Quest Mechanics
Every quest in Wildoria has a shape. Some you walk; some you hunt; some you keep someone alive through. The shape decides how the city judges the outcome - what counts as a win, what counts as a fall, and which door you walk back through.
Prerequisites
Some quests are not available to everyone. You might face:
- Stat Requirements: "You need 50 Strength to lift this rock."
- Item Requirements: "Bring me a Golden Ticket to enter."
- Reputation Check: "The Savages do not trust you yet."
Word on the Street
Not every contract is pinned to your map from the first day. Some work never reaches the noticeboard at all. It travels the way most things travel in Wildoria: as a rumor, passed quietly from one person to the next.
A hidden quest stays off your map, your tile panel, and your quest book until you hear about it. Stop and talk to the right townsperson, and the small talk turns into a lead. The moment the rumor lands, the quest's marker appears in the world for you to follow.
The one who whispers the rumor is rarely the one who needs the work. A farmer at the market square repeats what a stranger left by the old oak; the actual task waits a district away. Word moves from the safety of the town toward the trouble, and you move with it. This keeps the world feeling lived-in: the map is not a checklist handed to you at the gate, but a set of doors that open as you listen.
Rumors are tied to specific people in specific places. If a townsperson has something to share, you will see a Talk option when you stand where they stand. Hearing a rumor once is enough; the lead is yours to keep, and the marker will not vanish if you walk away.
A single conversation can reveal more than one lead, and a single lead can be carried by more than one voice, so the same rumor may reach you from different corners of the city. Listening widely is its own kind of preparation.
Two Engines, Two Pacings
Wildoria runs quests on two engines depending on how the contract is expected to play out. The two engines aren't a player choice - they're how the city's clerks sort the work.
Live Engine
Real-time, action-based work - mob hunting in the field, gathering tasks in the open city, contract pickups by hand.
- Progress is tracked the moment you act.
- Each action (kill, loot, delivery) is verified before the city pays.
- Map indicators (
!,?) update on the spot.
⏳ Simulation Engine
Background contracts where you're not swinging the sword in real time - the simulator runs the encounter beats while the city's clock ticks.
- The contract starts a timer; you queue it and walk away.
- The city resolves the run on its own. When the timer ends the simulator replays the encounter beat-by-beat against your stats and gear, settles the outcome, and pays out the rewards - you don't have to come back and click Collect. The next time you open the Quests page the run is already closed; the line-by-line timeline is waiting.
- If the run went badly, the city mail reaches your inbox before you do - a verdict letter or a recovery note, depending on which lane the simulator landed on.
The two engines are independent. They share only the citizen's underlying state - your stats, inventory, the wounds carried on your body. Neither reaches into the other to decide an outcome.
Mission Archetypes
Different contracts have different shapes of victory. The simulator recognizes the shape from the contract's terms and routes the run accordingly.
Courier - deliver and live
The default shape. Walk a road, weather the encounters, finish the run alive. Survival is necessary but not sufficient - your skill, gear, and luck still have to land for the contract to close cleanly. Failing a courier contract is usually a missed paycheck; a sworn courier contract carries a penal clause on top.
The shipping example is Perilous Delivery.
Hunt - bring back the count
A bounty. The contract names the count and the kind, and you collect the difference. Survival is necessary but not sufficient - you can walk out clean and still fail because the count came up short. Other kills along the way still pay for themselves (XP, coin, hide), they just don't tick the contract.
Escort - don't let them fall
You walk with a third party - a courier, a witness, a postman, a caravan-master. They have their own HP, their own attack, and they take part of every blow you take. They swing back at the end of every round. If their HP reaches zero, the run fails - even if you're still standing. The contract is about them, not you.
Heist - slip out without writing your name down
Modern noir. Tight encounter count, lower success rate, real penal pressure on a bad job. Surviving is the win condition (courier-shape), but the failure tone leans criminal - the city watch comes after you, not the ranger. The article cited on a botched heist is theft, not duty.
Other Shapes
The catalog isn't closed. New shapes plug into the same engine by declaring a fresh win condition - a pacifist contract that just needs you to survive, an exploration run that pays for ground covered, an escort that also asks for kills. Same encounter beats, same NPC pool; different definition of "you won."
Server-Authoritative
Wildoria follows a server-authoritative model so that nothing about a quest's outcome can be claimed without verification.
- Thin client. The game client is a visual layer. Quest state and rewards are calculated on the city's side, not yours.
- Re-verification. Even if the client says a quest is "ready", the city checks the work against the contract's terms before granting any reward.
- Kill ownership. Mob kills count for a contract only when the citizen (or party) actually has loot rights on the kill.
Contract Chains
Some quests sit at the end of a chain - they only appear once their parent contract is done. Other contracts fork on a dialog choice or a faction allegiance, opening one branch and closing the other.
Simulation & Replay (Offline)
Simulation contracts continue while you're offline. The city handles the close on its own - when the contract's timer runs out the simulator fires automatically, the rewards land, and the mailbox sends whatever letter the run earned. There is no manual Collect step; the run is closed in the ledger before you log back in.
The Simulator
When the timer ends, the simulator runs an encounter sequence beat by beat. Each encounter follows the same shape:
- Setup. A wave or group is picked from the contract's actor pool (a lone scout, a pair, an ambush trio…), each enemy scaled to the declared level.
- Round loop. A few rounds of exchange - every alive enemy swings; you counter-attack with a basic strike or a slotted skill; your ally, if you have one, intervenes and swings back at the end.
- Stat checks. Dodge, crit, damage all roll against your stat line. Persistent wounds (poison, bleed) tick at the top of each round.
- Win decision. Once the encounters resolve, the contract's win condition reads the run and decides the lane (see below).
Replays
Every event in a run is recorded. You can read the Replay line by line - when you dodged, when the bandit crit, when the bleed started, when the ally stepped in. The log is the audit trail; everything the simulator decided is visible to you.
Combat Depth
The encounter loop has texture. A swing isn't a single number; it passes through layers.
Armor - flat physical mitigation
Your Defense removes a flat amount from every incoming physical hit, with a 25% floor (no perfect tank - you always take a sliver). High armor turns a 13-damage swing into a 10-damage one; the log shows both numbers:
A Highway Bandit's blade lands for 10 (armor absorbs 3).
Block - your guard catches one
Higher Defense also raises a block chance, capped at 25%. When a block fires, the already-mitigated damage is halved further:
Your guard takes the brunt - 14 incoming, only 5 cuts through from the Highway Bandit.
Skills bypass blocks (they animate around your guard); only basic strikes can be blocked.
Gear-aware skill damage
A skill's damage isn't just its base value plus a stat bonus. Physical skills add a weapon roll (your equipped weapon's damage range) and an Attack Power contribution from Strength. Magical skills stay on the stat-only path. The result: the same Whirlwind swung with bare hands hits softly; with a sidearm on your hip it hits hard. Equipment is felt, not just listed on a sheet.
Lingering Wounds
Not every wound closes when the contract ends.
How wounds linger
Some attacks - a wolf's bite that cuts deep, a poisoned blade - leave a persistent wound. The injury is recorded on your character, with a duration measured in real-world minutes. The bleed keeps ticking after you walk back to the city. It stacks if it lands again before the timer expires. Another encounter on top of an open wound can be lethal.
| Effect family | Lingers? |
|---|---|
| Bleed - deep cuts that won't clot on their own | |
| Poison - toxic exposure with a long tail | |
| Burn - severe heat damage | |
| Curse - slow degradation, narrative-flavored | |
| Stun / Slow / Silence / Freeze | - |
| Combat-internal buffs (attack-up, shield, hp-up) | - |
Tactical states scoped to the encounter (stun, slow) clear with the encounter. Long-lived injuries cross the line back to the city with you.
Stacking
A persistent wound can stack up to its catalog cap. A bleed that hits five times in a single encounter ends at five stacks, ticking five times harder until each stack rolls off.
The Wound Sheet
Active persistent wounds live on your character's effect list - the same surface a healer reads when they decide what to charge you. Each entry shows the wound's name, current stack count, remaining time, and where it came from. The wound sheet is what tells you whether the next contract will finish you.
Recovery & Dispel
If wounds linger, the city sells you a way to close them.
Field consumables
A bandage clears bleeds. An antidote clears poisons. A burn salve clears burns. Each item carries a list of wound types it can clear; using it against an active matching wound consumes the item and ends the wound on the spot.
The use flow has a courtesy guard: if there's nothing to cure, the item isn't consumed. A clean citizen who fumbles a bandage onto a healthy arm gets a polite message and keeps the bandage:
Nothing to cure right now.
You don't waste consumables on bruises that aren't there.
Field nurses
Nurse Amelia Duran handles the combat-downed lane - when a contract leaves you on the ground with HP at zero, she finds you, bandages you, and sends a recovery letter. The letter is courtesy mail; no rewards attach, the character is back on their feet by the time you read it. Field nurses cover the fall, not the bleed - a wound stays open until something explicitly closes it.
A staffed infirmary tier - paid in coin - is the intended endpoint for citizens who'd rather not heal in the dirt.
Cleanse skills
Some learned player skills can clear effects on cast - a self-cast "Bind Wounds", a partymate's "Mend". They run through the same dispel plumbing as consumables, so the rules don't fork between an item and a skill.
Natural expiry
Every persistent wound carries a duration. If nothing closes it, it ends on its own when the timer runs out. Nothing in the current catalog is open-ended.
Consequences of Failure
Most quests treat failure as a missed opportunity - energy is spent, no reward is granted. Some quests, however, declare a failure clause, and that clause can pull a fallen citizen into deeper trouble.
Lanes - how the simulator names a run's outcome
Every run ends on one of four lanes, computed after the win decision. The lane drives both the closing narrative beat and the mailbox hooks downstream.
| Lane | Citizen state | What happens |
|---|---|---|
success | win (any HP > 0) | Rewards granted; per-kill rewards on top. |
unlucky | fail, HP > 0, no jail | Energy spent, no reward, no mail. The most common loss. |
jailed | fail, HP > 0, conviction landed | Verdict mail + opened sentence. |
dead | fail, HP = 0 | Recovery letter from the field nurse. |
jailed and dead aren't mutually exclusive - both can fire on the
same run. Each gets its own letter; the simulator's closing line picks
the one that's narratively heaviest.
The Penal Hook
If a contract carries an imprison clause, a failed run rolls against the configured chance and - if the roll lands - the citizen is sentenced under the named Civic Code article. The shipping articles for contract failures are M-401 Dereliction of Sworn Duty (courier-shape contracts) and M-201 Theft (heist-shape contracts).
When the article triggers, Judge Hope Long dispatches a verdict mail with the article cited, the sentence id, and the term imposed. Repeats within thirty days double the term up to the article's hard ceiling. A character already imprisoned cannot be sentenced twice - the active sentence stands.
The Field Nurse
A separate, automatic hook fires only when the simulator reduces the citizen to HP = 0 during the run. Cron timeouts and other non-combat fails do not trigger it - she is the field nurse, not a coroner. Amelia Duran sends a recovery letter explaining the citizen was found in time and bandaged; no rewards are attached, the note is a courtesy.
The two hooks are independent and can both fire on the same run:
| Outcome | Verdict mail | Recovery mail |
|---|---|---|
| Success | - | - |
| Fail, conviction roll misses, HP > 0 | - | - |
| Fail, conviction roll lands, HP > 0 | - | |
| Fail, HP = 0, no failure clause | - | |
| Fail, conviction roll lands, HP = 0 |
Lethal Blow
When the death dice lands on a contract's death chance, the simulator adds a lethal blow beat to the timeline rather than silently snapping HP from a healthy number to zero. The narrative reads as the bandit closes in - a final strike lands clean for X. You go down
- a single explanatory beat between the last surviving encounter and the recovery letter.
Per-Enemy Rewards
Killing an enemy mid-run pays out on its own - XP, coin, and a roll on the enemy's loot table - independent of whether the contract ends in a win or a fail. The dead bandits don't un-die because the parcel slipped. The contract pays separately for delivery; the field pays for what you put down.
| Reward stream | Granted on |
|---|---|
| Contract reward | Success only |
| Per-kill XP / coin | Every kill, win or fail |
| Per-kill loot | Every kill, win or fail |
The Quests log renders each kill as a chip - a yellow +N XP, the
city's coin glyph followed by the amount, and item drops as
hover-expandable chips with full rarity/level tooltips.
See Also
- Perilous Delivery - the canonical courier example.
- Article M-401 / Article M-201 - the penal articles the contracts cite.
- Prison - what happens after a verdict lands.
- Combat & Wounds - the same surface, viewed from the combat side.
- Life & Vitality - HP, energy, and the vitality underlay.