Delemis' Quest Showcase

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Delemis's picture
Delemis
Quest Developer
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2019-01-02 10:17
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1 month 1 week ago

Before I begin, let's start with an IMPORTANT NOTE: I was not able to test this quest in morrowind exe. When I first started making the mod, the latest mainland release file was not vanilla engine compatible, so I did all of my (extensive) testing in OpenMW thinking that by the time I was finished, a new mainland section file would be uploaded and I could do proper vanilla testing. However, when I was finished and an updated file was present, I tried to load the game only to find that some sort of incompatibility with the latest roryn's bluff section file was stimying my efforts now as well. I imagine that its considered poor form not to test with morrowind.exe, but the quest is technically complete and I was told I should make a topic anyways so here I am.

On that note, here's a quest that I completed over the course of a week called 'Routine Delivery.' In short, its a quest where a relatively poor Andothren merchant enlists a player in a rather risky but certainly profitable moneymaking scheme by sending them on a "routine delivery." You can start it by talking to Irva Sedrethi, the dunmer outfitter with her shop located on the docks of Andothren.

The detailed summary

Irva Sedrethi will ask if you want to make some money by making a routine delivery, and will elaborate that she has a client waiting to collect an ebony longsword from her in Almas Thirr. She can't make the trip, so asks you to do it for her.

If you accept the quest, she'll give you the sword and tell you to meet with the client's agent in the "Thirsty Saint Cornerclub," and to use the codeword "Amethyst Dreugh" to identify yourself. But what's this? Talking to any ( not t_nolore using) smith in tr_m3 or tr_m4 will cause them to notice the sword, and following up on the "ebony-looking sword" topic will cause them to point out that it is, in fact, a fake.

With this knowledge you can go back to Irva Sedrethi, give the sword back and refuse to make the delivery. With high enough stats, you can blackmail her into paying you for it (using the T_Glob_Speech_Haggle function). Otherwise, if you don't care that the item is a fake or simply can't get the blackmail to stick, you can venture on to Almas Thirr.

In the Thirsty Saint Cornerclub in Almas Thirr's canalworks, the dunmer Sulada Syrivis is the agent you need to speak to. Give her the codeword and she'll give you directions to a trapdoor nearby that leads to the underworks, telling you that her employer is waiting for you there. Enter that trapdoor, and you will find three individuals: Sulada Syrivis, who seems to have followed you and has shed the robe she was wearing, as well as an orc named Dorog Gro-Durin and another dunmer named Hles Vervul. This time, Hles Vervul is the one you need to speak to.

If you don't have the sword at this point, Hles Vervul will tell you to scram. If you do, he'll gleefully collect it only to almost immediately realize that its a forgery. He will demand that you pay him back what he paid for the sword: 2,000 drakes. At this point, you have four options:

  • You can give him the money, at which point he will let you leave.
  • You can refuse to give him the money, at which point he and his gang will attack you. You can flee at this point, or you can kill him and his gang to get a journal update indicating you did so.
  • You can tell him that Irva Sedrethi gave you the forgery. He will believe you, and ask you to collect it back from her for him. If you refuse, he and his gang will attack you.
  • You can attempt to convince him that the forgery is worth the money he paid for it (using T_Glob_Speech_Sway), and if he buys it then you will be free to go. If not, then you can probably guess what happens. What's notable is that, especially with his disposition decrease upon finding out the sword is a forgery, it'd be pretty damn hard to do this successfully. In my personal opinion, that's fine, but the reviewer may have a different perspective.

Regardless of what you choose, you will likely be returning to Irva Sedrethi's shop in Andothren, where a multitude of things might happen.

  • If you gave Hles the money, Irva Sedrethi will give you 1,000 drakes and a false-ebony shardsword, another forgery but one that has a decent enchantment on it. The 1,000 drakes is not enough to cover your debt or even really count as a reward. However, if you are a Kinsman of House Hlaalu then you will be able to threaten her with your position, which will cow her into giving you both the rest of the money you paid and an additional reward in the form of 1700 more drakes. Needless to say, she won't like you much after this, but she'll at least put on the appearance of doing so- Wouldn't want to piss off a Hlaalu kinsman, after all.
  • If you refuse to give Hles the money and flee, Irva will be a little bit disappointed that the deal went awry. She will give you 200 drakes and the false-ebony shardsword. 
  • If you killed Hles and his gang, Irva will be overjoyed at not having to deal with a dissatisfied customer, and will pay you 500 drakes alongside the false-ebony lonsword. Keep in mind that the strongest npc of the three - Dorog Gro-Durin - is level 20, so this will not be an easy feat for a low level player.
  • If you agreed to get Irva Sedrethi's money back from her, you will not have access to the routine delivery topic or be able to complete the quest in that manner. Instead, you can get the 2,000 drakes from Irva Sedrethi or just pay off her debt yourself.
    • To get the money from her, you can pickpocket or extort her. If extorted (requires 80 disposition), she won't forget it, and your relationship with her will greatly suffer. Failing to extort her (not having 80 disposition) will not permanently cause her to hate the player however, even if it does result in a significant disposition drop. 
    • If you pickpocket her, she won't hate the player or make the connection that they were the thief. After completing the quest in your journal, you can return to her to get a reward due to the fact that she doesn't know the player was involved in ripping her off, and considers them to have performed their duty. Unfortunately, because you robbed her, she has no money to give- only the false-ebony shardsword. Pickpocketing 2,000 gold is, in and of itself, probably impossible without a mod installed to overhaul the sneak skill- Once again, I'm personally fine with this, and once again the reviewer may disagree.
    • If you pay off the debt yourself, its much the same, except that instead Irva will give you 200 drakes and the false-ebony shardsword.
    • Regardless of any of this, upon giving the debt money to Hles Vervul, he should pay the player a 700 drake cut. The next time the player enters the Almas Thirr Underworks, he and his gang should be gone. 
  • If you killed Hles Vervul and his gang, or convinced him that the forgery was worth the money he paid for it, then Irva will be considerably impressed, giving the player 500 gold in both cases but with a much higher disposition increase in the latter scenario. Of the two options, killing the gang is more profitable since you'll also get all the goodies that they had on them (not a ridiculous amount of loot, hopefully, but suited for the high-level player capable of beating them down.)

Once the quest is completed, Irva Sedrethi should have dialogue suited to the player's actions in the aftermath, not a huge variety but enough to feel realistic (She's not going to say "How are you?" to the nerevarine who extorted her, for example.) Also, Hles Vervul and his two fellow gangsters should be gone from Almas Thirr Underworks. These scripts are the ones I had the most trouble with, and if the reviewer notices that they're not working correctly then I will absolutely get to work fixing them once I'm done tearing my hair out.

AttachmentSizeDate
Binary Data Routine Delivery.ESP55.62 KB2022-05-04 04:09
Mortimer's picture
Mortimer
Senior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
2016-06-10 21:48
Last seen:
1 week 2 days ago

Great work so far!

Comments / Requests

-Insert that the cornerclub is in the canalworks of almas thirr, it's a decently big place and is pretty hard to find. There isn't a good topic that can direct you there otherwise (make sure you update it in the journal, too)

-Avoid starting sentences with ellipses even for dramatic effect (the codeword response at the cornerclub). Also in the same line, don't break to a 2nd line after [an emote] in square brackets

-The directions to the meeting in the underworks aren't written in the journal entry but could be (I'm notoriously bad at remembering directions)

-Hles vervul 'routine delivery' response: "but-... Wait," -> "but wait. Something about"

-Hles vervul line after giving the sword "Well, listen here buddy" -> "Well listen here, buddy"

-Irva Sedrethi response to killing them all in routine delivery: remove the "..." on a separate line. Cut from !? to Oh thank the three. Overuse of ellipses is pretty common lol

-irva sedrethi response to giving them the money in routine delivery: "You're saying the client found out- err," change to "found out, err, claimed". emdashes are --, and when using double its generally better to use double commas surrounding the phrase. same goes for the emdash further in

-Same line, when she offers you 1000 gold and asks "that should cover it, right"? Remove that part. The player has no available responses. just cut that part and say something like "I'm sorry, I would offer more if I could"

-Journal "When I gave him the ebony longsword": remove the -, replace with :

-Journal "Irva Sedrethi was less than enthused": remove the "at least its slightly more useful" part, keep the rest

-Irva should explain to the player at some point post-quest why they did what they did. Either they were in too deep, or they couldn't get an ebony sword due to supply chain or whatever. "had to get something quickly' kind of doesn't play well, as the player could take infinite time to do the quest.

- you immediately turn in the sword when you click the 'routine delivery' topic, usually there's a chance to reneg and not give it over just like accepting the quest

-One of the routine delivery lines is not filtered for Hles, should set it just in case

-as discussed, rather than getting the money on behalf of hles, tell irva to give hles his money back, and hles will then give you the cut. maybe have irva give you a letter for hles

-hles responses to the successful check, and his lines in general, have a lot of "hmm...." "hrmm....". cut back on those a little bit imo

-the check to expose the sword as fake should still be able to happen even if the player encountered the thugs via proximity. it only is accessible if == 10

-Ebony-looking blade should have a continuous response from a smith as long as you are on the quest. it disappears as soon as you click it, which causes the 'ghost' topic where it doesn't have a response. also in this response, cut the initial yep. the sentence after the next one also starts with yep.

-Irva's responses to the forgery accusation, more single -, change to double or remove some of the flavor dialogue

Delemis's picture
Delemis
Quest Developer
Joined:
2019-01-02 10:17
Last seen:
1 month 1 week ago

After like two days, here's an updated version of the quest that should hopefully have taken care of all the issues that you mentioned. I removed the path where you can take Irva Sedrethi's money without her knowing, as money is no longer what you need to get Hles Vervul's questfinish state anyways.

AttachmentSizeDate
Binary Data Routine Delivery 2.ESP57.01 KB2022-05-07 03:54
Mortimer's picture
Mortimer
Senior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
2016-06-10 21:48
Last seen:
1 week 2 days ago

Less typos than most developer quests with this much dialogue.

Dialogue was cleaned, quest works great. Made some minor changes to choice wording and phrasing, but 97% of it is all your original dialogue.

The only major bug I found was that smiths still had the "ebony-looking blade" greeting after the quest was completed. This was fixed by simply adding another journal check onto the greeting.

Other than that, I'm genuinely impressed.

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