Tips for leveling up stats?

[Varrek]

Hello, as the title indicates, I was wondering if anyone has a few tips on how to level up the stats in the game? You know, like, how to get enough erudition to get more reason and so forth. My apologies for bothering.

[marcmagus]

This is obviously going to be pretty spoilery, but it's mostly early-game or mid-game mechanics, so just be warned.

Health: You can simultaneously Work Health (or, better, work Strength + Health) and Study Health to get two Vitality every ~60s. This will easily get you to Strength 2, Strength 3 (needing 6 Vitality) you might need to get a lucky Vitality out of some other effect and effective timing, but it's not too difficult.

Reason: Studying Reason will get you enough Erudition for your first Scholar, and you can usually get a couple on the table at the same time through good luck to set up to get your second the same way if you have free Study at the right moment. For the third, if you really want it, the trick is knowing that when you turn in a commission to a Patron you will always get an Erudition. You can bank up to four that way (complete commissions for every Patron, turn them in all at once), plus 2 from Studying Reason to get your 6 in a straightforward fashion. But note that at present Scholar doesn't do anything, so you're probably better off just grinding Collections of Essays, which are easy to complete.

Passion: The easy thing to do is grinding Study Passion plus Collections of Poetry, but if your goal is to get your Imagination up so you can paint that won't work. What will, however, is lots of Painting [Work Imagination, fill it up with Passion, buy pigments]; you have a decent chance to get Glimmerings from painting, so if you can keep at it (and, ideally, also Study Passion, but you have to have a bunch to do all that at once) you can get there fairly quickly. You'll probably be losing Funds as you do so, however, so beware.

If you know what other activities sometimes give Vitality/Erudition/Glimmering, or plot points in the early game where you might reliably get them for your Legacy, you can work these into a plan where you also progress on other axes.

[Varrek]

Originally posted by marcmagus:

Reason: Studying Reason will get you enough Erudition for your first Scholar, and you can usually get a couple on the table at the same time through good luck to set up to get your second the same way if you have free Study at the right moment. For the third, if you really want it, the trick is knowing that when you turn in a commission to a Patron you will always get an Erudition. You can bank up to four that way (complete commissions for every Patron, turn them in all at once), plus 2 from Studying Reason to get your 6 in a straightforward fashion. But note that at present Scholar doesn't do anything, so you're probably better off just grinding Collections of Essays, which are easy to complete.

This is the main skill that I want to level up, but I don't know for sure how to get commissions. I think its a random drop from the talk verb no? I'm also not too sure how to finish them up, so I could use a bit of help in that. Even if Scholar doesn't does much at present, well, it wouldn't hurt to know how to level reason more, especially since it might get more uses in the future. My apologies if my questions are a bit too obvious, I am a bit rusty and also a bit lost with all the new changes.

[marcmagus]

Collections of Essays will sometimes appear from Morland's and Oriflamme's.

Commissions come from talking to Patrons. Patrons are now met in the same way as Acquaintances, randomly through the using the Talk verb with any Lore.

Talking to Patrons will get you a commission. Working the commission with the requested Lore will complete it. They sometimes want up to 6th order Lore, so banking them is probably more of a midgame than early game strategy.

For just getting lots of Reason, your best bet is probably using the Collections of Essays you'll be getting anyway as you buy out Morland's and Oriflamme's.

[Faey]

Neither shop gives infinite Essays/Poetry anymore, they now give "something something DEEP MYSTERIES something" instead.
On my last playthrough (achieved Incursus victory) I managed to get Health 5, Passion 10, Reason 9 (after the -1 from founding a cult). Mostly following the above suggested methods.
Dreaming and some of the Doors can unreliably provide Vitality/Erudition/Glimmering.
The biggest difficulty, with recent changes, is not losing your job because you're working something else.