Skyrim talk:Radiant

Replacing Merchants

Does Radiant still replace NPCs that are killed as originally claimed? The Windhelm stable-hand Ulundil was killed by a dragon just now and I'm wondering if some other person will fill in for him. If so, how long would the replacement take? Would it be a randomly generated NPC or someone who is from Windhelm already? 69.65.92.11 03:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Most merchants have a specific NPC defined in the game data as their replacement. In the case of Ulundil, Arivanya is defined as the backup Hostler. I haven't personally tested it in-game to see whether it happens, but all the behind-the-scenes info is there in the game data. --Nephele^Talk 03:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

What makes a quest Radiant?

I noticed a lot of basic quests are marked as radiant quests, even if there's nothing dynamic about them. Is that designation being automatically applied based on internal data?Vardis 07:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

The Radiant system didnt work. It kinda..failed horribly actually, with bethesda needing to re-write almost all of the quest aspects very quickly. Because it simply didnt work to any meaningful level, and using it for more than trivial aspects was found to be a terrible, broken way of doing things. So they had to redo it all by hand. Simply put; Radiant failed utterly. This is actually the reason for a whole lot of problems, like the delay on the construction kit (Its all based around radiant, which failed.)

Forgot to sign 74.132.249.206 08:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

This is the first time I've heard this... do you have any references? A quick Google doesn't show any corroboratory information, but if this is true it would have a wide-ranging effect on the wiki; pretty much every page in the Skyrim namespace that references or alludes to Radiant would need to be reconsidered. You're basically saying that where, for example, the wiki details a quest which may have a location chosen by Radiant (which favours undiscovered locations), that quest location may actually be arbitrarily chosen from a predefined list specific to that quest. I don't think the wiki content needs to be concerned with technical implementation, but Skyrim's (apparent) randomness and dynamic elements are arguably key to gameplay. --Reka 11:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's clear that there are radiant quests that are dynamic, and then there are quests where it's marked as radiant on the wiki, but it's just a misc quest like we'd normally see, like Delivery to Calcelmo. A quest like the one that Farkas first gives you is your basic radiant quest - go to <location> and beat up|kill|rescue|retrieve someone|something. It's not that big a deal, although if someone wanted to look through a list of Radiant quests, as I think most would understand the term, they'll get a lot of extra stuff that are Radiant only technically. -Vardis 06:59, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently there are three kinds of "Radiant Quests":

• Quests with random elements like the dungeon an object is found in. These are the only ones "radiant" in play experience.
• Unique (miscellaneous) quests which are marked "radiant" behind the scenes but are just one (misc) quest, nothing more.
• Similar miscellaneous quests which are absolutely defined (fetch item X from character Y, bring it to character Z) but use the radiant system behind the scenes to simplify programming. These do not, as said on the page, use random elements but are a simplification tool for programmers (a command "fetch X Y Z" in an imaginary quest-programming language if you so will, which will automatically add relevant dialogue options and similar).

Especially this "programming language effect" - short work to get a whole quest set up - is what actually seems to work. In the examples of the second kind, it does not help, but maybe they were thinking ahead to future endeavours. --Ulkomaalainen 01:48, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

May want to..

Someone may want to create a page for "Radiant Quests" and have it forward to this page. I did a search for Radiant Quests and couldn't find this page, yet when I googled it, it was one of the first links. Sorry I don't know how to do this, otherwise I would take care of it. Is there somewhere that explains how to make a link automatically redirect?

Shadow Hado 06:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. Done. You use the #REDIRECT[[]] directive. --Morrolan (talk) 18:54, 19 January 2013 (GMT)

Limit to number of radiant quests?

It seems to me that you couldn't have more than some specific number of active radiant quests at a time. At some moment they stop to give you the quests. For example, the Encahnter in Winterhold college stops give me his quests, also the NPC's who gave me quests in previous playthrough don't have this option now.--31.128.139.226 11:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Radiant quests are given to your character somewhat based on how you play. In my "mage" playthroughs I always encountered a student who wanted my help in training but in my theif character file this never happened. This may be what happened to you. The radiant quests are infinite, although they may take a while to appear. Also, the bounty missions are included. RIM 13:54, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Not all of the listings on the page are infinite. The Break of Dawn, Totems of Hircine (of which there are just 3), etc - many are limited. It might be worthwhile to add a tag to each entry in this section saying "repeatable x times", either just for those that aren't infinite, or for all and saying something like "infinitely repeatable" for those that are. Some might not be obvious - In my first game I assumed that the book fetching quest line was limited ("surely he'll run out of books he wants eventually") but I seem to recall him assigning me to fetch Chimarvamidium twice in a row (which may have been a bug - this was many patches ago and there's still plenty of bugs around) — Unsigned comment by 24.69.196.170 (talk) at 04:37 on 22 September 2012

QUESTION:

If you go and clear a dungeon that is on a quest givers radiant quest list, does that mean that dungeon won't be chosen to be the quest? Or does that mean the quest won't be obtainable? Or if it selects the cleared dungeon for the radiant quest will the dungeon respawn everything? I guess I'm asking if clearing places that might be chosen as a radiant quest location later will affect anything? Should I not go to places that I'm not sent to by someone? — Unsigned comment by 108.197.122.144 (talk) at 01:20 on February 19, 2012

No, it's still a possible location; only difference is that it might be somewhat easier to finish any applicable radiant quest if you have already run through the place. They want you to feel free to explore any given location you come across. However, to limit possible bugs or the misplacing of important items, I suggest not taking any quest items you may come across if you're not yet at the point in the associated quest where you're supposed to take it. Quest items you are not "ready" for are usually easy to recognize. So feel free to enter locations, but I would be careful about what you touch. Maybe I'm being overly cautious about bugs, but that's what happens when you play TES games. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 01:33, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Anyone else have Radiant quest affect/target NPCs/Creatures from community mods??

This last playthrough when I got the first "Hired Muscle" mission for the companions, It had me beat up "Ambassador Guard". Thing is, "Ambassador Guard" is an NPC added by Phenderix Magic Evolved. Comes to show just how amazing the Radiant system really is if it can affect Mod-created NPCs too. I was just curious, but did anyone else have radiant missions that targeted/used Mod-Added NPCs or creatures? — Unsigned comment by 96.41.225.122 (talk) at 14:57 on 23 May 2012

Radiant quests choose the various radiant quest components based on certain conditions (e.g., dungeon within a whiterun hold, or npc that isn't a follower), so any NPC or place added by a mod can be chosen for those quest components as long as all conditions are met. ABCface^◥ 04:19, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Innkeepers in Whiterun Hold aren't offering any more bounty quests... Is this a bug?

I did a whole bunch of bounty quests in Whiterun, and now the innkeeper isn't offering any more. I can't seem to find a definitive answer anywhere, so I have to ask: Will she eventually offer more quests? I tried leaving Whiterun for a few days and completing a Dragon bounty in Windhelm, but when I came back there was no change. Did I not wait for long enough? Is this a bug? If someone could just explain what's happening, that would be great. Chunk of Ham 16:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Radiant Quest Stages Potential Bug

One of the most dreadful things that I hate having to do in Skyrim is doing these radiant quests given to me from one of 2 veteran members of the thieves guild. I've tried advancing the quests by using the setstage (code) then the finish number, and apparently it completes the quests that was given to me, however I notice that when I go back to the NPC to request more jobs the dialogue is no longer there. Vex is still program to act as if the quest is still activated.

Has anyone face with this problem before? If so how do you fix it? Raijin 06:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

yes this also happened to me after entering complete.quest for a bugged radiant quest(the Bedlam job) from delvin, then returning back to delvin, the option to recieve more work doesn`t appear, vex`s is still working fine for the moment. Later on i returned from rescuing Aela(given by Florentis) also having an animal extermination quest from her, after handing in the quest to aela once i reached jorvaskr the same thing happened as with delvin, farkas and vilkas work fine same as vex! There is no more "I`m looking for work!" dialog line for Aela and Delvin i hope this can be fixed the game is far from over. Raskan 9 september 2012. — Unsigned comment by 89.38.159.78 (talk) at 18:27 on 7 September 2012‎

\this is still a fault feb 2013 — Unsigned comment by 92.13.123.81 (talk) at 15:24 on 10 February 2013

I'm having this problem with ALL of the Companions in January 2015. Can't continue the Companions questline now, totally broken.

Dawnguard quests

Added the Dawnguard radiant quests to the list. I'll do the Volkihar clan quests later if nobody else gets to them. Also I'm not sure I formatted them perfectly, if details can be filled in and maybe the way the quests are presented cleaned up that might be good. --Morrolan (talk) 20:13, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

Dragonborn locations

some radiant quests can also be on Solstheim such as the totems of Hircine, Ancient Power and Rescue from Dawnguard. — Unsigned comment by 82.73.72.148 (talk) at 14:44 on 9 April 2013‎

Yep. Actually a whole lot of them can be on Solstheim. See the note on the main page: NPCs and locations added by mods or plug-ins can be assigned as targets or givers in radiant quests if they fit the parameters for the given quest. Dragonborn is a plug-in, so there you go. --Morrolan (talk) 19:34, 9 April 2013 (GMT)

This threw me off too. I was looking for dwemer schematics for the lady in the Dawnguard that makes the crossbows and bolts. One of her quests pointed to Hrodulf's House. I didn't remember hearing of that location before and there wasn't a marker placed on my map. I assumed it was bugged with no quest marker. So I came here to find out where Hrodulf's House is at and it's on Solstheim. Was not expecting a DG quest, radiant or otherwise, to send me to Solstheim. --Ignotus (talk) 03:29, 14 April 2013 (GMT)

Yeah, this fact should probably be given more prominent attention on the main radiant page because now that people have multiple DLCs installed this is going to crop up a lot more. If Bethesda releases any more Dragonborn-type DLCs with extra land area in them it's only going to get worse. In Oblivion, with Shivering Isles installed, you got a quest marker pointing to the gateway for quests that had their targets on the other side, but not in Skyrim. --Morrolan (talk) 14:09, 14 April 2013 (GMT)

Some of these aren't random at all for me

Would it make sense that since I start a new game from the same save file (the auto save before character selection) that that would be the reason most of my radiant quests take me to the same places?--69.136.59.17 16:32, 27 July 2013 (GMT)

It might explain some of the early Bounty quests that you can pick up from innkeepers. I can't explain it, but I consistently got the same locations for the early companions quests (about 10 in a row in one place) before it switched locations and gave me a run of pointers to another location. I run a lot of new games for work on the site. This could be because the quests run from the beginning of the game, as many other non-random quests do, but obviously not as noticeably. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 16:40, 27 July 2013 (GMT)

Certain quests (including at least some of the Companions ones) only send you to targets within a hold you've already been to- so early in the game, you are likely to get a lot more targets in Whiterun Hold. I'm not sure how many quests this applies to, but I've seen it noted on a couple quest pages. This could easily explain this, though. — ABCface^◥ 21:04, 27 July 2013 (GMT)

A lot of radiant quests, not just the Companions ones, seem to only target holds you've been to. Exploring a lot before starting to do quests leads to much more diverse targets. --Morrolan (talk) 00:45, 28 July 2013 (GMT)

Hm, I will admit that most of them seem to come in the Whiterun and Winterhold holds because I go to them first. But it would still be ridiculously long odds to encounter the amount of missions that are the exact same. Silence said it and I've definitely had runs like that. I mean, my first 2 radiant quests for the companions were both bandits in silent moon camp and rescue Idolaf from Redoran's retreat. Both began from the same file. In addition, I also experience what Silence said where it does the same things for a period of time, suddenly switches, and stays on those for a long period of time. It just doesn't seem that the quests are extremely random, just parts of them are.--69.136.59.17 01:06, 28 July 2013 (GMT)

It would be interesting to test. Can you start another savegame from the same file, visit all 9 holds (you don't need to really do anything to speak of, just enter them; if you know your way around the map it's not hard to do) and then see what the Companions give you? I always watch the full intro, I kinda like the bit with Ralof and Ulfric at the beginning, so I've never loaded the Prisoner savegame. I would suggest saving right before they give you your first radiant quest, reloading a few times to see if you get the same quest again. --Morrolan (talk) 02:48, 28 July 2013 (GMT)

Will certainly do within a few days, at least it's something new :-D--69.136.59.17 04:15, 28 July 2013 (GMT)

Radiant system may end up stalled for good, none of the radiant quests starting anymore

It seems that the radiant system may endup with an error "Quest 'XXX' timed out filling aliases" and then it keep trying to process the same event over and over ignoring other events that should start other quests and so no more such quests are started.

Some topics where I tried to get to the bottom of this (see full logs in spoiler tags)

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1447502-sendstoryeventandwait-not-returning-either-true-or-false-what-can-it-mean/

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1446712-thieves-guild-mini-quests-issue-to-get-the-radiants-in-each-city/

Any information about this? Imo this is a huge one not only for vanilla game but also leading to a lot of issue reports regarding mods without those mods being the cause of this.LukeH (talk) 13:21, 2 October 2013 (GMT)

I haven't heard any reports of this bug affecting people on consoles. My best guess is that it's because of either a RAM shortage or a CPU speed issue. --Morrolan (talk) 13:31, 2 October 2013 (GMT)

The most obvious symptom is thieves guild job not starting after dialogue cause in other cases you may simply not knowing you hit an issue...no such report on console? I tend to agree with you that it may be related to system resources. I'm desperately searching for ini configs to tweak the Radiant system, similar to the papyrus ones, to set a higher the timeout value or something, as the logs may say over 20 timeouts per second...yet with no luck.LukeH (talk) 06:59, 16 October 2013 (GMT)

Another related thing on my game seems the "Farkas not offering jobs issue". I don't claim this is the source of the issue for every user but for me it was. For me none of the proposed solution on Purity page worked. I was able to fix it for me, in a brutal and for a very specific point in the companions questline, by editing vanilla scripts. Morrolan, the Farkas/Purity issue is mentioned for consoles, at last for PS3, but as I sayed I can't guarantee this is the only possible cause for it. LukeH (talk) 08:39, 2 December 2013 (GMT)

Initiating Radiant Quests

It doesn't appear possible to initiate a particular Radiant Quest by console, but is there some other way than by just talking to the regular NPC quest-giver? Edit:Just remembered ForceRefTo or ForceLocIntoAlias [1] that gets a desired location for the story which is a workaround.--Lmstearn (talk) 05:41, 6 January 2015 (GMT)

When are locations determined?

From reading various articles on here it would appear that certain radiant quests have their locations determined at the start of each new game. The Moon Amulet one does this, for example. However, I was curious if they all work this way - particularly the ones that are repeatable or use lists? The Dawnguard ones, for example. I ask because I want to do the DG quests, but also want Dragonborn enabled - but want to cut out the risk of Solstheim locations being used for DG radiant quests. — Unsigned comment by 176.35.67.26 (talk) at 16:59 on 5 February 2015

Only a few of the radiant quests have locations determined at game start. Most determine them when you get them. To determine which kind of quest you are getting, save the game first then ask the quest giver for the quest two or three times (reloading from the save to ask again); if you get a different location, then the radiant quest is generating its location at the time you ask for it. All of the DG and DB radiant quests (there's only a few in DB, but there are some) generate their variables at the time you get them, however.

Still, you can solve your problem using the method I suggested. If you get a Solstheim location for a DB radiant quest, then just reload the save and try again. You can tell it's a Solstheim location because when you look for its map marker on the Skyrim map, there isn't one. --Morrolan (talk) 13:17, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

As for the Dawnguard Side Quests I noticed, that saving before you talk to the next quest giver will not allow you to change results by reloading. What helps, is to save before you report back your previous mission. That way I could get some control over the results. --Marc — Unsigned comment by 84.188.182.40 (talk) at 17:20 on 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Create a list of Radiant Quest givers?

It'd be more convenient to if the radiant quests were listed by 'givers' - whether it's 1 person, a group of people from the same faction (Companions for example) or by an action in a certain place (shouting in certain locations), or what-have-you, and to list whether they are repeatable or not.

It's very confusing on some location's pages here to see "radiant quest location" when technically it might only be available to just a couple potential quests, and if you already completed one of those quests, you won't get that location as a target. Like me - because it's vaguely described as "radiant quest location", I spent a long time wondering why I never got certain locations as a quest, while I had other already-cleared dungeons given as targets instead, until I dug into what was actually meant by "radiant quest location".

Plus it'd be convenient for "endgame" questing - everything finished, all main questlines completed, nothing left to do but repeatable radiant quests: having a list of these quests according to who gives them/how to get them would make things alot easier. — Unsigned comment by 108.0.32.170 (talk) at 01:53 on 26 May 2015

The idea behind the radiant system is that it will eventually have you visiting every dungeon in the game. The two radiant quests from Urag gro-Shub have the possibility to do this alone, while the other quests have a more stringent list of places. The system does not take into account whether or not you've been to a location yet, and has been known to pick the same place an improbable amount of times consecutively before choosing another.

In terms of endgame (where you've completed everything else) the only easy places you can guarantee jobs from are the factions and innkeepers (for bounties). Others are random, as in completing an action does not guarantee that you'll get a quest from it (shouting, assaulting someone). Each faction only has a limited number of radiant quest givers, and off-hand I think the most is three (College and Companions). In total I think there are 14 people in all of Skyrim, and just 1 I can think of in Dragonborn that give radiant quests (besides the innkeepers of which there are numerous per Hold), and they can all be found in 5/6 specific areas. These people have on average about 3 quests each, and they overlap quite a bit. Even leaving out all the inns and innkeepers the list would be quite complicated, eg do we list a quest under all givers individual lists, or have a separate tally for quests available from multiple people as well as their own list for ones unique to them. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 02:03, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Well why not list those 14 people, with any others belonging to DLCs under a seperate DLC-appropriate heading?

If there's multiple people that can give the same quest, like the innkeepers, just list "Innkeepers" - you don't need to list them all individually if they all give the same radiant quest(s) - and have that word "innkeepers" link to a page like this one: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Inns

You could also do it in table format, so you could list all the potential givers for a radiant quest; you could have columns for "quest giver(s)", "quest name/type", "starting location(s)", "possible locations", and any other possibly necessary information.

I get it's not a fast/easy thing to do compared to other edits, but it would be a useful asset. — Unsigned comment by 108.0.32.170 (talk) at 01:44 on 5 June 2015

There are quite a bit more than 14 radiant quest givers, even discounting the bounty quests (which aren't just innkeepers, you can get them from the jarls' stewards as well). You're forgetting all the radiant favour quests, which are of course non-repeatable but are still there. --Morrolan (talk) 13:24, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

The Quest Givers section seems incomplete. It lists “Orc strongholds” and “Any innkeeper, jarl, or steward” but does this not leave out Urag Gro-Shub, the Companions, etc.? Having all Quest givers listed in one section would be convenient.