I just spent over a thousand lessons on Influence, figuring that if I learned all of the third skills of each influence type, I'd be much better at it. I also thought that if I had a much higher skillrank, I'd be much better at it. At Expert 50%, it took me 11-12 rounds of influencing to empower a guard. Now, at Mythical 0% skill, it takes me 11 rounds of influencing to empower a guard. Same ego drain, if not more. Same time, more or less.

Umm... huh? What's the point of ever learning past Expert 50%? You learn nothing new that's useful after that, it seems, and you don't get better at influencing with higher skill. You do learn more influencing skills, but they don't seem to help that much. The defence drain must not be fast enough for the difference between two and three skills to be noticable.

All I can say is... meh, wasted sooo many lessons I was going to trans the skill, but is it worth it? Seems like it won't make me any better at influencing


EDIT: It's actually 10 for me instead of 12 with all three skills as opposed to two skills - I had forgotten to take off my armor and put on real clothing *cough*

Still, it doesn't seem like that much of a boost

My experience with influence seems to suggest that, yes, the more skill, the better, but the benefit is marginal. For example, if you just use compliment on a guard, it may take you 12-13 hits. If you cycle between compliment, admire, and praise, it may take only 9-10 hits.

As for the ego drain, I doubt it changes as your skill in influence increases. That's what SuperEgo is for. I believe it reduces hits to you by about 10%, which is still very small, but better than nothing.

Be a man and just kill stuff like all the cool people do. *duck*

Well, you still have to take into consideration that it might not really help on one, but if you add it up, it's quite helpfull, since you need 1/5 hits less than before. so that means you'll influence the 6th person for free, practically.

At least judging from what you said.

I guess I just expected skill to matter more than it does. Meh.

EDIT: Though, thinking about it, 9-10 hits instead of 11-12 is a rather nice improvement, I guess. When I thought it was 11 hits instead of 11-12, then that's not so nice -grins- But I guess it really is fine, now that I'm not trying to influence in armor.

Could use a big influence area that makes it worth it though, but higher influence mobs.. eesh. Couldn't imagine having dozens of bromide vials like these bashers and their healing.

You are also forgetting that if you only use one or two influencing attacks, there is a chance it will become completely immune to your attacks. If you cycle between all three, that chance is almost nothing.

Unless divert gets involved, anyway.

Hmm.. I'm going to have to try work out how to change my influence macros so it switches randomly between them.

What's wrong with just doing it in order?

I find doing them all in order works just fine. No need to randomize it. Start with the highest and go down (praise, then admire, then compliment, for example).

Also, Like most other skills, I would assume that reaching Trans Influence gives its own boost. Like Resilience jumps quite a bit between Mythical and Trans. I'm guessing most skills do the same.

Monks in Tosha, with 16 Charisma, Trans Influence, Stag TrueHeart, and Demesne Influence, took me like 4-6 attacks roughly, if I recall correctly, and they give more XP than guards. However, that low-time might be due to the TrueHeart and Demesne Influence, but I'm thinking Trans Influence has a bigger effect.

Resilience jumps a bit between mythical and trans because "between mythical and trans" has the most lessons out of all the other gaps, not because trans stops following the formula.

Oooh, I'll go there once I get my throne

And you'll end up wasting more ego than necessary. Without constantly alternating between all three it's possible that the mobile will start to become resistant to one.

Better to do it the boring way. It'd be nice if the NPCs started showing signs of breakdown so I could set funny little messages like Murphy.