Every once in a while Spindle chimes in on the newbie channel, telling us newbies how we can influence instead of bashing. But how does this work? It takes a lot of lessons, and supposedly levels, to get influence to work effectively. And then how do you get xp out of it? Just curious.

Well, I'm no expert on influencing... But consider it a non-violent form of bashing, with ego and bromide vials substituted for health and health vials.

As far as newbie influencing is concerned, try running around the Newton caverns and 'influence gnome/fink with begging'. You'll usually need to do it more than once, and if you wait too long before your next influence 'attack' you'll suffer ego loss. You'll know you've won because they either 'come up empty handed' or give you something.

Try it out, and you'll realise how it works almost instantly. You will get exactly the same amount of XP for influencing the creature as you would for killing it. If you hit 0 ego you'll have an 'ego death', and lose the same amount of XP as you would if you had died (although you will not need to pray, of course, so it isn't that much of a hit).

It's more complicated than this, of course, but 'Help influence' sums it up better than I could.

If you're seriously interested in influencing as a RP choice, over combat, simply pick your race as Tae'dae or F0eling... something with high charisma, and put the lessons you'd normally spent building up your guild skills into influence instead.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

I am *so* tempted...

I can't think of any reason why it isn't possible to become a 'career influencer'. I'm absolutely positive the super-high charisma races were intended for this.

The vast majority of command and guild skills are directed towards either combat or trade. With a limited number of lessons/credits, it's much more feasible to try and trans one skill (influence), than three or four plus a trade skill.

You might not advance very far in the guild... But you could run around empowering loyal villagers, city guards... spreading paranoia and rumours in other villagers... You could certainly make a career out of it. The nicer your clothers and jewellery are, the better you'll be at influencing. The exception is begging, which works the other way around. You can actually get tailors to tatter your clothers to make you better at begging.

Just be aware that only 'intelligent' (i.e. humanoid) creatures can be influenced, and only Necromancers can influence Undead.

For an all out influence character, I'd probably make a Guardian Faeling, as Netzach in Highmagic, Laetitia and Populus in rituals are all very early skills that improve your influencing.

I'll second the Guardian Faeling as being the optimal influencer.

Influencing effectively is comparatively complex to bashing for experience. I'm not sure how well it fairs past the L60ish range, but one drawback is that even specializing in charity attacks, I couldn't afford to keep myself supplied with bromides. So, you'll need an alternate source of gold...perhaps influencing for quest items.

One potential problem is that while there are high level 'bashing grounds' (Astral), I'm not sure how many options there are for high level influencers.

I think city guards and named mobs in villagers might do you for level 70, 80 maybe... But after that. In any case, I'm not too concerned because I am not primarily an influencer, and I expect by the time people hit that level and start complaining, we'll see the same quick response from the admins as we have with combat balance issues.

But yeah, you won't make a profit out of it unless you know who to beg for quest items. For example, in some villages you can beg for hay, and use that to get the cows home for a spot of extra gold...

But if you have the wealth and dedication, why not put some effort into a trade skill, too? If you're proactive about it, you could use your trade to fund your influencing.

Obviously you're not going to influence your way to level 100 (ok, you may but it's definitely not going to be the easiest route). Given that influencing is for the less aggressive or less able to be aggressive (*cough* faelings), people who chose them aren't likely to try and aim for such lofty heights anyway.

Maybe if you influence to level 100, you'll transform into a giant fluffy bunny instead of a Titan? *cough*

Well... just an idea.

Yeah, and if you used rumours and teasing and stuff you'd be a big black spikey bunny like the one they have in the Maggy zoo!

The best high-level influencing area I've found is the Ethereal Plane, honestly.

Even so, it doesn't come close to what a skilled hunter can achieve with the same effort in the Astral plane.

Judging from your posts I wonder if you know how to influence. Influence is more complicated then bashing, because you have to keep switching attacks, and I chose to be a tae'dae ur'guard mostly with the idea of influence then kill.

there are plenty of areas to influence bash if you think outside the box, and I leveled twice influencing villages during the revolts.

One comment- You don't lose nearly so much experience from an ego death as from a real death, and I don't think you can gain as much either though. It's much safer for that, because if you mess up bashing and die, you have to do the whole praying thing or cost your city/commune power to rezz you, but if you lose influencing nothing like that happens.

Actually, I know of a person who manages to get experience from influencing (and a little questing) ONLY. Last time she bashed was at Newton-class levels. And it's an elfen.

I personally am an influencer (High Elfen) and I haven't had to many problems. Yes, I do run out of ego quickly, and bromides are eaten fairly quickly, but in all honesty, I haven't found it all that much different from bashing and running out of health potions. Also, I haven't put that many lessons into Influence - once I hit Supplication, I stopped putting lessons into Influence since I had two attacks of the same type to use.

I suggest you learn more influence, there are two handy skills, one being charismatic smile (a free cure to disloyalty) and the other being SuperEgo, it will save you lots on the bromide potions. Also get a beuty enchantment.

Other skills like Amnesty and Diplomacy can be usefull if done right.

And if your a moondancer, you should most definitly trans influence.

You do gain the same amount of experience for a successful influence as you would from bashing that sentient. The experience loss for failure is the same as if you had died and been immediately revived.

If you're looking for low- to mid-level influencing areas, it's quite true that villages are the best.

Trans Influence, Diplomacy (the amnesty half) is broken.
I use influence a LOT, and get many many more levels off influence/questing than bashing.

I made a Faeling once and poured every single lesson into influence, just to see how things would work. I found it much more fun and rewarding than bashing; I, however, only played it up until level 15 or so. If you're going to make a pure influencer, i'd go Faeling; you'll be less than worthless in PK, however.

Both systems call the same functions to calculate XP gain and loss, so they are identical. The only catch is you can lose more XP when praying when your mana goes to zero, so you could potentially lose more XP from bashing death. But of you do the normal thing and pray right away then both are equal.

Also, there was discussion on classes to use for influence and cosmic guardian rituals was mentioned as useful. I believe the elemental mages and druids have a demesne ability to make them more influential, so there should be potential with those as well. Hmmm.... Maybe knights should get an "intimidate" ability to boost up their influencing, modified by their STR stat. That would be amusing. Maybe have a chance of angering the NPC to respond with physical attack combat.

There are a few of those 'intimidate' skills, but they revolve around scaring another player if you have higher might. It'd be nice to see some like the one you just suggested.