Guidelines

1. Use the UESP wiki to get an overview of each quest and its stages before testing. Some CK know-how will be useful as well to look at the stages for Skywind. When reporting issues in GitHub, please attach screenshots (when applicable) with a brief description. Please check off quests which have been tested using the QA check-off box in the given card.

2. Play through multiple times to test all possible options--don't just go for the "happy path" of how a player is "supposed" to play a particular quest, but really try to break it. (e.g. talk to NPCs at the "wrong" times, go places before the quest sends you there, kill NPCs that are part of the quest to see what happens, etc.) Saving at critical points can save time when revisiting options. Screenshots are recommended.

3. Pay attention to if the quest is fully completable without quest markers, This means descriptive objectives and detailed journal entries.

   • Skyrim’s journal does not retain old log entries. Verify that any important information is not lost when a journal entry updates.

   • You don't have to do a whole separate playthrough without quest markers; just pay attention to if the markers are needed or not.

4. Quest givers should not mark locations on the player's map, unless their dialogue indicates that they will do so. This means that the only time the player will have a map marker is when that location had a map marker in Morrowind.

   • Note: Revealed map markers should never have fast travel automatically enabled.

5. Quest markers should accurately reflect the information the player has been given.

   • Consider the quest Beneran's Bounty: You are assigned an NPC to kill, and are told what cave to find the NPC in. However, Percius does not have directions to the cave, and instead points you to Maar Gan to search for better information. The quest marker for this case should point you to Maar Gan first, and only point you towards the actual NPC once you've gotten that information in Maar Gan.

   • Similarly, the first quest of the Main Quest points you to the South Wall for directions to reach Caius; there should not be a marker pointing directly to Caius until the player has gotten directions to him from Bacola Closcius at the South Wall.

   • Another Fighters Guild quest, Tenim's Bounty, doesn't give you Tenim's location but rather the town where he was last seen. The quest marker should point to that town, rather than directly to Tenim.

   • Quests where the player plays the role of detective should not have markers pointing to specific clues.

   • (Remember that markers are a subset of objectives, not the objective itself! We should still have objectives for Beneran, Caius, etc... at the outset of the quest.)

6. If the player makes progress on the quest before the quest is officially "assigned", is that reflected in dialogue/journal entries?

   • Generally this means killing an NPC or other creature prior to the quest beginning, but sometimes also recovering an item beforehand.

7. Does the quest properly handle dead NPCs?

   • If a dead NPC would block progression of the quest, then the quest should fail.

   • If a dead NPC would stop a quest from starting, ideally it will have dialogue indicating it can't start, but otherwise it is okay for it to not start.

8. Quest items should be able to be found prior to the start of the quest (unless they were dynamically enabled/placed in Morrowind).

9. Quest items should be droppable and should update the quest objective to get them if they are dropped.

10. NPCs and placed objects like chests should all exist in the world prior to the quest starting. We do not want cases where such things are disabled just to make it so that the player can't break the quest before it starts.

11. All doors and chests should be pickable. If a door/chest must be non-pickable, it should be barred, magically sealed, etc... not simply "Requires Key".

12. When the player is asked to collect debt or donations from NPCs, they should be able to pay off the debt or give the donation themselves, bypassing the quest.

    • However, make sure that dialogue prompts indicate this, such as "(Lie) I collected the debt from Desele," so that the player doesn't accidentally skip the quest.

13. If there is an NPC follower, is the region in which they follow the player reasonable?

    • NPCs should not follow the player across all of Vvardenfell.

14. Is cell ownership handled properly, so that the player can reach NPCs in their home when needed? If the player registers as trespassing, it may cause the NPC to break out of dialogue.

15. Do dialogue topics unlock at the appropriate time? A lot of Morrowind's system was not ported well, so we have, e.g. directions to a quest destination appearing before a quest was assigned, or all parts of a conversation are available instantly rather than having to progress through it.

16. Report dialogue when:

    • It appears incorrect in any form.

    • It doesn't appear when it should (delayed or missing).

    • Prompts are not present and instead there is only a keyword.

    • It fails to give or take proper items from player.

    • It can be repeated erroneously.

    • It allow you to progress when you shouldn't be able to (such as not having an item or correct stats).

    • Directions do not make sense with how the world is laid out.

17. Report any general awkwardness/weirdness. We want the quests to feel natural and not clunky.

    • This includes item placement, NPC placement, timing of events/dialogue, etc...

Notes

• Remember that journal entries, quest objectives, and quest markers are three distinct things.

  • Journal entry: The long description of what the player is doing at the top of the quest's section in the journal.

  • Quest objective: Bullet points of what the player should be doing, listed in the quest's section in the journal.

  • Quest marker: The indicator on the map of where the player should travel to.

• Remember that quest testing may take you to places where other aspects of the game are incomplete.