[Fixed - persists in 3.40] Pig in forest cover quest

[Plotinus]

Sometimes when you burn spruce twigs on the end of the trail and wait around, it doesn't work. I have a save available of a character in this situation, Reko.

I got the quest, killed the lynx that was in the area (I've noticed that the farm animal won't come if the predator is nearby but maybe that's just a superstition?) and skinned it and cooked it's meat and then I went back to the pig tracks and followed them to the very end.

I cut spruce twigs from the tree nearby and then without picking them up lit them on fire (maybe this is the problem? maybe i should have picked them up and then dropped them again?)

i waited for about 2-3 hours, no pig.

I tried lighting fires one at a time on the empty tiles surrounding that one, just in case there was a track there that I missed, waited a couple hours for each one, didn't work of course. I haven't burnt a fire on any of the other spaces with tracks so the trail should be preserved. I've tried tracking all around that area in places where i couldn't see tracks, just in case there was a gap in the trail and it continued but i'm pretty sure i was in the right place.

My character is saved standing on the burnt ashes of the fire that was on the last track in the trail. no pig anywhere

[Plotinus]

Got a different charcter, Talvikaksi, who got the same quest except for a reindeer and same thing, the reindeer didn't appear no matter which track she burnt spruce twigs on. burnt them on the last one in line, killed the lynx, then spent two weeks just burning the tracks one by one (just in case i was wrong about which was really the most recent track) and waiting for a few hours after each little fire but the reindeer never came. and then a badger came by and a fox and some birds and a herd of forest reindeer and there were too many tracks so all of the old reindeer tracks disappeared at once.

The quest expired and we went back to the village and immediately got the same quest again, we were told to talk to Olesa the shaman, just like last time, but now Olesa the shaman has no message for us. There are two shaman in the village, Olesa and Ilpo and neither of them have the second part of the quest. I think what happened was: we were in the village when 8 o'clock happened and the old quest was removed from the journal and the new one became available, so a new shaman named Olesa should have been generated but wasn't. I've been wandering around this little village for 2 days just looking for the new shaman and I really can't find him anywhere.

So this is sort of a different bug from the post before but it's the same quest, just a different character and i didn't feel like making a new topic. Save available of this one too if wanted.

[Sami]

I can't say for sure if it's a bug or not, but I can take a look at the saves, so just send 'em along.
The animals may also fail to reach you sometimes as the quests work in organic fashion, but in that case you maybe should have spotted released animal tracks at least - or found the carcass if it had been attacked by a predator or something.

But I'll be wiser after checking out Reko, for example.

When it comes Talvikaksi, there's been something hasty with quest flagging. It doesn't happen so that these Shamans are generated when this quest needs them, but the shamans existing in the village already come part of quest if the quest comes along. We dearly try to avoid generating stuff based on the quests needs, we try to utilize the world as it exists as seedbed for quests. And as seen, it's both revolutionary and problematic

[PALU]

Sorry if it's a bit of a tangent, but it definitely seems villagers are generated for at least some quest. I believe the weird message quests and the bird thief quests seem to generate new characters, as the message recipient and thief respectively tend to be people that have no known name, so either they're new or they've been stripped of their names for cases where the quest target is a village you visit regularly (I can't keep track of everyone in every village, so I wouldn't normally note if someone was pushed back to an unidentified state). Ah, yes, I believe the craftsman for the punt quest also seems to be generated.

[Sami]

Sorry if it's a bit of a tangent, but it definitely seems villagers are generated for at least some quest.

Yes, some NPCs are generated on the fly, and some conditions also. Hence let me re-bold, "we dearly try to avoid generating stuff.." and "It doesn't happen so that these Shamans are generated when this quest needs them."(But continuing on this matter is irrelevant in this thread.)

[Plotinus]

sent!

[Sami]

sent!

Alright, Reko has been checked out and this feels like a borderline case between bug and extra challenge of procedurally generated organic quests

See, there are more fresh pigs tracks around but they've just been messed up and stepped over multiple times with other animals tracks. Knowing where to burn the twigs will release the pig alright, so no flaws in quest generation here, but the player character really can't spot the downmost freshest tracks from the path of many animal visitors.

We could either make it so that forest covered animal tracks wouldn't get messed up by other animals tracks as easily as normally, or so that the freshest track information would be removed if that should happen. Both feel a little gamey, but if I'd have to choose I would go with the first option.

[JEB Davis]

Please everyone understand this is not directed at anyone in particular, and I understand the many posts about quests are intended to find bugs. This is excellent for the game.

Opinion:
Every quest should not always be possible to complete. In this case, it seems very realistic that if other animal tracks have covered up the pig's tracks, then "C'est la vie!"... the character may fail the quest.

Of course we didn't know this is the reason until Sami checked the savegame, but I think it's cool. 

Sami, please don't make it "gamey" to allow easy quest completion... please!

[Plotinus]

Sometimes when there are multiple tracks you see something like "You see some squirrel tracks here over some older unclear tracks". I don't think I remember seeing that message with the pig tracks though? Maybe I'm remembering wrong.

I think I also don't mind if it's not always possible to do the quest; it's an incentive to find it as quickly as you can. I've noticed, though, tha twhen I spend a lot of time in an area, more animals start spawning, so often when I'm doing this quest I'll be looking for the tracks in an area for some time and then aherd of forest reindeer will come through and a lynx and a badger and a squirrel and a ton of birds and eventually there are so many tracks it triggers a cleanup and all the tracks disappear, which is fair.

I think when that happens it is fair for a person to just have try burning in lots of tiles systematically in the hopes that they find the right one. In real life, too, there are lots of animals in the fores tmaking tracks and sometimes you lose a trail. I mean, I am guessing this is the case as a person who lives in a city and spends a lot of time indoors.

Maybe if animal generation were toned down a tiny bit in the area during the quest? I'll start keeping stats of what animals come by the next few times I get this quest.

[Plotinus]

Finally.

[PALU]

Congratulations!
And I admire your persistence...

[Plotinus]

3 spruce twigs per fire, then a branch to mark the place after the burnt ashes disappeared after a few days. just took a few days to find.

[Sami]

This has been taken care of now.
We'll make it so that losing a lost animal trail under (lots of) new tracks means losing the trail for good, so the tracks that are said to belong to animal you're after are the ones that matter. It's also adjusted so that the small animal tracks don't that easily mess up the bigger tracks even if the smaller ones were numerous.

Fixed - Persists in 3.40