Special note to the owners/editors of this forum: a true-format preview of our posts would be priceless. I had to edit this post seven times to compensate for the erroneous, and totally unforeseen, formatting corruptions caused by punctuation in my original version. Thank you.
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…MAIN TOPIC…
When I googled the question “how to level up Speech”, I found no one seemed to know the answer. I read three different posts, one here in the official forums, another in Steam forums, and a third on Reddit. No one had a clue; everyone’s answer was just a guess or recital of random experiences. So I decided to be scientific. Here are my findings.
…Conversation with NPCs advances the Speech skill by one experience point (1 xp) for each white-colored line of text in the dialogue options that you engage with. Gray-colored lines grant no xp, nor does simply interacting with an NPC without actually doing any conversation. White lines must be used.
…But conversation is usually slow, unless you’re having a long quest-related conversation. Haggling is usually faster and it can certainly be done more often. But the nuances are complex.
For anyone who wants to try to reproduce my findings, here are the specific starting conditions I was working with:
…Game version 1.3.1.
…Created a save point right outside a tavern so I could conduct each trial quickly.
…Main level 4, Charisma 7, Speech at level 6 with 30 xp already earned toward lvl 7.
…NPC: an alehouse maid with starting rep of 52% toward me.
…Item haggled over: 3 pieces of bacon amounting to 34.5 groschen, retail. This exact amount was convenient and important because it meant I would be working with exact increments at the start of the haggle rather than the game rounding up an off-center number like 34.9 to 40 and thus incorrectly interpreting a change of price when I declined to move the starting amount. A whole integer would’ve been better, like 34 or 35, but the .5 worked out equally well in this case.
Set 0 (baseline): no haggling. Bought the bacon at retail price without entering into a haggle.
trial 1: gained no xp, no change to reputation.
trial 2: gained no xp, no change to reputation.
trial 3: gained no xp, no change to reputation.
Set 1: maximum tip. (moved my offer all the way to the top of the haggle bar)
trial 1: 2 xp, +2 rep.
trial 2: 2 xp, +2 rep.
trial 3: 0 xp, +2 rep.
trial 4: 1 xp, +2 rep.
trial 5: 1 xp, +2 rep.
Set 2: minimum tip. (one increment above start line)
trial 1: 1 xp, +2 rep.
trial 2: 1 xp, +2 rep.
trial 3: 4 xp, +2 rep.
trial 4: 3 xp, +2 rep.
trial 5: 1 xp, +2 rep.
Set 3: no change, agree upon initial price.
trial 1: 6 xp, 0 rep.
trial 2: 4 xp, 0 rep.
trial 3: 4 xp, 0 rep.
trial 4: 6 xp, 0 rep.
trial 5: 5 xp, 0 rep.
Set 4: minimum haggle. (one increment below start line)
trial 1: 1 xp, 0 rep.
trial 2: 1 xp, 0 rep.
trial 3: 1 xp, 0 rep.
trial 4: 2 xp, 0 rep.
trial 5: 2 xp, 0 rep.
Set 5: “lowball” haggle. (offered the lowest price available in the haggle bar)
trial 1: 5 xp, -2 rep. No bacon!
trial 2: 6 xp, -2 rep. She snatched the bacon out of my hands.
trial 3: 4 xp, -2 rep. She refused to give me any bacon.
trial 4: 6 xp, -2 rep. She kept the bacon all to herself.
trial 5: 5 xp, -2 rep. She ate the bacon right there in front of me.
Set 6: sweet spot?
trial 1: 4 xp, 0 rep.
trial 2: 4 xp, 0 rep.
trial 3: 4 xp, 0 rep.
trial 4: 5 xp, 0 rep.
trial 5: 6 xp, 0 rep.
NOTE: I was working with a margin of 24 increments below the starting line. In this case the sweet spot for a prolonged haggling session was 8 increments down (trader would lose nearly half of her patience), hold position for the next round (trader would lose about three-quarters of her total patience), then compromise up 1 increment to seal the deal.
…Mind that your increment count will vary based on your starting rep with your trader and the amount being haggled over. I think it also makes a big difference how many increments of compromise you are willing to make after the trader’s first response. If I started low and compromised little, her patience would quickly run out. If I started low but then compromised at least two increments, she would usually accept. The option of not compromising at all also exists but in those cases you can not start low.
…It took me a while to find this spot despite the trader’s patience losses being quite consistent. I wanted to find a spot where I could see at least two movements of the trader’s patience dial before we agreed upon my third offer. Offering too low of an initial price risked angering the trader too quickly. Offering too high of a price gave too little wiggle room in the haggle bar for the haggling session to endure to my goal.
Conclusions/Thoughts.
…The “sweet spot” seems to be bitter sweet since it appears to be a waste of time compared to putting no effort into the haggle whatsoever. Yes, the sweet spot will net you the most profit, or least cost, but if all you care about is leveling your Speech skill then staying at the start line is a time saver.
…It makes sense to me that I would receive negligible xp for tipping the trader. After all, money talks, so why would I get the credit? However, I find it odd that I could earn so much xp for completely forfeiting the trade in Set 5. Granted, Henry would then be under obligation to make amends with that trader if the player wanted to keep that progress rather than reloading a save point, but still: what does Henry actually learn about Speech from being an overly frugal jerk?
If you’ve read all the way to the bottom of this post, thank you for your interest. I’d like to leave a parting comment about why I asked the opening question in the first place. On my first character playthrough, I found Charisma was too unreliable of a stat when the persuasion options appeared in scripted conversation. My Charisma was less than half of my Speech stat by about halfway through the game and it could easily become less if my attire was unattractive. But my Speech stat was consistent. Thus, I wanted to know how I could quickly level it up while playing on a new character.