What type of quests would everyone like to see in Book II?

I would like to see some timed quests. For example, a plague has broken out in a village and the cure has to be delivered to the village in a certain amount of time, say three days. If not delivered within three days villagers start to die. The amount of experience you recieve is based on how many villagers you prevent from dying.

The quest would have a clock to count down the time (after 3 days) or a death meter. The death meter would start with the number of villagers and start to decline as time passes.

Maybe a quest where you have to raise a band of fighters in a village to defend it. The number of villagers you can convince will depend on your charisma and diplomacy skill. You get experience based on the number of fighters. You also earn experience by how well the village is defended. The amount of experience rewarded will be based on the number of defenders lost and damage to the village. The amount of experience rewarded will be on a sliding scale.

If you lose few defenders with little damage to the village, you get full experience points. If you lose to many defenders and the village is heavily damaged no experience is rewarded.

The game could use the death meter to show the number of dead defenders and a damage percentage meter to show the damage done to the village.

What kind of quests would everyone like to see?
BW, without giving anything away what kind of quests can we expect?

The storyline is already in place (as it has been for about 3 years) and I have worked out most of what the main quest would include already, but I have zero side quests designed yet. Actually, very little has been done on the production side of Book II yet- we've just been doing conceptual tests and some modifications to the engine. Hopefully we can make an announcement soon to officially confirm that Book II is "in full production". We are working out the last details of that now- ensuring we have the resources to move ahead with production and actually see it through to the end!

And yes, I would love to see some quest ideas here! Most people here know what kind of quests would be possible within the capabilities of the Eschalon engine, so share your ideas!

Im pretty old school when it comes to quests. I do have to say I like the ones suggested by realmzmaster.

I tend to like quests of this type

- There is an ancient underground lair that a wizard had built as he started to go crazy and there are stories of weapons and artifacts of great magical value down there if you can survive the beasts, traps and puzzles to get to them. As your going through the lair maybe find notes and bones from long dead adventurers who had perished trying to get to them in the past.

- A ancient dragon's lair that contains something like special armor. You have the option to try and kill the dragon or negotiate with him. Maybe he asks you to go on some quests for him? The trick is the stuff he asks you to do is evil so its a moral dilemna if you wanna do it or not. If you refuse he comes after you and you have to fight him and he is very tough to kill.

- A wealthy merchant and collector of rare items asks you to find something for him in an old ruin of a monks monastery that has been infested by many undead and a very tough vampire.

I know these aren't original ideas, but I always seem to enjoy exploring old decrepit lairs and castles and stuff....I like the feeling of exploring something that no one else has in many years.

Anyways, just some thoughts of the top of my head.

I could share a few ideas I have for quests that might be interesting for Book II, but is there any chance you could share with us some information about the types of locations we'll be visiting? Will we be revisiting places like Bastion Spire or the Barrens of Crakamir? I know you properly won't answer that given the secrecy behind Book I, but I might as well give it a shot.

I would love to see quests with multiple ways to resolve them. For example there are two factions one is good and the other is bad, and you can take quest from anyone of them to find some artifact, if you will bring it to the evil faction, he will give you more money, but he will use it for bad purposes and to destroy the good faction.

Difficulty: Medium
Objective: Find two rare books and recover stolen book for Abygale
Reward(s): 10% discount at store for all three items or 400 gold pieces for each book (750 experience points for each book)
Quest Information: Abygale has moved her business “Grand Magicks Emporium” to the safest place in Eastern Thaermore, Bastion Spire. She hires you to find two rare books, “Volume IX: Ectoplasm and You” and “Depths of Peril”. She also wants you to recover the “Secrets of Transference Circuits” book which was stolen from her shortly before Chancellor Malcolm announced the end of the war with the Orakur. All three books can be found well before the middle of the game so the discount won't become redundant.

Difficulty: Easy
Objective: Collect twelve pieces of Basilisk scales
Reward(s): Eight pieces of “Basilisk Surprise”, each piece of food gives + 4 health to the player and greatly decreases the “Hunger” bar. Quest awards player 250 experience points.
Quest Information: A hermit that appears demented demands you hunt basilisks near the coast and bring back their scales so he can make his delicacy “Basilisk Surprise”.

Something like this BasiliskWrangler?

Culmination: yes, that is good but it doesn't have to be so specific regarding people and places. After all, we don't really know where Book II takes place yet, do we?

Guess we'll have to wait until we see the first screenshots, you evil bastard.

I didn't mind the quests in the original. Bigger and more of them, with more thought out consequences (like the quest line regarding the vaults). The mechanics can remain really, you just need some more attention paid to the writing. Perhaps you should hire someone to help with that aspect? I do think that's what Book I lacked the most, some good, not overly wordy, atmospherically entertaining writing. Presentation alone can turn a good story and plot to great in my opinion. It also works vice versa if it's not up to par... With a dedicated writer you could have some more in depth NPC dialogues also.

Here's a couple small ideas:

1. Quests that are started by rumors or hints picked up in conversations. Since this game encourages exploration, it might be nice to have a randomly generated quest for the "Widget of Awesomeness" that begins with an overheard conversation, a scrap of a map or page from a journal. More clues are discovered through exploration. not all of the clues and hints pan out, some are red herrings and dead ends, but if the PC is diligent, they can find the item.

2. Class specific quests.
For example, a rogue might be hired to steal the "Widget of Awesomeness" from a locked room with lots of traps that is behind a door that cannot be bashed, only picked. Or a Priest class character might be called upon to get rid of some high level undead critter that is immune to elemental magic or ordinary weaponry.
Class specific quests would encourage replay as a different class to see what else there is to do in the game and encourage role play because as a rogue, only I can do this, or as a mage, only I can do that.

Keep the FedEx, kitten rescue, and teddy bear retrieval quests to a minimum. If my character is being asked to do something, make it dangerous, and exciting, possibly illegal or immoral. Killing, looting and desecrating ancient burial sites never gets old.

You had explosions. I would like to systematically blow something up. Then run away with a timer. Lots of people would hate this, but I kind of like this idiocy.

I also would like some ridiculous quests, or even insane quests, things like quest for the cheese, or other retrieval quests.

There are no riddles in your game. I wouldn't mind a riddling contest where you pay to answer random riddles.

It might be fun to poison someone, or poison a well.

I, too, would have liked to pick up the occassonal powder-filled barrel and set it off at another spot. They (barrels) could be real heavy like crucible one was in Book 1 and you had to decide whether it was worth it, or it was part of a quest to blow something up..like a Goblin dike built to stop water flowing to a village of humans. You have to blow up the dike with powder to get the water flowing again so they/crops don't die of thirst.

I don't especially care for riddles, they're too hard for this ol' brain to fathom

The poison a well one could be a quest for the bad guys. And the good guys have to unpoison it. Or,..The well is an ordinary one. A quest makes it magical, ie. able to drink the water and get hit points back or mana back. And the bad guys want it poisoned so the magic won't work. An item has to be dropped inside to make it magical..perhaps on a deadline? If the deadline goes by the well is poisoned and magic won't work if item dropped down later.

No opened ended quests like the one in Book 1 where you find out the potion you thought was ment to help didn't and you could use your own magic to help. And the fact that priest never got punished (unless you kill him off yourself). I'd have liked to try and come back and heal the guy or find him dead (heh, so I could loot his chest).

I really hope to not have so many "hanging quests" in Book II. When designing quests it is very hard sometimes to think about all the possible options that people will want to take during a quest. An example of this (other than the Priest of Aridell situation) is how many people wanted to be able to warn Lilith that some shady guy in Blackwater wanted you to kill her.

Oh, and regarding the Powder Kegs- yes, in Book II you can pick them up and drop them in new locations. It has already been added to the engine and it opens up some interesting strategy options.

So if you pick up a powder keg and start walking around, you REALLY don't want to get into a fight, right?