Arcane University: Quest Implementation
The Beyond Skyrim Wiki — Hosted by UESP
This is the main page of the Beyond Skyrim Arcane University Quest Implementation tutorials. It serves as hub for the standard workflow and pointers to detailed specific tutorials for Quest Implementation. The Implementation department is structured in three sub-departments:
- Quest Implementation
- Nif Implementation
- Mechanics Implementation
Workflow & Expectations
These are some of the important/relevant points to learn for implementing quests in Skyrim.
- Core structure: setting up stages, updating the quest log, putting relevant elements into aliases, and displaying/completing/failing objectives
- Creating quest dialogues, with some branching.
- Enabling / Disabling / Teleporting quest's elements dynamically as the quest progress.
- Reacting to quests items picked up, quest targets death, dialogue choices, book reads, and hand placed triggers & activators to progress the quest.
- Giving/Taking items to/from actors, expecially the player.
- Locking an NPC dialogue for a specific situation.
- Handling the death of NPC involved in the quest.
- Setting up a Forcegreet.
- Forcing NPCs to travel and stay at specific locations during a specific timeframe (usually between 2 quest stages).
- Forcing NPCs into specific idles/furnitures during a specific timeframe (usually between 2 quest stages).
- Single NPC scene, chaining some movements, surrounding's interractions, animations, and spoken lines.
- Multiple NPCs scene (ambient dialogue)
- Querying a radiant location, and placing something dynamically there (item to fetch and/or stuffs to kill), or querying its radiant components (like, the local boss) to use them as elements of the quest.
- Basic counters (reacting to N targets being dead, or N activators beeing actionned).
- Controlling NPCs hostility toward the player/each other.
- Setting up favor dialogues (persuasion, intimidation, bribe, ...)
- Setting up generic dialogues for NPCs
- Setting up random encounters
- Setting up world interactions
The AU Implementation team recommends Bethesda's Quest Implementation tutorials (Basic/Intermediate) as the best place to start. These together cover nearly all the core elements listed above. Additionally, the Creation Kit Wiki provides many more tutorials that you can take advantage of (CK Wiki Tutorials/Community Tutorials/Video Tutorials).
