Little Favours (a Brief Overview of DDO Favour)

Todays title comes from a song by KT Tunstall and follows the english (correct) way of spelling favour, if your american and want to blank out the U in your mind well...... seriously. Guess this gives away the fact I am from the UK.

Today I want to talk about something that players new to the game will be scratching their heads about because at first it seems to make no sense. And yet the rewards each house gives you is important to what and how you play, especially for the free to play and  premium players. So we will discuss what is favour and look at the those points that new players should be taking note of. Some rewards will be unachiveable unless you have access to quest packs from the ddo store. First thing about favour is it is a one off reward and its value can only change if you do a quest of a harder difficulty, if you do Cannith Crystal at the start and get to do it on hard you will get 4 favour, if you do it again on normal you get no more favour, the only way to increase the value to 6 (the maximum favour you could earn for this quest) is to do it on elite. The favour is not cumlative so if you do it on hard and get 4 favour and then do it on elite for 6 favour the total favour will only increase by 2 points. I know this will sound obvious to experienced players but it isn't as obvious as it seems to new players. Now turbine not only gift bonuses for achieving favour with each faction in the game the total faction also brings bonuses, for a new player this is good because your first character on a server will get 25 turbine points (TP) at 25, 50 and 100 and then at every 100 total favour you get another 25 TP. Any other character you start will reward you at 100 favour increments.

Not even got myself a new back pack

So what is important in total favour as I grow as a player? Apart from turbine points which are useful to purchase things the favour brings rewards at certain points. Favour will unlock race and classes for players allowing them more fun options to play with. At 400 total favour you unlock the Drow race and can play as a dark elf with different racial bonuses. 1000 total favour unlocks Vetern status 1 which allows a player to start new characters at level 4. 1750 favour brings a +2 tome and 32 point build, which may seem a small thing but as you play more you realise just how vital each point is so select your tome well and enjoy creating more powerful builds via the 32 points. At 2500 favour you unlock the favoured soul which is a fighting caster which to me sits between the Paladin and the Cleric. And at 3,000 favour you unlock Veteran Status 2 which allows you to start your characters at level 7 and avoid some of that grind of repeating lower level quests again and again. Now finally there is Revered at 5000 favour which gives you a +5 tome. This is all covered in the ddo wiki but if your exposure to the game is just looking then this is as good a place as any to get some idea of what you are working towards.

You can always go back and do the ones you missed.

Every faction in the game rewards characters for achieving favour. Some things are more useful than others so here is a quick run down of some things to think about when you are deciding what quests to do. The coin lords provide additional storage space, at 75 favour your get 1 bag of holding (or back pack as I think of them) which equates to a 20 slots bag and at 150 you can get another 20 slot bag but this requires a collapsed portable hole and money. I have yet to find a player who is not interested in extra storage. House Deneith provides ammunition which for those who use ammo is useful. Now the Twelve provides even more storage with ingrediants bags but I am not a fan of trying for that sort of favour at the moment. And House Kundarak at 75 and 150 allows you to buy extra space at the bank. And even if you have everything unlocked you probably still feel like you don't have enough storage. Finally in terms of key favour totals House Cannith at 150 favour unlocks the artificer class which has always been a fun class to play but at present I am concentrating on other characters.

One day I will have enough time for the Temple runs.

I cvould cut and paste wiki guide and other people's work but the concept here was to get new players to think not just of experience for their character but also the favour a character can get and what it is worth. Save all your turbine points and you could buy an adventure pack which would unlock more favour. Obviously us VIPs are lazy and can't be bothered to work for a lot of this. But to me the 1750 is important for at least one character because of the tome and it unlocks 32 point builds.

Now there is plenty of information on Favour in the ddo wiki which is useful is you want a more in depth view of how favour works and the rewards but if you are lazy and you only enjoy pictures and an easy read then hopefully this little commentary will give you some idea of what favour gives players.

Happy Favour Gathering

Grouseman