I was playing Daggerfall and I accepted a quest to deliver an item to somebody in a [randomly-generated name] residence. When I went to that residence, the person I was looking for wasn't there. Somebody else was there, but it was not the person I was looking for. I came back at a different time, and nobody was in the house at all. I gave up and accepted another quest like this one. I went to another [randomly-generated name] residence, and nobody was there. I came back at another time, and somebody was there, but it wasn't who I was looking for. What do I do now? I'm sick of wasting my time. After finally finding the residence and dealing with a few enemies, I hate having to give up and reload, gaining nothing. This has happened twice, and I'm sick of it. Does anyone here know of any solutions?

Are you playing the game in DOSBox?

Yes.

did you check the attic? most of the time they spawn there.

Attic? I didn't know there were any attics.

Almost any house that looks two-story (or more) from the outside will have an attic. Look for a ladder against the wall, usually in a small closet or side room, and double click it to travel up to the next floor. To return to the lower floor, you'll have to drop through the hole where the ladder is-- as usual, climbing down isn't possible. Sometimes if the quest target is a monster, it will appear directly over the ladder opening, in which case hitting it can make it fall through the opening and vanish (probably into the void), rendering the quest unsolvable.
I always have a real problem with quest targets not appearing in Mage's Guilds. If I'm asked to deliver an object to a Mage's Guild, at least half the time there simply isn't anyone matching the description inside the guild to talk to. I'm not sure why it only seems to happen for MG... none of the other guilds or businesses give me that problem.

You can click on the ladder from the attic to get down however it's not easy, though I still recommend trying this as sometimes you can fall through the walls by jumping down the hole. When I'm back at home I think I'll get screen shot of the best angle to click on the ladder to get down.

Are ladders in Daggerfall really wide? I saw something in Daggerfall that may have been a ladder, but it didn't look narrow enough to be a ladder.

there is only one type of ladders in the game, wide and brown.

Just click on the ladder to use it.

Worth mentioning that there are walls next to the ladder. One can just scale/climb on the wall as an alternate. Or levitate up to the attic.

Yep, they're pretty huge.

I didn't know you could use ladders! I've just been scaling the walls all these years.

How is it not easy to click on the ladder from the top? Sure, it's small and close to the floor, but you can look down and activate the cursor for easy clicking. Toggling the cursor from view mode is always a good thing to remember you can do, especially when you're trying to pull a lever!