User blog comment:Wyvern Queen Kym/A Beginner's Guide to Love Interests/@comment-174544-20120912001323

I have a couple of theories of sorts to put forward; I believe that certain NPC's react better to affinity gain overall.

By this, I don't mean specific gifts, as I'm sure everyone here is aware that each NPC has at least one favored gift. What I mean is there are NPC's that have a flat affinity bonus (i.e. They gain X% more affinity whenever they gain affinity).

Admittedly, most of this speculation is based off of Aelinore, as she seems to be a bit of a whore for affinity. After heaving a jug at her (by accident, believe it or not), I was able to reach the jingle stage by giving her 2 beast steaks, and only talking to her 3 (more) times.

Madeleine's also seems to increase quite fast (at least in my game, apparently some people aren't so "lucky").

The other possibility (which is admittedly more likely) is that certain NPC's have an overall lower threshold for reaching the "crush" (jingle) and "love" (pink glow) stages of affinity.

For example, you might say that every time you talk to someone their affinity increases by +1, and hypothetically say that Aelinore's "crush" stage is at 10 affinity, whereas someone like Mercedes is more along the lines of 30+.

Now, at this stage I know that's not much to go on, but I just thought I'd put my thoughts out there and see if anyone else has had similar experiences.

Perhaps the graceful, ever-charming Kim can comment. :)