About EQ Faction Dance

This site is meant to be a tool to assist adventurers who want to ally with as many factions as possible.

This is an open source project. If you find an error or have an idea for a change feel free to either open an issue on Github or fork the repository and make a pull request with your desired changes.

Faction List

The faction list page provides a list of faction links. Clicking a faction will show a quick summary of how to raise that faction and what factions are likely to be hurt by raising it. You can then click on those to see how to repair those factions when you've maxed the original one.

Faction Order

The faction order page calculates the optimal order to increase factions in. It will first show you a list of factions that you won't need to hurt later. Once you've maxed a faction (or simply want to skip it) you can mark it complete. At that point any factions you had to hurt to raise the previous faction but can now be safely raised will be added to the list.

For example, if your goal is to max the 7 major Velious factions, it's impossible to improve Thurgadin factions without hurting Kael Drakkel factions, and impossible to max Kael Drakkel factions without hurting Skyshrine factions. However, the inverse is not true, so the list will tell you to max Dain and Coldain first, then Tormax, Kromzek, and Kromrif (by killing dragons, not dwarves), then finally raise Yelinak and Claws of Veeshan by fighting in Crystallos.

Recommended ways to increase faction

Some factions can be increased in a variety of ways. For factions that can be increased the faction list and faction info pages will include a recommended way to improve that faction. These recommendations aren't necessarily the fastest or easiest way to increase this faction, but are the way that should have the least negative impact on other factions or will mostly impact factions that can be easily repaired.

General Faction Notes

If possible, you want to raise your faction via quests instead of kills. Not only do they tend to give bigger hits (though not always), but they usually give a better ratio of positives to negatives. The secondary hits for allies and enemies are generally much smaller than the hit to the actual faction of the NPC you're interacting with, so if you kill and NPC you will gain far less faction with their enemies than you lose for killing them. Conversely, if you do a quest for an NPC you will generally gain far more faction with them than you lose with their enemies.

The tricky part here of course is that you need them to already be at least non-KOS or possibly even higher to accept your quest turn ins. There are a few ways around this. In Classic content illusion potions work quite well for making yourself welcome in unfriendly cities, provided you haven't also damaged your reputation too much. The hide/sneak combo is also a good way to do turn ins if they don't require higher than indifferent. If you aren't a class that can hide you can sometimes use a rogue spirit shroud to do this. If the NPC doesn't aggro (or you can reinvis really fast) you can also use invis by opening the trade window then casting invis before Give.

Charm is also an option in some cases. You won't get faction from turning in an item to a charmed NPC, but you can use charm to hail them and get quest items to turn in elsewhere. If you can't cast charm yourself the evil eye enchanter shroud has a nearly unesistable charm that works up to level 70, so it's an effective way to charm most old world NPCs that aren't outright immune.

Terminology

A few different terms are used throughout this site, the meanings of which are explained below.

Faction Importance

Important

Important factions are quest, guard, or merchant factions or any other factions with some benefit associated with increasing them.

Unimportant

Unimportant factions are factions which can be increased but have no benefit associated with raising them aside from possibly being non-KOS in an area where mobs are normally hostile. Factions which can't be raised but do start out non-KOS will also be listed as unimportant as you may wish to preserve them rather than treat them as expendable and make yourself KOS where you don't need to be.

Useless

Useless factions can be increased but do not appear in the faction window and do not appear to have any NPCs associated with them. It's recommend you treat these as expendable unless you really love faction grinding.

Expendable

Expendable factions are factions which start KOS and either can't be raised or can never be raised past scowling (such as the various Omens of War hostile factions). These factions can be safely ignored when planning your faction dance.

Unused

These are factions which were previously unknown before being seen in the faction window. While it's possible there are some odd NPCs hidden in some corner of Norrath that we haven't encountered yet, in all likelihood these factions appear to be unused and cannot be raised, lowered, or interacted with in any way other than seeing them in the faction window.

Faction Relationships

An NPC can only belong to one faction, but killing an NPC or turning in a quest often results in many hits due to the complex relationships between factions.

Allies/Enemies

Allied factions are those that give sympathetic hits. For example, if you do a quest for one faction you will also gain standing (often a smaller amount) with its allies. Likewise you will lose a bit with a faction's allies for killing one of its members. Faction enemies are naturally the opposite; completing a quest for a faction will make its enemies like you less, while killing NPCs belonging to a faction will make enemies like you more.

Ally of/Enemy of

These faction relationships are not always bidirectional. For example, nearly every faction in Qeynos and the surrounding zones will give you some sort of hit with Guards of Qeynos, while killing or questing for Guards of Qeynos only yields secondary hits for 4 other factions. Faction A may view Faction B as an ally while Faction B has no view on Faction A.

Diametrically Opposed

Faction relationships are often mutual, and if two factions hate each other it is sometimes difficult to raise each other. In many cases it can be done either by doing quests for an ally of one faction that doesn't hate the other, or by fighting a different enemy of one or both of them. Other times, however, it is difficult if not impossible to raise one of two factions without hurting the other. These faction pairs are referred to as diametrically opposed factions.

Safe/Unsafe Factions

A faction is safe to increase when you won't need to hurt it to raise other factions. Unsafe factions are factions that if raised now will probably be damaged later. Many factions are always safe, as they have few or no enemies, but other factions only become safe when you finish working with their enemies. For example, you will need to hurt your standing with the giants of Kael Drakkel to make the coldain of Thurgadin like you, but Kael factions can be improved without harming Thurgadin factions, so once you are done with Thurgadin Kael Drakkel becomes safe, provided you don't accidentally damage your Thurgadin faction and need to repair it.