I just want to confirm a rule about discarding locations. You discard an active location as soon as there are enough progress tokens on it. It then leaves you free to travel, in the next faze. Each time I quest with northern tracker I place a progress token on each location in the staging area. Do this go off to the discard pile as soon as there are enough tokens on them, or do you have to make it the active location and then immediately send it to the victory/discard pile?

If it is immediate from the staging area do you still get to collect the victory points if available?

Wheelz said:

no as soon as it has enough it goes to discard

And yes, if a location becomes "explored" while in the staging area and it has a victory points value, it'll be added to your victory display just as if you had explored it while it was active.