NPC Story

NPC Stories are the events randomly happening to the player sect's individual NPCs as they go about their activities, and recording their failures and successes. A section of them, the epiphanies, have beneficial effects but can only happen to a fraction of the player's NPCs.

## How it works

Whenever a NPC starts a task on the sect map, they may trigger a random story of the associated type at some point during the task (between 10% and 90% of it). If the task the NPC is doing has no associated story type, a Normal type of story is striggered. The story selection will depend on whether they are (for that story) a Hot NPC or not, Hot NPCs having exclusive access to beneficial epiphanies.

Each story type has a chance to be triggered. Moreover, each of the story it contains has a weight determining its chance to trigger related to others. Once the story has been selected, it happens and if relevant a memory is added, visible in the "Mood & Social" panel of the NPC.

### Epiphanies and Hot NPCs

The game keeps an hidden counter for each NPC of some actions the player make, and uses it to try to determine which NPCs are important to the player. That counter is never reset and is only increased.

#### Earning Hot NPC points

Only your sect NPCs can earn hot points and, if they're Illuminated items or Awakened Animals, only once they've been transformed in humanoid form.

* The starting NPC lead (the one you used Feature points on) has 25 Hot Points.
* Displaying the tooltip of a NPC appearing on the top of the UI adds 1 Hot Point.
* Displaying the bottom center NPC panel adds 5 Hot Points, as long as they weren't already the last NPC to earn points with this action.

#### Hot NPC status

A NPC even with a good ranking is not always considered Hot for every story it triggers.

* The NPC with the most hot points is always a Hot NPC.
* The rest of the NPCs in the top 25% (included) of the hot points ranking are considered hot with a

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% chance, with a minimum of 87% for the NPC at the 25% rank (or 4th in a sect of 12).
* The NPCs in the bottom 75% of the hot points ranking are never Hot NPCs.

## Generic Epiphanies

While some stories have dedicated (or semi-dedicated) epiphanies, most story types use a generic epiphany, sometimes two. For concision, the common epiphanies are directly detailed here.

### Practice

Common to: Cultivating, Pill Crafting, Artifact Crafting, Miracle Casting, Drawing a Talisman.

### Work

Raises by 1 the Skill Level of a random skill among Medicine, Cooking, Construction, Farming, Mining, Artisanry, Crafting, Social.

### Fun

If it's a cultivator, same effect (with a different text) than Practice. If it's not, same effect (with a different text) than Work.

## Story list

This list does not include the Social Interactions stories as they're a more complex mechanic.

### Golden Core

The Epiphany special effects is: +50,000 (consumable) Qi.

### Breakthrough

The Epiphany special effects is: +200% Breakthrough Chance Bonus (`AddP`). This does not guarantees success however, as explained in the Breakthrough page.

### Normal

These stories are the default stories if no specific story has been assigned to the task at hand. One is also triggered in case a story is triggered whose conditions are not fulfilled, for example if the text contains a reference to a friendly sect but no relationship with any sect is friendly enough.

### Drawing a Talisman

Those stories can trigger when the drawing begins, not during the action.

The epiphany is the generic practice one.

### Pill Crafting

The first epiphany is the generic practice one. The second one's special effects is: +150% Elixir Concoction Yield Bonus (`AddV`), which expires once the pill crafting completes.

### Pill Crafting Failure

The epiphany special effects is: +400\*Attainment Inspiration.

### Cultivating

The epiphany is the generic practice one.

### Artifact Crafting

The epiphanies special effects are:

1. generic practice
2. +100% Artifact Crafting Quality Bonus (`AddV`), expires after crafting.
3. all bonuses expire after crafting:
	* +100% Artifact Crafting Quality Bonus (`AddV`),
	* +10,000% Artifact Crafting Grade Bonus (`AddV`),
	* +1,000% Artifact Crafting Success Rate Bonus (`AddV`),
	* +100% Base artifact crafting success rate (`AddV`) - which despite the name refers to the chance to refine a T12 Artifact.

### Artifact Crafting Failure

The epiphany special effect is: +400\*Attainment Inspiration.

### Casting Miracles

The epiphany is the generic practice one.

### Fighting

Fighting stories differ in how they trigger : instead of once per task, a NPC story triggers (once per fight) if the fight lasts more than a random number between 10 and 100 seconds.

The epiphany is the generic work one.

### Playing

This is not for any kind of play, but only Looking at the Sky or Reading.

The epiphanies special effects are:

1. generic fun.
2. Drop a random Talisman with minimal power and between 60-99% Quality.

### Fishing

Despite what the text says, these stories do not result in any increase in skill.

### Forging, Crafting Item, Sewing

The special effect of the epiphanies are:

1. generic work
2. despite what the text indicates, this modifier never expires:
	* +100% Forging Quality Gains (`AddV`)
	* +100% Handicraft Quality Gains (`AddV`)
	* +100% Sewing Quality Gains (`AddV`)

### Crafting Medicine, Blocks, Cooking, Mining, Planting Crops, Clearing Plants and cutting Trees, Eating, Drinking, Building, Treating, Feeding Tamed Animals

The epiphany is the generic work one.

### Cooking Success, Failure

The epiphany raises the Cooking Skill Level by one.

### Feeding untamed animal

These stories always trigger and are simply an indicator to the player on whether they're feeding the proper food when trying to tame wild Animals.

### Hunting

The hunting task only triggers "Normal" stories, but specifically killing the unconscious prey can trigger a Hunting story. The epiphany is the generic work one.

### Putting out fire

When the NPC puts out flames he triggers the relevant story. No Epiphanies.

## References

1. ↑ `XiaWorld.ToilBase.EnterToil()`
2. ↑ `XiaWorld.NpcMgr.TriggerNpcStory()`
3. ↑ `XiaWorld.NpcMgr.GetNpcHotRank()`
4. ↑ `Panel_ThingInfo.UpdateThing()`
5. ↑ `XiaWorld.World.PlayerReady()`
6. ↑ `Wnd_GameMain.GetNpcHeadTip()`
7. ↑ `Panel_ThingInfo.ShowNpc()`
8. ↑ `XiaWorld.NpcMgr.IsHotNpc()`
9. ↑ `Settings/MapStory_HotCharacter.xml [HotStory_Practice_Golding]`
10. ↑ This is supposed to grant progress towards the next breakthrough, however when it triggers the cultivator is still considered at a bottleneck.
11. ↑ It should be significantly higher, but as above the character isn't considered golden core yet.
12. ↑ `XiaWorld.JobPaintCharm.OnToilBegin()`
13. ↑ `XiaWorld.JobFighting.OnStepJob()`
14. ↑ `Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Panda.xml,` the modifier is never added to the character.
15. ↑ The modifier should be linked to the current job in `XiaWorld.NpcLuaHelper.AddModifier()`, however the MaxStack is defined as 0 in `Settings/Modifiers/Modifier_HotStory.xml [HotStory_MakeBigSuccess]` , which results in the modifier never being removed.
16. ↑ `XiaWorld.Npc.Breeding()`
17. ↑ `XiaWorld.JobHunting._Kill()`