[2021] can we do something about quests resetting points of interest?

If you place your LandClaim Block or a bedroll down, it won't reset.

Originally posted by Mars: ...if devs could consider maybe putting things back to how they were after the person doing the quest leaves the area, even after completing it. that'd be alot cooler.
not instantly so it doesnt punish people who get the bag and dont loot everything first.

You know, I’m trying to think of the downsides of this idea, and I’m not coming up with much. They’d broadly fall into two categories: exploits and technical hurdles.

The exploits could basically occur if the person doing the quest and the person building the base are different people with different motives. For instance, a skyscraper POI could be demolished ahead of time. Then the quester kills the last zombie on the top floor, the quest completes, the POI resets, the building reverts to its demolished state, and the quester falls to their death like Wile E. Coyote. But that’s prevented if the game waits until the quester leaves the property. Another exploit would be if a base builder turns a POI into a super fortified horde night base, and just as horde night starts, an adversary triggers a quest in the POI, resetting it back into a crummy indefensible wooden building. But this exploit is already theoretically possible with or without Mars’s idea. I guess you could lay some traps in the POI before triggering the quest, and then finish the quest before killing all the zombies inside, and catch some zombies by surprise by finishing the quest so traps appear right in front of them, but that’s not practical. So on the exploit side, I’m stumped. Can anyone think of how Mars’s proposal would be more exploitable than what we currently have?

On the technical implementation side, things look pretty good, too. The game is already remembering all the little modifications you make in the world, including changes big and small to POIs. So remembering the pre-quest state of a POI isn’t some new thing to program the game to do. The memory footprint shouldn’t be bad - what’s a few more chunks whose modifications, again, were being remembered before the quest started anyway? Changing hundreds or thousands of blocks all at once could cause lag, but that’s already what happens when you start the quest in a heavily modified POI.

So all in all, I don’t see why the devs couldn’t do this. They have a remedy in place, with bedrolls and land claim blocks suppressing quests, but the OP’s idea would be better by not requiring player intervention to prevent loss of their stuff.

Originally posted by Mars:

Originally posted by Crater Creator:
You know, I’m trying to think of the downsides of this idea, and I’m not coming up with much. They’d broadly fall into two categories: exploits and technical hurdles.

The exploits could basically occur if the person doing the quest and the person building the base are different people with different motives. For instance, a skyscraper POI could be demolished ahead of time. Then the quester kills the last zombie on the top floor, the quest completes, the POI resets, the building reverts to its demolished state, and the quester falls to their death like Wile E. Coyote. But that’s prevented if the game waits until the quester leaves the property. Another exploit would be if a base builder turns a POI into a super fortified horde night base, and just as horde night starts, an adversary triggers a quest in the POI, resetting it back into a crummy indefensible wooden building. But this exploit is already theoretically possible with or without Mars’s idea. I guess you could lay some traps in the POI before triggering the quest, and then finish the quest before killing all the zombies inside, and catch some zombies by surprise by finishing the quest so traps appear right in front of them, but that’s not practical. So on the exploit side, I’m stumped. Can anyone think of how Mars’s proposal would be more exploitable than what we currently have?

On the technical implementation side, things look pretty good, too. The game is already remembering all the little modifications you make in the world, including changes big and small to POIs. So remembering the pre-quest state of a POI isn’t some new thing to program the game to do. The memory footprint shouldn’t be bad - what’s a few more chunks whose modifications, again, were being remembered before the quest started anyway? Changing hundreds or thousands of blocks all at once could cause lag, but that’s already what happens when you start the quest in a heavily modified POI.

So all in all, I don’t see why the devs couldn’t do this. They have a remedy in place, with bedrolls and land claim blocks suppressing quests, but the OP’s idea would be better by not requiring player intervention to prevent loss of their stuff.

the thing about laying traps to exploit, when you start the mission it would erase them to reset the poi right? I mean if it remembered how the location was and didnt completely erase it forever, but reverted back, itd still be there after you finished and left. but during use it would be a fresh location, as in, if you place break or loot the poi without being inside the active quest, it functions like normal.


I just started playing again though and I dont know how most stuff works so maybe thatd be hard. I thought missions were maybe instanced until you left them or something, but I was in single player so maybe activating one just completely wipes parts of the world clean for anyone to loot if its in multiplayer.

In the scenario I was considering, the exploit occurs after the quest is completed and the POI returns to its pre-quest state. Except you’ve rigged the pre-quest state ahead of time with traps, in order to catch remaining zombies (e.g. it was a fetch quest so it can end before killing the zombies).

Imagine setting up blade traps and turrets in every room before you start the quest. Then you start the quest, and rush to find the courier satchel. Normally you can’t barge through like that, because more and more zombies would amass. But you just have to reach the satchel, and then boom, the POI resets, and the blade traps and turrets reappear and slaughter all the zombies that were about to get you.

I realize that this is a stilted and impractical example. I can’t think of a worse exploit so far, and like other problems it seems easily mitigated by waiting until you leave the POI before doing the reset. In other words, I’m trying to poke holes in your idea and I have yet to succeed.

Originally posted by JimmyIowa: If they restored quest POIs to original condition after the quest, presumably without zombies because that's what you want for your base, you could just re-loot it again for free without zombies. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but it is later for tier 5 quests tons of loot and cars out front. Probably using your LCB for its intended purpose and paying attention is a better solution.

No, not restore it to its original state. Restore it to its pre-quest state: the state it was in the instant before you pressed the key to start the quest. If there were unopened loot containers in there before you started the quest, then they go back to that unopened state when the POI resets after the quest. If there were sleepers in there before you started the quest, then they’re back in there when it resets. The POI is exactly as it would be if you never did the quest.

You can double loot the POI with this proposed change, but you can do that already. It’s not making things any worse.

Originally posted by JimmyIowa:

Originally posted by Crater Creator: You know, I’m trying to think of the downsides of this idea, and I’m not coming up with much.

I can forsee some pretty game-breaking exploits about instant-replacement of player modified areas, including instantly repairing all damage to your POI base from horde night.

Build a base in tier 5 POI. Make it fancy with lots of expensive traps and turrets (because they will all be replaced for free in the morning, including even the ammo in the turrets.)

The day of horde night, go to the trader and ask for quests until you get the one in your base POI (since there's only 3 tier5 quest locations, this isn't hard to do). Sit back on horde night as the zombies get shredded by traps and spikes and turrets and don't worry about any damage or trap degradation or work in rebuilding because as soon as you trigger the quest in the morning it will all be instantly replaced for you.

The KISS principle tells me that placing a LCB on your base already works just fine to solve the perceived "problem" without opening 10 extra-large cans of worms.

Does the POI editor save data on block damage? I don’t know - I’ve been meaning to check. That’s the only way you’re getting free restoration of damaged blocks, I think.

Again, under the proposed change you’re not going back to how things were at some random time in the past. You’re going back to how things were right before you triggered the quest.

Now, if you have a POI that’s, oddly, naturally suited to be a defensible horde base without modifications, then you can let the zombies wear it down over horde night and then go back to how it was before. But to the extent such POIs are available, it points to a larger problem of why there are defensible horde base POIs in the game that don’t require modification. Generally every building should be somewhat of a fixer-upper, zombies shouldn’t be stymied just because you’re on a POI roof, etc. And that applies whether or not POIs reset after a quest finishes.