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Quests, NPC dialog, and stackable loot

The headline this stretch is a complete quest and dialog system, built up over several days from the NPC groundwork to a fully playable loop.

NPCs you can actually talk to

NPCs are now first-class, named characters (Brom, Tindwyl, and friends) placed in the world with stable identities. Inspecting one opens a dialog hub modeled on old-school RPG gossip menus: a greeting, flavor/lore options to chat about, and any quests that NPC can offer or that you’re ready to turn in — with the shop and training windows now reached through the hub rather than as separate clicks.

Quests, end to end

A quest is a chain of steps, and there are four kinds of objective:

  • Slay a number of a given creature
  • Collect and return items to an NPC
  • Collect a set of items
  • Talk to a specific NPC

There are also four ways to pick up a quest: accept it from an NPC, right-click a quest-starter item in your bag, walk onto a trigger spot in the world, or kill a particular creature. The last three pop the same Accept/Decline offer window you’d get from an NPC — nothing is forced on you. Quests can require other quests first, can be marked repeatable, and can be abandoned.

Finishing a step (or the whole quest) opens a reward screen listing the gold, XP, and items you’ll receive, granted when you confirm. A new Quests tab lists your active quests, and each opens a detail panel with its lore, per-objective x/y progress, and — for quests that allow it — a Complete button so you can wrap up without hiking back to the giver.

Quest drops that respect the party

Quest collectibles don’t litter the dungeon or get sniped. A quest item only drops for a player who’s actually on that quest and still needs it; the single drop is reserved to one eligible looter — invisible and un-lootable to everyone else — so it lands on the ground to be picked up normally while staying fair in a group. If nobody needs it, it simply doesn’t drop.

Stackable items

Items can now stack. Multiple copies of a stackable item share a single bag slot with a small count badge (the same treatment charges and hotbar potions already get), so collecting ten of something for a quest no longer eats ten inventory slots.

Knowing what a click will do

Two quality-of-life touches for the viewport:

  • A command-preview box in the bottom-left corner shows a thumbnail of the tile you’re hovering and the action a double-click would run — Move, Search, Fight, Open, Close, Up, Down, or Locker — driven by the exact same resolver the click itself uses, so the preview can never lie.
  • Hover cursors: a chat-bubble cursor over NPCs (in the world or the critter list) and a loot-bag cursor over reachable loot, so right-click targets read at a glance.

Fixes & polish

  • The timeout-resurrection message now correctly names the safe room instead of the temple.
  • UI sound cues (gold, level-up, skill-up) are now driven explicitly by the server rather than sniffed from the combat log, and reward gold plays the same chime as looting coins.
  • Gold-gain lines are colored loot-green and quest completions light blue in the log.
  • Trimmed combat-log noise around HP fractions and progress spam.