Arod

1) Will the response not allow placing progress on the active quest?

2) Can you place progress on a location in the staging area?

3) If either are allowed, are 1 and 2 restricted by the active location?

1) No, because the Quest is not a location. Only when you are instructed to place progress on the Active location you can place tokens on the current Quest card if there is no Active location.

2) Yes, no restrictions. See Northern Tracker for example of location restrictions.

3) Arod allows you to target a Location card that can be targeted (i.e., doesn't have Immune to card effects text). This means almost all Locations in play no matter of their position or status. You can target the active location OR a location in the staging area.

What he said ^

Only when you are instructed to place progress on the Active location you can place tokens on the current Quest card if there is no Active location.

Are you sure about that? I thought the only way you could place progress on the quest was with effects that explicitly place progress on the quest, and even then only if there is no active location.

Honestly I am not sure at all, as neither rulebook nor FAQ say anything on the matter. The moment when you are attempting to place progress on the current quest and there is an active location is well detailed, but the other way round is not.

Following the way I read and apply rules cards like Ancestral Knowledge will not work when there is no active location, as there is no rule that allows such transfer, otherwise the card would say "place on the current quest". Then the active location would soak the progress anyway if there is an active location.

It is one of those rule-reading traps a player might fall in from time to time - if something works in a way it doesn't mean it works the other way round, too.

I actually don't think it carries up.  The active location only absorbs progress that would be placed on the Quest card.  The Quest Card doesn't take any excess progress that would be put on the location.

The rules and the FAQ are pretty specific in the interaction between quest card and active locations. Nowhere do they say that tokens to be placed on the active location by a card effect carry over to the quest card if the active location is not there.

The Quest Card doesn't take any excess progress that would be put on the location.

If you refer to excess tokens placed on the active location by a card effect, I tend to agree. If you refer to normal questing, you 're wrong. The example on the bottom of page 15 of the Rules is adamant that excess tokens carry over to the quest card.

If you refer to excess tokens placed on the active location by a card effect, I tend to agree. If you refer to normal questing, you 're wrong. The example on the bottom of page 15 of the Rules is adamant that excess tokens carry over to the quest card.

Yes, there I meant any targeting card effects, not normal quest resolution. I must have missed that part of the rulebook as I searched with a string.

I haven't reread the rules, but in my understanding after you quest, you have a total number of progress which is the difference between your questing power and the staging area threat.  So for example, say there is 10 threat in the staging area and you quest for 20.  You will have 10 progress to place on the quest.  However, any progress that would be put in the quest must first get absorbed by the active location (when available).   If that location had a progress value of 3, you would put 3 on the location (and discard it) and put 7 on the quest.

Say the active location only has a progress value of 1 and you use Asfaloth (attached to Glorfindel) to put two progress on the location.  Since it is progress that is going on the active location, the excess 1 progress does not carry over to the Quest.  

At least, that is how I understand it.

Me too. What players need to understand is that questing and placing progress tokens on locations are two different things. Hence the cases where someone can place progress tokens on locations outside the quest phase: Asfaloth (if its controller decides to use its action outside the quest phase), Arod etc. The rules specifically mention that, during questing (first case), excess progress tokens from the active location carry over to the quest card. They are silent however concerning the second case. I think it's safe to assume that, in that case, extra progress tokens are lost.  

One more thing for further clarification: In the first case, the target of the questing is not the active location; it's the quest card. The active location absorbs some of the progress tokens gathered by the player while questing up to its quest points. The remaining (if any) progress tokens go to the quest card. In the second case, the target is not the quest card; it's just a location. Even if the progress tokens were to be put on the active location, any excess are lost, simply because putting tokens on the location had nothing to do with the quest card itself.

If that location had a progress value of 3, you would put 3 on the location (and discard it) and put 7 on the quest.

Not entirely accurate. You place all the progress at the same time and, if there is enough progression on the quest, you resolve quest advancement at the same time that you finish exploring the location.

Why is this important? Because since quest advancement is a passive effect it will resolve before anthing else and if there is some forced, response or action trigger tied to the exploration of the location it can only happen after quest-progression. I had this be important to my solo-take on "Breaking of the Fellowship"; it is the last quest-stage and my active location had the ability to remove a burden card from the campaign pool if it was explored; I´m sitting with the possibility to almost certainly end the quest during the questing stage, when I recalled that I might not be able to get rid of a burden if I over-quested. Not taking any chances I put the game on hold for 2 days while I awaited an answer from Caleb, which confirmed my suspicion: I would not have been able to trigger the location´s response if I just finished. I decided to chance one more round against the encounter deck and luckily my gamble paid off: Frodo got away and I rid myself of a nasty burden as well

I remember now that is how Caleb said it should go, but I don't have to like it.  It is counter-intuitive to how the active location mechanic even works.