This is a task that is part of a bigger mod I'm working on for Rentable Player Homes http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31215

I want to create a chef that can be employed, but they will give a task every 4 days to collect random ingredients for them and they will increase the players daily profit by a certain amount. There is a time limit of 3 days the player has or else he forfeits 50% of the extra profit gained.

But how many ingredients could the player get in 3 days? It must be achieveable but not easy.

As one example, I was thinking something along the lines of...

5 Venison
5 Troll Fat
5 Flax Seeds
5 Ginseng
5 Nightshade

Would that be a hard task to do in 3 days or too easy?

No one got any ideas?

Just don't wanna go through the trouble of creating something thats really easy or impossible.

Not sure if this will help you or not, but each game day is 48 minutes long (someone correct me if I'm off on this). So multiply that by 3 and that's how long the player would have to collect 5 each of those items.

For me though, I would have no idea where to even go to get those items so I would be hosed, lol.

Maybe have an option to display on the map the general location of each item where the mob or plant usually hangs out at...which for me would be a blessing. But I think 5 of each of those would be good.

Yeah, I should of mentioned in the first post that I am planning to inform the player where these things can be found, but not on a quest marker, but in a letter in their inventory.

Something along the lines of..

"Flax Seeds are common in the West Weald region and around Skingrad."

"Trolls are common in the Imperial Forest and can be found in some Caves, Forts and Ruins."

I'm also thinking, instead of having 5 of two creatures ingredients, I should have 1 ingredient of 5 creatures, or 2 of 3 creatures.

Many, many players use a mod which changes this, usually to a much longer time. Some use a mod which causes time to pass slower indoors but faster outdoors. Time limits are tough to balance in modded Oblivion.

I think getting those ingredients in 3 days would be pretty easy, but not super duper easy. If you want to increase the challenge, disable fast travel for the duration of the quest :laugh:

Another option could be to give graduated rewards...for 3 of each, give so much...for 5, all little more...or a great big reward for 10 of each. Or, that they have to return a 'full dinners worth of ingredients' (meat and two veg, if you will), but get an increasing reward for each full meal they supply.

Or, ask the player when they start the mod (via script, or create separate esps) what sort of time-scale they have for their days, and vary the length of time given depending on the length of their days.

I agree with Mentalor - a better idea would be a leveled reward according to the amount of ingredients returned. That is fairly easy to do with simple quest and dialogue conditions, and will work the same for anyone regardless of what mods they're using.

So long as the quest doesn't require creature ingredients from highly uncommon foes(say, Unicorn Horns, or Frost Salts), I bet I could gather ten of each within the time limit, assuming I have a horse on hand.
Well, ten fauna ingredients and quite possibly twenty or thirty flora ingredients, depending on how lucky I am with the things.