[Byrjun]

While we're talking about the Shaman epic... I have no hard evidence besides doing the quest 3 times on live.

I've never heard of anyone having to charm anything to do the quest. If you do the quest "normally" you should always have enough faction for each step. (This is as a shaman... are we talking about non-shaman faction? Because that was different and required some grinding)

The biggest inaccuracy with the epic here is how common the books are in CoM. No one ever used the CoM books to faction skip on live, yet everyone uses that method here. The drop rate on most of the books might be a bit right, but the Student's Log from the Spectral Courier was too rare for that to be an option. I personally spent about 16 hours camping that one book when I did my epic in Kunark. That was highly unusual, but the Courier still spawns way too often on P99. 1 spawn per 4 hours or so would be a start, instead of 1 spawn per 30-60 minutes as it is now.

The method that everyone used to faction skip on live was turning in Woe/Envy + Marr's Promise. I feel the faction you receive for this section of the quest is too low. It was 3-4 turn ins of Woe/Envy/Marr's Promise (including the gem turn in in EJ) to max faction on live.

Here's a non-classic comment about starting the epic:

Factioned it with an iksar monk, problaby 1 year to 2 years ago.

Did not take long at all this way. Curious how you managed to do it 10 times? unless you tested it with an enchanter. I had to use oen click from the orante velium pendant on the wolf, and one on Bondi in order to get the gem and get him to take it. After that I was able to get it without using any more clicks. I did use another click however when doing the turn in of the childs tear as otherwise a non-shaman will not have the faction.

Then there was a discussion about whether Sneak would have been enough... some people saying that an Indifferent faction about Sneak (0) is required... no conclusion was actually made though.

Here's a shaman factioning up by doing the first part of the quest:

First turn in to Bondl - indifferent to amiable (had already done up to Test of Patience)
Second - Amiable to Kindly
Third thru fourth - kindly to warmly
Fifth thru eighth - warmly to ally
Ninth thru 16th - ally, gave up and did Woe/Envy one time to max ally.

Probably would have been maybe four more times giving the gem to Bondl to max it out? Anyways I bound both shaman and druid at Bondl, ported to Buthcerblock, gated druid back as shaman ran to Peg Leg. Made a hotkey for the text so all I had to do was target and hit hotkey, bag the gem, and gate. Rinse, repeat.

I did the whole max ally faction with Peg Leg once before on a little shaman I started up on a new server once, as I was getting xp for the kills. This was a long time ago, many years, and I don't recall how many times it took, as I only did the hand in once per Peg Leg spawn for some silly reason, over a few day period.