Quests which don't work with One Tamriel

Danikat · September 2019

These are quests which I've noticed exhibit anomalous behaviour following the One Tamriel update and the shift to new characters starting in the latest expansion. I suspect they're oversights rather than bugs but it would be nice to have them fixed.

Soulshriven in Coldharbour - You can meet the Hooded Figure in any major city and get told that her benefactor is nearby...but then the quest sends you to the first major city for your Alliance. For example my new character picked up the quest in Rawl'kha and is being sent to Davon's Watch to complete it. This is quite jarring if you've just started out and have never gone to your alliance's lands - what could be one of the first quests you pick up sends you 1/2 way across the map.

The journal also needs new initial text - on my newest character I've done nothing beyond agree to follow the Hooded Figure but the journal entry starts with "I died, but that was only the beginning... I awoke in Oblivion. My body is intact, but my soul has been torn from my body." etc. and then at the bottom there's the intended text for this step stating that I've been approached by a Hooded Figure and should see what they want.

Scion of the Blood Matron (Vampirism quest) - this one is even more of a mess. I was infected by a bloodfiend in Reaper's March where there is a vampirism shrine, but had to go all the way to The Rift to find the NPC to start the quest and for some reason could only use the shrine in The Rift (again probably because my character is part of the Pact, even though that's irrelevant here). Also the dialogue mentions your escape from Coldharbour, and Molag Bal having already taken your soul, even if the character has not done the Soulshriven in Coldharbour quest yet.

I assume the werewolf quest has similar problems, but I've not done that one myself.

(Overall I found it disappointing. I thought I'd found a backstory which would actually work with being forced to start in the latest expansion - he's a wood elf, recently exiled from Valenwood and the plan was that he'd get as far as Elsweyr, get attacked by dragons, take up his old profession of highwayman to get back on his feet, get infected by vampires, get turned, buy into their "you have a greater purpose" malarkey, decide to follow the hooded figure, end up in Coldharbour, get dropped out at Bleackrock and then join the Pact as a result of his experienced there. It's disappointing to find that quests in this game are even more of a mess than I realised and any kind of coherent narrative that doesn't involve skipping across the continent via wayshrines and ignoring the chronological order of events is becoming impossible.)

VaranisArano · September 2019

Most pre-One Tamriel quests like the Main Quest, your guild quests, and werewolf/vampire are all tied to your faction. Its probably one reason why ZOS won't work on an alliance change token.

You can even see this with a low level Thief or DB character, as your radiant quests will send you only to your leveled faction zones. ZOS didnt want new characters to have to explore too much, too soon.

One Tamriel opened up the whole map and let players of all alliances and levels group up together. What it didn't do was provide a seamless storyline anymore. It didn't rework the whole world to allow everyone to seamlessly adventure in whatever order and area they want and have it all make sense. With starting in new Chapters, the seams become more and more obvious, and Elsweyr is worse than most since ZOS decided to reuse Main Quest characters.

Nestor · September 2019

Character Start has gotten more and more muddy and confusing as time has gone on.

We need one character tutorial (quick and basics) and one for either the main quest or each of the chapters. We start or skip the Coldharbor Wailing Prison, then go to the Starter Content for the chapter or content of choice

SirAndy · September 2019

Nestor wrote: »

Character Start has gotten more and more muddy and confusing as time has gone on.
We need one character tutorial (quick and basics) and one for either the main quest or each of the chapters. We start or skip the Coldharbor Wailing Prison, then go to the Starter Content for the chapter or content of choice

So many missed opportunities to get this right ...

Danikat · September 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

You can even see this with a low level Thief or DB character, as your radiant quests will send you only to your leveled faction zones. ZOS didnt want new characters to have to explore too much, too soon.

Thanks for letting me know. This character is going to join both the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood and I had been debating skipping the main quest due to the issues mentioned above and going straight to the guild quests since you can pick those up in the Rawl'kha outlaw's refuge, but it sounds like I'd run into much the same problem doing that too.

Overall it seems I'd have been better off doing what I usually do - get through the tutorial then go straight to the starter city for the alliance to pick up the main quest and try to forget the character started off in an expansion zone. I really thought I'd found a way to work with the changes they made, but clearly not.

Nestor wrote: »

Character Start has gotten more and more muddy and confusing as time has gone on.

We need one character tutorial (quick and basics) and one for either the main quest or each of the chapters. We start or skip the Coldharbor Wailing Prison, then go to the Starter Content for the chapter or content of choice

I agree. It would be much simpler if we could go back to everyone starting in the same place and it would save having to build a new tutorial for each expansion. If ZOS don't trust players to find their way to the new expansion without help they could add an NPC to the starting city to send them there, like they did with the older DLCs.

katanagirl1 · September 2019

@Danikat and others - whenever I start a new character I go back to their proper alliance zone. I don’t really do the expansion storylines with any characters other than my main character anyway.

All of the expansions, Morrowind, Summerset, and Elsweyr have so much more detail and a richer environment to them, I wonder if new players would be completely turned off if they completed everything in the new zone and then went to an older one.

Besides, players are always asking in zone chat how to get to the main story quests, since it’s impossible to figure out if you haven’t played the game already.

They had an Invitation to Orsinium given to you by an NPC when you got to the first major city in the area, that worked just fine. I kept that quest item until I was ready to go there as a reminder.

Danikat · September 2019

Normally I do everything in order too, but there are exceptions. This character is my designated 'bad guy', he's a Thief, Assassin, vampire, I re-created him to make him a necromancer and he makes all the choices in quests which make me go "well that's horrible, I'm not doing that...but I wonder what would happen if I did..." So he's probably not going to do everything anyway, and not in release order.

Previously I was happy starting him off in Coldharbour and going straight into the alliance/main story. But knowing he'd have to start in Elsweyr regardless of what makes sense and knowing I'd want to make him a vampire ASAP because it takes ages to level and I could do that in Reaper's March I decided to do that first, not realising at the time it wouldn't work.

It's frustrating to me because from my perspective that flexibility should one of the benefits of One Tamriel, and then once the expansions started to be added we couldn't actually do everything in order anyway, even if we wanted to because we're forced into the latest expansion first (if only as a starting point). If they're going to do that the least they can do is update existing quests to match. Especially when everything necessary already exists - the quests I mentioned are already set up to occur in multiple different locations, they just need to make it possible for any character to go to any of those locations instead of being restricted to just one.