Relationship

Relationship is a mechanic that abstractly determines how much an NPC likes you.

Relationship is only somewhat related to whether or not a creature is actually hostile to you, or will attack you. A creature with a negative enough relationship will turn hostile if they were neutral before, but many creatures spawn hostile, and raising their relationship doesn't turn their hostility off.

Relationship is most important for determining when you can marry your companions, how adventurers treat you, and, in Elona+, as a prerequisite to use of an Astral Light Pen.

Levels of Relationship and Impress

Impress is the in-game word for the score an NPC has for their relationship to your character. It appears on the left of the text box when talking to an NPC, and changes to impress status appear in the text log at the bottom of the screen unless they are a <boss character>.

Relationship Level	Impress Points Needed
Foe	15 or below
Hate	16-24
Annoying	25-39
Normal (50 is the default)	40-74
Amiable	75-99
Friend	100-149
Fellow (shows up as (???))	150-~199
Soul Mate (shows up as (???))	~200-299
*love* (shows up as (???))	300 or above

Raising Impress

NPC Impress

There are several means of raising impress levels with NPCs that aren't in your party:

• Talking to an NPC that can talk can randomly increase or decrease impress. This seems to depend upon your character's charisma and the target character's level. In general, better charisma leads to more random positive changes, while higher level NPCs tend to require higher-charisma characters to gain impress.Shopkeepers and guards have high levels, and are harder to get along with. Also note that this will not increase impress above 100.
• A love potion, or food spiked with love potion, can be used to increase relation, but do not give the potion to the NPC directly.
• Sleeping with the NPC can be another viable tactic. Just give the target an identified bottle of non-cursed alcohol to get them drunk, then offer them "a little tail" when you talk to them. Be aware that you need to have plenty of remaining stamina, may catch a disease, and will take a one point karma penalty (barring secret treasure of the wicked) for doing so.
• Token of friendship can be given if you are already at "Friend" impress level.
• Elona+ adds a series of gift items such as Valentine's chocolates and others that can be purchased and given to NPCs.

Pet Impress

Members of your party have other options:

• Just let them kill things. Tell all your other pets to wait at the bar, and go pick fights with random enemies, letting the companion you want to raise relation with get kills. Alternately, just keep them in your party as you adventure, and if they are any good at all, they'll reach "Soul Mate" relationship eventually.
• Engagement rings or necklaces can be given to pets. Note that this will take up their inventory slots, and trying to take the jewelry back drops impress and destroys the jewelry.

Losing Impress

NPC Impress

An NPC, especially an adventurer with low impress can become hostile to the character. Use a disguise kit or spell or scroll of disguise to make them no longer hostile, and speak to them to try to halt their hostility.

• Talking to an NPC, especially when they have no remaining Attract, can randomly drop Impress.
• Hostile acts or damaging an NPC in any way drops impress. This includes damage from any sort of environmental hazard created by you, such as fire or acid, non-damaging hexes, or even thrown potions that have beneficial effects.
• Being caught pickpocketing from that NPC will drop impress significantly.
• Giving an NPC a love potion does massive damage to impress. Either mix the potion with food, or throw the potion on the ground and hope they step in it if you want to raise impress.

Pet Impress

Pets do not follow the same rules: 

• Pets lose impress if they are killed, even in the Pet Arena.  
• Pets don't lose impress for being damaged (or affected by hexes or other such things) by your character - they do seem to lose attract, however.
• Pets lose massive impress if you try to take any sort of engagement jewelry from their inventory. Also, just trying to get the jewelry back will involve them swallowing the ring. (In game-terms, deleting the item without having anything to do with food.)
  • Non-pet NPCs do not do this when traded for engagement jewelry - you can hire an adventurer, give them engagement jewelry, and then trade to get it back from them.
• Pets never gain or lose impress (or attract) for talking.

Attract

Attract's full function doesn't seem to be entirely clear.

At least, on the surface, it appears to be a measure of the current mood of an NPC. It goes down as an NPC is annoyed, which unfortunately includes every time you talk to them. Since this applies to shopkeepers every time you look at what they have to buy or sell, they will frequently hit minimum attract.

Attract is represented by little "faces" on the bottom left of the NPC dialog box.

Having no attract appears to cause an NPC to stop making idle chatter with the player character, (instead saying "[character name] is bored" or some other indicator of their displeasure,) and will make their impress level tend to go down as you interact with them further.

Performing seems to also drain attract, and may have a function in curtailing how much money they are willing to throw at you.

Attract also appears to be counted among pets, where it seems to merely reflect how often you've hit them with "friendly fire" recently. It may have an impact on how quickly their impress status rises or declines, and having max attract is necessary for marrying them.