Editing EQ/howtohelp/Creating a link to a Quest

== General == 
Creating a link to a quest is not that much different that creating a link to a zone, except it is slightly more complicated in the sense that it requires a little more information and is not as obvious or elegant.

The reason for it being a little more complicated, because there is no index such as zone file name to tell us who or what these zones are.  And in fact one quest may refer to any other quest in the game which may or may not start in the same place.  So we need a slightly more advanced template to handle this for us.  That template is '''AbsLink'''.

== Linking to a Quest ==
This tutorial will assume you have already read and understand the beginner level tutorial [[RoF/misc/helping/Creating a link to a Zone|Creating a link to a Zone]]

This tutorial will use the following quest as an example: {{AbsLink|RoF/Zones/shardslanding|Beating the Beetles}}

So just like the '''ZoneLink''' template we will approach it the same way as far as how to link to the content.  First I need to know what I want to link to.  So Quests are found in Zones, which Zones have Zone pages.  So if there is a Zone page in theory I should be able to access it, yep {{ZoneLink|shardslanding}}.  So what I need from the zone page is its actual page name.  You may recall from a previous tutorial talking about this: [[RoF/misc/helping/How to edit a Page|How to edit a Page]].

Okay now I have the page name.  Now I need the Quest name.  No problem this is available in game, or through the wiki directly.  Let's review what I have.

# '''Template Name''': As discussed in general this is: '''AbsLink''' - check
# '''Page Name''': '''RoF/Zones/shardslanding''' - check
# '''Quest Name''': '''Beating the Beetles''' - check

Now all we have to do is use the template.  Below is the copy and paste version
<pre>
{{AbsLink|RoF/Zones/shardslanding|Beating the Beetles}}
</pre>

So you will notice that there are all 3 pieces of information present in the Template.  Now you should easily be able to link to any shardslanding quest by changing the quest name.  If you wanted to link to a quest in say grelleth, you would have to change two things.  the '''Page Name''', and the '''Quest Name'''.

Templates can have multiple parameters separated by pipes |.  This enables us to have templates like AbsLink.

'''What you should have learned so far''':
# Briefly discussed how to find the wiki page name
# How to use the '''AbsLink''' template to link to a Quest in any zone.
# Templates can have more than one parameter.

== How to avoid typing ==
Alright this AbsLink thing is pretty cool alright.  But it isn't of much use.  Well you are right, because you need to know so much information to use it.  But luckily there is a short cut.  I'll let you in on a little narwhal secret.  Copy and Paste.

Yep I don't type anything out after the first time, all I do is goto the corresponding quests sub page in a zone and Copy and Paste.  Example on page: [[RoF/Zones/shardslanding/quests]] is all the AbsLinks I would ever need already typed out for me.

How to use the Copy and Paste functions on your computer may differ from mine, but I highlight the text I want to copy with the mouse cusor and press Ctrl+C on the keyboard, then I navigate to the page where I want the text and press Ctrl+V to paste it in.  I can even repeat the paste process multiple times if I need the same text repeated 3 or 4 times.  I know that copy and paste are not intermediate level, but I know the average person thinks they know more than they think, so this is for that small percentage of people that skipped the beginner stuff.

'''What you should have learned so far''':
* Where to locate all the Quest Links in a Zone
* How to Copy and Paste, if you did not already know