Maybe a daily multistep quest that could possibly involve multiple zones. Quest markers are disabled. It consist of clues that are vague, sometimes combat, sometime bribery, sometimes puzzles. Maybe the quest could be from an artifact merchant/collector. And your job is to figure out where the "lost" artifact is and bring it back. An example of a quest might be:

1) You start with information about an Argonian beggar on the streets of wayrest who mentioned, after to many ales, about an expedition he was on and researchers mentioning a book they found containing information about a rare artifact.

2) You find the beggar after searching wayrest. But he has not ate anything but scraps for days. He says he will tell you what he knows if you can find him his favorite food( a crafted green food). The beggar tells you about ayleid ruins that he went to as a laborer for some researchers. He doesnt remember where they are but remembers dominion soldiers along the road and that the ruins were right on a stream as he use to spend his evenings fishing just outside of the ruins. He gives you the title of the book and says it should still be there.

3) After some trial and error and using your knowledge of tamriel you think you found the right ruins. Now you fight through hostile NPC as you scour the bookshelves for the book. You find the book and read it. In it( you actually have to read it as you dont get an updated quest telling you where to go next), you find some of the history of the artifact in question. The artifact was last recorded in the book to in the tomb of ( dead NPC name) that is located in Northern Valenwood( at this point you need to have a bit of lore knowledge or do some research to figure out that Northern Valenwood is the old name for Reaper's March)

4) You find the tomb, but find it has been cleared of valuables. It seems you have reached a dead end. You decide to talk to some of the locals and see if you can pick up the trail. Finally after many ( often boring conversations) you find a bosmer who has knowledge of the robbery. It turns out that the artifact was cleaned out in a heist by the thieves guilds nearly 30 years ago.

5) Your next logical step would be to talk to the guildmaster of the thieves guild in Abahs landing. You scour old documents and books in the den to reveal who pulled the heist. Nothing is mentioned of where the artifact went too. but does mention who lead the heist.

6) You talk to the guildmaster again and learn the heist leader "retired" to fencing at the outlaw refuge in morrowind.

7) you get to the refuge and find the fence. he will tell you who he sold it to but you have do him a favor first. In a cave on the west side of the volcano is a dwemer artifact that one of his clients want for their collection. The only problem is its guard by dwemer constructs. Inside is a wall with blocks on it. Each block has dwemer word. The blocks have to be pushed in a certain order in order to open the door to go further in. he gives you a map of the location of the cave( looks like treasure map)

8) You have two choices try to figure out the order. You can either push them randomly and try to find the correct blocks and order. Or you can try to solve the puzzle. You get to the ruins fight a few dwemer spiders and make it to the room with the wall. You see 10 blocks in the wall with dwemer words. Luckily you are able to make out the words. The inscription above says " If one has an infusion of chal, a marble, and a leather-sewing needle; what 3 items should they acquire at the market? If you choose not to fight your way through dwemer constructs of increasing difficulty and instead figure out the puzzle you may find that the reference is probably in your own lore library. A search of dwemer scrolls will find that scroll IV contains the answer you need: bone-tweezers, guar egg, and boot-jack.

9) you make it past the door and acquire the trinket. Once back at the fence, he reveals he sold it to a noble Breton in Port Hunding but only gave a first name of (NPC first name)

10) you find the noble in port hunding and ask him about the artifact. He says he owned it, but bandits stole it a few years ago. He remembers the bandit leader was called ( NPC name) and they use to work out of a cave on the north western side of the island.

11) you find the bandits and dispatch them. You find the bandit in question who is now the leader. He is not in the mood to talk and you are forced to kill him. On his body is two maps. One of a map of Tamriel with an area in the northwest circled. The other is a drawing of a local area( treasure map style) with an x on it. At the top of the map it has a single word, the name of the artifact.

12) you travel to the general area and look for the spot. You find it and dig up a treasure chest. Its locked with an inscription " Only a sigil stone will stop the wrath of oblivion" You see a round inset with a keyhole. You decide to pick it. It has 6 tumblers and is very complex. You manage to pick 5 but you took to long and portal opens and several scamps burst forth. You dispatch them and try again. one tumbler to go before dremora burst from a new portal and attack. You try again and faulter. This time 2 Daedroth( elites) emerge from a portal and attack. You barely survive with your life. Finally you manage all 6 tumblers and unlock the chest. You have found the artifact!.

13) you return to the artifact merchant and claim your reward( XP, gold, and either writ vouchers or something similar with the merchant selling similar quality items that you can buy for writ vouchers)


It would be a lot of work to add enough quests like this to make it seem dynamic( though they could do some with every patch or make them more dynamic) but it would interesting to have quests that you had to figure out and that dont always have an obvious answer or that cannot be solved completely by trial and error.

I get annoyed each time I have to do the light beam "puzzle" in Stonefall. It's an insult to one's intelligence. Only interesting puzzle I can think of is the dwemer contraption in the mine in Wrothgar, though the difficulty is for a large part due to the perspective.