Amity Mini-Game Explained (Kinda Sorta)

[Karna5]

Alternate title: The Bungler's Guide to the Amity Mini Game

My first couple of years of playing BDO my method for building amity with NPCs was to randomly pick conversations that looked like they might add favor and hope I won and got favor. I had no clue how to know what adds favor and didn't even know sometimes you must fail to win. It was unpleasant and a chore.

Yes, I watched countless tutorials on YouTube and scoured the internet for many threads, and not one of them made sense to me.

However, I did try to figure out patterns o what succeeded and failed, and eventually I figured out there are only three fields that matter in the mini-game:

1. The requirement field (middle left) which tells you whether you need to succeed or fail and how many times and how much favor you need to gain. If it says talk freely, there are no requirements, and just pick what has best chance to add as much favor as possible.

2. Under the Interaction Effect on the character in the wheel:
a. Sparking Interest (chance of success)
b. Favor (how much favor you'll gain if you succeed)

All the other fields are either useless or misdirection and are the reason I couldn't understand any of the tutorials. People "said" what to do, but they didn't point, and as most fields had two things with identical descriptions (such as favor or sparking interest), I never knew which fields mattered.

Here's a picture in which I point out what matters:

https://i.imgur.com/mBy2Gez.jpg

Once I figured out what fields mattered, the game actually became fun. Now I often talk to NPCs just to lay the game.

Please keep in mind the game is almost prohibitively difficult for new players because your chance of success depends on your having the knowledge any given NPC wants, and new players just don't have the knowledge yet.

You gain knowledge by talking to NPCs and killing stuff or doing some quests. So the amity game is not good for new accounts.

Sadly, starter horse gear from stable masters is locked behind the amity game.

[March]

For difficult NPCs (Either I don't have enough knowledge to choose interesting topics or they have ridiculous requirements which have a high risk of failing the conversation) I just wave at them until I get enough amity. Of course, this requires you to have some energy stored up, but it's 3 amity per greeting (3 energy cost). New accounts without much knowledge can use this to get some quick amity with NPCs they deem important. Since amity is family-wide, you only have to spend that energy once.

Interest Level and Favor are not useless, they're the foundation of the Amity formulae, but you're right in the sense that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

As for the combo attribute: The wording is not super clear on what it means, but you'll notice a small blue arrow that goes from that node to the node where the "combo" will take effect. What games calls "turns", it means nodes in the graph.

For example, talking to Eileen about Clorince:
Next combo effect: After 3 turns, Interest Level will be increased by 3 for 4 turns

This means that 3 nodes after conversation hits Clorince, calculation for Interest Level will have additional +3 in the equations. This will be applied to 4 nodes. You can see these numbers when you hover your mouse over those nodes. Obviously, if it says after 5 turns and you put it in the end, this will not do anything as there are not enough nodes left. So it makes sense to try and put these in the beginning so you can reap full benefits if it goes through. Apparently they can also have negative effects, or they did at least, but I can't remember a single time I've seen this recently. Combo only gets applied if the node that will produce the combo sparked successfully.

There's also a question of your zodiac sign, but I have never given it too much thought. I do make a point to have my characters have different signs, but that's more roleplaying than anything else. I believe we don't have the exact formulae for amity calculation, so it's hard to say how much the Zodiac sign contributes, but it's not enough to stress over for sure.

When in doubt: Greet

[Karna5]

Ah, Bartholemew, are you aware that your guide to how to play the amity mini-game is to not play the amity mini-game? Waving/greeting NPCs to gain amity is bypassing the amity-minigame and missing the whole point of explaining to new players how the amity-minigame works. I forgive your comment, of course, as it simply means you misread the title and my post.


You also say: "Interest Level and Favor are not useless, they're the foundation of the Amity formulae, but you're right in the sense that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things."

But you do not explain why they're not useless, do you? I presume from your coment you looked at my picture and that you're asserting one of the fields I said is useless (or worse misleading) is not useless, but you do not explain why you disagree. I assert only three fields matter in the mini-game for knowing what NPCs in the wheel to pick, and you have not offered a reason you disagree.

As for combo cards, are you aware that all the combos do not generate favor? It's always better to pick a card that adds 20 or 30 favor than to pick a combo box which adds no favor. Worse to your assertion, if you need to gain 90 or 140 favor to win, there's absolutely no chance you can achieve that picking a combo card. It's always better to pick something that adds favor over picking a combo card.


Finally, you bring up zodiac but are not explaining what that has to do with the mini-game.

But truly the worst advice you're giving new players ion how to play the mini-game is telling them not to play the mini-game :(