QUESTS & STORY NPCS

Quests are QuantumRift’s narrative layer — short, structured missions handed out by named NPCs and tracked through your PDA. They’re separate from the bandit-faction Mission system; think of quests as the personal, story-flavored jobs, and Missions as the ongoing Empire-vs-bandit grind.

This page covers everything you’ll actually see as a player: the /quest command, the PDA’s Quest tab, and a full walkthrough of the two quests currently in the game.

Quick facts

• Quests are given by specific NPCs and tracked step-by-step in your PDA.
• Each quest can only be run once at a time, and (right now) neither shipped quest is repeatable — once you finish or abandon one, that’s it.
• You can have more than one quest active at once; there’s no cap on how many different quests you’re juggling simultaneously.
• Abandoning a quest is irreversible for non-repeatable quests, so the game deliberately makes you confirm before it lets you do it.

The Quest Log — /quest

Permission: quantumrift.quest.use (on by default for all players).

A few quest steps ask you to pay credits to a specific NPC in person instead of the treasury — those can’t be settled with /quest pay; you have to walk up and interact with that NPC.

Talking to NPCs: the dialogue box

Everything an NPC says, quest lines included, appears in a dialogue box at the bottom of your screen: the speaker’s portrait and name, their lines typing out, and your answers above the box.

• Click (left or right) or press F to skip the typing, then again to go on. Each click has to be a fresh press: holding the button down (to eat, for example) never pages through, and a click the instant a new page appears is ignored, so you can’t skip lines by accident.
• When answers appear, scroll to pick one and click to answer.
• Shift leaves the conversation. For a quest, leaving (or walking a few blocks away) counts as having heard it, and the quest moves on.
• You walk slowly while a dialogue is open, and chat waits until it closes; you get every message afterwards, in order.
• A dialogue never interrupts you. If a quest has something to say while you are running, falling, riding or have a chest open, it waits until you stand still on the ground.
• If you disconnect in the middle of a step’s closing lines, they play again when you come back.
• Quest offers are part of the giver’s greeting: a quest you can take shows up as a golden answer. Pick it to read what the job is, then answer I’ll do it. or Not now. While your tutorial is running, no one offers you another quest: finish it or skip it first.

The PDA Quest tab

Your PDA has 11 tabs, and “QST” (“ACTIVE QUESTS”) is one of them. It’s your primary way to check on quests without typing commands:

• Every active quest gets a row. If it’s the one your compass is tracking, the row says “tracking” — otherwise it shows your current step’s short label.
• Clicking a row opens a detail pane, and abandon is available from there (and via right-click) — both routes go through a confirm dialog first, since abandoning can’t be undone.
• Nothing active? You’ll see: “NO ACTIVE QUESTS — Find a quest giver to start one.”

If your resource pack isn’t loaded, you’ll fall back to a chest-style menu version: it shows up to 9 quests at a time (a chest’s row limit) and abandons on a bare right-click with no confirmation step — so be extra careful abandoning quests from the chest fallback.

How a quest is put together

Every quest has a giver NPC, a description, and a chain of steps that can branch on dialogue choices. Some quests pay out small rewards partway through (the moment a specific step completes), on top of the big payout at the end. Quests can also set persistent flags on completion that the game remembers forever — these can gate whether other content offers itself to you later.

Step types you’ll run into

Quest steps come in a wide variety of flavors — here’s every type currently in the game:

Quest 1: “First Steps” — the tutorial

Giver: the Quartermaster, on the spawn plaza inside the Imperial City.

This is the one quest every player runs, automatically, the moment they first log in — you don’t need to seek it out. It starts a short delay after join so it doesn’t get buried under the join-message scroll, and once you’ve been offered it (whether you finish, abandon, or fail it), the game never offers it again. While it’s active, the Locator Bar above your hotbar always points at the next person or block to find.

The setup: you wake from cryosleep in the arrival pod. The pod cuts in:

“Cryogenic deep sleep recovered. Welcome to Karnal, colonist. You are not registered yet, since you just arrived. Go see the Quartermaster, it is his job. He is in his office. He is pinned on your Locator bar.”

Find the Quartermaster and he lays out the deal:

“Finally, a newcomer. Most of you are not making it. Welcome to Karnal. Here, everything is different from where you probably come from. The planet is mostly empty and freshly settled in. For your initiation, go see some of the tutors here in the Imperial City.”

Steps

The chain is a tour of five demo stations around the plaza, each run by an instructor NPC (the Engineer, the Warden, the Scavenger, the Prospector and the Technician). Every demo block is a working mock-up: anyone can use it, nothing you do there is real, and nobody can break it. Your Locator Bar always points at the current step: the station you have to reach, the grove or seam you have to harvest, or the instructor you are standing with while you craft, eat or tour the PDA.

1. Report In — talk to the Quartermaster on the plaza.
2. Go see a tutor — a dialogue choice: Go to see a tutor or I already know the basics. Choosing I already know the basics. skips the tour: the Quartermaster answers “Suit yourself. Your PDA is in your hotbar. Come back to me if you want the tour.”, and your PDA lands in your hotbar straight away. You don’t get the tour’s gifts (the starter tools and leather set, the final credits and tokens), and you can always come back and talk to him again later to take the tour.
3. Gather wood. — break 3 Oak Logs from the grove beside the Quartermaster; your Locator Bar points at it, and felled logs regrow within a minute so it is never bare for the next player. “Wood. Most of the constructions need it. There is some good credits to do with that.”
4. Craft a Crafting Table — craft 1 Crafting Table. Finishing this step immediately hands you 3 Bread.
5. Eat the food. — eat 1 Bread. If your food bar is full when this step starts, it makes you a little hungry (down to 14 of 20, no damage) so you can actually eat.
6. Meet the Engineer — she explains the demo machine: a spawner feeding a conveyor belt, with a chest beside it.
7. Fix the Belt — right-click the demo belt and set its output toward the chest, then wait for one piece of stone to ride into it. The belt’s direction and the stone on it are shown to you alone, so every new player gets the same lesson.
8. Meet the Warden — she introduces the Base Core, the block every base and team starts with.
9. Core: Upgrade — open the demo Core, find the LEVEL tab and press UPGRADE THE CORE.
10. Core: Deposit — in the BANK tab, press DEPOSIT.
11. Core: Release — in the LAND tab, press RELEASE THIS CHUNK. The demo Core shows every button a real one has; none of them do anything, and the Core says so.
12. Meet the Scavenger — she explains site loot chests: open one and it’s spent until it restocks.
13. Loot the Chest — open the Loot Chest beside her (a chest only you can see) and take everything: a wooden sword, a stone pickaxe, axe and shovel, a full leather armour set and 8 steaks — the same items as the death starter kit.
14. Meet the Prospector — he shows you the coal seam and how renewable ore works.
15. Mine the Coal — mine 3 Coal Ore from the seam. It regrows within a minute, so it’s never empty for the next player.
16. Meet the Technician — he hands you your PDA on the spot.
17. Open Your PDA — right-click it.
18. PDA: Navigation — open the Navigation tab.
19. PDA: Quests — open the Quests tab.
20. PDA: Missions — open the Missions tab.
21. Report to the Officer — find the Empire Officer: “Name’s in the register now. Welcome to Karnal. You are now part of this colony.”
22. Reach the Portal. — walk to the transit portal, the lit Nether portal behind the Beacon Operator. He explains it: walk into it (or ask him to Take me out.) for a random drop into the wild or a jump to your base, and you go through empty — no inventory, no armour — so stash what you own first. Nothing forces you through it; the quest completes when you arrive.

Reward

• Your PDA — handed over by the Technician at step 16. The PDA isn’t a join gift; it’s earned inside the tutorial.
• The starter gear from the Loot Chest at step 13.
• On completion: 10 credits, 2 Imperial Tokens, 8 Cooked Beef and 16 Torches.

Quest 2: “The Broken Compass” — a side job worth doing

Giver: the Quartermaster (speaking for Engineer Marcus, whose survey compass is the whole reason for the job). He only offers it once you are done with the tutorial, or skipped it.

Marcus’s pitch:

“Citizen, my survey compass ended up in a supply chest at an Oasis. Bring it back and there’s a tier-1 gear piece in it for you.”

Worth knowing: the reward Marcus promises in dialogue and the reward you actually get don’t quite match — the coded reward is credits, tokens, and food, no gear item. Don’t go in expecting the gear piece.

Steps

1. Take the Job — talk to the Quartermaster. Choice: [Take the job] or [Walk away] (walking away abandons the quest).
2. Search the Oasis — open a supply (loot) chest at an Oasis. Your Locator Bar points at the nearest Oasis. Opening it hands you the Compass. Any Oasis counts; chests appear there on their own, so if someone got there first, wait for the next one.
3. Fight Your Way Out — kill 3 Husks, and only kills inside an Oasis count toward this step. The Locator Bar points at the nearest Oasis here too.
4. Return After Dark — head back to the Imperial City, but only during the night hours: stand within 8 blocks of the City centre (the spawn point on the plaza) after dark. Hint given in-game: “Return to Imperial City after dark — bandits patrol by day.”
5. Hand It Over — deliver the Compass to the Quartermaster. Marcus is grateful: “You’re a good one. The Empire’s lucky to have you.”

Reward

• 20 credits
• 5 Imperial Tokens
• 8 Cooked Beef

This quest doubles as a demo of much of what the quest system can do — branching dialogue, a loot chest at a type of site with an item reward for opening it, location-gated kills, night-only checks, and NPC delivery — all in one compact package. If you want to see the full range of what a QuantumRift quest can throw at you, this is the one to run.

Story NPCs — who’s real and who’s a ghost

You’ll meet two very different kinds of “quest NPC” while playing:

• Real, persistent NPCs — full humanoid characters that exist in the world all the time, regardless of quest state. The Quartermaster, the five tutorial instructors (Engineer, Warden, Scavenger, Prospector, Technician) and the Empire Officer — all at spawn inside the Imperial City — are this type. They use real player-shaped skins and you’ll see them whether or not you’re on a quest.
• Phantom NPCs and chests — illusions that only render for you, and only while you’re on the specific quest step that needs them. The Loot Chest in the tutorial is one. They vanish once you’ve passed that step, and they’re built to refresh themselves so they don’t glitch out or disappear if you wander in and out of range.

Skins

Every NPC in the game has a face of its own: 38 distinct character skins, one per NPC, covering everyone from the Quartermaster and Empire Officer to the five tutorial instructors, the ten bandits and the five rank envoys. No two NPCs share a skin.

What to expect going forward

Right now, only two quests exist — the tutorial and the Broken Compass side quest. There’s no larger quest chain, no bandit-faction story quests, and no late-game quest content yet. If you’re looking for the ongoing bandit conflict, that content lives in the separate Mission system, not here. The quest system itself is built out and stable — it just doesn’t have much content riding on it yet, so expect more quests to show up over time rather than changes to how the system works.