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Quests

"Half the work in any town is reading the notice board. The other half is doing what it says."

The quest system is your steady-state work in Ghelmyon. Notice boards in each town carry hand-authored regional notices plus procedural fillers; NPCs offer personal quests as your bond with them climbs; story arcs gate behind specific NPC + faction combinations. This article is the system reference.

At a glance
Sources Notice boards (most), NPC offers (personal), story chains (gated)
Max active Usually 5-8; varies by class
Quest log /quest or q
Tier ladder Easy / Medium / Hard
Time-sensitive? Some - board hints urgent / deadline notices
Reward shape Gold + rep + occasional item / item-set

Sources of quests

Notice boards

The notice board in each town is the bread-and-butter quest surface. Town squares have one; some districts have a second. Reading the board surfaces 6-12 quests per board, mixed across:

  • Urgent - current emergency (lost child, missing shipment). Time-sensitive; expires after a few in-game days.
  • Standing requests - vendor restocks, herb hauls, escort jobs. Reliable but flat reward.
  • Rumors - vague leads that pay out only if you act on them. Often unlock multi-step chains.
  • Deadlines - dated tasks. Watch the deadline_days field.

Each of the five towns (Ghelmyon, Thornwood, Millhaven, Darkhollow, Greenweald), plus the smaller settlements and waystations dotted along the roads, carries hand-authored regional notices that match the place's voice - road-warden bounties out on the frontier passes, a miller's-bounty pastoral in Millhaven, harbourmaster work down at the coast. Read the boards when you arrive somewhere new.

read board

Bulk-accept hotkeys

At the "Read which notice?" prompt:

Hotkey Effect
A / all Accept all (asks if any are time-sensitive)
AE All Easy tier
AM All Easy + Medium
AH All including Hard

Bulk-accept respects MAX_ACTIVE_QUESTS. If the cap would be exceeded the board trims to remaining slots, or refuses if your log is already full.

NPC offers

NPCs at Friend tier or higher may offer you their personal quests. These are usually higher-stakes than board fillers - they pay better, unlock more, and often start multi-step chains. To check for an offer:

ask <name> about quest

If they have one for you, they'll describe it. Acceptance is verbal: yes or accept. NPCs at Stranger tier won't volunteer; you need at least Acquaintance status before they trust you with anything but the simplest tasks.

Story chains

The Acts 4-7 main story arc fires through specific quest chains gated on:

  • Act 1-3 chains completed (the first ~hour-20 of play)
  • Specific NPC relationships at threshold
  • Faction commitments made or refused

You don't ACCEPT these from a board; they trigger from events. The /story command shows your current Act + the active chain title; the journal narration is the only surface.

Quest objectives

Each quest carries 1-N objectives. The most common types:

Type Example Resolution
kill "Kill 6 rats around the wharf" Combat kills auto-credit
deliver_to "Deliver coracle plank to fishwife" Trade verb on the NPC
craft "Forge a steel sword" Craft completion at any anvil
earn_gold "Save 5 gold" Pure passive
reach_skill_rank "Get One-Handed Swords to rank 20" Pure passive
investigate "Find out what happened to the courier" Conversation + clue collection
deliver_message "Take the letter to Hollowford" Read + drop at destination

Multi-objective quests resolve all objectives in sequence; the quest log shows current progress per objective.

The quest log

/quest

(Or q for short.) Shows all active quests with:

  • Title + giver
  • Current objective
  • Deadline (if any)
  • Tier (Easy / Medium / Hard)
/quest <name>

Shows detail for a specific quest - full description, all objectives + their progress, current reward preview, any breadcrumbs from clues collected.

/journal

The narrative-side view - same data but written as journal prose ("Tomek's coracle... still missing..."). Useful for players who lose the gameplay-thread between sessions.

Deadlines + time-sensitivity

Some quests have deadline_days set. Watch for:

  • URGENT prefix on the board - first-day deadline, max reward, half-reward on late, void on miss
  • DEADLINE prefix - multi-day, deterministic deadline
  • MISSING / RUMOR prefix - soft-deadline, reward decays gradually over the deadline_days window

When a deadline expires, the quest auto-fails (no penalty beyond losing the reward). Most quests AREN'T deadlined; the ones that are warn you clearly.

Late-completion multipliers (from the engine):

  • late_gold_multiplier 0.5 - half-pay if late
  • late_gold_multiplier 0.75 - 75% if mildly late
  • exceptional_bonus - flat extra if completed extra-clean

Quest chains

A chain is a sequence of linked quests that unfold across days, revealing more of the story with each stage. The classic shape:

  1. Day 1 - notice board hands you a small fetch.
  2. Day 2 - completing the fetch reveals a complication.
  3. Day 3-4 - investigation step (conversation + clue work).
  4. Day 4-5 - choice point (which side do you back).
  5. Day 6-7 - payout, often with a named item.

Chains are flagged in completion text: more to follow or the matter has a thread or a giver who asks to meet again. Your /quest log shows the active chain as a single line with the current stage's sub-objective.

Chains pay 2-3x what single-step quests do at the same difficulty tier, and almost always end in a named gear piece or a faction-rep windfall.

Turn-in

When a quest's objectives all read complete, return to the turn_in_location (or the giver-NPC named in the quest log) and either:

turn in <quest-title>

or just talk to the giver - they'll prompt you to complete.

Some quests require an item in inventory to turn in (delivery quests). Some require a specific NPC alive (escort). Some specify a location. The quest detail in /quest <name> always lists the turn-in conditions.

After turn-in:

  • Gold credited to your purse
  • Rep credited to the relevant faction
  • Item rewards added to inventory (if any)
  • The quest moves to your Completed log
  • If part of a chain, the next stage triggers (sometimes immediately, sometimes after a phase or sleep)

Failure + abandonment

You can abandon a quest:

/quest abandon <name>

Cost: small rep hit with the giver, the quest re-locks for a few in-game days, items consumed in pursuit are NOT refunded.

Some quests have a must_not_kill or must_not_lie invariant - violating it auto-fails. Check the description carefully on moral-gate quests like the Pinescree chapel-vandal notice (catch alive preferred).

Strategy tips

  • Read every board. New-player default is to read once and forget; the boards rotate every few days, and the regional ones surface things you can't get elsewhere.
  • Bundle by direction. Accept all the Saltspray-area notices BEFORE you walk to Saltspray; you'll do them in one trip rather than three.
  • Don't burn your slots. Cap is 5-8; if you have 6 active and find a great chain-starter, abandon something stale first.
  • Chain-starters pay better. A 5-step chain pays 2-3x the equivalent single-step. If you're going to do one thing for one giver, start a chain rather than grind one-offs.
  • NPC-offered > board-offered. A quest from a Friend-tier NPC almost always pays better in rep + items than a board filler. Build bonds.

See also