So civic diplomacy now.. Any quests?

Calenor · 02-23-2007, 04:37 PM

Hey everyone, one more noob diplo question.. still trying to figure out how this thing works..

I have a 55 diplo skill... I am a Thestran Human so my base is Tursh. I've been trying to find quests around my skill but all I got is a couple of quests in Tursh and the Three rivers village which require 50+ presence (I dont remembert for which stations). The question is.. my presence almost in all stations is below 10... I ve tried to parley with NPCs here and there to raise it but no results..

So what am I missing here? I am sure Im doing something wrong but I don't know what yet, I am a bit confused. Sorry if these questions have been posted before. All I have found are diplomacy guides that talk about the way you parley and the diplo terminology.

Thx for any help

Mrrx · 02-23-2007, 04:46 PM

You have several hidden "XP" bars related to all of this stuff.

Each parley you do gets you more Skill XP. The higher your opponents skill, the more you get. But all parleys appear to give XP.

You also have many Presence XP bars. Soldier Presence XP, Noble Presence XP, et cetera ad naseum. Each parley you win gives you some more XP towards getting a presence point. I believe the minimum threshold has been stated as 14 parleys for 1 presence point. Might be fewer if you get better XP as you go.

Some will advise you, being 55 skill, to go after the 75 or 100 skill NPC's. Me, I will advise you to find 50 skill NPC's and grind away on them. Either way, take notes on what decks work with what NPC's, decide on how much failure you can stand, and go for it.

I'm not worried about doing quests personally. The presence requirements, like you saw, are very high. I would just go after doing as many parleys as you can.

MrrX's Character Journal

brusw68 · 02-23-2007, 05:49 PM

The key to getting Presence is persistence. You need to stick on one station, and grind there. Don't go between solider to clergy to craftsman, stay on soldier. The second consideration is how much you win by. You will get more "xp" for your Presence if your opponent has a lot of points left instead of a little. So, in the case of presence, lower level opponents are the way to go (more points for them to get rid of means a better victory for you).

The other way to get presence is gear. You can either buy gear off brokers to up your presence (and on the Kojan broker on Shidreth, prices are dropping massively over the last two weeks), or you can collect the information and turn them in. For bang for the buck, your best bet is arcana (which primarily comes from convince coversations) which yields shirts when turned in, which tend to have the better stats.

So, if you really want to up your presence with soliders (for example) fast, your best bet is to find a group of Dip 50 skill soliders and grind them in convince.

I have been playing for about 10 days now, mostly diplomacy, and doing the above has netted I now have a combined base + clothes presence of 95 with solders, and nearly that high with crafters and domestics as well. Still looking for Outsiders.

Calenor · 02-23-2007, 06:09 PM

Thanks to both of you for the very helpful answers

*casts blessing of Light on brusw68 and Mrrx

Calenor · 02-24-2007, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brusw68

You can either buy gear off brokers to up your presence (and on the Kojan broker on Shidreth, prices are dropping massively over the last two weeks), or you can collect the information and turn them in.

Turn them in you say? Where and how do I turn in information?

EncasedMeats · 02-26-2007, 09:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calenor

Turn them in you say? Where and how do I turn in information?

Why, I do believe there's a thread in this very forum dealing with exactly that topic! If it isn't here, check vgtact.com (probably at both locations though).

brusw68 · 02-26-2007, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calenor

Turn them in you say? Where and how do I turn in information?

Try:

http://www.vgtact.com/wiki/index.php...in_Information

boneclub · 02-26-2007, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brusw68

The key to getting Presence is persistence. You need to stick on one station, and grind there. Don't go between solider to clergy to craftsman, stay on soldier. The second consideration is how much you win by. You will get more "xp" for your Presence if your opponent has a lot of points left instead of a little. So, in the case of presence, lower level opponents are the way to go (more points for them to get rid of means a better victory for you).

I admit, I'm not completely up on how best to gain experience, but where is it stated that you get more EXP if you destroy your opponent versus just barely winning?

Kind regards,

Mindeno

brusw68 · 02-26-2007, 03:42 PM

Post #3 on: http://www.vgtact.com/showthread.php?t=2344

There is, however, ongoing debate about what constitues "degree of victory". The traditional reading is the number of points you took off your opponent, thus saying you should go for low skill NPCs because they have more points to lose. However, there is a new theory that it is how many points YOU lose...if you lose fewer you get more progress to the next Presence increase, but if you lose more you make less progress.

Either way, the key to progress is beating your opponents soundly, not barely.

boneclub · 02-26-2007, 06:26 PM

Awesome!

Thanks,

Mindeno

LeviticusD · 02-27-2007, 05:39 PM

Something that I'm trying to do to help break up the grind a bit, is I went to Tawar Galan on Kojan and picked up all the diplomacy quests there. There are quite a few with decent clothing rewards with high presence. I pick one of the quest lines that I think I can do and then go grind the presence that I need to do that line. Once I get it, I'll do that quest and get the reward that will give me alot of presence to attack another one of the quests.

There's still grinding involved, but it mixes the quests into it and makes it less tedious (at least that's the hope...I'm still pretty early in this process).

Absalon · 02-27-2007, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeviticusD

Something that I'm trying to do to help break up the grind a bit, is I went to Tawar Galan on Kojan and picked up all the diplomacy quests there. There are quite a few with decent clothing rewards with high presence. I pick one of the quest lines that I think I can do and then go grind the presence that I need to do that line. Once I get it, I'll do that quest and get the reward that will give me alot of presence to attack another one of the quests.

There's still grinding involved, but it mixes the quests into it and makes it less tedious (at least that's the hope...I'm still pretty early in this process).

That's what I did as well. And while grinding for the first one, I earned info for turn ins and got gear that increased other stations. Once you get going and the gear starts coming in it really isn't bad.

The last few days I've been working on BC and LN prestige. I parleyed mostly with academics and clergy as those were my lowest "naked" presence values. While doing that I raised those presence values, raised my prestige in both cities and earned lots of tier 2 info. From that info I got upgrades in almost all stations. I got a +33 crafter, soldier and outsider shirts. My shirt values before that were 13, 25 and 25 respectively. I got a +47 merchant shirt to replace my +19 shirt.

The system isn't perfect, but it works if you work at it a little bit.

Puuma · 02-28-2007, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brusw68

The key to getting Presence is persistence. You need to stick on one station, and grind there. Don't go between solider to clergy to craftsman, stay on soldier.

I pick a town and a presence. For me it was Lomshir(PZpres) soldiers, BC Clergy, LN Academics, and now CB crafters. I parley that presence until my city prestige is 1000 then move to a new town/presence to work on. (although I spend more time in LN because they are very weak against my flattery deck, that exploits reason. I hang there to wait for groups.)