A few quests (e.g. Race Across Harad) can only be completed when a key location (e.g. River Harnen) is explored as the active location. Once the main quest has sufficient progress, further questing effort may as well be directed to any side-quests in play. So, if I quest successfully with enough progress, can I count the chosen side-quest as defeated (and hence get any victory points) in the same quest phase that I explore the key active location?

In other words, is the progress on the side-quest put on at the same time as the progress on the active location?

Active location buffers progress towards the current quest, whether that's a side quest or a main quest.

However, when progress is placed, the actual exploration of the location happens only after all progress is placed, so the quest-end can trigger before the exploration effect. So in this case, if you already had sufficient progress on the main quest, then placed enough progress to clear River Harnen and also the side-quest as well, they would complete in the following order:

1) Side quest completed

2) River Harnen explored

3) Main quest completed

Wait, you can put excess progress from a quest into a side quest?

29 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

Active location buffers progress towards the current quest, whether that's a side quest or a main quest.

However, when progress is placed, the actual exploration of the location happens only after all progress is placed, so the quest-end can trigger before the exploration effect. So in this case, if you already had sufficient progress on the main quest, then placed enough progress to clear River Harnen and also the side-quest as well, they would complete in the following order:

1) Side quest completed

2) River Harnen explored

3) Main quest completed

I don't think this is necessarily accurate. The relevant ruling as I recall was about triggering responses based on exploring the quest and exploring the active location (Like triggering The Long Defeat or advancing to the next stage of the quest before triggering Ancient Mathom or Elf-stone). But to make sense of some other rulings I've always assumed that that only applies to the responses, not the actual exploration. So you place progress, which explores the location, but before triggering any responses based on exploring the location you have to finish placing progress - completing the quest however could supersede the requirement to finish placing progress and mean you never get to put the progress on the side-quest.

Of course since all this affects is victory points and therefore score it's not that important which way it works which is why I've never bothered submitting a rules question about it.

22 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Wait, you can put excess progress from a quest into a side quest?

No. However, it's not unusual to have the main quest already be full or over-full from progress (because it requires more than progress to complete), while working on a side quest.

For example, consider Journey Down the Anduin -- no matter how much progress you have on Stage 1B, you can't move on until the Hill Troll is killed. Side quests are excellent for these sort of quests, since they let you do something useful with progress that would otherwise just pile up uselessly on the main quest.

Steward's Fear (stages 1 & 2) is even better for side quests, since completely the stages requires no progress at all, and you can place resources from exploring locations or claiming clues even with the side quest as the current quest.

In this case the order doesn't matter because it's the final stage. But in other quests the order could be important for more than victory points -- for example, if the Gather Information triggers before the exploration triggers, you could use Gather Information to get cards in your hand that can respond to the new quest or the location exploration itself.

If during the process of placing the progress a gating location was "explored" before you continued to place progress tokens on the current quest, then on a quest where a location was required and it was *not* the final stage, exploring the gating location could cause the excess progress to be placed on the *new* stage. I don't think that'd be the case.

26 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

No. However, it's not unusual to have the main quest already be full or over-full from progress (because it requires more than progress to complete), while working on a side quest.

For example, consider Journey Down the Anduin -- no matter how much progress you have on Stage 1B, you can't move on until the Hill Troll is killed. Side quests are excellent for these sort of quests, since they let you do something useful with progress that would otherwise just pile up uselessly on the main quest.

Steward's Fear (stages 1 & 2) is even better for side quests, since completely the stages requires no progress at all, and you can place resources from exploring locations or claiming clues even with the side quest as the current quest.

Ok, I wasn't clear on the setup

5 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

In this case the order doesn't matter because it's the final stage. But in other quests the order could be important for more than victory points -- for example, if the Gather Information triggers before the exploration triggers, you could use Gather Information to get cards in your hand that can respond to the new quest or the location exploration itself.

If during the process of placing the progress a gating location was "explored" before you continued to place progress tokens on the current quest, then on a quest where a location was required and it was *not* the final stage, exploring the gating location could cause the excess progress to be placed on the *new* stage. I don't think that'd be the case.

True, and I agree that it feels like that would be ruled the other way - however in Thing in the Depths you can explore Helm of the Stormcaller and the quest stage in the same quest phase - but Helm of the Stormcaller needs to be in the victory display for you to put progress on the quest stage, suggesting the location is explored instantly even if you can't trigger responses until later.

I think I misplayed that in Thing in the Depths, then. I assumed you couldn't explore Helm and the stage in the same quest phase, you'd have to wait until the following turn when it'd be in the victory display.

It seems odd to me that Helm of Stormcaller would count not just as explored, but actually being in the victory display in the midst of placing tokens. If so, it seems that any non-final quest stage that gates on a location being explored would cause the excess progress to be placed on the next stage, which I would not expect.

The earlier discussion is here:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/199848-elf-stone-long-defeat/?page=2