I thought I would try influencing and took some lessons. I haven't tried it yet because I really don't fully understand it and am afraid of loosing and loosing a level like I do everytime I try to bash on the Tidal Flats and get killed by even starfish. Anyway I read in another thread on the foriums that influence drains ego and something about sipping bromides to keep the ego up. Well, as a newbie, or nearly so ... lvl 25 my ego is 0%. Does this mean that I loose an ego battle before I even start?

As you can see, I am very confused even after reading all I can find about it.

Thanks.

Your esteem is 0%. However, should you do CONFIG PROMPT STATS (or CONFIG PROMPT ALL), you'll see numbers for your health, mana, and ego. Yes, you will most likely need bromides for influencing (they can be bought from many shops, or even from Trader Bob I believe).

To use it, you'll want to find a relatively weak npc... for example, the little rascals that run around in village streets... and INFLUENCE RASCAL WITH BEGGING for example. If you do this a few times, they will delve into their pockets and give you untold treasures (usually consisting of a handful of coin, or an herb, or something similarly exciting).

Esteem has nothing to do with the actual influence. I'd suggest you not worry about it right now.

The thing you should be worying about is your EGO and CHARISMA. You can see how much charisma you have by typing STAT, and how much ego you have by typing SCORE.

As Xenthos said, you just need to INFLUENCE WITH and keep up at it several times, until the denizen you were influencing is... erm, influenced. Be careful so you don't drop to 0 ego. If you do, you will lose the ego battle (although it's not as quite painful as dying, it still stings)

One tip on this though: you need to be quick. After you begin the ego battle, you need to be very fast. Meaning, immediately after recovering equilibrium you should influence again. Otherwise, the denizen will drain your ego and that's not very good.

Do I just keep typing 'influence rascal with begging' over and over or do I actually have to beg using 'say something'?

Just keep typing INFLUENCE RASCAL WITH BEGGING when you regain equilibrium, until they frantically search their pockets to give you something.

Be willing to accept that until you get used to Influencing you're probably going to lose a few times. When I finally figured it out I lost quite a bit trying to get used to the weird ego draining. I got put off for a bit, but I'm back into it and love it now. If your ego gets low leave the room, heal up and go back in. Just be quick about it. If you're not careful the denizen could become more difficult to influence.

The complicated part is when you need to cycle attacks, but you don't need to do that untill you have "matching" attacks. So begging goes with wheedling and supplication. So if you don't have wheedling yet, only use begging.

And some denizens are resistant to certain types of influencing while others are susceptible to certain types. If you have to skill Analyze, you can tell what types of influencing are best for that mob.

Here's some more information on Influencing.

Is begging as effective as wheedling at any given level of influence, or is wheedling always better?

How much would you bring in say if you were successful in wheedling a city guard?

And influencing is based on EQ, right?