Eleven types · three pipelines · eight-step payout

Quests are howthe simulation talks to you.

Almost every quest in the game is generated rather than written. Eleven quest types feed three generation pipelines: procedural (the world's natural state), profession-aware (your specific skill set), and authored (the few hand-built arcs that anchor the rest). When you accept one, eight steps unfold to compute who pays and what they pay for.

11quest types3generation pipelines8payout steps3payout rules

Rumors, faction tax, party rules · all part of the payout

Eleven quest types

CollectCraftTradeDefendEscortHuntExploreResearchBuildDiplomacyRescue

Three pipelines · one active card · payout in eight steps

Quest categories

Payout rules

Generation sources

Universal sales tax + faction tax

Where quests come from

Three pipelines feed the quest board, and they run concurrently. Most cities are getting quests from all three at once.

WorldEventGenerator (procedural, systemic). Scans the world state every tick for the six narrative seed types — Resource Scarcity, Resource Abundance, Node Overuse, Economic Collapse, Population Crisis, Faction Conflict. Each seed converts to a quest hook on the local board. See the simulation page for trigger thresholds.
Profession-aware city generation (procedural, local). Each city tracks its profession distribution. The quest generator weights new quests toward what the local workforce can actually complete — a city full of Farmers doesn't spawn ten Blacksmith contracts. This pipeline dropped profession-mismatch rates from ~75% to under 30%.
Hand-authored Story Arcs (curated). Each arc carries multiple stages, each with prerequisites and objectives. The Imperial Unity arc, the Ore Crisis arc, the Varn Rescue chain — all are arc-driven. Stages spawn quests but they're gated by arc state, not by world imbalance.

Eleven quest categories

Quests in Titan Saga break down into eleven player-facing categories. Most map directly to engine quest-type enums (QUEST_COLLECT_RESOURCES, QUEST_CRAFT_RESOURCES, QUEST_TRADE_GOODS, QUEST_DEFEND, QUEST_ESCORT, QUEST_FIGHT_MONSTERS, plus build / explore / research). Diplomacy and rescue objectives are typically expressed as multi-stage Story Arcs composed of the engine types above. Either way, the category drives the objective shape and which professions are eligible to fulfil it.

Collect Resources

Gather a specific quantity of a resource and return it. The bread-and-butter of gathering economies; spawns whenever a city's buy-order ceiling is hit during a shortage.

Professions: Farmer, Miner, Lumberer, Hunter, Harvester, Herbalist
Example hook: “Lithmere Faces Food Shortage” — 200 crop within 48 h, max-price ceiling.

Craft Items

Produce a specific finished item from raw resources. Triggers when a city's manufactured stock drops below threshold and the local workforce isn't picking it up.

Professions: Blacksmith, Tailor, Chef, Mason, Jeweler, Alchemist, Apothecary, Enchanter, Artificer
Example hook: “Ironhaven Needs Steel Plate” — deliver 15 steel chestplates to the garrison commissary.

Trade Routes

Move goods between two markets to satisfy a price differential the city itself can't bridge. Generated by the trade system when a route becomes consistently profitable but the standing trader pool is too thin.

Professions: Merchant
Example hook: “Mithril Run to Goldport” — 50 units mithril from Irondeep to Goldport, premium escort included.

Defend Position

Hold a location against an incoming threat — bandit raid, monster incursion, faction skirmish. Spawns from StimulusSystem broadcasts when a settlement's defence rating drops below need.

Professions: Guard, Escort, Adventurer, Dauntless
Example hook: “Hold the South Gate” — defend Thornwall for 6 in-game hours against a raid.

Escort

Move a caravan, refugee column, dignitary, or convict between two points. Travel events trigger en route (random encounters, ambushes). The single highest-XP quest type per hour invested.

Professions: Guard, Escort, Bard, Cook
Example hook: “Caravan to Millbrook” — escort eight wagons of ore through the northern road; Coordinator boss likely on the final leg.

Fight Monsters

Clear a specific monster population from a region, or hunt a named target. Generated against the monster system's spawn density, with named-target quests gated by player rank.

Professions: Adventurer, Dauntless
Example hook: “The Alpha at Copper Ridge” — slay the Coordinator Remnant occupying the abandoned mine.

Explore

Map a region, reach a landmark, scout a route, or recover a lost expedition. Espionage professions excel here; the rewards include map data and uncovered resource nodes.

Professions: Scout, Spy, Cartographer, Adventurer, Dauntless
Example hook: “The Lost Surveyors” — find what happened to the expedition into the Burned Forests; recover any maps.

Research

Investigate a target — an anomaly, an artifact, a person, a faction. Long-form quests with multiple sub-objectives. Outcomes feed into world state changes other systems then act on.

Professions: Scout, Spy, Cartographer, Cartographer-Bard pairings
Example hook: “The Conspiracy at House Dawnfire” — gather evidence linking the higher house to the orchestrated frontier attacks.

Build / Construct

Construct or upgrade a building, fortification, or piece of infrastructure. Settlement-tier quests that take days of in-game time; pay heavily but lock the party in place.

Professions: Engineer, Architect, Mason
Example hook: “The Outer Wall” — build a triple-layered defensive wall around Thornwall's market quarter.

Diplomacy

Negotiate a treaty, broker a marriage, mediate a faction dispute, or extract a confession. Often hand-authored as part of a Story Arc; difficulty scales with the involved factions' relations.

Professions: Bard, Spy, Cartographer (intel), Merchant (incentives)
Example hook: “The Iron Pact” — broker a renewed defence pact between the Iron Covenant and Stone Brotherhood after a border incident.

Rescue

Recover a captured NPC, party member, or quest target. Often rank-gated — Varn's rescue is locked behind Silver Rank as a long-term hook for the opening hours.

Professions: Adventurer, Dauntless, Scout, Healer
Example hook: “Recover Varn Ashford” — locked behind Silver Rank. Tracked from the opening sequence.

The eight-step payout flow

From generation to gold-in-hand, every quest follows the same eight steps. The two most error-prone are escrow (step 3) and settlement (step 7) — see the breakdowns below.

1 · Generation
Quests come from three sources: the WorldEventGenerator (procedural, driven by systemic imbalances), the city's profession-aware quest pipeline (procedural, driven by local workforce gaps), or hand-authored Story Arcs (curated, gated by world state).
2 · Posting
Generated quests post to the issuing city's quest board. The board exposes them through the dialogue with the city's quest-giver NPC (mayor, guildmaster, faction representative).
3 · Escrow
Gold equal to the maximum payout moves from city funds into escrow. The city cannot double-spend the budget while the quest is open.
4 · Acceptance
A player or NPC party accepts the quest. Their party's payout rule is recorded on the quest record (so changing rules later doesn't apply retroactively).
5 · Tracking
Objectives tick as party members complete them. Some quests have multiple sub-objectives that branch; some have single completion criteria.
6 · Completion
On objective fulfilment, the engine validates with the issuing city, calculates the actual payout (full / partial / failure), and proceeds to settlement.
7 · Payout
Faction tax is deducted; the remainder is distributed per the party's payout rule. Faction's total_taxes_collected ticks up. AdvancementSystem grants quest XP to all party members.
8 · World effects
Quest-defined world state changes apply (city flags, faction relations, location modifiers). The StimulusSystem broadcasts completion as a perceivable event. New seeds may spawn off the consequences.

Party payout rules

Each party picks one of three payout rules. The rule is recorded on the quest record at acceptance time, so changing rules mid-quest doesn't redirect already-earned rewards.

EVEN_TO_GROUP
Default. Split the reward evenly among all party members. The standard adventuring party setup.
ONLY_TO_FACTION
All rewards flow to the party's faction treasury. Used by faction-aligned crews; common for Silver Hand paladins, Iron Covenant officers.
ONLY_TO_LEADER
All rewards go to the party leader. Mercenary contracts and trade caravans where the leader pays the others in wages on their own terms.

Faction tax

Every faction applies a tax to quest payouts earned by its member parties. The tax is collected before distribution to party members — you never see the gross figure.

tax_amount = (payout_amount × faction.tax_rate) / 100
net_payout = payout_amount − tax_amount

Tax rates run from 5% (Shadow Conclave) to 25% (Obsidian Throne). The full ledger is in the economy page. The faction's running total_taxes_collected field is what funds faction-level activities — military campaigns, infrastructure investment, diplomatic gifts.

If a party leaves a faction mid-quest, the tax rate at acceptance time still applies — the faction collects, and the leaver eats it.

Rumors — the quest pipeline before the quest pipeline

Not every lead becomes a quest immediately. The rumor system stages information as it propagates through taverns, markets, and guild halls. A rumor that doesn't unlock a quest still does useful work: it reveals map markers, unlocks compendium entries, modifies regional danger levels.

Each rumor carries:

category
treasure, warning, lore, political, mystery, weather, crafting, monster. Drives where the rumor shows up and which speakers carry it.
rarity
common, uncommon, rare. Probability weighting and trust-tier gating.
conditions
min_day / max_day, required_flags, forbidden_flags, location_types, speaker_professions. Rumors only surface when their conditions hold.
effects
unlock_flags (world state), trigger_quests (queues a quest), unlock_compendium (lore entries), reveal_map_marker, modify_danger_level.
trust_required
How much rapport with the speaker is required for the rumor to surface. Bartender favourites get the good stuff first.
repeatable / cooldown_days
Some rumors recur; others fire once. Repeatable ones carry a cooldown to prevent spam.

Worked example — the "Hidden Forest Cache" rumor (rarity: uncommon, surfaces at taverns and inns when told by merchants, adventurers, or guards) unlocks the rumor_forest_treasure flag and reveals a map marker — but no quest. The flag then gates an exploration objective later.

Profession-aware matching

Cities don't generate quests they have no workforce for. The profession-aware generator queries city_system.get_profession_count(city_id, profession_id) and weights new quests by what's actually present locally. A city with 30 Farmers and 2 Blacksmiths spawns mostly gather-and-craft chains; a city with 12 Adventurers and 4 Scouts spawns mostly monster and exploration work.

The system fires distribution updates on city init and whenever profession membership changes (a Farmer becomes a Hunter, an Adventurer dies). It does NOT update every tick — that would be expensive — so a freshly-arrived NPC may not influence quest weighting for a few in-game days.

The effect: walking into a new city, you'll usually see quests that align with the city's character. Goldport posts trade and finance work. Ironhold posts smithing and military contracts. Deeproot posts herb runs and anti-corruption clears.

Rank gating

High-stakes quests carry minimum rank requirements. The quest board shows them but locks them — players can read the brief and start preparing without being able to accept. This is how the opening hours dangle long-term hooks.

Varn Ashford rescue. Locked behind Silver Rank. Visible from Hour 1. Reward: Varn's Gold-tier Fire Essence crystal.
Titan Vault expeditions. Most gated at Diamond Rank or higher; some require party composition (a Healer of certain tier, a Cartographer with specific maps).
Faction defection arcs. Need significant reputation with the destination faction plus a moderate negative standing with the source. Gates unlock on reputation rather than on rank.

Where to read next

Major storylines →

The Imperial Unity arc, the Ore Crisis arc, the Varn Rescue chain — hand-authored arcs that span the quest pipeline.

Major NPCs →

The named characters who issue, accept, or appear in the headline quests: Brennan, Holt, Sera, Mira, Kael, Renna, Tormund, Varn.

World simulation →

The WorldEventGenerator's narrative seeds — the systemic-imbalance pipeline that produces most of the quest hooks on this page.

Professions →

The 32 professions whose distribution drives the city quest generator. Profession decides which quests you'll actually see offered.

Source: World-Engine — STORY_SYSTEM, QUEST_PAYOUT_FLOW, QUEST_COMPLETION_FLOW, QUEST_INDEXING_SYSTEM, PROFESSION_AWARE_QUEST_GENERATION_USAGE, STORY_SYSTEM_PROCEDURAL_FEATURES; TitanSaga-Godot — rumors.json.