So I have two quests in a chain, and I'm having some issues. I have an actor, my guard. He is a Unique Actor Alias for my first quest. However, I have several things that need to be set up at gamestart using alias's in my second quest. It just so happens, that the guard is also an alias in the second quest. The issue being, that the second quest is having issues assigning him. If I use SQV, my first quest has all five alias's assigned, but the second has neither of the two. (The guard and another random actor)

Also, the guard doesnt actually appear to fill his alias in quest one, as it has several packages listed that he ignores, and when I look at him, there is no hud for him. (It should say 'E to talk - Guard'. That kind of hud)

So it appears his aliasing is just breaking or something. Any suggestions? (Man I really seem to be tripping on this alias system... )

Thanks,
Alexander J. Velicky

I tested this EXACT scenario with the Getting Started Quest during the CK Beta phase.

1) Hellos/Goodbyes ONLY 1 quests H&G's can ever apply at any one time so if you want to be able to have your npcs acknowledge your completed quests you need to do like I do and set up npcs with their own quests that hold "ALL" of their data for every quest they are involved in on this quest then just alter quest stages for the real quest from the dialog quest.

Note: my FO3 mod ended up with 500+ Dialog Quests and they only served just over a 100 Real Quests so its quite a bit of extra work to keep things in line but the overall effect is superior to the default way of doing H&G's.

2) ONLY 1 quests AI Packages can be applied at any one time so any follow/travel/whatever packages gets prioritized and forces the player to complete the quest with the currently running AI package -> AND TRYING TO DO THE OTHERS WILL LEAD TO BROKEN QUESTS !!! so its best to not do this unless absolutely necessary.

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What I do is I create Hold Out Quest Stages that check if the NPC I want to use is already being used by another quest and if it is then I set the stage to a middle wait her do nothing stage that only checks for if the npc is released by the first quest to be able to continue the second, the dialog I assign to this stage is as generic as possible (as I tend to reuse npcs quite alot) just something like "Lets finish this task first, then we can speak about that issue." generic finish the other thing first stuff.

So if I wanted Elisif The Fair to give the player a quest, I'd better make sure it checks to make sure she's not currently waiting for the player to return after placing her husband's horn...or going to blip to High Hrothgar, or anything?

Not necessarily if your NPC's entire purpose is to only give and end quests then you can run multiple at once -> the problems arise when you need the npc to do things for the quest to be able to complete it -> like traveling or following the player or any other actor.

For instance two quests both add a travel package to the npc telling him to travel to location a and another to location b -> the npc can only ever exist at one location so you have a direct conflict one which has the ability to break one of the quests if you generate a quest update with the npc is absence and his presence is required for whatever reason.

So as long as you keep things in order you should be fine, adding condition to starting quests or quest stages that add these types of packages to your npc will help with not allowing a player who does not know they are about to break something to well break something.

Isn't that what quest priority is for? Resolving this kind of conflict? So a priority 70 quest package would take precedence over a priority 60 quest?

Yes priorities *may* work for this ... but if you have a 50:50 (both are as important) then it won't.

I solved it same way as Saiden. You have a "hidden" controller quest that sets the stages of the "player visible" quests that you want to affect.

It can be a bit of a headf**k, depending on how complicated your Quest Layout is ... but it can be done (MQ does similar things, which is one of the reasons it's so tough to follow)


** I would also suggest you have a think about your Quest Layout. Is there a better way of setting up the Story without needing to wreak your head using this solution? There might not be ... in which case, take it slow and do all of the Quest Outline (Stages that do nothing, with a comment in each) before starting the complex scripting.

Quest priority only prioritizes what AI packages/scripts get applied at the top, it does not disable the ability for the player to break quests by getting updates with pivotal npc in absence... this needs to be done manually.

Well half of this was user error. I had some staging and script issues that were causing things not to fire, so those should be fixed. As for him not filling two alias's at once, I guess you just cant? I'm going to apply the other alias stuff outside of the quest, then no longer have it start game enabled to see if that fixes it.

EDIT: Well that answers my main question here, I'm going to make another thread for my rather separate issue. Thanks. Mod can lock this.