So, coming back after a couple of hours at the game. Praise/punish is tricky to understand, but basically it's based around their reaction to you entering that menu. Whether they're paying attention or not.
Seems to have nothing to do with their overall disposition towards you. (I've got a slave noted to hate me, who responds well to praise and poor to punishment, because she pays attention when I tell her to.)
Money is still a chore to grind.
I seem to have hit a serious problem on Cali (market-stall-girl)'s questline though.
I followed the wiki guide far enough to get to the point where she suggests coming with you to the slaver-camp, pretending to be a slave.
Simple enough, except I can't bring her with me. She won't join the battle-group, and I don't know why.
She's obedient, loyal and seems to like me, but her name is grey on the battle-group screen.
What exactly are the prerequisites for taking someone into a fight with you?
Use mind read to check if the servant has been praised recently. If it says something about the servant being upbeat from praising you should give it a few days before praising/gifting the servant, when you use it again and the upbeat status is gone you can praise again. And starting out I would say putting a point in Con to survive a few battles and putting another in STR until you can level up and get more points to allocate in other stats. Sometimes the bandits also drop better versions of equipment with extra stats, they also appear in chests you can lockpick/open with energy. Saving people from being bullied is also a good way for Rep/Rewards (If they offer something)
I have mind-read, so maybe it's doing something pasively, but it looks like I can tell if they're upbeat from being praised or not without actively using it.
That wasn't the issue I was having with it though, they were getting arrogant after the first use.
Turns out I was praising people who weren't even paying attention to me.
Now I know which line of discription to look for, I understand how to do it.