Quest

A quest is a task assigned to you by an NPC for a reward. Quests have no impact on the overarching storyline; however, through the dynamic quest system, quests can affect other quests and explorable areas, as well as add depth to the world of Guild Wars.

An NPC with a quest to give will have a large, green exclamation mark (!) over his or her head. Speaking with that NPC will allow you to read the quest and choose whether to accept or decline it. Accepting the quest will add it to your Quest Log. Declining the quest (or abandoning it later via your Log) brooks no penalty: you can always reacquire the quest by speaking with the NPC again.

Quest Lists
Each Campaign of Guild Wars has its own set of quests available: The Realms of the Gods and the Battle Isles have quests which are available from every Campaign: On special occasions quests are introduced for a short period of time only:
 * Quest list for Prophecies Campaign
 * Quest list for Factions Campaign
 * Quest list for Nightfall Campaign
 * List of Core quests
 * Quest lists for special events

Quest Categorization
Some quests are marked in-game as primary quests. There are no other official categories for normal quests besides quests given in a certain region (festival event quests have their own category). However, there are many commonly understood categories of quest.

Primary Quest
Primary quests are used as links between the missions to progress through the game. A primary quest will lead you to the next mission or to the next primary quest, which will eventually lead to a mission location. So, this kind of quest will form parts of the storyline.

In many cases, primary quests generally do not have big inherent rewards. The purpose of the primary quest is to advance you in the game, not advance you monetarily.

Primary quests are clearly identified by their own category at the top of your Quest Log, if you are currently undertaking at least one.

Skill Quest
Skill Quests include any quest which gives you a skill or skills as part of the reward. These quests are the most popular to do, the reason being that skills that are taught through these quests become available at trainers but at a later point in the game. So, they provide a fast and free (no gold, no Skill Points) way to obtain some skills.

For example, Captain Osric the skill trainer in the Northern Shiverpeaks, offers many skills, but almost all of them are available previously through quests in Ascalon.

Many skills are only available through Skill Trainers or Signet of Capture.

All skill quests in the Factions campaign are available only to Canthan native characters.

Profession-Specific Quest
Profession-Specific Quests are quests that are limited to a specific profession. They are usually offered by Profession Trainers for that profession. A Profession-Specific quest will only appear to a player if his primary or secondary profession is the designated one.

If a player changes his/her secondary profession, then the profession-specific quests of the old secondary profession will no longer be available while the ones for the new secondary profession will now become available.

All Profession-Specific Quests are Skill Quests.

Secondary Profession Quest
Secondary Profession quests include the six quests in pre-Searing Ascalon that allow you to choose a secondary profession and the six quests in the Crystal Desert that allow you to change your secondary profession.

All secondary profession quests grant a few basic skills for the newly acquired secondary profession. Pre-Searing profession quests grant the skills before finishing the quest, allowing players to sample each profession before settling on one. The Crystal Desert profession quests grant the skills upon changing to the secondary profession for the first time. In all cases, you cannot use the skills granted if you change your secondary profession away from the profession that granted the skills, though you do retain the skills should you change back, including a Ranger pet (tied to skill "Charm Animal").

Attribute Quest
Attribute quests grant you extra attribute points to use. These quests increase your power in a very direct way. Every player should seek these out and complete them.

There are 2 Attribute Quests in each campaign, giving you 15 attribute points each:


 * Prophecies:
 * Forgotten Wisdom
 * The Hero's Challenge


 * Factions:
 * Lost Treasure
 * An Unwelcome Guest


 * Nightfall attribute quests come relatively early, and involve Sunspear Promotion Points:
 * Rising in the Ranks: Sunspear Master Sergeant (100 promotion points)
 * Rising in the Ranks: First Spear (300 promotion points)

If you have an account that combines multiple campaigns, it is not possible to do additional attribute quests, since that would result in having over 200 attribute points and an unbalanced advantage. You cannot skip the attribute quests from your character's "native" territory and perform them in foreign lands.

Repeatable Quest
Repeatable quests are quests that can be taken again after they have been completed. Normally, when a quest is completed, it cannot be taken again. Speaking with the quest giver will not provide any way of taking it. Still, there are a small sub-set of quests, usually in high-experience explorable areas of the game that are repeatable. These quests recharge every time a player enters the area.

While main story Missions are repeatable in that they can be done more than once, you get the XP reward only for first time you complete the mission/bonus. Repeatable Quests give you the XP reward repeatedly, every time you complete the quest. In the Factions campaign, some repeatable quests also offer Kurzick or Luxon faction as a reward, and repeating these quests contributes greatly to a players unspent faction total. These repeatable quests also allow faction farming and fast faction farming.

Note: Unlike regular quests, most repeatable quests are cleared from the Quest Log when the player leaves the area in which the quest is given. Any tasks completed (crossed out) in the quest log will be undone. The next time you enter the area you will have to start the quest over. The only confirmed exceptions are the Wintersday 2006 quests In Grenth's Defense and You're a Mean One, Mr. Grenth, which are not cleared from the quest log when you change zones. The Mallyx the Unyielding quest is a repeatable quest of this type.

See Category:Repeatable quests for a listing of repeatable quests.

Other
Quests that do not fall into any of these categories are just called quests. They generally reward you with some experience, some gold, and a few items, though the exact mixture of these three rewards vary depending on the quest.

Quest Marker
Finding where the quest actually takes place can be viewed on the world map. The active quest will annotate the world map with a few key features:
 * A bright rotating green star will indicate the destination of the quest.
 * If the quest is several zones away, the destination zone will be shown in green, and the location of the nearest portal to reach that zone shown with a green arrow.

Quest Rewards
Quest rewards may be one or more of the following:
 * Experience points
 * Skills
 * Weapons, Shields and Focus Items
 * Gold
 * Attribute points (only in two Attribute Quests per campaign)
 * Skill Points
 * Collectable quest items
 * Faction points (either Kurzick faction or Luxon faction)
 * Sunspear Promotion Points
 * Lightbringer Points

Note however, that Weapons, Shields and Focus Items that come as quest rewards, are different from regular items in the following sense:
 * They cannot be salvaged. Which means you should not use weapon upgrades on quest items, as you cannot salvage them back should you desire to change to a different weapon.
 * They have a higher value than a comparable looted item would have (often 2–3 times higher).

As such, most people sell their quest reward items immediately. However, early in the game, some quest reward items are noticeably better than loot and crafter items.

First introduced in the Factions campaign, the Collectable quest items are special rewards that can be traded for various other items like Identification or Salvage Kits, Scrolls or even some rare crafting materials.

Valuable Rewards
A handful of quests (all in the Prophecies campaign) give out rewards that are considerably more valuable than their merchant value, making it a good idea to keep them for either use or trade. See the Notes section on the following quests for more details:


 * The Prize Moa Bird (Pre-Searing): Popular Crystalline Sword skin.
 * Cities of Ascalon (Post-Searing): -50HP cesta for Invincible Monking.
 * Blankets for the Settlers (Post-Searing): -2 physical damage while in a stance bow, not available anywhere else.
 * The Villainy of Galrath (Post-Searing): Sword with salvageable perfect 10% Furious mod.
 * Fires in the East (Post-Searing): Even though the introduction of inscriptions made it possible to craft 20 energy staves, players without access to Nightfall can find this quest useful for crafting a staff with 18 energy bonus.

Previously valuable rewards:
 * Cities of Ascalon (Post-Searing): Negative energy scroll for protection against e-denial in PvP. Several green items introduced, such as the Frozen Fan, are superior to the scroll.
 * Charr at the Gate (Pre-Searing): Sword came with in inherent +5 armor mod, however this was changed to a 15^50 mod in an update.