[Coreia]

Throwing in my agreement here...

In Leth Nurae, I've made it to the Sickness in our Midst quest. For this one, I have to parley with an NPC named Faolin - and it has to be gossip. As a high elf, my only strength is in Reason. Without Reason, I have at most '3' cards, which all have higher refresh times, and so far I just can't come close to beating Faolin with what I have. Especially since my lower skill level (40ish) means he starts with a lower counter.

Okay, so put that quest on hold for a while, there must be a solution somewhere else... I went and found the civic diplomacy instructor. He wants me to parley with 'crafters and soldiers' until I get two hearsay for blackmail. Okay, cool, this sounds fun. I used to civic-parley with the nobles in the palace. They started with a counter of 1, but I got lucky several times.... Not anymore. Now I can't even attempt a parley with anyone higher than 75 - which appears to be most of the town.

I finally found an area with crafters in the 50-75 range. They still start with a counter of 10 to my 15, but at least I can use reason... I won Convince parleys against a couple of them, and settled on one girl who happened to just throw Reason expression at me. I leveled up to 60 on her, bringing her counter to 13 to my 15, filling the gaps with Convinces (about a 50/50 success rate) on others when I lost against her and had to wait for her to reset. I collected 30-40 pieces of information, but no hearsay for blackmail. I backtracked and searched out the arcana informant and got a couple of pieces of gear -- but it's presence only. I need /cards/ or starting /expression/. Something to actually help me win a parley.

Right now I'm frustrated out of my mind, and I don't know what I'm expected to do to progress. The normal quest line has thrown me into gossip with no tools to help me through it, and civic diplomacy has pitted me against only one 'target' that is even semi-consistently winnable. And no rewards for two hours' parley. What am I missing?