Even Better Quest Objectives – EBQO
Enhances the quest descriptions in the vanilla game. An officially endorsed update to whickus’s Better Quest Objectives.
— Description —
This mod enhances the quest descriptions in the vanilla game so that you have a clear sense of where your are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do besides looking at the quest markers. Let’s face it – the quest descriptions were quite bad, not specifying where you are supposed to go by themselves, and forcing you to play with the quest markers on all the time. This affects nearly 250 quest objectives/descriptions, spanning over 160 quests, editing descriptions that were either really vague or didn’t exist at all.
If you recognize the concept, then you’ve probably seen Better Quest Objectives by whickus, and this mod is mostly inspired by that. However, due to whickus’s disappearance from the Nexus, his mod was left unmaintained and became more and more outdated over time – not including fixes from the unofficial patches, changes by the DLC, and even official updates from Bethesda. Making reviving this mod harder was the fact that the author did not include the source code for the scripts, making changes to them really difficult.
Enter this mod. A updated revival of whickus’s mod, it includes fixes from the unofficial patches and official updates, so it will not undo fixes any more from both, while also enhancing the quest descriptions and objectives.
A few things to consider: Some quests with ambiguous descriptions are left alone because they are meant to be riddles. They will not be modified – it’s as likely as me cutting myself on a sharply observed portrait. Also, quests with journals that give information about the locations have the journals themselves edited instead of the descriptions.
Also, this mod does modify some of the vanilla scripts relating to some of the radiant quests. This is done so that the location would be properly displayed in the quest objectives. For now, only the scripts relating to DA09, DA10, MGR20, MGR20b, MGR21, MGRArniel04, and MGRitual05 are modified – more might come soon.
There exists a French Translation of this mod, made by lasyan3, for those of you who speak French and want to have the mod in their native language. There is also a German translation of this mod by translation newcomer Riknar. If anyone is willing to translate this mod, please message me about it. I can’t do any translation work by myself. Would be even better if you did the other parts of this mod as well.
— Installation —
First, you MUST have the Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch installed. Otherwise, the game will crash on startup, as this mod uses the patch as a master (this is done to integrate some of their fixes into the mod). You should have it installed anyway, as it fixes a *lot* of the bugs that Bethesda didn’t get to. This mod has switched to using the new patch since 1.5.6, as opposed to the individual unofficial patch.
Download and install with a mod manager. Manual installation is possible, but is not recommended. The mod is packaged for easy installation with Mod Organizer, Wrye Bash, and NMM, so if you use any of those, this mod will have a automated installer.
I highly recommend using LOOT to sort your load order. If there are any oddities with the load order it provides regarding this mod, please report them to me, and I will fix them pretty quickly.
I also highly recommend merging the plugins in this mod using Merge Plugins Standalone. Most of the plugins in this mod, excluding the main ESP, are very small, and no parts of the mod rely on active scripts. I recommend merging compatibility plugins and optional plugins – you can merge the main ESP if you want.
— Uninstallation —
Remove with your mod manager, or remove any files starting with BetterQuestObjectives from the data folder.
— Compatibility —
Anything that modifies the vanilla quests can overwrite the better descriptions. If your mod does so, I would recommend making a compatibility patch between both this mod and yours, or integrating the changes from this mod into yours.
— Credits —
whickus, for creating the original Better Quest Objectives.
ElminsterAU, Sharlikran, and Zilav for creating TES5Edit, a great modding tool, and the same one I used to fix and update this mod.
The entire STEP team, for being awesome, and crafting a very detailed newbie-friendly guide to enhancing Skyrim, as well as being the key factor to my start in Skyrim modding. Go check it out!
And finally, Bethesda Softworks for creating such a modular and quality game. Thank you all!
