Questwriting - How to select a specific location for a questgiver?

For all talk about quest development - creation, testing, and quest system.
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DotFX
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Joined: Thu Aug 04, 2022 5:41 am

Questwriting - How to select a specific location for a questgiver?

Post by DotFX »

I have 3 possible 'permanent' places to choose from:
ScorgBarrowEntry - no npcs (as far as I understand, it is the small room near entrance with all the coffins)
ScorgBarrow1 - no idea what it is precisely
ScorgBarrow2 - same as ScorgBarrow1 (I suppose one of these 2 includes the hall with the necromancers and the King of Worms)

As a questgiver I want to choose a random npc at Scourg Barrow (preferably a female one, as there are only 3 of them there). So I use 1 of the following:

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Person _questgiver_ faction The_Necromancers female  -- will choose the King of Worms --

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Person _questgiver_ faction King_of_Worms  female -- will choose the King of Worms --

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Person questgiver named King_of_Worms  -- will choose the King of Worms, who would have thought --
If I manually start the quest through the console, the journal note I created (as a debugging tool) tells me, the quest created a new King of Worms at some random location possibly at Dragontail Mountains (as he, or now she, awaits for my return - I'm just trying my hand at how quest scripting works, so everything is simple).

As my guiding point, I use Jay_H's tutorial (it's great).

So the question that I have is:
How to limit the engine to choose random npcs as questgivers at a specified 'permanent' location? Or is it possible at all?

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Jay_H
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Re: Questwriting - How to select a specific location for a questgiver?

Post by Jay_H »

I'll move this to Quest Development ;)

DotFX
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Aug 04, 2022 5:41 am

Re: Questwriting - How to select a specific location for a questgiver?

Post by DotFX »

Jay_H wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 6:32 pm I'll move this to Quest Development ;)
Thank you, and sorry, I didn't see this section of the forums at first)

Sappho20
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2022 8:54 am

Re: Questwriting - How to select a specific location for a questgiver?

Post by Sappho20 »

Well, I don’t exactly know the difference between ScorgBarrow1 and ScorgBarrow2 except they are both the interior of the Dungeon. ScorgBarrowEntry however, is the exterior area around the Scourge barrow. So, one quest I made had you meet someone at ScorgBarrowEntry, so outside, whilst another quest you had to go inside the dungeon, I used ScourgBarrow1.

To have a quest giver at a permanent location you can use:

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place npc _person_ at _place_
or

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place npc _person_ at _place_ marker nn
Both will place the questgiver at a quest marker in the location, but the second one lets you define which one, if there is a choice and you know which one you want. (remembering that you have little to no choice as to where people are placed). For example, in the Scouge Barrow one of the quest markers is in the stone tomb beside the King of Worms and may look odd for someone to be standing in it, but it is an ideal place for an item to be hidden.

Furthermore, unless you choose an individual character like the King of Worms, the quest needs/will create a new person to give out the quest, so you cannot have a random person in the Scourge Barrow (except the King of Worms himself) become the quest giver unless you generate a random person and place her at a quest marker. It is a bit annoying as there are some individually name people there that you can’t use. The courts of Daggerfall, Sentinal and Wayrest have a few individuals that can be used and you could make the quest randomly choose one of them.

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