NPC Relations: Memory, Favor, Stress, And Gifting

• Rydian wrote on 2015-05-27 06:18
  NPC relationships with players are more complex than we previously thought. In order for NPC secret shops to open up, when you use the Shop button the NPC's status towards you must be...
  15+ Memory
  50+ Favor
  5- Stress
  
  - Favor
  You gain Favor with them by giving them gifts (usually), or completing their PTJ.
  You get up to 4 Favor for a perfect, up to 2 Favor for semi-complete, and 0 Favor for a failed PTJ.
  These are the only situations I can find where Favor is added so far that's reliably usable.
  
  - Memory
  When you interact with NPCs, their Memory of you goes up. Memory of 3 is a threshold and they'll remember you for a bit (there's a comment that translates to "Third meeting - storing the user"). Memory goes up now and then at other times, it's hard to map out when 'cause some of these are engine functions we don't have access to. When you talk to NPCs about Private Story or Nearby Rumors their Memory of you rises (up to 2 point at a time), but...
  
  - Stress
  Talking to NPCs with Nearby/Private keywords repeatedly will stress them. If their Memory of you is at least two, it adds 5 stress. If their memory is 7 or higher when you start a conversation, they add +10 stress. Even in most other cases, when you talk to them with those keywords (or ones they don't know about) even in the same conversation, you get a semi-random amount of Stress added (1-5 or so depending on their current view of you). As far as how Stress is lowered I'm not sure, it looks like the engine handles that but it might be similar to Stress for partners in that it lowers automatically over time.
  
  
  How can you tell their Memory/Favor/Stress? I can't tell you much that we don't already know... most of the indicators are text responses and give you hints based on various combinations of their feeling towards you (there's too many combinations for me to bother mapping and they can vary per NPC). The only obvious thing I can dig up is a setting for Favor thresholds to change the character's facial expressions when you speak with them.
  [spoiler="Favor = Face Type"]40+ = "Love"
  16 to 39 = "Good"
  -14 to 15 = "Normal"
  -39 to -13 = "Bad"
  -40 or less = "Hate"[/spoiler]
  
  Now as far as gifting, there actually is a science behind which items NPCs like and dislike. First off, Likability Potions flat-out increase favor by 10 and memory by 4. This means that you should only need 5 potions for an NPC (their thresholds are defined per-NPC but I haven't seen one vary yet). The reason that the wiki lists 6-7 for some NPCs is probably from players talking to them too much and stressing them out.
  
  So knowing this, it should be possible to give even "hard" NPCs 5 likability potions to open up. So I went up to Agnes, said hello once, then gave her 5 potions and her shop opened.
  
  [video=youtube;cDw9UDMfeq8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDw9UDMfeq8[/video]
  
  One major question is how exactly do NPCs pick which items they like as gifts?
  Is there anything we can do to speed up the gifting process?
  
  The Tastes of an item are...
  [spoiler="Tastes"]Beauty
  Individuality
  Luxury
  Toughness
  Utility
  Rarity
  Meaning
  Adult
  Maniac
  Anime
  Sexy[/spoiler]
  These are listed in the client (itemdb) and various other places so they've been known about for a while, but people thought they were unused. Turns out they're actually how NPCs decide what items they like and don't like. Different NPCs have different reactions to an item's taste.
  
  Agnes, for example, is known to be annoying to befriend to get into her secret shop using the old methods so we'll use her as an example. Looking at her likes and dislikes, we end up with...
  [spoiler="Agnes' Tastes"]Beauty: 2
  Individuality: 0
  Luxury: 1
  Toughness: -1
  Utility: 2
  Rarity: 1
  Meaning: 2
  Adult: 0
  Maniac: -1
  Anime: -1
  Sexy: 0[/spoiler]Agnes likes Beauty, Utility, and Meaning most, and also likes Luxury and Rarity. She dislikes Toughness, Maniac, and Anime.
  
  Knowing this, we can try to figure out item gifts that she'll like.
  The wiki lists Anthology as her preferred present, so we'll look at this first.
  
  An Anthology's Taste is...
  [spoiler="Anthology"]Taste_Beauty="0"
  Taste_Indivisuality="0" [sic]
  Taste_Luxury="0"
  Taste_Toughness="-10"
  Taste_Utility="0"
  Taste_Rarity="10"
  Taste_Meaning="20"
  Taste_Adult="0"
  Taste_Maniac="0"
  Taste_Anime="0"
  Taste_Sexy="-10"[/spoiler]Now we need to determine the actual "score" of this item. To do this we multiply Agnes' likes by the item's tastes. This will cause us to end up with 0, 0, 0, 10, 0, 10, 40, 0, 0, 0, 0. And if we add up those numbers, the end result, the "score" of the item, is 60.
  
  Now that we know what the normal gift worth is, let's try to find another easily-accessible item with a decent score, perhaps one that stacks.
  
  [spoiler="Six-Sided Die"]Taste_Beauty="1"
  Taste_Indivisuality="-3" [sic]
  Taste_Luxury="-2"
  Taste_Toughness="-4"
  Taste_Utility="9"
  Taste_Rarity="-2"
  Taste_Meaning="4"
  Taste_Adult="0"
  Taste_Maniac="2"
  Taste_Anime="-6"
  Taste_Sexy="0"[/spoiler]So we end up with 2, 0, -2, 4, 18, -2, 8, 0, -2, 6, 0. So this item has a score of 32 which isn't as good as the Anthology, but it should make a good gift since it stacks to 100 at a time instead of just 1, right?
  
  Now let's see how a gift's score is converted into Favor... uh oh, turns out there's a difference between stackable and unstackable items for gifts.
  
  Unstackable
  [code]score / (Random(2) + 2)[/code]
  So the 60 ends up as either 30, 20, or 15.
  
  Unstackable
  [code](score * current_bundle) / (Random(2) + 5) / max_bundle[/code]
  So one Six-Sided Die in a stack of 100 units ends up as either 6.4, 5.3, or 4.5 for each one in the stack.
  
  So even with the stack cut, a stack of Six-Sided Die would be over twice as nice of a gift... Unfortunately, as I found out the hard way, NPCs will only take one item from a stack at a time. So in almost all cases gifting them stackable items will be much worse and slower than non-stackable items, unfortunately.
  
  This means that for most NPCs, the standard "gift" items are still the way to go if you don't have those potions, though a way of raising Memory without raising Stress at the same time would make the process of getting into a secret shop quicker overall.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By the way, the lore hunters out there should totally try to make friends with NPCs, they can actually tell you some interesting things about the in-game world, including unseen characters like the king.
  [spoiler="Briana"]

  [Image: http://i.imgur.com/g4oLY7B.jpg]

  
  

  [Image: http://i.imgur.com/oucvfF0.jpg]

  
  

  [Image: http://i.imgur.com/20voR3C.jpg]

  [/spoiler]
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2015-05-27 06:29

  - Stress
  Talking to NPCs with Nearby/Private keywords repeatedly will stress them.

  
  
  ... What. Who the hell said this that it increased FAVOR in the beginning... >.>
• Slayerj wrote on 2015-05-27 08:16

  Quote from Darkboy132;1276531:

  ... What. Who the hell said this that it increased FAVOR in the beginning... >.>

  
  
  That's what I'd like to know...all the time I spent on that damn secret shot..URG..also, good to know they still do hidden Lore...I should really get back on my elf and start going around befriending NPCs again (without pots 'cus screw rafting for them~) I miss talking with Stewart..
• Rydian wrote on 2015-05-27 08:50
  Was probably something along the lines of "talk to them every so often to see how far along you are" and somebody took that to mean "talk to them a lot to keep track of it" and then it became "talk to them every time".
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2015-05-27 08:59

  Quote from Rydian;1276539:

  Was probably something along the lines of "talk to them every so often to see how far along you are" and somebody took that to mean "talk to them a lot to keep track of it" and then it became "talk to them every time".

  
  
  NPC reports Milletian for harassment. Milletian gets banned.
  
  GG at the evil mastermind's plan.
• Elleanior wrote on 2015-05-28 06:34
  That's some fairly interesting information.
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2015-06-07 03:24
  So then, what would be the best way to unlock without the use of Like Pots?
• X wrote on 2015-06-07 03:56
  - Look up your victim in the data leaked scripts.
  - Identify their tastes (contained in GetGiftReaction, I think).
  - Scour the itemdb, and the NPC's trash, for clues as to what gifts they'd like.
  - Laugh when the females like candles and the males like panties.
  - Arrange with a store to have 500 of their favorite item shipped direct to their door.
  - BE THERE WHEN THE GIFTS ARRIVE.
  - Smile creepily at the NPC, cause they have no idea what's coming.
  - Shove gifts down your victim's throat 10 at a time, until they choke.
  - After the 10th item, ask them if you can do the nasty/see their shop/get their book/etc.
  - If they refuse, KEEP SHOVING until they break like a twig. Really, you want to go all Silence of the Lambs on their ass.
  - If they start whining, shove 4 gold into their mouth to block their windpipe. Sadly this only works temporarily.
  
  Alternatively you can just assume the Wiki is correct (it usually is) and use those items.
• Rydian wrote on 2015-06-07 04:23
  It seems memory is the limiting factor in terms of time to increase what's needed, the only reliable way to gain memory with the NPC is to talk to them a lot. Using the Nearby Rumors or Private Story keyword tends to increase Memory by 1-2 each time. So the theory is...
  
  1 - Talk to the NPC about one of those keywords ~12 times on average (15 at the most)
  2 - Give them 6 of their favorite gifts (should be enough for even the picky ones).
  
  So the talking is to reach 15 memory, then gifts to hit 50 favor, which might erase the stress built up from gifting. But I just tested on Kirine and it doesn't erase the stress enough. Maybe more time is needed or something.
  
  Wish I could see how stress is lowered normally.