Question about my Questing experience

Hello all,

So, I've been playing this game since 2013 when the world map was a picture of the cloth map with a honeycomb overlay. Ive been on the same character since then. Now, my friend I play with had has his character since before release but not for too long.

Anyway, for me all of my enjoyment in this game comes from questing and exploring. Since I finished the main story this is all that keeps me logging in.

I can honestly say that since release, knocking out bloodriver and high vale, on average 1 out of 4 quests is broken, or breakable. Even with the last two releases. This morning I just had to post about how the Aerie Drumplemouth is breakable. Its frustrating as hell. It even gets to the point where I feel like the RNG is broken for our characters. Questing for the underdweller armor set took over two hours last night. Got my set in 15 minutes, got his first 4 pieces in 10 minutes, then off to two hours to get the last piece. often having to leave epitaph and sit on our butts for 10 minutes while the scene resets because there are hardly enough underwellers and the re-spawn rate is near 0. Heck, when they made it so masterworking failures hit durability instead of delete the item I failed 5 times in a row with a 7% failure chance (0.07 ^ 5) = 0.0000016 chance of that happening. My compass in Aerie right now is like a cancerous tumor eating my face. It is riddled with glowing blue from quests years past completed, things that aren't even quests (NPC's with no purpose or meaningful dialog), etc, etc.

So my questions is this. Is the best action to take resetting my quest state? It seems like the right thing to do. I cant help but feel like there is some rouge legacy XML file somewhere from 2013 bugging the hell out of my character. Has this solves issues for anyone as far as fluidity and completion rate for quests? Is there any sort of planned overhaul of the questing system that we should wait for before we decide to reset our quests? We really don't like the idea of losing all of our quest items but it seems like something we should have done around release date. So, has this helped anyone? Should we wait? If we do reset out quest state, can we do it again down the road? Thanks for reading/helping.

See you in New Britannia

 

As a relatively new player (I started playing about a week before release, R52), I experience a lot of the things you have described. Several of my starting quests were difficult to figure out, and possibly bugged out and impossible to complete. As an example, there was a quest in Soltown that involved asking people about "red cloth". I broke this quest by performing things out of sequence. I completed the "main" quest of "figure out who started the fire, and report to the guard captain" before completing the side quests of "ask people about red cloth". When I finally got around to asking about red cloth, their natural conclusion of "report to guard captain" was already completed, so the objectives just remained in my journal. At some point, they fixed this bug, and included some release notes on how to clear up the issue, but if you don't read the release notes in detail, you could easily miss something like this.

In regards to the compass, mine is also full of blue indicators leading to things that I've already completed. It doesn't matter where I am anymore. In a town with quests? On the world map? In a cave that had a quest objective once? Blue indicators everywhere, leading to nothing. Resetting your quests may get you a momentary reprieve, but it's only a matter of time before things return to the status quo.

 

I'm with you there. Finished that bad boy back in 1442 and still have the red cloth part stuck on me. Perhaps i'll pitch an abandon quest option in the dev forums but I cant help but feel like that must have been done already.

 

Yes, this is a recurrent theme. It's because they designed the quest with a set order without considering what would happen if someone went out of that order. Frankly after you've reported to the captain, that stuff should either latch off or auto-complete (as all the requirements have been met).

 

Although resetting your quest should give you a clean questing Journal and reset all your quest as it did with me. Some of the bugs for completing the quest, and them clearing from being active are still there.

 

Here is a video on how to do a reset.

Starting another game in offline mode is another option and you can recruit three companions to help also.

 

I think it is explainable, why some of us have other uncleared tasks on task list and compass:
Lum told about a fix which would take quest/story tasks/sparkles away after reaching a point of the questline where this should have been done!
I assume, that's the reason why some of us have other quest tasks and sparkles ... they would be cleared at a special stage I guess.

Before official launch I used the Quest Journal reset. Unfortunately it cleaned not only the current Quest Journal entries, but also the Knowledge Journal.
I did the quest reset about one/two month after official release - and started to play all quests on all paths.

Here ist the list of bugs I still have:

Sparkles only on compass overland map
1.Soltown

Sparkles only on compass in Soltown
1. Guard Captain
2. Arabella

At the point I had to meet with the Oracle (finale):
Sparkles only on compass overland map
1. Travel to Etceter --> I don't know, when it appeared.
2. Aerie: Give key to Marlin (Bug reported on QA 55 Bug Forum)

Task list ONLY:
1. Reassemble and Use the Vermillion Lens (Bug reported on QA 55 Bug Forum)
--> This has gone after finishing the Oracle Quest.

So, after I finished ALL quests ( I did it over the last few months, about 1-2 months after launch, until the last weekend), there are only 5 bugs:
COMPASS
Soltown overland map
Soltown: Guard Captain
Soltown: Arabella

Travel to Etceter
Aerie: Give key to Marlin


Well, its not really a solution to make a quest reset.
Each quest should vanish on task list and compass after it is done and all connected tasks also should!

 

I wouldn’t do a quest reset just yet. Wait till they implement the new quest Architecture.

I have no idea when/if that will happen though.

 

I keep waiting for a release that is ready for me to play offline... but then I keep seeing threads like this.

How can i commit to starting an adventure if the questing system is so broken?

 

I'm happy to adventure in online mode though likewise I'm still waiting for such threads to die down to indicate an enjoyable experience.

 

I've been playing offline, and it's a mixed bag of fun and frustration.

On the up-side, the overland map has no PoTs and the NPC towns have no homes (unless you place one). This might be a personal preference, but the game world just feels a lot cleaner. Getting the companions is awesome. They are fairly capable (so far, I'm not very far along), and travel along with you reasonably well.

On the down-side, a lot of the online mechanics are still in place for online mode. Towns get besieged (like Aerie), but the sieges aren't appropriate for single-player play. The control points are still in place, and are pretty much lethal to a single-player in offline mode. A lot of quests are buggy or poorly designed (e.g., the tower of the shuttered eye is tier 5, when it should be tier 2 or 3 at most).

I'm hoping for a fun offline experience in the future, but a lot of work needs to be done to make that possible.

 

You can currently get your Shroud and Lot Deed, so I don’t quite consider the current state “so broken” for the Quest System.

Are there a number of quests that are complex, confusing and prone to breaking? Yep! But that’s not true for all the quests in the game currently.

However, with the development team preparing for the next Kickstarter for Episode 2, they are currently focused mostly on polish and bug fixes. Which is something much needed currently.

 

Here is my experience with the quests - I have been able to play though and complete the story and most of the side quests three times so far on two different characters.

I am also doing an offline game and have only run into two quests so far that are bugged - the Frostgiest quest in Highvale Outskirts, but one of them I could workaround - Morton's ledger in Owl's Head.

Overall, I think they are better than they used to be - the compass VFX clues are helpful in finding where to go next.