Okay,

Here's the thing. Nawat is basically a pacifist (Yes, some of you in Serenwilde will notice its similarity to another character that isn't mine - I liked the idea so I stole it from him) and theres a few problems I can see with it remaining viable in the forseeable future for me sadly.

Firstly, there is no way to speed up your influence once you hit Trans (not that I am trans yet) like there is with conventional bashing, due to the lack of critical hits. This is partially mitigated by influencing a certain mobs weak points but see my point below for details there.

Secondly, eventually (not quite at the moment - but I can see it happening soonish) where Influencing at high levels will be EXACTLY the same as "grinding" on many graphical MMORPG's. This is partly due to the lack of decent influence options (barring Charity because it actually makes you a profit unlike the other skills) unless you want to bugger with another organisations economy and partly due to the lack of decent things to influence (taking into account the influencing options). Even if you didn't influence this one area, city guards give the exact same amount of karma, esteem and gold.

Thirdly there is a HUGE discrepancy in what you can imbue with esteem and what you cannot. I find it quite odd to say the least that you can imbue a bra or a pair of trousers but you cannot imbue jewelery or a weapon (at least the ones I have tried).

Just as a small sidenote - it is almost at the point where I could make a fully automated script (not that I am intending to - I like doing things semi-manually) and completely run the one good influencing area constantly until I run out of bromides vials without a risk of me losing a single influence session until then.

Now onto my main non-influencing concern (well not directly related to influencing). What should I do with all my Karma? I have two blessings active both with over 14 hours left on them (beauty and harmony) and at a complete loss with what I should use the rest of my 91% karma for. I don't even know for sure if the harmony blessing is worth it as I have not noticed the slightest difference in how fast I gain experience from influencing with it active. Should I invest in a life or knowledge (or another) blessing just on the off chance I get jumped, or should I just save it for once I get jumped to curse my slayer?

And then you're promptly make into a shrub for using a bot
I know of people who had automatic scripts to bash achaean's Underworld (kindoff astral) non-stop, almost anything is automatable if you're a good enoguh coder or get all the triggers right.
And it's strictly forbidden.

I wasn't advocating or in any way implying that I was going to make it, but using it as an example to reiterate the fact that Toscha (and city guards by extension) are that little threat to me.

There is little risk of "dying" with influencing. Low risk, low gain. I doubt it'll get any better. I do, however, think influencing is the best idea ever. I love it!

City guards do not give the same experience/karma/gold as Tosha. And its damn akward to have a script to work in Tosha due to the moving monks in situations where there are rooms of 6+ sometimes. So, either you don't even know the best influencing area, or you don't pay attention to your xp/esteem/gold gain.

Harmony is good to get... its more noticable over time.


I think you bring up a very good point about the lack of Criticals while influencing, you should really give that to your envoy.

You have scored a crushing blow to his ego!

About imbue, its only good to imbue artifact items, and if its says 0% on it, you can embue it.... but crits for influencing should really be looked at.

1) City guards take the EXACT same amount of hits to take down as the normal toscha monks, and give me the same amount of xp for influencing them, with the side effect of not giving cash. If I try to influence them with charity it goes upto about 15 attacks to influence a guard effectively doubling the time spent on them.

2) I know the monks move around, and that makes things slightly more tricky but it is not completely unworkable. The easiest way around that is to automatically add the unique id of each monk that walks away from you mid-influence to a variable list, and when you come across a monk that is attacking you while you are not influencing anything else, it runs through the list of monks you haven't completely influenced yet and deletes them from it when finished.

3) With Imbue, rings, earrings and studs all say they are "imbued with 0% esteem" yet you can't imbue them. Yet a pair of trousers doesn't have this line and yet you can (this rule isn't 100% accurate yet though as there are other things with % esteem that you can imbue and others without it that you can't).

Ok, here's a question.

Why would you WANT to imbue a 900gold worth ring, or a weapon worth a hundred or so metal?

You would just be offering it and then losing it.

Here is another question.

If you are complaining about how easy everything is, why are you also complaining about there not being more karma blessings to boost influencing? You don't need anymore boosts.

Finally, yes influnecing IS sub-par as far as experiance goes, but I think it's right up there with other things as far as gold/karma goes, and the places are useally open more (with less influencers then people hunting) and the loss from getting shattered by a mob compaired with dieing is less as well, and the places you are influencing (at city guards) are safe, and thus your taking less risk.

Also, with the introduction of the Aether bubbles. Those denizens in the bubbles are good for influencing, "candy land" is right up there, if higher then lvl 2 guards.

I like iimbuing flowers. I might start putting flowers in my shop for 10 gold for people to buy them to imbue

With how relatively easy most denizens are I doubt this needs to be put in, and if it would be put in it would have to be dissabled whenever a village was in play to prevent abuse. Seems more trouble then it's worth.

Just get up to Superego and you can take everything on but the top of the line denizens.


Oh, and if you really want to be passifist influencer become a druid(blacktalon/hartstone) and take ecology, then you can empower/weaken less intelligent animals as well.

How is this any more unbalance than the fact that a person who is level 90 can kill a guard in one hit with a world shattering attack?

There are clearly many things that make raising in level after level 70 MUCH easier for people who are using violent methods with little risk compared to those who wish to use influecning.

At level 77 when I bash things in glomdoring or other low level areas, I actually bash faster then doing a high level area purely because I get more critical hits. Especially the Sewers in magnagora, I can wipe that place out clean really fast.

People could get world shattering crits for influencing on the leader of a village, now you can't tell me that's right.


And Nawat, you are level 61, according to your xp ranking. The higher you level up the less each thing, no matter how hard, gives you in terms of % of a level. It's only natural that it will get a bit boring at higher levels, if you think 61 is bad, wait till you get to 79.

Edit:Oh, and I'm not sure about guards, but I know that Supernals/Demon lords/Avatars are immune to critical hits, simply because it wouldn't be fair it someone randomly walked in, and hit that .1% chance to get a world shattering and just killed Whitehart, or something like that.

Oh, and the last time I compaired experiance, empowering guards was 33% the experiance of killing gorgogs (on a 1-1 ratio)

Which isn't that bad, seeing as Gorgogs are the best hunting on prime, and even around lvl 80 I've got a hard time with them.

Also, as a Nihilist Faeling you've got access to the best skills to help you influence, of course things are going to be much easyer for you then other people.

Yes, I have access to the skills, but honestly its not worth the bother of putting them up. Take my clothes off, walk into Toscha and start influencing. Yes I have them, but they aren't worth using anymore. About all I do is rub my enchantments for the regen and go to work. I can't remember the last time Quettle got me low enough to even use my healing scroll (and he is the only one that has a chance of getting close) just on my sipping + enchantment regeneration.

Edit: Stupid double post.

Please do, I can never find a good place to buy 'em.

I've had flowers for sale in Of Mists and Moonlight since esteem came in, just about. Riesa started it by donating some, then Elryn let me raid his.

I offered up snowballs last night to a few gods.

If crits are a problem for village influencing, and they have disabled crits on Supernals, then they can disable crits influencing on village leaders...

But I still think influencing could use crits.

Alright, well, I'm just saying that you are in the very small minority as it being that easy for you.


Edit:Oh, just for a referance, killing most of the merians, and grogogs, earlyer today, I gained 4%, that's 50 creatures at around 00.08% experiance each. The only other options I have for hunting beter then that would get me killed.

You're doing something wrong if Gorgogs are hard for you. I have a fire weakness, no robes, and about 10 fewer levels than you, and the passive ones are easy. About as much risk as bashing trout.