I think I can speak for most of the other players on the server - nothing sux more than getting shafted by a crash when a party has spent a crapload of resources and completed a scripted quest.

When the questgiver is a good ways from the quest area, this is almost guarenteed to happen frequently.

This discourages players from doing the harder quests that are way out there when they burn literally thousands of gold in supplies and then have to try to divvy up whatever loot MAYBE got picked up.

ANSWER - have another version of the questgiver very near the area where the quest ends so that the XP and gold can be divided fairly quickly. Otherwise, you have to send a tell to the rogue character - "RUN up and get the ding", and the whole party has to avoid RP and act very OOC while they are trudging to the Last Stand to spread the loot out.

Just a thought.

Any thoughts from the DM staff on this?

Maybe just make a clickable to reward XP like the gnolls, urdlenite and goblin bandits? That way, if the server crashes, all you lose is the gold.

For instance, the Duergar slaver quest. Love it, but it's a LONG way back to Sanctuary and the cowardly dwarf with the gold and the XP ding. Quests that are challenging, consuming your barskins, blurs, healing potions and wands and such are killer if you get a crash before you can get back to the gold and get your XP.

That's why people spam quests that are closer like clowns, Hoar, stinky sewers and the old zombie staircase. Easy to get to, little chance of crash, good payout. Even trolls which is tougher now, has a quest finish that isn't so stinking far away, and lowers the chances of server crash robbing you of your earned XP and coin.

On a side note, it really seems like the loot has been scaled back for a lot of quests, and the difficulty increased. Personally I think quests that are hard to get to and challenging should have bigger payouts. Duergar slavers, the druid trees, lizard Moanderites and so on should pay more than they do to encourage them.

EFUQS isn't easy to modify like this. Quite difficult, actually! And since it's such a vital part of the server we're loathe to make big changes lest we break it. We may consider something like this, but no promises.

As for the scaling down of loot and gold payouts, quest balancing is an ongoing process, and some of our quests have been imbalanced on that department and are now being fixed.

They have unique loot that drops, which is incentive enough for me as a player, and are supposed to be rarely done because they are dangerous quests.

No real interest in this change.

The incident that sparked this thread was unfortunate and annoying, but it doesn't happen all that often.

One easy solution - perhaps the quest giver could be moved a little closer to the actual quest area. Maybe he's hiding out in a corner of the underdark near Mur or near there, for instance (which works for other quest givers already in place).

Thoughts?

You know, I'd really support the centralization of a lot of quests. Make Mur more of a location for more quests by moving the current location and sliding it to Mur. Or the Blue Mushroom even.

Idea: at the exit from the quest area there is a clickable item which gives all the chars in party an 'X quest completed' token (undroppable/unstoleable), same like the gnoll or the goblin camp "questgiver". The real questgiver takes those tokens away and gives the gold/XP/item reward the the 'quest completed' journal entry in exchange.

It also solves the problem when someone has to log right after doing the quest and can't wait till the party treks back during years to the questgiver.

Thoughts?