[Wudan]

I just got to a point where I have finished all the begginers quests in my starting city of Halgarad. My diplomacy skill is at 51 atm and I dont know how to progress anymore. Most dip quests I have seen require a lot of presence, which I dont have (all my presences are under 10). I dont have cash to buy expensive dip gear to gain the presence I need. Its also very hard to find a dip quest that suits my skill, most is 100+

Any suggestions / advice will be much appreciated

- where / how should I rais my dip past 50 being Varanjan?
- where / ghow can I get more cards?
- I have read somewhere, that I should focus on dip NPCs that use flattery as main. . .is that true?

[Parallax]

Ok after you finish the starter quests diplomecy changes, and gets alot harder, and grindier. To skill up you need to start doing civic diplomecy, you will have enough presence to talk to some npcs around your home town and some other places too. Only current way to get cards is to do quests, which you need presence for, which to get presence you need to just grind it up or the better way is to earn clothing from turning in information to informants. The cards you have right now *are* good enough to win some parleys, you probably wont have all the right cards for any npc you talk to, but you should be able to devise an effective enough strategy that you can take on most npc's in your skill lvl range. About the flatter heavy npcs...I dunno, I'm sure that works for some people, but what you need to do is figure out what works for you. Some parleys will be very difficult for you, while the same npc doing gossip instead of say convice will be very easy for you. Good luck!

[Wudan]

Originally Posted by Parallax

Ok after you finish the starter quests diplomecy changes, and gets alot harder, and grindier. To skill up you need to start doing civic diplomecy, you will have enough presence to talk to some npcs around your home town and some other places too. Only current way to get cards is to do quests, which you need presence for, which to get presence you need to just grind it up or the better way is to earn clothing from turning in information to informants. The cards you have right now *are* good enough to win some parleys, you probably wont have all the right cards for any npc you talk to, but you should be able to devise an effective enough strategy that you can take on most npc's in your skill lvl range. About the flatter heavy npcs...I dunno, I'm sure that works for some people, but what you need to do is figure out what works for you. Some parleys will be very difficult for you, while the same npc doing gossip instead of say convice will be very easy for you. Good luck!

thanks for good info...

I tried to do some parleys with NPC around my starting are, but I always lose Usually they have 50skill
I tried a lot of different strategies, but no success so far. Sometimes it looks like im on a good way to win, but than the NPCs pull out some really nasty cards that give them a lot of expression and cost 0 and I get beaten up at the end.
The only thing I got out of it is negative faction hits wiht my own town! That makes me afraid to start new parleys, dont wanna end up being KOS in my hometown. . .

after reading some posts on this forum about people kickin some dip azz, already having their dip skill at 150+ . . . Im starting to think that I might be really bad diplomat, maybe its just not for me. Wish I could win at least one civic parley.

[klokwurk72]

Originally Posted by Wudan

thanks for good info...

I tried to do some parleys with NPC around my starting are, but I always lose Usually they have 50skill
I tried a lot of different strategies, but no success so far. Sometimes it looks like im on a good way to win, but than the NPCs pull out some really nasty cards that give them a lot of expression and cost 0 and I get beaten up at the end.
The only thing I got out of it is negative faction hits wiht my own town! That makes me afraid to start new parleys, dont wanna end up being KOS in my hometown. . .

after reading some posts on this forum about people kickin some dip azz, already having their dip skill at 150+ . . . Im starting to think that I might be really bad diplomat, maybe its just not for me. Wish I could win at least one civic parley.

I found myself in a similar situation where my cards were heavy on flattery and I had to parley an npc where I couldn't user flattery. I couldn't figure out how I could possibly beat him with the cards I had and so I had almost given up. What happened for me though was I was in a city and noticed I got some civic diplomacy buffs and two extra cards for an hour. So I went back and was easily able to beat him and advance. I know that's not a reliable strategy but if you are stuck it's worth watching for those buffs and then following up with new cards in hand to see if you can beat the npc.

[brusw68]

Originally Posted by Wudan

I tried a lot of different strategies, but no success so far. Sometimes it looks like im on a good way to win, but than the NPCs pull out some really nasty cards that give them a lot of expression and cost 0 and I get beaten up at the end.

Reading between the lines, I wonder if maybe you aren't feeding your NPCs a lot of expression. There are some basic strategies: a basic plan that works on one NPC may mean diplomatic death on a different one. One basic strategy is "slow and steady wins the race". There is a crafter in Tanvu you can play one card, a low level comment, and win. You won't feed her enough
expression to get her going and she will never play. So you play your one card, and then hit listen for 20 odd times until you win.

Now, if you take that same NPC and play all your highest cards as fast as you can, sure, you will pull ahead initially, but she will cream you in the long run because you will have given her the fuel for her own deck. I wonder if that isn't what you are running into.

Just remember, you don't need to be 10 ahead of the person to wear them down, just 1 on your favor is enough. Listen is, often times, you best friend.

Also, as someone who is currently 138? I very rarely win contests with NPCs on my first, second, or even third try. Maybe their are natural diplomacy savants out there who can see a person and build their deck. But for me? It is careful experimentation, and careful notes, including what decks did win so when I go back to them I don' have to start from scratch.

[Kenuda]

Originally Posted by brusw68

Reading between the lines, I wonder if maybe you aren't feeding your NPCs a lot of expression. There are some basic strategies: a basic plan that works on one NPC may mean diplomatic death on a different one. One basic strategy is "slow and steady wins the race". There is a crafter in Tanvu you can play one card, a low level comment, and win. You won't feed her enough
expression to get her going and she will never play. So you play your one card, and then hit listen for 20 odd times until you win.

Now, if you take that same NPC and play all your highest cards as fast as you can, sure, you will pull ahead initially, but she will cream you in the long run because you will have given her the fuel for her own deck. I wonder if that isn't what you are running into.

Just remember, you don't need to be 10 ahead of the person to wear them down, just 1 on your favor is enough. Listen is, often times, you best friend.

Also, as someone who is currently 138? I very rarely win contests with NPCs on my first, second, or even third try. Maybe their are natural diplomacy savants out there who can see a person and build their deck. But for me? It is careful experimentation, and careful notes, including what decks did win so when I go back to them I don' have to start from scratch.

I am at a similar stage to the OP - nearly finished the town dip quests and starting on the city diplomacy. Have looked all round town and most seem to be 100+ .

I also like to start parley off slow unless I know the strat after a failure or 2. One quest npc in Halgarad is a one card win if you don't give her any ammo.

I have basically 2 decks at the moment - a blue feeding deck and a mixed red,yellow + 1 other deck.

[Parallax]

Originally Posted by Wudan

thanks for good info...

I tried to do some parleys with NPC around my starting are, but I always lose Usually they have 50skill
I tried a lot of different strategies, but no success so far. Sometimes it looks like im on a good way to win, but than the NPCs pull out some really nasty cards that give them a lot of expression and cost 0 and I get beaten up at the end.
The only thing I got out of it is negative faction hits wiht my own town! That makes me afraid to start new parleys, dont wanna end up being KOS in my hometown. . .

after reading some posts on this forum about people kickin some dip azz, already having their dip skill at 150+ . . . Im starting to think that I might be really bad diplomat, maybe its just not for me. Wish I could win at least one civic parley.

I felt the same way when I made it to civic diplomecy and wondered if I was going to make it any further or just quit it, but I kept trying and eventually landed on a strategy that works very well for me and I can generally win against any npc within my range. For me the key was using my racial card as the backbone of any strategy, since it hits for 5 and only takes 1-2 rounds to refresh its a heavy hitter so to speak. I'm pretty sure every race gets a card like that, so you definetly want to use that. I also have 2 other cards that thier only purpose is to feed myself the flattery I need to play my big card, so that means that I'm using it as much as possible. Also as someone else pointed out, pay attention to what you're giving your opponent, if a card you are playing is giving them just what they need to play one of thiers; it might be best not to play it at all, or just use something else.

One last thing is that npc's use the same hand for any parley, so if they have a strong "demand" deck, chose a parley that doesnt allow demand and they will be cake. I know if I do a parley without flattery I'm really weak, but with flattery I'm tuff to beat, its the same with npcs.

[Wudan]

Thank you all for good tips and info. I will try again tonight, see how I go. Maybe I was feeding her with expressions, cant really remember now as its been more than a week I tried last time. I do remember tho, that she was using a lot of +2 influence 0 cost cards which is really hard to beat. . .

will try again and post what happened

P.S. I went to Khal last night and found NPC with 75diplo skill so I thought I would try to beat her. I did! 3times! Woohoo! There is one big BUT. . .I did not gain any skill. Is it possible that if you win parley with NPC that is 25lvl higher, it wont get your skill up? suxor

[Sturmlied]

I had a really hard time after the tutorial quests, they don't show you how to really advance in diplomacy.

Observation and experimentation are the key.

I have excel sheet with all NPCs I encountered. There race, class, diplomacy level, presence needed etc.

When I parlay against them I make notes on what cards they use a lot, what expression they need and what they give me.

Based on that I build my deck and strategy. I also write down what I use.

Now I have a nice route though Leth Nurae where I can win every time and really grind skill. I'm now level 60 and parlay against Level 75 and even some 100 NPCs, most of them are soldiers and crafters, because I have a good deck against them.

And you should ask other diplomats if you have trouble with a npc.

[brusw68]

Originally Posted by Wudan

Thank you all for good tips and info. I will try again tonight, see how I go. Maybe I was feeding her with expressions, cant really remember now as its been more than a week I tried last time. I do remember tho, that she was using a lot of +2 influence 0 cost cards which is really hard to beat. . .

will try again and post what happened

P.S. I went to Khal last night and found NPC with 75diplo skill so I thought I would try to beat her. I did! 3times! Woohoo! There is one big BUT. . .I did not gain any skill. Is it possible that if you win parley with NPC that is 25lvl higher, it wont get your skill up? suxor

Hi again,

I ran into an opponent like that, her deck was NOTHING but comments. Sure, they were only +1 or +2 and, sure, each took 3-5 or 4-6 rounds to refresh, but with 6 cards like that was basically nudging a 1 or 2 point hit against my influence every turn. Bozhe moi!

The weakness, of course, is that she was feeding me a ton of expression. It was all spread out, only a point here and there at a time, but it was consistent. So what I did was make a deck out of all my basic assertions (you know the type, 2 expression yielding 3 influence giving up a point or two of expression to the opponent), one for each expression. So, once she got going, she was playing a 1-2 point comment each turn and I was playing a 3 point assertion each turn. Throw in Absolution, and it was a slaughter.

As far as skill raises? Going against a 75 will be better than 50, sure, but it won't be that much better. I wouldn't expect a skill up any faster than 1 in 8 at that point. I am currently grinding against 2 - 100s and 2 -150s at 140, and getting a skill up maybe every 16 or so. Like adventure xp, your skill ups are going to get longer and longer as you increase your skill.

::editted to hide my lack of reading skills::

[Ikthog]

This is part of my problem with civic diplomacy so far... often you either need a strategy for gaming the system (i.e. knowing that if you play a certain card or cards at the start, your opponent will never be able to play a single card), or you have to either learn a particular opponent's typical strategy, or simply get lucky. It's not as though even a master diplomat will be able to plan for any situation, as you only have five cards... you may find a deck strategy that is tough to beat, but even that seems to be based on getting a particular card that is unusually good.

My other main gripe is that if you lose a CD parley, you are unable to parley with that NPC again for a few minutes, which just seems punitive, especially when there are maybe two or three NPCs in an area you can even parley with.

This isn't a criticism, exactly, just a bit of frustration. I think diplomacy is a lot of fun, and I hope to keep advancing. I'm currently at skill 50 in Martok, and I'm at a point where the few NPCs I can parley with will no longer give me a reward, I'm not allowed to parley with the 100 skill NPCs, and the main diplomacy quest chain in Martok is broken (with numerous bug reports submitted weeks ago). I was hoping there might be an ongoing chain of quests that would lead to other cities, but that doesn't seem to be the case (please correct me if I'm wrong). I assume I just need to travel to other cities and seek out NPCs I can CD parley with, but I'm hoping there are more quests beyond the starter quests...

[brusw68]

There are more quests -- I just did several in Three Rivers I quite enjoyed due to the stories being told within them.

[LeviticusD]

There are quite a few in Tawar Galen also that I am working on.

[MagicNumbers]

Originally Posted by Wudan

Thank you all for good tips and info. I will try again tonight, see how I go. Maybe I was feeding her with expressions, cant really remember now as its been more than a week I tried last time. I do remember tho, that she was using a lot of +2 influence 0 cost cards which is really hard to beat. . .

will try again and post what happened

P.S. I went to Khal last night and found NPC with 75diplo skill so I thought I would try to beat her. I did! 3times! Woohoo! There is one big BUT. . .I did not gain any skill. Is it possible that if you win parley with NPC that is 25lvl higher, it wont get your skill up? suxor

It takes about 4.5 successful parleys in a row to gain a skill point.

[Brownshoe]

Originally Posted by Ikthog

I'm currently at skill 50 in Martok, and I'm at a point where the few NPCs I can parley with will no longer give me a reward, I'm not allowed to parley with the 100 skill NPCs, and the main diplomacy quest chain in Martok is broken (with numerous bug reports submitted weeks ago).

If it's like Tursh, I suspect that there are one or two level 50 and level 75 npcs hanging around that you can parley with. In Tursh, I had to go outside the city into the farm/crafting area to find one farmer for domestic presence that was level 50...then, for level 75s, it was back to the town and the Inn where there are two level 75ers...at first I was frustrated with the lack of options, until I thought part of the fun/game was finding the npc you need in the first place (I should be keeping track of the type/levels of all the others I'm hitting that eventually I'll need).

[Absalon]

Originally Posted by Ikthog

It's not as though even a master diplomat will be able to plan for any situation, as you only have five cards...

Every 100 points you get another card slot in your deck. So, at 100 skill you have 6 cards, at 200, 7 cards, etc. up to 500 and 10 cards.

[Snothair]

Originally Posted by Wudan

I just got to a point where I have finished all the begginers quests in my starting city of Halgarad. My diplomacy skill is at 51 atm and I dont know how to progress anymore. Most dip quests I have seen require a lot of presence, which I dont have (all my presences are under 10). I dont have cash to buy expensive dip gear to gain the presence I need. Its also very hard to find a dip quest that suits my skill, most is 100+

I am in the same position, but in Martok 51 skill and level 8 adventuring.

All the quests I can find in the area require me to have 12 outsider presence, and despite having 23 outsider presence, it tells me I don't have enough. (bug?)

I tried some of the 75 skill civic diplomacy NPC's in Martok to build up my skill, but after about 15 attempts on two, and much lost prestige faction I gave up on them and made some observations.

a) I don't have the cards I need to defeat these NPCs
b) I wrote down the cards the NPCs were using, and some of the 75 skill npcs that I was able to find were using at least 6 different cards. (bugged?)
c) ALL the npcs I can find in the Martok and surrouding areas are civic diplomacy npcs, is there any other kind anywhere near Martok?
d) Have some gloves that give me +1 inspire, but during the parley it doesn't recognize the extra point I have (if I have 2 inspire and a card that requires 2 inspire, it won't let me play it till I get 3 inspire).

Which leads me to wonder if I need to travel elsewhere, and does anyone have any experience in doing this safely as a little goblin? Is Diplomacy currently bugged enough that I should wait until some of the bugs are fixed before I continue with it?

[Parallax]

Originally Posted by Snothair

I am in the same position, but in Martok 51 skill and level 8 adventuring.

All the quests I can find in the area require me to have 12 outsider presence, and despite having 23 outsider presence, it tells me I don't have enough. (bug?)

I tried some of the 75 skill civic diplomacy NPC's in Martok to build up my skill, but after about 15 attempts on two, and much lost prestige faction I gave up on them and made some observations.

a) I don't have the cards I need to defeat these NPCs
b) I wrote down the cards the NPCs were using, and some of the 75 skill npcs that I was able to find were using at least 6 different cards. (bugged?)
c) ALL the npcs I can find in the Martok and surrouding areas are civic diplomacy npcs, is there any other kind anywhere near Martok?
d) Have some gloves that give me +1 inspire, but during the parley it doesn't recognize the extra point I have (if I have 2 inspire and a card that requires 2 inspire, it won't let me play it till I get 3 inspire).

Which leads me to wonder if I need to travel elsewhere, and does anyone have any experience in doing this safely as a little goblin? Is Diplomacy currently bugged enough that I should wait until some of the bugs are fixed before I continue with it?

Those are some strange problems. I havent heard of someone not being able to start a parley when they had more then enough presence, so maybe check out the forums on the specific quest and see if anyone else is having the same problem.

a) You may be right that you dont have the right cards to beat those NPC's you were on, but I can guarentee you that you do have the cards to beat some of those 75skill NPC's somewhere, just have to find them.

b) I dont know if that is intended or not, but the fact that npc's only use one hand right now for any parley puts them at a pretty big disadvantage in certain parleys.

c) Civic parleys are all you can do besides quests.

d) Not sure what that could be really. The gloves will give you the extra inspire once, at the start of the parley, once you use it its gone.

I'm not a goblin so I dont know where else you can go, but I'm sure you can find some npc's to beat where you are. There are bugs in diplomacy and its far from being completely implemented but its still very fun imo and there are quests and rewards and things to do now and things to look forward to. And in very Vanguard fashion diplomacy will require you to do some of your own legwork and do some exploring and strategizing to unlock the content that is there.

[Snothair]

Originally Posted by Parallax

a) You may be right that you dont have the right cards to beat those NPC's you were on, but I can guarentee you that you do have the cards to beat some of those 75skill NPC's somewhere, just have to find them.

b) I dont know if that is intended or not, but the fact that npc's only use one hand right now for any parley puts them at a pretty big disadvantage in certain parleys.

I have gotten them very close a few times, but that seems to be when card#6 comes into play

c) Civic parleys are all you can do besides quests.

Wasn't sure about this one, read on a few other message boards that there was a lot of problems with the Civic diplomacy, and to stick to 'regular diplomacy' (whatever that is supposed to be), I can stop looking for the other types now

d) Not sure what that could be really. The gloves will give you the extra inspire once, at the start of the parley, once you use it its gone.

Yeah, it shows up there, but it is like it doesn't exist to the game.

I'm not a goblin so I dont know where else you can go, but I'm sure you can find some npc's to beat where you are. There are bugs in diplomacy and its far from being completely implemented but its still very fun imo and there are quests and rewards and things to do now and things to look forward to. And in very Vanguard fashion diplomacy will require you to do some of your own legwork and do some exploring and strategizing to unlock the content that is there.

I have enjoyed it so far, but it seems to have a very steep learning curve beyond the initial quests, and like you say it is a little buggy. I guess it is time to run my little goblin butt to another continent, and see what they think of Goblins there

[dallan]

Originally Posted by Snothair

d) Have some gloves that give me +1 inspire, but during the parley it doesn't recognize the extra point I have (if I have 2 inspire and a card that requires 2 inspire, it won't let me play it till I get 3 inspire).

The gloves do not effect the cost of your cards. All they do is make it so that when you start a parley with an NPC, you already have one dot of inspire built up. Its just a free point of inspire you get at the start. Very handy!