How to make NPCs stay where you put them

Problem: My NPC doesn't stay where I put him!

Every time the Player enters a map, all events return back to where they were originally placed.

This means that any NPCs you manually moved while the Player was on the map are right back where they started.

This is fine for random townsfolk who move about randomly or just repeat the same route, but if you have cut scenes or any interaction that causes an NPC to change locations (and/or change their behaviour) then it can really stuff you up.

Solution 1

If the NPC is supposed to vanish, the easiest way to get them to remain vanished when the Player comes back is to set a Self Switch (or Switch, if controlling them from a different Event) that switches their behaviour to a new Event Page with no graphic. (Self Switches and Switches maintain their state globally.)

(This solution can also be used to change their Autonomous Movement, if you just want their move route to change.)

Solution 2

If you need your NPC to be in a totally new location, however, the only way to do this without scripts is to create an Event with its Trigger set to Parallel Process. Insert Set Event Location commands and set up each NPC with its new coordinates. 

Once all commands are set, use an Erase Event command. This will terminate the Parallel Process after it has run once, and since Erase Event commands don't actually delete the Event, it will reset every time the Player returns to the map, and all those Set Event Location commands will happen again.

This only runs when the set condition is true