Quests and Story

Quests give you a reason to visit every corner of the isles, and they pay real rewards: EXP, lumens, potions and gear. The story runs from your first steps to the end of the Farside. Everything else is optional and can be done in any order.

Four kinds of quest

Over an NPC's head, a gold ! means a quest you can take, an hourglass means one is under way, and a green ? means one is ready to hand in. The main story wears a larger, golden crest.

The main story

You wake beside a fallen shard of the star. Elder Wynne in Dawnhollow gives you your first quest, The First Light. The star is dimming, and something is eating its light. Each chapter follows the trail into a new land and ends with a guardian fight.

Chapter I ends at The Thorn-Crowned King, chapter II at The Screaming Tide, and chapter III at Wyrm of the Burning Peak. Chapter IV climaxes with The Eclipse Throne, and the story closes with The First Dark.

Scenes play as short conversations with replies, and a title card marks the start and end of each chapter. It stays on screen until you press CONTINUE, so you can read it at your own pace. The STORY tab of the quest log shows where you are and what came before.

When the story asks you to defeat a region boss, you fight it in your own private copy of its lair. The first is The Moss King, asked for a little before the boss's own level. Walk in below the boss's level and your private boss hits softer and has less health, more so the further below you are, down to a limit. At or above its level it is the full boss. The shared lair, Hard boss lairs and the Echo Tower are not softened.

Side quests

There are well over a hundred side quests, spread so that nearly every level has several to choose from. They are small stories: a lost hat, a lighthouse under siege, a hermit who needs a warmer quilt. Early ones to try:

• A side quest can be taken only inside its level band. Past the top of the band it reads "Outgrown" and leaves your lists.
• A quest you already accepted is never taken away. An outgrown quest in progress can still be finished.
• Some quests ask you to defeat a Crowned giant, clear a Party Quest, dungeon or raid, or open a secret climb's cache. See Secret Climbs and Creatures and Bosses.

Job trials

At levels 10, 30, 60 and 100 you advance your class by passing your mentor's trial. The five mentors stand in Dawnhollow: Dame Aurelia, Magister Vey, Kestrel, Nyx and Warden Brenna. A mentor lets you try a class before you commit. Read Classes and Jobs first, because your level 10 class and level 30 path are permanent.

Dailies

Daily quests come back every day at 00:00 UTC, and the quest log shows the countdown. Each one pays EXP, lumens, potions and enhancement stones, and you can finish each once a day.

A few dailies are about fishing: see Cloud Angling. The WEEKLY tab of the quest log is a checklist. Do three different kinds of activity in a week (a daily, a dungeon, a lair boss, a Party Quest or an Echo Tower floor) to open the weekly chest. It resets on Monday at 00:00 UTC and is shared by all your heroes. More in Daily Rewards and Resets.

Rewards you can see first

When a quest is offered, its reward tiles show before you accept: EXP, lumens and up to four items. Gear rewards are real, wearable gear for your own class, and each class line can be offered its own weapon. Tap a tile to read the item. Quest gear is never a cosmetic. Looks come from the Cash Shop. Potion rewards are paid in the potion that suits your level, so a high-level hero turning in an old quest gets a fitting potion in a smaller stack of the same worth, never a bag of weak ones.

Finding your way

• The tracker on the HUD lists your active quests and what each wants next. It folds away to one slim plate. Tap GO to be walked there.
• Quests that ask for a secret climb are guided too: GO, the waystone and AUTO-QUEST lead you to its hidden way in and up to the keeper (see Secret Climbs).
• A small gem, the waystone, rides the edge of the screen toward your next step and settles over the door or NPC when it is in view. The map shows a dotted road to it. Turn the guide off with the gem beside the tracker.
• AUTO-QUEST walks to the giver or hunting ground, fights what the quest needs, returns and talks. It spends AUTO time like any AUTO run (see AUTO-Hunting). Nudge the stick and it pauses, then carries on a moment after you let go. Steer for a second and it stops. It never starts by itself: on your first quests, Glint lights up the GO chip on the tracker and tells you when to tap it.
• AUTO-QUEST stays on the quest you chose. GO or TURN IN always leads to that quest, even when another one waits at the top of the list. If another quest gets finished along the way, the run keeps going until yours is done. If both are handed in to the same person, you can turn in both in one talk. Otherwise the other quest shows as ready on the tracker; tap its own TURN IN when you like.
• A Teleport Stone can skip long walks (see World and Travel).
• The Wayfinder and the World Map list quests by place. The quest log has a GO on every row.

The Unlit chapters

Chapters six and seven take you from level 120 to 160 in The Unlit.