Favors for Lady Arabelle: Help Short-Tail

heaven13 · July 20

For this quest for Lady Arabelle, you need to enter Northpoint. The problem, however, is that Northpoint is quest-locked. If you have not gotten to this point in the story, you cannot enter and help this character. And because the quests are progression locked, you are either locked into this quest and forced to hurry through a quest zone you may not yet be ready to be complete, or forced to drop it and stop favors entirely. If this is your first/only character, that's your only choice. If you have a different character who has done the questline, you have to start from the beginning and work your way up to this one before getting back to where you left off.

Is there any way to complete this without having done the Northpoint quests, or are you SOL? If the latter, I think it bears reconsidering how/what tasks these quests require to be mindful of the myriad of different players that may be engaging in them.

ESO_player123 · July 20

Which part of Northpoint is locked. I just entered it on a character that did not do any quests in Rivenspire zone.

GlassHalfFull · July 28

I had the same problem, these are the steps I took in order to complete the favor, and I received an unexpected skill point. My opinion is any dev who actually plays this game would have realized this is a major pain point for the customer just to complete a favor quest.

According to Brave AI, to gain access, you must complete the following sequence in the Rivenspire main quest line:

Start "The Concealing Veil": Speak to Count Verandis Ravenwatch after completing The Blood-Splattered Shield. He will direct you to Baron Alard Dorell near Northpoint.

Begin "Northpoint in Peril": Talk to Baron Dorell, then locate Skordo the Knife in the abandoned farmhouse. Skordo will send you to find Darien Gautier.

Find the Smuggler's Tunnel Key: Darien discovers a secret tunnel but lacks the key. Speak to Gwendis, who reveals the key is held by the pirate captain Lagra.

Head to the shoreline east of Northpoint.
Find the Message in a Bottle to locate Lagra's sunken ship.
Dive into the wreck and retrieve the Smuggler's Tunnel Key from a lockbox on the lower deck. You will encounter Captain Lagra's ghost upon taking it.

Enter the City: Return to the smuggler's tunnel entrance (marked on your map near the coast). Use the key to unlock the gate. This triggers the The Liberation of Northpoint quest.

Complete the Liberation: Follow the quest steps to infiltrate the city, rescue Lord Ellic Dorell, and defeat Lady Lleraya Montclair in Dorell Manor. Once Lleraya is defeated, the city gates officially open, and the hostile occupation ends.

Gabriel_H · July 28

I don't remember a Favour that involved Northpoint. This tells me the Favour is related to a side quest that I had already completed. There are several base game side quests that are deliberately part of the Favour.

I believe ZOS looked at which quests had a less than 5% completion rate, and tied them to Favours for each alliance.

i.e. The whole point is you have to complete the Northpoint quests to gain access to complete the Favour.

heaven13 · July 28

It's not me, but my partner who got blocked out. I'd done all the quests on my main character ages ago and the quest auto-completed for me without me having to go anywhere. We were trying to figure out if he could complete the favor. I guess at some point he started some sequence of quests which have him locked out of Northpoint unless he finishes that sequence of quests. I haven't attempted to go in on one of my characters who hasn't done any of Rivenspire to see if the residents are there as they are once you are done. He finally just went ahead and started over on his character who's done the quests and is almost caught back up.

GlassHalfFull · July 28

If one has actually completed the side quests, then you can just turn in the proof at the favor board, and not actually need to do anything, which is quick and convenient.

However, if you have not done the side quest, then one may also need to do lengthy main quests just to get to the side quest, then do the side quest, then turn in the favor quest. This is a bad design.

ESO_player123 · July 28

GlassHalfFull wrote: »

I had the same problem, these are the steps I took in order to complete the favor, and I received an unexpected skill point. My opinion is any dev who actually plays this game would have realized this is a major pain point for the customer just to complete a favor quest.

According to Brave AI, to gain access, you must complete the following sequence in the Rivenspire main quest line:

Start "The Concealing Veil": Speak to Count Verandis Ravenwatch after completing The Blood-Splattered Shield. He will direct you to Baron Alard Dorell near Northpoint.

Begin "Northpoint in Peril": Talk to Baron Dorell, then locate Skordo the Knife in the abandoned farmhouse. Skordo will send you to find Darien Gautier.

Find the Smuggler's Tunnel Key: Darien discovers a secret tunnel but lacks the key. Speak to Gwendis, who reveals the key is held by the pirate captain Lagra.

Head to the shoreline east of Northpoint.
Find the Message in a Bottle to locate Lagra's sunken ship.
Dive into the wreck and retrieve the Smuggler's Tunnel Key from a lockbox on the lower deck. You will encounter Captain Lagra's ghost upon taking it.

Enter the City: Return to the smuggler's tunnel entrance (marked on your map near the coast). Use the key to unlock the gate. This triggers the The Liberation of Northpoint quest.

Complete the Liberation: Follow the quest steps to infiltrate the city, rescue Lord Ellic Dorell, and defeat Lady Lleraya Montclair in Dorell Manor. Once Lleraya is defeated, the city gates officially open, and the hostile occupation ends.

I do not know if we were visiting different Northpoints, but, as I said, I can enter the city on a toon that did not do ANY quest from Rivenspire main quest line:

ESO_player123 · July 28

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I don't remember a Favour that involved Northpoint. This tells me the Favour is related to a side quest that I had already completed. There are several base game side quests that are deliberately part of the Favour.

I believe ZOS looked at which quests had a less than 5% completion rate, and tied them to Favours for each alliance.

i.e. The whole point is you have to complete the Northpoint quests to gain access to complete the Favour.

You do not need to do any quests to gain access. See my toon inside Northpoint in my previous post.

DoofusMax · July 28

heaven13 wrote: »

For this quest for Lady Arabelle, you need to enter Northpoint. The problem, however, is that Northpoint is quest-locked. If you have not gotten to this point in the story, you cannot enter and help this character. And because the quests are progression locked, you are either locked into this quest and forced to hurry through a quest zone you may not yet be ready to be complete, or forced to drop it and stop favors entirely. If this is your first/only character, that's your only choice. If you have a different character who has done the questline, you have to start from the beginning and work your way up to this one before getting back to where you left off.

Is there any way to complete this without having done the Northpoint quests, or are you SOL? If the latter, I think it bears reconsidering how/what tasks these quests require to be mindful of the myriad of different players that may be engaging in them.

Ehhh... "quest-locked" is a bit of a stretch since you can walk right in the gate like you can with Haven, Velyn Harbor, Dune, Hallin's Stand, and maybe a couple of others which aren't coming to mind at the moment. Short-Tail and Puddles are right there in Northpoint whether you've messed with the Rivenspire zone story or not. Nothing in the town is hostile until you progress the zone story and then one of your tasks will be to make it not-hostile.

freespirit · July 29

I have done no quests in Rivenspire on one of my accounts but just walked into Northpoint through the gate.

Monte_Cristo · July 29

I just tested it. Took a lvl 11 that has never been to Rivenspire to Northpoint, entered the main gate, found Short-Tail, and did the quest. He's now lvl 12.

heaven13 · July 29

Thanks y'all! Good to know that there's only a weird "quest-locked" state if you're in an in-between state of the quests there and not that you have to start and finish that area. My partner swapped to a different character and all was well; it just took him awhile to get caught back up with where he'd been in the sequence.

I still don't think it's great design, but not as bad of an oversight as I initially thought.