Talk:The Troublesome Artifact

At first this quest wasn't available to me, even after completion of Defend the Wall. Then, I did The Great Northern Wall, arrived at Fort Ranik, head out and accepted Regent Valley Defense quest, updated Vanguard Equipment quest (returned stolen goods to merchent), but did NOT finish any quests. Mapped back to the City, and the quest is available! My current theory is that the quest becomes available if the player has been to Fort Ranik in post-searing, regardless of whether The Great Northern Wall mission was completed or not, and regardless of the status of other quests. -PanSola 18:11, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * This happened to me too yesterday and I wanted to talk about it. I think right now we can theorize that it either requires completion of the Great Wall mission OR getting to Fort Ranik, we can decide conclusively.
 * The same applies to Scavengers in Old Ascalon and Barradin's Advance
 * The same though also happened for me for Vanguard Equipment, you're saying you were able to get it before doing the great wall? --Karlos 19:10, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * For both the Vanguard Equipment quest and the Scavengers in Old Ascalon quest, I obtained them BEFORE I entered The Great Northern Wall mission. However, those two quests are not available until AFTER the completion of Defend the Wall quest.  In other words, go in the Great North Wall prep area, get quest reward, come back into the city WITHOUT entering the mission at all, and both Vanguard and Scavenger became available to me.  Troublesom Artifact was not available at that time.  Barradin's Advance is STILL not available to me even now.  Hope this info helps you in some way. Did you go right into the missoin after claiming the Defend the Wall quest reward? -PanSola 19:56, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * I remember when I played through the game for the very first time I completed pretty much ALL quests in the Ascalon area before completing ANY mission. That was because at that time I simply hadn't understood how to launch a mission. Missed that tiny little "Enter Mission" button in the party formation window. LOL. So I bypassed all missions and fought my way to Yak's Bend. But I had a list of quests available in Ascalon, and I did all of them. --Tetris L 21:07, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * So plus one point for "Having been to Fort Ranik" as the trigger. d-: -PanSola 21:57, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * I was in a similar situation to Tetris L on my first character. I just plain ignored the missions until I was pretty much all the way through Ascalon (doing only quests).  I don't think that doing the missions is a requirement for any of the quests, but visiting the locations might be.  --Rainith 01:08, 26 October 2005 (EST)


 * I agree. It's probably reaching the place itself for this quest. --Karlos 01:22, 26 October 2005 (EST)

As one may deduce from this discussion, the requirements for unlocking this quest, as well as some others (as mentioned below by DaveBaggins) have changed a few times since the game's release. Originally, none of the quests required completing a mission or visiting an outpost to unlock them. After one update, some of these quests only became available after completing the Defend the Wall quest, but no other requirements resulted. The third change, which seems to hold true now, is that these quests require the completion of one or the other of the first two missions to unlock them (in addition to the previous requirements). Thus far, I have not noticed any of them unlocking just because I visited a certain town or outpost. HanokOdbrook 08:22, 17 September 2006 (EDT)

Requirements
The quests: Barradin's Advance, Ruins of Surmia (Quest), and Troublesome Artifact -- did not open up to my e/mo char until after I have completed the Fort Ranik Mission. As to the speculating on needing to visit the locations to trigger the quests, my char have already visited all of the towns/outposts in post-seering Ascalon prior to doing any of the missions. --DaveBaggins 04:37, Feb 02 2006 (CST)
 * I found the same thing. I've been keeping track of quests and so forth to try to deduce the triggers for the last few quests with "unknown" as the requirement. I am 100% sure that getting to Fort Ranik did not trigger the quest (I checked after completing any quest, entering any outpost or finishing any mission). It was only when I completed Fort Ranik and was warped to Frontier Gate that the quest became available from Warmaster Tydus. I'm not sure what to make of that when comparing to earlier posts in this thread. I would have suggested getting to Frontier Gate might be the trigger, but DaveBaggins said he visited all locations before doing missions, so maybe not. All I can say is maybe it has changed since October.


 * In any case, here's the log of what I had done before finding the quest available:


 * Outposts visited:
 * Ascalon City
 * The Great Northern Wall
 * Sardelac Sanitarium
 * Fort Ranik
 * Piken Square
 * Frontier Gate


 * Missions completed:


 * The Great Northern Wall
 * Fort Ranik


 * Quests completed:


 * Captain Arne: Vanguard Equipment
 * Symon the Scribe: Counting the Fallen
 * Warmaster Tydus: Defend the Wall
 * Warmaster Tydus: The King's Message
 * Warmaster Tydus: Scavengers in Old Ascalon
 * Captain Osric: The Krytan Ambassador
 * Ambassador Zain: The Ambassador's Quandary
 * Ambassador Zain: A Mission of Peace
 * Ambassador Zain: Helping the People of Ascalon
 * Witness Rastin: Rastin's Ritual
 * Grazden the Protector: In Memory of Paulus
 * Grazden the Protector: Protecting Ascalon
 * Grazden the Protector: Sowing Seeds
 * Vassar: A Cure for Ralena
 * Vassar: Mesmerizing the Enemy
 * Vassar: Trying Times
 * — egads talk 08:46, 3 March 2006 (CST)

Weird drop
I got the drop from doing the bonus in Ironmines of Moladune. My character has done all the missions & bonus already. Icyangel Strawberry 11:53, 21 August 2006 (CDT)