04 - Doesn't Hurt to be Prepared

Quest 4 - Doesn’t Hurt to be Prepared

Reward:

Expert’s Guide to Grilling

Now that we have completed 3 quests officially (if you are following along with the guide), if you hang out in Ordolus for about a minute, John will make a comment about the Ordolus Dossier that he got from Ardus. The end result of the scene is that the Ordolus Dossier gets upgraded to the new and improved Ordolus Almanac!

1. Search barrels near Udumo’s house.

To activate the quest, you need to talk to a green-shirted Ordolus citizen standing in the north-west of town. He is standing right next to the palm tree just south-west of Epherus Maldais’ house (point 2) on the Ordolus City Map.

The man is missing his engagement ring and Ardus has agreed to search for it. Fortunately, it is not located very far away as Udumo’s house is point 3 on the Ordolus City Map. After activating the quest, one of the barrels in front of Udumo’s is sparkling. Examine it to get the Platinum Ring.

Creator Commentary: You can actually get the ring first if you examine the barrel outside of Udumo’s before beginning the quest.

2. Return the ring.

Now the we have the man’s ring, simply talk to him again to return it to him. For your trouble, you’ll get the book Expert’s Guide to Grilling.

As you can see from the description of the Expert’s Guide to Grilling, there is another way to obtain it. In fact, you don’t have to return the Platinum Ring to the man if you don’t want to. If you sell the ring (which sells for 500 gold) and then talk to the man, the quest will still be completed but you won’t get the book from him and the party’s Regret will increase by 1 point.

If you do sell the ring, you can still get the Expert’s Guide to Grilling, it will just require an extra step to get. Go to Kreutzfeld Rarities at the Seaside Bazaar and talk to Sudi, the shopkeeper. He will mention a sullen man who came in and sold a copy of the book to him in a desperate search for money to buy a new engagement ring. Sudi recognizes Ardus’ situation and heavily inflates the price of the book as a consequence. In this scenario, you can still get the book, but it will cost 1,000 gold.

Creator Commentary: You might wonder, why is this quest so short? This simple fetch quest was used as a test for the quest journal system in the game. It was designed to experiment with quests that have different outcomes and possible solutions. Once I figured out how everything fit together in this microcosm, it was easier to design the more complex quest lines.

The previous part of the walkthrough was Bazaar Encounter, the next part is Louder Than Words