Data storage (quest progress)

Quest definitions come from datapacks (see Quest format). Quest progress — who has done what — is saved in your world. This page covers what NeroQuests stores, where it lives, and the controls over it.

Everything here is server-authoritative: progress only ever changes on the server, and the client is told what to draw.

What is stored#

That is the complete list. NeroQuests stores no names, IP addresses, chat, coordinates or anything else about a player — nothing beyond the UUID Minecraft already uses.

Objective counters are indexed by the objective's position in the quest definition, so a datapack that appends an objective keeps existing progress meaningful. Reordering or removing objectives in a quest players have already started changes what the stored counters mean — append rather than reshuffle.

Progress for a quest that no longer exists (a datapack removed it) is simply kept and ignored; if the quest comes back, so does the progress.

Where it lives#

In the world save, as one vanilla saved-data file (id neroquests:quest_progress) in the overworld's data/ folder, next to Minecraft's own saved data. It is written by the server whenever progress changes, saved with the world, and never leaves your machine. Deleting the world deletes it.

With NeroEconomy installed there is one more, normally empty, file next to it: neroquests_payout_journal.json. A credit payout is written there (player UUID, amount, reason, source id, request key) before the economy is asked and removed when it answers; one left behind by a crash is retried with the same key on the next start (never paid twice) and then removed. Erasure clears a player's entries from it too.

If the file is damaged#

A corrupt or unreadable progress file does not crash the server. NeroQuests uses Neroland Core's recovery: the damaged file is first copied aside as quest_progress.corrupt-<time> (so nothing is lost for good), then the store is restored from Core's last-known-good backup (data/neroquests_quest_progress_backup.dat), or starts empty if there is no usable backup, and a clean file is written at the next save. Warnings name only the storage file and dimension — never a player or a stored value. Delete the .corrupt-* copy once you have looked at it: it still holds player rows that erasure cannot reach.

Upgrading from an older version#

The progress file carries a format number. On the first load of a file written by 0.3.0-beta.1 or earlier, NeroQuests upgrades it in place:

• every completed quest is entered into the paid ledger, so nothing pays a second time after the update;
• progress on neroquests:space_race/breathing_room, full_larder and settled_ground moves to nerocolonies:colony_chronicle/… (those quests now ship with NeroColonies — see Sibling chapters);
• on the first evaluation each row is stamped with its quest's current objective list, keeping its counters. From then on, a row whose quest's objectives change is reset if unfinished.

The upgrade runs once; the file is then saved in the new format.

Held in memory only#

Some things are never saved: the event channels other mods fired this session (ids only, for the editor's picker), the per-player editor rate limits, which chapters your book has shown (for the companion-app alert) and the short hold after an erasure. All are dropped when you leave or the server stops.

Retention#

questDataRetentionDays in config/neroquests.properties controls how long an inactive player's progress is kept.

The sweep logs only the number of records purged. Shared scope: server progress belongs to the world, not to a player, and is never pruned.

Purging forgets what was paid, too. A purge removes the player's paid-reward record along with their progress — keeping it would mean keeping data about a person the server was told to forget. A purged player who comes back therefore starts fresh, and quests that are measured rather than counted (holding items, standing in a dimension or structure, an open gate, completed quests) can complete and pay again on their next check. That is why retention is off by default (0); if you turn it on, choose a period long enough that "come back after N idle days and re-collect" is not worth it on your server.

Erasure#

NeroQuests registers with Neroland Core's shared per-player erasure hook, so one request clears a player everywhere in the Neroland ecosystem at once:

• players: /neroland data eraseme
• admins: /neroland data erase <uuid>

That drops every quest row and the activity stamp for that UUID. Erasure never logs who was erased. Shared server-scoped progress is untouched — it holds no player identifiers. Custom quests the player authored stay in the world, with created_by cleared, and the player leaves the editor allow-list; the custom store's backup is refreshed in the same request. An escrow deposit on a quest whose author was erased is discarded when the quest's rewards change or it is deleted (it is never handed to someone else).

Erasure also removes the paid-reward record (see Retention above), so measured quests can pay an erased player again if they return. Privacy wins here by design.

Export (data access)#

NeroQuests can produce a JSON export of one player's own progress and nobody else's: their quest IDs, objective counters and timestamps. No other player's rows and no shared progress are included, so an export can be handed to the player who asked for it as-is.

{
  "last_updated": 1750000000000,
  "quests": {
    "mypack:chapter1/wake_up": { "counters": [1], "completed_at": 1749990000000, "complete": true },
    "mypack:chapter1/first_steps": { "counters": [3, 0], "completed_at": 0, "complete": false }
  }
}

Operators produce it in-game with /neroquests export <player> — an online player's name, or a UUID for someone who has left. The JSON is printed to whoever ran the command and to nobody else. See Commands.

The export also lists the custom quests the player authored and whether they are on the editor allow-list.

The same tree also holds the per-player admin controls: /neroquests reset <player> wipes one player's stored progress, and /neroquests revoke <player> <quest> clears a single quest.

See also#

• Commands — the /neroquests operator tree, including export and reset
• Quest format — the datapack JSON these counters track
• Telemetry — crash reporting, which never contains quest progress
• Privacy & data protection — the full POPIA/GDPR statement