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Town Builder - 68 - The Quest System

Added 2024-07-27 20:42:39 +0000 UTC

Chapter 68: The Quest System

Simba looked impressive as he flexed his new humanoid frame. I had selected him a catkin body with tiger coloring. His head was a little larger on his body than most catkin in Malcum, but he looked fearsome and no longer cute, with dangerous fangs appearing when he talked. His speech had a deep, throaty, almost growl to it. “Tallis, level 39? Really? I am disappointed in you. What have you been doing with all your time?” His disappointment was that his level matched mine.

I was a little surprised he didn’t know, but he probably did and was needling me. I rolled my eyes. “I have been building a city, and now, I can’t level until the new players catch up.”

The feline shook his head in good humor, “Fine, we need to get to work if my level is stuck at 39 for the foreseeable. I can still increase my skills, so you can send me off on quests, or we can do them together. You have an Adventurer’s Hall I believe?”

From what I read before summoning Simba, the companion quest system was a huge cheat in my opinion. Players with companions were allowed to send them on Adventurer’s Hall quests and rake in the rewards for themselves. The quests even counted toward the players Guild advancement. The companion NPC would complete the quest just like a player, increasing his or her skills while doing so. Of course, the companion could be killed or fail at the quest as well.

“We can head over to the Adventurers Hall and talk with Danny.” I started walking, “Glad to have my snarky and little kitty back.” I reached over to rub his head, and he leaned into it to allow the petting.

“I only resemble one of those remarks,” Simba said, purring softly before realizing what he was doing and stepping out of reach.

As we walked, I asked, “So, if you are here to advise me. What do you advise?”

“I can only advise you in your avatar's development. I cannot answer direct questions about the base building. You have to hire specific NPCs for that,” Simba said while extending and retracting his impressive claws on his hand.

“What skills do you have?” I asked. I hadn’t had time to read too deeply into companion skills and development in the wiki and updates.

“I still have the same skills and spells I learned when I was with you,” Simba said while slashing a tree and stripping the bark. “Yeah, I am going to like this body.” He turned to me and listed them without me opening the interface. “All seven of my skills are centered around nature magic. I wanted to be able to transform into a beast.” He looked down, “That is one item I can cross off my bucket list. But yes, I have free skill slots, and you need to direct my development.”

“How does that work? I select a class from the list, correct?” I said, recalling what I had recently read.

“No, you select my profession. Then I tailor my development by selecting my class, profession at level 25, and finally the profession at level 100,” Simba stated. Are you going to allow me to keep my freedom and choose for myself?” These NPC companions had the same development as players, but with fewer skills. Where a player had access to 23 skills and could learn more but suffer a learning penalty, these expensive AI companions only had 13 skills but gained bonus skills from their profession and specialization.

“No,” I stated.

“I see,” the disappointed catkin said. “What am I to be then?”

“Whatever class is best at killing players, select something good in that vein,” I said. I figured Simba would be an ideal bodyguard when the players came calling.

“So, I do get to choose something,” he purred loudly while he went into thought, and we reached the Adventurer’s Hall. Danny was inside talking to Neral, my NPC Guildmaster. Her elf companion was sipping ale and waiting patiently at a table in the empty room.

“Danny, this is my tutorial companion, Simba. I just hired his services for the next month. Do you want gold to hire yours? You had a pixie, right?” Danny studied Simba, curious at the odd catkin.

“He reminds me of a certain cartoon character from when I was little who peddled cereal.” Simba scoffed at the remark. “I think I will hold off from owing you any more favors. Maybe after Goatyah joins the Kingdom of Malcum, I can negotiate some benefits. She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. The moment quickly passed and she was focused again.

Danny indicated to Neral. “The Guildmaster was telling me how quests here work. Even though the quest might be for a dozen plains lion pelts, you have to get them yourself. You can’t go to the auction house, buy them, and turn them in. Everything has to be done by your hand, no shortcuts.”

“Or the hand of your companion,” I replied confidently. Danny looked confused, and I guessed she hadn’t read everything yet.

Neral interrupted our discussion. “I will explain the guild advancement system.” A familiar chart appeared behind him with some illusion magic. I didn’t realize Neral had illusion magic.

Rank Requirement Max Quests

Copper level 5 reached 1

Bronze 100 tier 1 quests completed 2

Silver 250 tier 1 quests, 100 tier 2 completed. 3

Gold 250 tier 2 quests, 100 tier 3 completed 5

Platinum. 250 tier 4 quests completed. 8

Mitheral. 500 tier 5 quests completed 12

Adamantium 1000 quests completed at tier 1 through 6. 20

“Since you are both copper card holders, you can currently only choose one quest at a time. That quest can be assigned to your companion if you wish. Depending on their skill and relation to you will determine how long it will take them to complete the quest.” Neral stated.

Danny was confused, “You mean how well our companions like us will determine how fast they work!” She looked over at her elf companion, who raised his mug to her.

Simba chuckled a throaty growl, “Of course! Tallis could send me on a fetch quest to get flour across town, but I could decide to get lunch, go swimming, and maybe chase some birds before actually getting to it.” Simba’s eyes got lively when he said chasing birds. Danny exhaled, exasperated, and looked at her elf companion, whom she had been trying to pay more attention to.

Neral pointed back at the chart. “Since you are both copper adventurers, you need to complete 100 tier 1 quests to gain promotion to bronze. Follow me to the job posting board.” Hundreds of slips of paper were on a long stone wall. I already knew I could sort them in my interface rather than use the physical representation in front of us. But this added to the immersion factor.

Neral pulled down a slip that clearly said tier 2 quest. “Now, if you wanted to, you could go and take this quest and complete it for the rewards, but remember, your promotion requires one hundred tier-one quests. Completing this would get you a head start on your silver promotion but not help with your bronze promotion that requires 100 tier 1 quests.”

“So, I could take this tier six quest and accept it?” I pulled a quest for 12 pairs of Onyx Minotaur horns from the Burning Desert.

Neral laughed, “You could but look on the back. There is a time limit and a price for failure. The Burning Desert is also level 120 to level 125 lands and six thousand miles from here. Although,” he winked, “as an esteemed Guildmaster, I might know a dungeon that is closer and where the same species of Minotaur live.” I looked at the time limit and failure price. It had a six-day timer and a 100 gold penalty for failure. With my extensive wealth, I didn’t think the failure cost would ever deter me.

Danny asked, “Can you drop quests? What if I found an awesome chain quest, but my quest slots were full?”

Neral shook his head. “There are a few one-time-use dungeon rewards that can expunge an active quest. But always check the time limit. If you get stuck with a quest that has no time limit, you will have to complete it to free the slot.”

“What about other quests?” I asked as I had my Sullen God quest chain.

“These limits,” he indicated the chart, “only pertain to Adventurer’s Guild quests. You can get these same quests by talking to NPCs as well, but they will not count toward your promotion quota in the Guild. So you essentiallly have the ability to accept an unlimited of quests outside the Guild quests, though those quests have a time limit as well.”

I walked the wall of quests to confirm something with my interface. As the lord of Malcum I was able to have my NPCs offer quests. And yes, those quests were here as well. I quickly compared the rewards and frowned. It appeared the quests offered here offered slightly less rewards. Guildmaster Neral explained, “It is just a small conviemce tax for players. No running around and talking to everyone.”

Danny asked a good question, “So other than being able to find quests easier, what other benefits do our Adventurer’s Cards do for us?”

Neral laughed at the human archer, “You mean that is not enough!? Well, there are lots of benefits beyond that. You can rent a room in any Adventurer Hall and access that same room from any other Adventurer Hall. The Adventurers Hall has its own shop, and what you can purchase is based on your rank. At tier one, all you can buy is basic potions, not better than Tonna’s potions, and limited to 5 purchases of each per day. But the offered items get much better the higher your rank.”

I was not overly impressed. “Anything else?”

Neral was not perturbed by my tone. “World quests.” He motioned to the board, “None posted currently but during the Incursion other special events, dozens of unique quests will be posted only in the Adventurer Hall. Those quests do require a minimum rank. For instance, you are not going to be able to accept the quest to kill an Incursion General as a copper adventurer.”

“Anything else?” Danny said.

Neral sighed, “There are Looking for Group postings, Raid quests requiring large number of players, and even rare quests, like chain quests.” Neral board and pulled three quests. He handed me the three quests. “Now it is a secret for now but if you hold these postings you will notice the paper is thicker and stiff. That makes then chain quests.”

“And why are you telling us if it is secret?” Danny asked, feeling the paper.

The giantkin smiled, his deep voice booming in a laugh, “Because I am employed by Lord Tallis.”

“So, what quests do you suggest for us?” I asked.

“If you are a group, you need to form the group with a leader, and then the leader accepts a quest. You need to have a slot available in order to accept a quest.” The red-haired giantkin explained. Danny sent me an invite, and I accepted, finding four in the group.

“Do you want to be the leader?” She asked.

“No, you are a much higher level than me,” I will be you Robin for today.

Neral pulled a sheet off the wall and handed it to Danny. She accepted it and a prompt appeared in my interface.

Your group leader has accepted a new quest. Do you wish to clone the quest and use a quest slot?

I accepted the quest before reading it, trusting Neral and Danny.

Tier One Quest Accepted. The halfling farm outside of Malcum has been plagued with giant groundhogs. Kill 10. Reward 50 silver. One Tier 1 Quest Completion.

Neral explained his selection. “Normally, a tier one quest takes about an hour to complete solo. Your group should be able to complete this one in just a few minutes once arriving at the farm. You want to knock out your hundred tier-one quests as quickly as possible. Some quests are repeatable, but only the first instance will count toward promotion, you need to do one hundred different unique tier-one quests. Not the same quest one hundred times over!”

“Thank you for the help, Neral.” Are we ready then?

Simba held up his paw. “I still have to select my specialization. I think I am going to choose Mystic Executioner. At least, that is what it will evolve to at level 100. The profession is called Arcane Assassin at level 25, and it follows the mage path at level one.”

I recalled the basic choices players got on starting the game.

Warrior, +100% to stamina regeneration, +25% to health regeneration, -25% magic pool regeneration

Mage, +100% to magic pool regeneration, -25% to stamina and health regeneration

Adept, +25% to all regenerations, +25% faster skill growth

This first selection was more a preference for a player's style of play. The real class came at level 25 when you selected your profession and got your real bonuses.

Simba explained his decision. “The specialization focuses on one-on-one combat using debuffs to bring down an enemy, monster of a player. It has a lot of defensive capabilities as well. The primary magics are spirit: death, water: cold, chaos: darkness and air: force.”

I looked over at Danny, who was impressed, “What is your specialization?” She had passed level 100 already, so she would have had the chance to select one.

“I haven’t selected my specialization yet. I have a few more requirements yet to evolve my profession from the archer. I am shooting for Thunderous Bowman, but my lightning and air magic need to reach level 23.” She chuckled at her own play on words. “It allows me to transmute arrows into lightning after they leave my bow. I can add an array of effects to the lightning as well so don’t tell me I could have just learned the lightning bolt spell.”

“How close are you?” I inquired, as I had not seen her use any lightning spells when we established her town.

She frowned, “Level 1. I just got the air: lightning magic skill shortly before the reset, and now I can't level it. I didn’t level it because I never got a chance to get into town to purchase some lightning spells.” She shrugged hopelessly.

Simba started to get impatient. “Well, you can't level your skills, but I can. Let's go kill some varmints.”

The walk to the halfling farms was short as they were only a quarter mile outside the walls. Strangely enough, this quest was not in under my town quests. Then again, that made sense as I only had a few quest givers. Tilda Sparrowcall was one of the NPCs I had recruited from the player auction. She brought a massive family of 21 with her, and they were growing most of the wheat and barely any rye for Malcum. This, in turn, supported our brewery. I was thankful I didn’t have to micro-manage the economy of Malcum. Kytalia was doing that for me.

The quest was anticlimactic as the most difficult part was finding the dog-sized groundhogs. Danny’s elf companion had a life-sense spell that could find them and then we just had to drive them out. I was a little taken aback when Simba attacked with his claws, shredding the first groundhog into a gory mess.

Licking the blood to clean his claws, he explained his actions, “I need unarmed combat at 23 as one of my requirements.” For some reason, I had some doubts about the pleasure he was taking in cleaning his paws. I could always turn down the game's gore setting to not show blood, but I decided against it. The creatures were only level one and two, and we never encountered more than two at a time. It was a jokingly easy quest.

We completed it with Neral, and he handed us his next suggestion.

Tier One Quest Accepted. Patrol the road from Malcum to Barrista. Reward 20 silver. One Tier 1 Quest Completion.

This was just a thirty-mile ride to the town south of Malcum and back. Normally, roads were safe zones, but since this was a quest, we had four bandits ambush us on the way. All were just level three, and we looted them for ten gold pieces of gear to sell.

Simba continued with his bloodthirsty slayings, and I remembered how the AI had single-handedly eradicated every small animal in Malcum when he was first allowed to kill. I began to think his AI personality may be flawed. Best not to voice such thoughts aloud.

I had to confirm with Neral that the bandits were just created by the quest, and I didn’t have a bandit problem on the trade road. He nodded, “With such an immense quest board, the system needs to create quite a few quests. For escort and patrol requests, you could have encountered monsters, bandits, or barriers to be overcome to complete the quest. The higher the tier the more difficult the challenge.”

Later, we were returning from our four easy tier-one quests of the day. Galana caught us as we were riding in through the western gate from collecting porcupine quills. “I take it these are for you.” I said, pulling out the quest bundle.

“They are Lord Tallis, but there is a more pressing matter. Two players entered the town a little while ago.” She informed me.

“Where are they?” I asked, trying to calm myself. I knew it was going to happen, but I hoped the Silver Linings Playbook Guild would have arrived first. At least I had Danny at my side.

“They wandered around town and entered the Adventurer’s Hall a few minutes ago. They have not done anything to warrant aggression, but my gnome detectives are keeping an eye on them.” She informed me.

I checked my town map, and yes, there were two players in the Adventurer’s Hall. We dropped off the horses and went on foot. With Danny next to me and her impressive 119 level, I didn’t have anything to worry about. We entered the Hall to find one player, of the angelkin race, scanning the quest board and the other player, a muscled male elf, talking with Neral.

I used my analysis skills on both.

Sinful Echo, Level 8

Conundrum, Level ???

Damn it. Sinful Echo was one of the fastest leveling players and the Conundrum was like us, a hard-wired player.

Sinful Echo had been talking to Neral and turned to face me, his angelic persona evident, but his cosmetics, using black facial hair and violet-tinted eyes made me think I was not going to be happy meeting him. Even less so, when he studied me and stated, “So you must be the architect everyone is looking for.”