Fetch Quests Don't Really Suck

Especially when you leave the player with no choice but to take them up huehuehuehuehue. . .yes, I know that fetch quests especially suck when you're forced to do them. But fear not! Nobody will play this demo (except you).

Burn.

Setting Up The Fetch Quest

Once Chester realises he needs to head to the Oceans of Paradise, he knows he'll have to go prepared. Since weapons cost a bit, he'll need to find a way to make some quick money (and ideally, level up), or he'll get whooped by the monsters in Paradise.

Enter the unending fetch quest! A place where Chester can offload monster-parts that he collects from his battles in exchange for gold. 2 birds with 1 stone!

For simplicity, you can, much like with Fishface's house, block the entrance to this place until the cutscene in Fishface's room is over.

In my case, this place is an apothecary. The transfer event that lets the player enter the store has 2 pages instead of the usual single default page – the first page (default) simply shows a message to say that the door is locked, while the second gets activated once the cutscene is over (recall the switch I set to ON at the end of the cutscene) and teleports the player into the store.

Default page - no entry

Page 2 - once the cutscene has finished

Once the apothecary is accessible, I need to set up the seller such that he asks Chester for specific monster parts, thus initiating the never-ending fetch quest.

Here's what my store map looks like -

Whatever could those ropes be used to hang...hmmmmmmmm

And here're the pages of the event -

Page 1 - don't forget to turn on a quest switch at the end of this page

Page 2 - once the quest has begun

1. Page 1 – Some dialogue, where the apothecary owner explains he buys monster parts, and he could use Chester's help obtaining some. At the end, the quest switch is turned on – meaning, the quest has begun!
   

2. Page 2 – Triggered once the quest switch is turned ON ('apotheQuest', in my case), this page has commands that let the player sell stuff to the store owner.

The quest switch is important to have because now 2 more things can be done using this same switch as a trigger -

1. We can open up a random encounter area that Chester can collect monster parts from. This area is not accessible until the fetch quest has begun.

2. We can create a new NPC in our quest book, with instructions for the fetch quest.

Keeping Up With The Quest For jUsTiCe

We can use the quest switch as the trigger to quickly set up another NPC to represent the quest. I've used the store owner's sprite itself for the NPC, so that it's easier to understand that this NPC will talk about the fetch quest. There only needs to be one page in this event for now.

We're back

"You sure can!"

Questbook update done! It takes barely minute.

The (Probable) Bane Of Your Existence Appeared!

Random encounters are one of those RPG features that everyone either loves or despises. Many prefer visible monsters on maps so that they can choose whether to start a pointless fight like a school bully or not, but random encounters are brilliant fillers, especially in adventure RPGs. They can get tedious, but I've played games with 0 visible monsters and still really enjoyed them.

If done right, they can add a nice challenge to your dungeons and forests. It really depends on the kind of game you're going for. Visible monsters are useful if your game is more exploratory and story-driven than a straight-forward adventure.

Anyway, it's nice to know how to set up random encounters (we will cover visible monsters next), and RM2K makes it very simple to do as well.

Make your map where you will allow the player to harvest monster parts. This is where we'll set up the random encounters.

NOTE: This area should only be accessible once the fetch quest has begun and the quest switch is ON ('apotheQuest' in this case). In my demo, I've made this map accessible directly from the town centre, but the path was conveniently blocked off until the quest switch got set to ON.

Before the sidequest

Yes, you're right, I just really like posting screenshots of the game here

Back to our encounter map. In the map tree to the left, right-click on the map and select 'New Area'. You'll see a new dialog open up.

1. Name => Give your area a name

2. Boundaries => This opens up another dialog box where you can drag and select the boundaries of this new area

3. Enemy Encounters => double-click in the white box to select all your enemy troops one by one

I'm selecting the whole map for now, and adding troops of all 4 monsters that we set up earlier on.

Hit OK, and we're done defining our random encounter area. Final step left is to set the encounter rate. Right-click the map again (not the area) from the map-tree, and set up an encounter rate. 15 is a good number for a grinding area (the default 25 steps is too large an interval for a monster grinding map, in my view. There's just too much time between encounters).

Encounter Rate settings are applied at the map level

This encounter rate will apply for all areas you define on this map.

Now I want to let the player encounter Leafhoppers a lot more frequently, as they drop the priciest items and are the easiest monsters. This is so that the player will not have to fight monsters too long before they are able to purchase the equipment.

We can easily do that by adding the same troops multiple times. Each troop listed will have the same probability of being encountered as the rest, so we can just add duplicates of the ones we want to increase the number of encounters for.

jajajajajajajaja

You can create multiple areas on the same map, and these areas can overlap. The probabilities of monster encounter probably add up across multiple areas if there's an overlap (but don't hold me to it). I'm going to define one area off to the side where there'll be only hornets, like this -

Hornety

Now let's run a quick playthrough on this map to see if our encounters are frequent enough without being too frequent.

TIP: Go to the 'Actors/Hero' tab in the database and hike up your character's initial level significantly. This will let you breeze through the encounters without trouble, since this test is just to assess the encounter rates, and not the battles themselves (for battles, we use the battle-test option)

teuneuneuneuneu-neuuuu

"EEEEEEEK!"

And this part is done! When we go back to the apothecary after a few fights, we'll see that we can now sell the monster parts for some money.

Mehbeh

Technically, you can sell these *anywhere*, but this is a beginner's tutorial so let's just ignore that.

Aaaaand that's a wrap. Next post, we shall explore the Oceans of Paradise (i.e., the driest cave system in the region).

Ciao,

- Ciabatta Buns from Meesemaker The Baker