Quests are objectives which, when completed, reward 
Dust, 
Influence, 
Strategic Resources, 
Luxury Resources, or Technology. Quests with multiple objectives will often grant multiple rewards upon completing later steps. Each faction has its own quest line, which is unlocked the turn after founding a city. There are also side quests which can be unlocked through actions such as searching ruins.
Due to the sheer number of quests in the game, this page has grown to a point where it has become difficult to maintain and navigate. For that reason, each major category of quest - Faction Quests, Side Quests, Naval Quests, and Global Quests - has been moved to their own page.
Faction Quests[]
Faction Quests could be considered the main quest of the game, though each major faction has their own quest to follow (except the Mezari, who share the Vaulters faction quest) which begins the turn after the faction's first city is founded. Each faction quest consists of eight chapters, and will provide powerful technology unique to that faction as a reward at set points in the quest line. Once a faction has completed their main quest, they will unlock the ability to construct the Temple of the Earth's Core (which leads to the Wonder Victory) as well as access to the epilogue quest, which upon its completion results in a Quest Victory.
Side Quests[]
Side quests are quests that consists of only a single chapter, and are separated into two main categories: Ruins and Pacification quests. Ruins quests have a random chance of being triggered anytime a ruin is searched. Pacification quests are given by minor factions after using the Parley action on a village, and will always result in all villages in that region being pacified upon success; these quests require the Language Square technology to trigger, and therefore are unavailable to the Necrophages, or any custom faction with the pitiless trait.
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Naval Quests are a special type of side quest that were added to the game with the Tempest expansion. There are two main types of Naval quests, ruins quests and Fortress quests. Naval ruins quests are very similar to the quests received by ruins on land, but are triggered by searching the Sunken Ruins scattered across the ocean. Fortress quests are equivalent to pacification quests in that upon completing the quest given by a fortress, you will gain ownership of said fortress.
Global Quests[]
Global Quests are a special type of side quest that are available to all players in the game simultaneously. There are two main types of global quests, Competitive and Cooperative. Competitive quests involve some goal that can only be completed by one player, and provides a pretty significant reward upon completion. Cooperative quests start by introducing a negative world effect, then presenting a means to remove said effect that all players may contribute to; upon completion, the world effect is removed, everyone that contributed receives a reward, and the player that contributed the most receives an additional reward.
Droplists[]
Droplists are used to identify what rewards are given for completing quests. Each quest is assigned a loot table and a number of items to reward. Quests will reward different quantities of items based on which technology age the player's faction is in. Not all items have the same chance of dropping, though drop weights are not represented in all tables. For those that include weights: the larger the weight, the more likely an item is to drop relative to other items.