Quest location does not equal your notable location level. They are different.

In general the game distinguishes four adventure related levels. And those again for your faction and the world in general.

Basically its monster & heroes level, quest level, notable location (or goodie huts) level and hidden resource level. The world level is thereby seemingly always the highest level across all the factions.

The mentioned individual levels are thereby increased researching particular branches in the adventure tech research tree. For the kingdoms there seem to be e.g. three path in the adventure tech research ... and although I don't remember the actual names, their order seems to constant. So let's just call them No.1-3

• No.1 - This seems to be the Heroes and Monster level branch. Researching it increases the level of spawning monster and champions for hire. If you don't like a dragon in your backyard beware of this branch.

• No.2 - Quests and goodie huts are here. They rotate. Researching it the first time increases your quest level, the next time the notable location level, then again questing ... you get the point. The text and name of the respective tech mostly gives a hint on which of the one of the two levels will increase.

• No.3 - Secret resources. Not 100% sure to the effect myself. One at least reveals orchards and/or bee hives. The shard spawning during the game could also be related to this. As might the appearance of other resources. Odd things is, that everybody seems to profit from researching into this branch. Not just the one actually researching it.

I hope this is more or less correct and answers your question. As for the Empire tech tree? No idea. Haven't touched the dark side yet.

Rabenhoff

PS Copied from various scatterd posts I made on this subject today. So, if something seems familiar ... sue me. *evil grin*

EDIT: As to the reload issue. Did you resarch a tech in the adventure three that turn that revealed thos level three locations? In general I'm not sure why the locations differed. I always assumed they were fixed for a map. But if they do, then the research in that turn might at least explain the changed locations. As for the levels ... see above.

Certain technologies in the "adventuring" category increase your notable level.  Unfortunately I never saw a clear indication of which ones actually raised it at the middle levels.

Also, the info pop-up you get when you can't access a notable location is cut off for me right where it is about to explain how to raise it.  I've mostly figured it out, but that was VERY frustrating at first.  It was like "You can raise your level by" followed by the end of the text box.  It was like the game was saying "Well I know how you could do it, but I wouldn't have any fun if I told you now would I?"

Odd things is, that everybody seems to profit from researching into this branch. Not just the one actually researching it.

Some of the time yes- but even if the new resources appear, they will often have to research the tech to actually use them.  There are obvious exceptions to this though; when additional shards or basic resources appear it does seem a little like you just did work for everyone else across the map too.  At least the advanced minerals require you have the tech to build on them though.

Yes, well we might consider the bug to be NO DOCUMENTATION. Haha. Seriously though, the Bermuda Triangle is less mysterious than this game at times. I guess I'm off to inspect the XML files so I can try to mentally sort out the "Adventurer" tech side of things a bit better. Frustrating. *Shrugs*

Its a good explanation but not quite as specific as I'd like, at least.

To show you what I mean, look at this post I just made:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393211

Believe it or not I've done work as a technical writer, off and on, for about fifteen years. Go figure! Heck, I'd even work on the cheap to properly document Elemental. Seriously!