Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival [RESOLVED]

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Jay_H
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Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival [RESOLVED]

Post by Jay_H »

I decided to start from mqstage 1 and run around for awhile to get Brisienna's letter.

Classic behavior: Once a letter is due to arrive, attempting to rest or fast travel anywhere will get interrupted by the letter's arrival.

DFU behavior: A letter may not arrive if the PC travels quickly enough. I was able to entirely run out Brisienna's various timers without receiving a letter by fast traveling quickly enough.

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Interkarma
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Re: Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival

Post by Interkarma »

Excellent catch, and easy for me to fix. Thank you. :)

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Interkarma
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Re: Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival

Post by Interkarma »

Jay, I've changed the behaviour now so that when a letter is already pending it will fire immediately if player attempts to fast travel away or rest. This should ensure letter has a better chance of being delivered. It also means you can use V or R to trigger a pending letter immediately when inside a town during the day.

There are still a few ways to break this, but the player has to be intentionally unreachable. For example:
  • Travelling from dungeon-to-dungeon without ever entering a town.
  • Initiating fast-travel before screen fade complete (quest machine does not tick the few moments during screen fade).
  • Never entering a town and staying in the wilderness for months on end.
  • I'm also thinking about vampire characters - they will rarely be outside during the day.
The other option is just to remove time/location limits and let player receive these offers anywhere so long as outside. That would simplify things a bit. But I really prefer the fantasy of being able to avoid couriers by staying away from towns. I think the player should have the choice of going full hermit wildman and breaking the main quest if they want to.

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Jay_H
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Re: Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival [RESOLVED]

Post by Jay_H »

I think that'll catch the vast majority of cases :) I do think vampires are going to be something to take into consideration later, but maybe that's part of the game; shouldn't vampires be hard to find in civilization? ;)

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Re: Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival

Post by Jay_H »

This matter is resolved. However,
Interkarma wrote:Jay, I've changed the behaviour now so that when a letter is already pending it will fire immediately if player attempts to fast travel away or rest. This should ensure letter has a better chance of being delivered. It also means you can use V or R to trigger a pending letter immediately when inside a town during the day.
Right now I'm getting all letters delivered immediately as they trigger. That doesn't affect me at all, but you said you wanted to avoid mass arrivals of letters. Specifically, with a new char I travelled 18 days and immediately upon arrival got the Brisienna letter. Then I used the setlevel command to increase, and the Morgiah and Lhotun letters arrived right when I closed the prompt.

However, the informant's letter during Missing Prince works as you intend it to.

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Interkarma
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Re: Dragonbreak #88: Travelling quickly prevents letter arrival [RESOLVED]

Post by Interkarma »

Not sure. It could have just been a couple of short delays rolled in sequence. Random generators can be clumpy. Could also be a quirk in the timing process. I also didn't test how the timings interact after setlevel, as it's not normal play.

Best way to test is reload a game well prior to delivery and repeat process. Will check this out myself later when I can, thanks.

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