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Quests

Design principle​

The quest system must make players talk to NPCs without becoming an endless checklist. The fix is making quests feel like the world talking to you, not a to-do list you manage.

Hard rules:

  • No fetch quests with arbitrary quantities ("bring me 10 fire crystals")
  • No ! markers over NPC heads
  • No formal quest acceptance UI
  • Every request must involve a Faeral, an ecosystem interaction, or a discovery

Field Requests​

Casual, contextual tasks from NPCs encountered during exploration.

  • Discovery: Heard in natural conversation — no pop-up, no menu
  • Tracking: The Codex quietly notes it (not a dedicated quest log)
  • Expiry: Tied to ecosystem state — a request for a rare species becomes irrelevant if that species goes locally extinct, or resolves itself if the ecosystem recovers
  • Rewards: Small — money, consumables, common items
  • No markers: NPCs do not always have something for you. Revisiting them after ecosystem changes may reveal new requests.

Examples:

  • "Haven't seen a Tidewraith in weeks — the tides have been wrong since the storms started."
  • "My daughter collects feathers from migrating species. She'd love something from a Duskwing."
  • "The old lighthouse keeper says a predator has been scaring off the fishing Faerals. Could you look into it?"

Research Commissions​

Structured tasks from Dr. Theo Retical via radio, or from Warden institutions.

  • Cap: Maximum 2–3 active at any time (hard limit)
  • Acceptance: Delivered in dialogue/radio contact, tracked in a dedicated Commissions tab in the Codex
  • Rewards: Better — rare items, significant money, Codex data, narrative progression
  • Tied to: The living ecosystem and the main story

Examples:

  • "The Boreal Sanctuary's disruption is pushing Frostwings south ahead of schedule — I need confirmed sightings in three zones before the season shifts."
  • "There's a population of Embralynx in the Volcanic Chain behaving unusually aggressively. Document three encounters and send me the Codex data."

Dr. Theo's radio​

Beyond formal commissions, Theo uses the radio to:

  • Contextualise ecological events the player witnesses
  • Deliver lore drops naturally during exploration
  • React to player actions ("You restored the Currents? The migration data is already changing — extraordinary.")
  • Provide ecological commentary, sometimes going on tangents about species he studied decades ago

The radio makes Theo feel like a character, not a quest board.