If you give me permission, I can steal from your shop. And I totally would too.

Kill in Newton. You get lessons from killing 100 finks and 100 gnomes. Influencing doesn't increase that counter.

Until you leave Newton, don't bother influencing - you get achievements for killing gnomes/finks which means free extra lessons, and influencing doesn't count towards it. Plus you stand to gain way more gold by just killing the things and giving the corpses to the appropriate npc: easily 25K+ by the time you reach level 21 and get booted out. For now just pump your lessons into your guildskills, since as a freshman novice in your guild you can forget a skill to recoup all the lessons, leaving you free to sink them into influencing at a later date. (Just make sure you do this before you graduate.)

I'm level 25ish now and found the influencing guide at top isn't helping much....all those places are really hard with the update. Any other places I can influence?

Hmm. Let me see...I never really measured influencing much until I was a demigod/Ascendant, but where have you already tried? I'll see about suggesting some places, though at that level, I'd assume places like the villages would be good.

Have you put any lessons into influencing? If not you should probably try for at least the second begging skill, which isn't that many lessons in.

Beauty enchantment on a ring is also very helpful. Make sure to RUB BEAUTY when deffing up, and you'll occasionally need to recharge it from a cube.

(sorry if this is stuff you already know)

Other things to watch out for: Prestige in STAT. When begging, lower prestige is helpful (Take off jewelry and wear your old tunic and pants from the portal) anything else, and you want higher prestige. Eventually, you won't need to switch clothes but for me early on this was helpful (I wasn't a faeling though)

knowing what kind of begging technique they're weak to is very important. Greedy villagers are completely immune to begging, so if you're trying on them it's not surprising you're having trouble. You learn this with analyze in Influence, which is pretty low.

I'm up to leadership in influence. I'll try to find some good looking clothes to help me with influencing. So far I found the village of Stewartsville is just about right for me. The monks in the place in the mountains that's recommended in the guide was far too hard. Thanks for the help so far!

at low levels, quests are decent sources of xp, as long as you can figure them out and they don't involve bashing/influencing. I guess that doesn't really apply when you're totally new to the game though.

Yeah, at the lower levels, villages are pretty good to influence until you're ready to move onto other areas. Perhaps places like the Caoimhe Dell, the Arthrar'rt Observatory and the Scorpion Caverns will do when you become a midbie.

Whats the best way to influence? For example, say a person is friendly and I'm begging or using supplication. Should I just stick with the higher begging skill? Or is it better to switch back and forth?

Another thing, do most of you just do the begging related skills to make money on every mob that is not greedy? Or do you analyze and pick the most appropriate one. Thanks!

Switch back and forth is the way to do it.

Personally I do whatever they're weak to, so it'll go faster.

It's usually best to switch between the two highest skills you have available to you at the time- like say wheedling and supplication if you've all the begging subset influence abilities. Just relying on one makes the denizen more inclined to become resistant and stubborn.

You can beg any denizen that's not greedy, just keep in mind that those who are friendly will be easier because of their personality being weak to begging. In my situation, influencing is more for getting esteem for offerings than money, but money is of course always nice to have.

Edit: Also, it's good to spend some lessons in Dramatics if you plan to be influencing a lot, a beauty ring, perfumed oils (sandalwood for begging) can give you an extra boost.

Er, no. If you have all three, you should switch between all three.

Well, whichever works best for each person then. I personally stick to two, and it works fine for me.

Faeling. Not everyone has the luxury of an ungodly amount of cha.

Using three works best for every person. I guess 2 is good enough for you though. /shrug

I've found that the one that they're weak to, isn't always the one that takes the least ego, I think, I only tend to influence guards, and only when -really- bored. Next chance I get will re-test.

They're weak to different types based on their personality shown in ANALYSE . The wiki has a table showing stuff.

Guards are immune to seduction and weakening afaik (maybe paranoia too?), so using them to test doesn't give proper data.

Not all guards, I thought? Different guards have different mindsets