I've been playing now for a few days now. I just thought I'd make mention of how different and fun-in-its-own-way type of server this is. I just thought I would give feedback on what I've experienced so far so you know what other newcomers to this type of game are thinking some-what as well. The biggest problem I have so far is the questing. More specifically, the journal entries. A group I was included in accepted a quest for killing gnolls in the mines. For one reason or another a dm decided to inhabit the body of the final boss, who i'm guessing causes the journal to progress when she dies. Well she died, and the journal didn't progress. I understand the main focus of this game is on roleplaying, but when I complete a quest I usually expect there to be a reward at the end? Is that consistent with dungeons and dragons? If not most of the time, lemme know so i don't hold my expectations to where they shouldn't be.

Anyways, long story short couldn't turn in the quest to get my reward, dm logged off so I couldn't get my xp from him which i'm sure he would've hooked me up with, had he known what happened.

About an hour later waiting on players (different ones entirely from the group I was in previously) to come back from afk with the quest still incompleted in my journal we head out to do that very quest. Now I mention that I have it in my journal and it doesn't illicit a response the first time, so i figure not many people realize this (the reason why i'm writing about it). We go to get the quest and it won't let anyone take it. I mention again that I have it in my journal which then gets me a quick boot from the group for reasons I have no idea why. So obviously I'm thinking, alright I'm not getting something here. They take the quest and go in to do it while I'm sitting outside wondering why i just spent the last 3 hours of my life playing the game haha. Now I understand it's just a mix of unfortunate incidents, but I don't understand how my being in the group affected them from getting the quest? I mean I understand why, script speaking and the reasoning behind it. But is there some way to instead let's say, make all quests only able to be gotten when you are ungrouped (solo), ad make the zone so it requires you have the requisite amount of players/levels in the party to enter? I don't know nwscript that well, but this just seems like it's something that doesn't represent the spirit of D&D which is, in essence, grouping to overcome obstacles where your weakness as an individual would make you fail? At least that's the illicited idea by forced grouping for zone entrance in my mind.

Just my thoughts so far. If there is a more appropriate area to post these things or even not to post them at all but maybe e-mail someone so no one takes this the wrong way and thinks i'm complaining, let me know please. I feel the need to write about anything at all I see that doesn't make sense to me openly for the sole fact of informing other people who may be in my shoes and just don't want to say anything, or leave the server before they get started because of a lack of information. Thanks.

Welcome to the server, and thanks for your comments.

We are indeed a beta server, and despite the general excellence of our content there are imperfections. That being said, I think I can address your concerns.

(1) When a monster is possessed by a DM and dies, no scripts fire -- there is no way to get around this as far as I know. The particular DM you dealt with was unaware of this at the time he was overseeing your quest, but he is aware of this now. Looks like it was bad timing also with not being able to catch him or someone else afterwards to correctly get your experience and gold, that's also pretty unusual. The poor guy has been really miserably sick for a whole week.

(2) Obviously, you can't repeat quests on a single session -- it'd make no sense, and break all kinds of things. It's a pretty basic principle with every quest on the server that they can't be repeated in a single session, this is of course based on the assumption that something doesn't break on an individual quest (which, as I said, is a very rare occurence). I'm pretty sure 99% of the server is aware of the fact that quests can't be repeated, I'm not sure why no one told you this OOC but the comment may have been misunderstood or people just didn't want to go OOC.

However, we have over 44 quests at the time of writing so there shouldn't be too much of a limitation in finding something else to do.

As for this:

But is there some way to instead let's say, make all quests only able to be gotten when you are ungrouped (solo), ad make the zone so it requires you have the requisite amount of players/levels in the party to enter?

I don't understand your comment, really. The way quests work is fairly simple, you hear about a job and put together a group. Once partied, you speak to the quest giver and then you can enter the area and do the quest.

We do have three major weaknesses that will be fixed within the next week I hope:

(1) Monsters not spawning entirely correctly when the earlier group failed to kill them all (2) Not being told why you can't take a quest when someone is on the quest (3) Not being able to add new party members to the group after having taken the quest

Your third comment on what you were working on is what I was asking about. I apologize for not being more specific but what I meant was that i did the quest with 6 people, journal was stuck and incompleted (it actually never progressed past the point of where it is when first gotten from the quest giver). Then I walked away and an hour or so later 4 other, totally different people wanted to do the quest. I grouped with them (they not even having the quest in their journal, unlike me) and when we talked to the quest giver he would not give the other 4 the quest. All I was really wondering was why, if I had yet to complete the quest or get any rewards for it, could I not go ahead with other people and do it? I eventually talked to the quest giver and told him I could not complete the quest so that the other 4 could go ahead and get it. I was just wondering if there was some way to prevent that from happening. What I was referring to about the getting the quests (solo) was just a possible idea, that I don't even know if it could be scripted.

To me it seems in order to get certain quests their is a minimum party amount required. Some quests are meant to be done solo and can be gotten without a group (deliveries, guy on the second floor of rock bottom). What I was asking about was why exactly couldn't the other 4 get the quest? A. Is it because I had it active in my journal? If so, did that only affect them when I was in their party or would it have prevented them from getting the quest whether I was in their party or not? B. Let's say, I'm not in their party, I have the quest incompleted in my journal, and they do go to the quest giver...if in this scenario it would've given them the quest without me having to go to the quest giver myself and "finish it prematurely" why exactly must I do that?

The quests themselves seem to have requisites for attaining them (class level/group number) while the zone also has requisites which I can't pinpoint but can infer (The quest being in your journal?). If situation "A" above was correct about why the problem happened with them getting the quest was that I was in their party with the quest already open, my suggestions about getting any quest (solo) instead of having the requisite group of members in your party would've solved the problem. The only problem that brings up is the requisite for the zone only being based on whether or not you have the quest in your journal...so as to prevent PC's from going in (solo) the zones would have to make a check for party quantity (multiple players) when entrance to the zone was requested by the PC. I'm guessing that is viable simply becauce the zone seems to scale up the higher the average level of the group is, so the number of players and their levels in the party can be called.

I understand you can't repeat quests on a single session, I just wanted to be able to finish the quest. If you said you were working on being able to have party members join "mid-quest" so to speak then that's all I was addressing with this post. I apologize for trying to go in depth with it, I've just always been curious about scripting and I like knowing the "why" behind the game. It probably comes from back when I exploited the hell out of the "why" to get my character higher level. But in this case I can see the RP'ing is the main focus and have no desire to exploit anything for levels. If this is still in beta, I'd like to be able to offer back more than just a complaint, instead focusing on a solution. It's just hard to do that without information about what the problem is to begin with I suppose. Thanks for taking the time to inform one of the many citizens of the underdark :D

About you mentioning it was in your journal, I personally didn't see the comment so I'm sorry if it felt like we were ignoring you. I remember you saying something slightly different as we were about to take the quest and I'm sorry for not explaining this at the time, it never crossed my mind that you might've been unsure about how questing works. So, sorry for the misundersanding.

Welcome to the server. To be brief, the answer to your main question about "not being able to finish the quest in another party", is probably to prevent exploiting the quests/farming exp. If you were to kill all the way to the boss, leave, join another party and do it again, it would be a fast way to level up and make no sense. Your idea for grabbing every quest solo and then adding more people is similar to what the DMs are implementing. You will be able to add more group members into the quest, as long as they have not already done it. The level or number of party member requirements are more of a precautionary so you don't end up dying.

In response to part B, I think you still have to clear the quest if it failed, despite not being present in their party. I am almost certain that all quests can only be done by one group at a time, unless they are the solo delivery quests. PS: it would also be wonderful for the quest giver to tell you who is on the quest. =)

And yes, the reason they could not get the quest was because you were in the party. It is unfortunate the quest got bugged as you say, however this does not happen very often (at least not to me =) ) so don't worry about it too much. The DMs are often very helpful and would have probably given you your missing exp/gold.

A. Is it because I had it active in my journal? If so, did that only affect them when I was in their party or would it have prevented them from getting the quest whether I was in their party or not? B. Let's say, I'm not in their party, I have the quest incompleted in my journal, and they do go to the quest giver...if in this scenario it would've given them the quest without me having to go to the quest giver myself and "finish it prematurely" why exactly must I do that?

When a group takes a quest, all encounters relating to that quest are reset. While a group is doing a quest (has the first or second journal entry) no other group can take the quest -- it would reset the encounters on top of the first group, and would let the second group into the area which would also break immersion when they ran into each other (and present a radically different questing experience).

When you cancel the quest (as you did), the group was then able to take the quest themselves.

The issue you encountered is very rare and will probably never occur again (it was entirely a human error), the reward you missed out on was only a few hundred XP and a share of gold. There are many, many quests in the module.

My bad. Not gonna happen again :?

Can't repeat quests that you started, either, but there's looooads of quests, and more on their way every day. And when we get the patch we can start putting in even funkier ones. (Literally. Ooze Mephits! Mustard Jellies! *slobbers*)

It happens NC don't worry about it.

I just wanted to clarify, I was not in any way making this some type of personal attack on nuclear. I think it's awesome just the simple fact that DM's actually play almost every day. Compared to most other servers I've been on; that's incredible and the reason why I want to stay here.

The reason why I posted all of this was just to find out literally what is done "behind-the-scenes" as far as the limitations of scripting goes for quests. I think I have a good idea of how the quests system is written and I'm just wanting to bounce ideas back and forth so that I have a good idea myself on what the creator/DM's want in the first place.

Just wanted to update this, and give a little bit of an outline of how EFUQS (the quest system) works.

Most quests work as follows: 1) Party speaks to questgiver. 1a) Questgiver checks to see if the party is legal and if the quest is available (checks party size, alignments, levels, whether someone else has the quest already) 1b) If the party accepts the quest, they get the journal entries, and the questgiver marks the quest as being currently taken.

2) Party does the quest, usually needing to kill some boss, recover some item, or do some other action to trigger a journal entry saying you've completed objectives.

3) Party returns to the questgiver, get's paid, gets xp, and the questgiver marks the quest as open for the next party to come along.

In this case, the trigger didn't fire for part 2, so the quest never got closed in part 3.

Now, we are in the process of adding and testing additional code that not only lets you add people, but also tells you when the quest is taken, so that there is less confusion there.