What value do "optional" quest steps add?

FlopsyPrince

Many quests have an "optional" part. What exactly do those add? What am I missing if I skip them?

I am currently on "To Save a Chief" and it has the optional "Avoid killing Vosh Rakh..." part. What impact will ignoring that have? Just more things to kill? Like the mine in the Nord starting zone where you can wear a costume and sneak around or just kill everything?

I do want to know about the Wrothgar quest, but I am more interested in the general principle of the value of these extra optional parts, including "talk with so and so".

valenwood_vegan

It's like... more for people into the story / RP aspects of questing I would think.

There can also be minor effects on the quest later - for example iirc if you complete that optional step in "To Save a Chief", I think there's a NPC who offers you some advice with getting through the rest of the quest, and if you don't complete the step you don't get to speak with him. [May not be remembering that right because it's been a long time].

Another example I can think of is in the initial quest on Kenarthi's Roost on the beach, you can optionally find some potions and give them to some bosmer sailors on the beach to heal them... if you do, they can complete a couple steps of the quest for you later and save you about a minute of your time. Nothing groundbreaking.

Kind of similar I suppose to how "persuade" and "intimidate" can sometimes be used to bypass minor steps in a quest.

I_killed_Vivec

In the grand scheme of things... nothing.

Kill all the Vosh you can, get discovered on a sneak task and end up killing the whole household... you can still progress in the quest.

FlopsyPrince

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

It's like... more for people into the story / RP aspects of questing I would think.

There can also be minor effects on the quest later - for example iirc if you complete that optional step in "To Save a Chief", I think there's a NPC who offers you some advice with getting through the rest of the quest, and if you don't complete the step you don't get to speak with him. [May not be remembering that right because it's been a long time].

I have found some of that. A lot of the "talk to so and so" ones just give more details.

This one has got me wondering for a while and I would rather just blast through the NPCs in the Chief quest, but I wonder what that would miss. The earlier "save the Temple Priests" one is a similar question.

JeroenB

Look at it this way: all quests other than Main Story and Zone Story quests are optional, if you think about it, for the purpose of 'completing' the game . Optional steps within quests are the same. It's all there to add more flavour to the world. One might even argue that the 'flavour of the world' is the primary purpose of an RPG, and the Main/Zone Story quests are also merely vehicles to provide that flavour.

FlopsyPrince

JeroenB wrote: »

Look at it this way: all quests other than Main Story and Zone Story quests are optional, if you think about it, for the purpose of 'completing' the game . Optional steps within quests are the same. It's all there to add more flavour to the world. One might even argue that the 'flavour of the world' is the primary purpose of an RPG, and the Main/Zone Story quests are also merely vehicles to provide that flavour.

So they are more Role Play steps than something I get anything extra (including XP) for, basically?

DigiAngel

Maybe those add more to that monumental 450 gold you get for completing the quest

Tandor

Extra immersion for those players for example who don't want simply to click through the quest dialogue - which is fine, don't get me wrong, it's just that there is more to it for those who want something more, which is also fine.

Necrotech_Master

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

JeroenB wrote: »

Look at it this way: all quests other than Main Story and Zone Story quests are optional, if you think about it, for the purpose of 'completing' the game . Optional steps within quests are the same. It's all there to add more flavour to the world. One might even argue that the 'flavour of the world' is the primary purpose of an RPG, and the Main/Zone Story quests are also merely vehicles to provide that flavour.

So they are more Role Play steps than something I get anything extra (including XP) for, basically?

more or less

i dont think any of the extra steps allow you to skip part of quests, such as using the "intimidate" (or the one from the mages guild) on certain dialogs

a lot of them dont have serious quest impact either like a red dialog choice that can change the direction of the quest

a good example of "optional" quest objectives would be in mirris intro quest, in each of the rooms where you have to free one of her friends/family, you can do it the "proper" way by optionally triggering all of the levers to free the person, or you can choose to just interact with the person which will kill them on the spot

this changes mirris dialogs throughout the quest, and at the end of the quest, but does not impact rewards, or the actual outcome of the quest (mirri still joins you regardless even if you killed all her friends/family, or saved her friends/family)

Sarannah

Some optional steps in quests unlock bonus effects. Not sure which quests all provide this, or have options like that, or even how many quests of the optional type there are.
One example:

The quest in Coldharbour that lets you choose to help either the lamia or the elf, who are at war with eachother. If you help the lamia, the elf will kindly ask you to not kill any of her kind. If you do NOT kill any of her kind while finishing the questparts, she will aid you in the final assault(together with the lamia). Despite you choosing the lamia over the elfs, and despite the elf council getting slaughtered.

Never anything major, so you're not missing out if you skipped the optional part.

Other optional step for quests can be avoided by using persuade/intimidate. These often lead to mages guild books and chest spawn locations if you choose NOT to persuade/intimidate. You are not losing anything, and in some cases the optional part is very frustrating to perform, so persuading/intimidating may be the better option. The first time I do a quest, I always try to do the optional parts too. Just to know what they provide/ask, and how they work.

The exp and gold rewards for quests never differs, regardless of if you did the optional parts or not.

FlopsyPrince

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

JeroenB wrote: »

Look at it this way: all quests other than Main Story and Zone Story quests are optional, if you think about it, for the purpose of 'completing' the game . Optional steps within quests are the same. It's all there to add more flavour to the world. One might even argue that the 'flavour of the world' is the primary purpose of an RPG, and the Main/Zone Story quests are also merely vehicles to provide that flavour.

So they are more Role Play steps than something I get anything extra (including XP) for, basically?

more or less

i dont think any of the extra steps allow you to skip part of quests, such as using the "intimidate" (or the one from the mages guild) on certain dialogs

a lot of them dont have serious quest impact either like a red dialog choice that can change the direction of the quest

a good example of "optional" quest objectives would be in mirris intro quest, in each of the rooms where you have to free one of her friends/family, you can do it the "proper" way by optionally triggering all of the levers to free the person, or you can choose to just interact with the person which will kill them on the spot

this changes mirris dialogs throughout the quest, and at the end of the quest, but does not impact rewards, or the actual outcome of the quest (mirri still joins you regardless even if you killed all her friends/family, or saved her friends/family)

I never realized that part (Mirri - your spoiler).

I just did those side things far too many times (on many different characters because I thought I got extra XP or something.

Kite42

I don't think any in-character choice or optional dialogue has ever had a lasting effect on the game world as far as your character is concerned, other than the skillpoints from a magic book I'm too lazy to find out how to make spoiler tags for.

FlopsyPrince

Kite42 wrote: »

I don't think any in-character choice or optional dialogue has ever had a lasting effect on the game world as far as your character is concerned, other than the skillpoints from a magic book I'm too lazy to find out how to make spoiler tags for.

The skillpoints would be good to know about, but I only remember one at the end of a long chain for one of the guilds or such.