This is the first feature unlocked by East Empire Expansion and is offered by Sha'khar immediately after clearing a dungeon for the first time.
East Empire Relics can be placed inside of a container to trigger a delivery service, whereby several NPCs will make their way to the container, take all of the items inside, and deliver them to a chosen destination.
When a relic is placed inside of a container, it should highlight the container in a reddish shader, and the activation option on the container should change to “Relic Container”.
Removing all East Empire Relics from the container will clear the shader, restore the activation option, and cancel the delivery service request silently.
The following criteria must be met for a container to be eligible for this system:
*Clearing the location is generally triggered by killing the NPC with the Boss ref type, so does not necessarily mean killing every enemy within.
When activating a container with an East Empire Relic inside, a message box should pop up showing the “label” on the container, with To: and At: lines - representing the idea the player attached a label to the container telling the pick-up team who the items are for and where they are meant to be taken to.
The “To” line should default to showing the player character’s name, and the “At” line should show the Outpost location name closest to the map marker of the location*, or if the player has set up an “East Empire Drop Off Point” it should default to that location name - that system will be explained under the corresponding section.
This menu will have several options:
If the player had previously placed an East Empire Company relic in the same dungeon location, and that previous one hasn’t been picked up yet, new relics used will default to using the same delivery details.
After the player exits the dungeon, and it is cleared, all of the relic-marked containers will be combined into one if their delivery details match. Upon delivery, only one of the East Empire Relics will be consumed.
So for example, if the player placed a relic in a container and marked it to go to themselves in Whiterun, then later placed a relic in a different container in that same dungeon, it will default to going to the player in Whiterun as well. If the player doesn’t change the delivery To/At of either container before clearing and leaving, the items from the second container will be moved from the first so that only a single Delivery Team needs to be dispatched, and only one East Empire Relic will need to be consumed.
After the player has completed the quest “East Empire Spoils”, and spoken to Sha’khar back at an outpost, they will unlock Auto Looting - with this, any container the player touches in a dungeon will be added to a list. If the player uses an East Empire Relic in that dungeon, clears it, and then exits, all items in those touched containers will be moved to the first container they used the relic in.
The immersive explanation will be given by the quest NPCs, which is that they will send a team to round up all of the loot for the player.
The limitation of only touched containers, rather than all detected containers, is to avoid breaking quests or grabbing things from invisible containers used for other systems that might be inside of dungeon cells.
After the player has claimed at least 20 locations for the East Empire Company and spoken to Sha’khar, they will receive an East Empire Drop Off Point, and the next time the East Empire merchant’s inventory resets they will have some for sale as well.
Dropping one of these items inside a location flagged as a “Player Home”, will spawn an “East Empire Delivery” container on the floor in front of the player that is physically identical to those found at the Outposts. These will provide additional delivery service destinations. The first one placed will become the new default destination for all delivery services.
Activating this container will offer the choices of “Manage Drop Off” and “View Container”, the latter of which will open the base game container menu for accessing items deposited there.
This menu will have the following options:
Below details the process that occurs involving the NPCs that will travel to add immersion to the pick-up and delivery, and the actual movement of items from one container to another via timers.
The system should work in any Worldspace, but the distance calculations will generally only work in the Tamriel and Solstheim worldspaces (as those two have Outposts to calculate distance too). To ensure that this system can work even in uncovered Worldspaces*, the time calculation for distance is capped to a max of 36 hours for any leg of the journey, so even far away dungeons will deliver items in a max of 72 hours (36 hours for NPCs to travel to container, 36 more to travel to delivery point).
*Mod Authors: You can set up your own Outposts in any worldspace and they will be automatically detected by East Empire Expansion and hook into the system!