Bug? [Eidetic Memory] Evacuation Order

IsharaMeradin · June 2018

Evacuation Order is a note found in a tower at the White Rose Prison in Shadowfen. This note does not appear until the quest hub is completed. I have one character who destroyed the keystone and was able to read this note. I have another character who chose to absorb the keystone, the note is not present.

Is this a bug or is it intentional?

Shadowshire · June 2018

IsharaMeradin wrote: »

Evacuation Order is a note found in a tower at the White Rose Prison in Shadowfen. This note does not appear until the quest hub is completed. I have one character who destroyed the keystone and was able to read this note. I have another character who chose to absorb the keystone, the note is not present.

Is this a bug or is it intentional?

For what it is worth, I haven't done that quest recently, but will be doing it eventually for Cadwell's Silver with two of my characters. Although I searched each of the current 50 pages of the ongoing discussion of Lorebooks in this forum, I did not find any mention of Evacuation Order : Eidetic Memory Bugs/Comments/Help.

Evacution Order should be available during "The Keystone" quest. However, in some instances it is not. I don't recall an option to "absorb" the keystone. However, a walk-through at en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Keystone contains the line "Choose whether to recover the keystone or not."

For a large number of quests, ZOS has chosen to rectify the absence of a document during a particular quest by making it available after the quest has been completed. However, in some instances, a document available after the quest is completed is not in the same location as it was or would be if it were available during the quest. So be sure to look around the area where the add-on Lorebooks pin shows as its location. Often it will be near the NPC which gives the reward for completing the quest.

If a document is not available after a quest, and your character could not find it during the quest, then that is clearly a flaw in the algorithim, whatever the circumstances. ZOS has never acknowledged any "intention" to make any Lorebook unavailable for any particular reason.

Nonetheless, there are some Eidetic documents which are never available. Apparently ZOS has deliberately put them in an inacessible location(s) -- if only because they did not have the time to make the effort to make them available when those documents should be available. Although I have submitted /bug reports about the matter, ZOS has never changed their accessibility.

The most common mistake that I and other players make is to overlook reading a document which an NPC has given our character, while it is in the Quest Items category in the character's Bags. Such documents are usually delivered to an NPC, or consumed during the quest, thus become no longer available to read. In my experience, all such quests during which a document is placed in the character's Bags as a Quest item are not repeatable.

So, if the player misses the opportunity to read a document while it is in the character's bags, then the only way to regain the opportunity is to abandon the quest before it is completed and begin the quest anew. ZOS probably did not anticipate that players would overlook the opportunity to read a document while it was in a character's Bags, when they designed the quest. Regardless, they have since decided to make almost all such lorebooks available somewhere after the quest is completed. They're usually, but not always, in the vicinity of the NPC which provides the reward.

Shadowshire · June 2018

@IsharaMeradin

For missing or inacessible Lorebooks, I don't know whether an in-game report will have any effect or value. The map pins for Lorebook and Eidetic document locations are not a feature of the native UI. They are displayed by the addon Lorebooks. So, ZOS apparently has the attitude that they are not responsible for the pins which it displays, regardless of whether the name and other data on the pin's tooltip are valid and correct.

Which begs the question, how do we know that a Lorebook is missing? All pins displayed by Lorebooks are placed according to data collected by its developer from players on the PC/Mac EU megaserver. The presence of human error aside, there is no guarantee that the EU megaserver presents Tamriel identically to its presentation by the PC/Mac NA megaserver. Regardless, if a player's character does not find a Lorebook at a pin's location, that does not matter to ZOS.

Nonetheless, the two Lorebook libraries are features of the native UI. Each listed Lorebook has a tooltip which will disclose whether it is available only during a specific quest, and/or whether it is located in a delve, dungeon or trial, etc. Many tooltips only show that the Lorebook is at an undisclosed location in one or more Zones. Suffice it to say that there is no internal consistency to the tooltips for the listings in the respective Libaries. Some locations shown on the tooltips do not, in fact, exist in the published game. The context data, displayed by using the RMB while the mouse cursor is on a library entry, is added by Lorebooks, not supplied by ZOS.

Other than its Library listing, there is no definitive way to determine whether a Lorebook is or should be available at any time during a quest, or anything else pertinent to its actual presence and location. The only way to know whether a Lorebook ever exists at all is where and while it is displayed in-game with an Interactive Prompt for the player-character to read it. Nonetheless, even from that viewpoint, some books and documents appear to be Lorebooks without an Interactive Prompt.

That said, the follwing method is the best way to report a missing or faulty Interactive Prompt for a Lorebook. ZOS has, in fact, eventually fixed errors which I have reported by using the procedure which I describe below. Given enough useful information, they will investigate and try to correct them (at least for most of the errors that I've found).

Take a screenshot which shows the Lorebook without an Interactive Prompt, or with a faulty Interactive Prompt. If the name and/or location of the Lorebook is not clearly identified in the screenshot, then -- assuming that you know the absent data -- be sure to include it in your report.
Either use the keybind <F1> Help or enter /bug in the text entry field for the Chat UI.
Select the Feedback > Delays Progress > Game Interface > Interactibles/Lockpicking category.
Describe the situation. If the screenshot does not disclose the zone or other location (such as inside a delve) clearly, then be sure to disclose that data in your report.
Checkmark the box to attach the screenshot.
Use the Submit button.
You might want to take a screenshot of the dialog that is displayed while the report is being submitted, which shows the ticket/case number for reference. If you need to contact Customer Support for help with recovering from the consequences of the error, include that ticket number in your request for assistance.

After you've done it a few times, reporting a bug with the in-game features is just another thing to do if you like to play TESO.

IsharaMeradin · June 2018

Three characters have completed said quest hub. The aforementioned Evacuation Order is not present until after the quest hub is completed. Its location is on a cot near the skyshard in the White Rose Prison area. It is not given by an NPC.

The first character to have completed this quest hub chose to destroy the keystone. The note is present and can be re-read as much as I desire. In fact, I used this character to confirm the location of said note.

The second character to have completed this quest hub also chose to destroy the keystone. The note is also present in the same location and can be re-read as well.

The third character to have completed this quest hub choose to 'recover' the keystone (dialog text indicates that the player will 'absorb' it) in order to see the different outcome. The note is not present. There isn't even the glow to suggest that it has spawned under or even inside the cot or floor.

I have returned several times after zoning and re-logging with the hope that it is a random issue on my end. I have checked other areas around the White Rose Prison to no avail.

Hence my query about whether or not it is a bug or intentional that the note only be available with only one particular outcome.

Shadowshire wrote: »

For what it is worth, I haven't done that quest recently, but will be doing it eventually for Cadwell's Silver with two of my characters. Although I searched each of the current 50 pages of the ongoing discussion of Lorebooks in this forum, I did not find any mention of Evacuation Order : Eidetic Memory Bugs/Comments/Help.

I did do a search prior to posting... You must have missed them
page 17, post #483
page 34, post #1010

Shadowshire · June 2018

@IsharaMeradin

Thank-you for your reply, and for the hyperlinks to the "main discussion" pertaining to Lorebook bugs. Since the browser page search feature <Ctrl> + <F> finds the words "Evacuation Order" without the quotation marks in each of those two messages, I have no idea why it missed them while I searched previously. Perhaps I mis-spelled one of the words in the search string? <sigh>

Regardless, as I stated before: "If a document is not available after a quest, and your character could not find it during the quest, then that is clearly a flaw in the algorithim, whatever the circumstances. ZOS has never acknowledged any 'intention' to make any Lorebook unavailable for any particular reason."

That said, ZOS has evidently deliberately made some Lorebooks -- all of them Eidetic library documents, none in Shalidor's Library -- inaccessible in a few places. Perhaps the most notable is the initial quest in Skywatch, Auridon, during which the character searches for clues as to who stole items from the bank. ....

IsharaMeradin · June 2018

Since I am not sure how reporting in-game would be helpful in this particular situation as there is nothing that indicates that there should be a note there other than having read the note with a different character. I am attaching screenshots of two separate characters with the note's location in view. Both screenshots have been taken without any addons activated.

Screenshot #1

This is of the character who cannot see the note Evacuation Order. She chose to recover/absorb the keystone and has feral prisoners over running the White Rose Prison area located within Shadowfen.

Screenshot #2

This is of the character who can see the note Evacuation Order. She chose to destroy the keystone and has a mix of friendly NPCs and feral prisoners within the White Rose Prison area located within Shadowfen.

Both screenshots are from characters on the PC NA server.