Better Daedric Quests

[NuclearNautilus]

While playing Daggerfall for the first time, I was disappointed that the Daedric quests are all just randomly generated fetch/kill quests. I was also disappointed with the entire summoning process. Paying a bunch of gold seems a bit dull as a way to summon such powerful beings. The Daedric Quests have always been some of my favorites in TES, and I'd like to discuss some ways they can be improved in this thread. Here are some of my ideas.

• Create unique quests for each Daedric Prince, looking to the lore surrounding the Daedra and future games for inspiration.
• Possibly rewrite the Daedra's dialog to better fit their personalities in later TES games
• Instead of paying for summoning, add Daedric Shrines to the world, similar to the ones in Oblivion, that you can use to summon the Daedra.
• The shrines could be in the wilderness, deep in dungeons, or hidden in cities.
• Instead of Gold and a Guild rank, add unique offerings or challenges for each Daedra.

These are the broad ideas I have right now. Hopefully these ideas can be discussed, refined, and go on to inspire someone with the knowledge of how they could be implemented.

[Jay_H]

Welcome to the forums

AFAIK, changing the daedra quests is possible right now. I haven't tried it yet directly so I can't guarantee it would happen flawlessly, but replacing those quests appears to be a very simple matter. If you want to get thinking on what would work for each one, perhaps we could do a collaboration.

EDIT: Yep, I just tested it. Daedric quest replacement works flawlessly.

[NuclearNautilus]

Thank you for the welcome

I made this thread pretty much as soon as I got the idea for changing the quests, so I don't have any very specific ideas yet. Also, I'm regrettably very inexperienced with Unity, so I probably won't be any help on the technical side. My first quest idea was for Sheogorath. Instead of just killing someone, perhaps you could actually try to invite him to a teatime like the Madgod initially asks you too. But first, you need to drive him to madness. I'm not sure how this could be achieved, maybe through dialog like the quest where you have to get an admission from a Necromancer for the Mage's Guild. Maybe it could be a multi-step process, with you following the target as he moves from city to city, slowly degrading his mental state each time you encounter him. I'm not sure how complex quests can be in Daggerfall before you start running into issues.

Also, I've been thinking about the shrines themselves. I suppose they could just be grey versions of the sprites of the Daedra, like other statues in the game. Have people managed to add or change dungeon blocks yet? I know there are ways to add shrines to the wilderness with the locations mod, but I like the idea of finding a shrine rarely in a random dungeon.

[Jay_H]

The shrines themselves would be beyond my capability. There are some who are venturing into altering DF's landscape directly which could perhaps make it possible, but as yet that will be an idea for the future.

Theoretically a system like Warm Ashes could put an arcane object into your inventory to summon a daedra when you choose to... That's not precisely what you're looking for, but it's shovel-ready.

If you want to get into any specifics about the quests, we can work out some ideas and I could start writing them. I'm available here and on the Discord in my signature.

[Ommamar]

D

[Firebrand]

One quest I remember from Skyrim was match the drink with the unknown Daedra (Sheograth I think but been a bit) then having to reconstruct what happened during the revelry.

This was Sanguine's quest, a super fun one

[NuclearNautilus]

Would there be any issue to adding quests that involve main quest dungeons, such as the Castle Wayrest? I had an idea for a quest for Sanguine. Similar to his quest in Oblivion, Castle Wayrest will soon be host to a party that Sanguine wants to liven up a bit. He gives you a substance that you must use to spike the wine that will be used for the party. The barrel itself is kept somewhere in the dungeon. If adding the objective to the Wayrest dungeon would cause issues, you could instead be tasked with finding the drug elsewhere and delivering it so someone in the castle who will spike the wine for you.

There could also be other objective needed to please the Daedra. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Jay_H]

Tech feedback:

Placing items in Wayrest is tricky, since the item spawn locations will be in deep dungeon places. It won't show up in the royal court or the kitchens.

A barrel is something I don't think will show up on the overworld. I usually use a small sack for such things, though a decanter would work.

The easiest way to make an event like this happen would be to put it on one the named nobles in the court, who are very easy to program for. Karethys, the dark elf sorceress, would be a good candidate.

Bringing in the item from a far-off location is the simplest solution, but that doesn't need to guide your vision of the quest necessarily. I can talk about possible and impossible, and we can work out what's between those two.