that has you go to a neighboring town and based on what you do changes the feelings either town has for each other, kind of like the current thing where you talk to a village chief and convince them that another town is good or bad but a diplomatic quest would either raise or lower dramatically.
The player could be given the choice between offering the other town a good item or a bad item and when delivered it will apply the changes to how the towns feel about each other maybe?

Have a culture that you have a certain high level rep with, have the chief ask you for a Village Scroll from each of the five cultures- or maybe something else strongly representative of the cultures, like a culture-specific sword from each or something. Upon completion, you could even have a new building type become available: A Diplomatic Embassy! An embassy could generate something special. Like maybe 2 traders or something. What else would make sense?... Maybe that's a little too modern for the 11th century, but you get my idea. Like, it would be cool for a quest to unlock basically a new tech-tree branch for a culture or a village. I suspect an approach like this could open up some seriously fun new gameplay ideas for Millenaire, without having to add much in the way of new content. Maybe even insert such a tech-tree quest earlier in a given culture's existing evolution. Like make certain existing buildings or building upgrade levels not available until a certain Technology quest is performed. Like, maybe you have to somehow teach them to mine a given mineral, (by providing X of them, or something,) in order to unlock a Tech level.

Anyway, just spitballing here....

A diplomatic embassy, interesting. Maybe some sort of submarvel building that is like a marvel. A cool idea indeed!

[MauveCloud]

Ocelots currently have no drops so I don't think a kill the ocelots quest will work...

Why would it need drops from the ocelots? I can think of a couple of other ways to detect when enough ocelots have been killed by the player:
1. Forge has a LivingDeathEvent, which Millenaire could probably subscribe to, and check if it was an ocelot that died, if it was a player that killed it, and which player (for a multiplayer situation).
2. Check the player's statistics at the beginning of the quest for count of ocelot kills, and re-query every few seconds until the count has increased by the quantity required for the quest.

[felinoel]

Ocelots currently have no drops so I don't think a kill the ocelots quest will work...

Why would it need drops from the ocelots? I can think of a couple of other ways to detect when enough ocelots have been killed by the player:
1. Forge has a LivingDeathEvent, which Millenaire could probably subscribe to, and check if it was an ocelot that died, if it was a player that killed it, and which player (for a multiplayer situation).
2. Check the player's statistics at the beginning of the quest for count of ocelot kills, and re-query every few seconds until the count has increased by the quantity required for the quest.

Even so, I think just force despawning ocelots that wander into villages like what is done for creepers would be an easier fix.

[MauveCloud]

*I like how Frustrated Lumberman wants a tool made from another culture, we could do more with that for the other cultures

Sure, but it should also check if the lumberman already has the tool, and block the quest in that case. In a multiplayer game, this could happen from another player completing the quest, but even in single-player, there are some additional ways it could happen:
1. The player might have sold some to the town hall, and the lumberman picked them up.
2. Imported from another village, and then picked up from town hall? (not sure whether the tools are subject to import/export)
3. Added to chest in town hall or lumberman's house when somehow unlocked, or via Mouse Tweaks.

On a similar note, there's the "Strange Reports" quest, which involves asking the player to collect water from the local well. Technically, Mayan villages get cisterns rather than wells, and it doesn't actually verify that the water collected is from there. However, it should only become available once a cistern is built in the village (in an older world, I saw it come up in a Milpa before the cistern had been built, and I think it could even come up in a Jub'uy, which doesn't build a cistern).

Also time limits need to be more rare, quests should only have a time limit when the task is time sensitive imo

There's also the problem of short-time-limit quests just before the villagers go "off to sleep". It makes sense for the "husband's lunch" quests to have a short time limit, but if I accept one just before the villagers go to sleep, it becomes impossible to complete in time.

Even so, I think just force despawning ocelots that wander into villages like what is done for creepers would be an easier fix.

Yeah, it doesn't look like there's a quest option to limit it to certain biomes, so now I'm in favor of this strategy.

[felinoel]

*I like how Frustrated Lumberman wants a tool made from another culture, we could do more with that for the other cultures

Sure, but it should also check if the lumberman already has the tool, and block the quest in that case. In a multiplayer game, this could happen from another player completing the quest, but even in single-player, there are some additional ways it could happen:
1. The player might have sold some to the town hall, and the lumberman picked them up.
2. Imported from another village, and then picked up from town hall? (not sure whether the tools are subject to import/export)
3. Added to chest in town hall or lumberman's house when somehow unlocked, or via Mouse Tweaks.

In a perfect world I would agree, but this is too much effort imo, I don't think it is easy enough to code so maybe the lumberman (or other villager type) just doesn't like this axe, maybe he wants a different one, it may be the same to you but to HIM it is different.

On a similar note, there's the "Strange Reports" quest, which involves asking the player to collect water from the local well. Technically, Mayan villages get cisterns rather than wells, and it doesn't actually verify that the water collected is from there. However, it should only become available once a cistern is built in the village (in an older world, I saw it come up in a Milpa before the cistern had been built, and I think it could even come up in a Jub'uy, which doesn't build a cistern).

Sounds like a translation error then for wells versus cistern, and idk if the quest can be stopped until one is made.

Also time limits need to be more rare, quests should only have a time limit when the task is time sensitive imo

There's also the problem of short-time-limit quests just before the villagers go "off to sleep". It makes sense for the "husband's lunch" quests to have a short time limit, but if I accept one just before the villagers go to sleep, it becomes impossible to complete in time.

Can't you just sleep?
I always keep a bed on me

[MauveCloud]

Also time limits need to be more rare, quests should only have a time limit when the task is time sensitive imo

There's also the problem of short-time-limit quests just before the villagers go "off to sleep". It makes sense for the "husband's lunch" quests to have a short time limit, but if I accept one just before the villagers go to sleep, it becomes impossible to complete in time.

Can't you just sleep?
I always keep a bed on me

The time "skipped" by sleeping still counts toward the time limit. I had 3 hours left when I used the bed, when I woke up it said -7 hours left.

Edit:

In a perfect world I would agree, but this is too much effort imo, I don't think it is easy enough to code so maybe the lumberman (or other villager type) just doesn't like this axe, maybe he wants a different one, it may be the same to you but to HIM it is different.

For that to make sense, the description would need to be changed. The current description has him claiming the axe is useless, and complaining about the abilities of Mayan artisans, which is jarring if he has a Norman axe. He might not specifically know that a Norman smith made it (considering he asks if it was made by a god), but he should at least know it wasn't made by a Mayan, and isn't exactly useless.

[felinoel]

The time "skipped" by sleeping still counts toward the time limit. I had 3 hours left when I used the bed, when I woke up it said -7 hours left.

Yes, true...

For that to make sense, the description would need to be changed. The current description has him claiming the axe is useless, and complaining about the abilities of Mayan artisans, which is jarring if he has a Norman axe. He might not specifically know that a Norman smith made it (considering he asks if it was made by a god), but he should at least know it wasn't made by a Mayan, and isn't exactly useless.

I can see him calling an axe he doesn't agree with as useless, people get sentimental about their gear, but yeah if he is complaining about Mayans specifically... yeah that seems like something to post a fix request in the Gitlab. >.>
Maybe suggest the don't do this quest if an axe already exists after all