Curfew is according to proclamations at Compline (9 PM) but the Night Watch accosts me at Vespers (6-8 PM).
On another occasion, on my way back to the Inn we defeated some thugs and the local citizens cheered, but we still got accosted by the bloody Night Watch.
So how am I supposed to cleaning the streets of thugs to get Fame, when the Night Watch constantly hounds me at night? I went to the Shloss/Town Hall and asked the clerk if the city needed my services, but obviously our Fame/Reputation was not high enough, and the clerk and the guards had some fun at our expense.

Also, I went to a church and it said they were preparing for Mass. But when we tried to attend the priest said return at Prime. But it was bloody Prime.

Any suggestions?

I used to follow the advice from the Darklands FAQ :

"... dangerous because of the night watches. Always pay the fine. This is the sequence from main street: find a secluded grove; wait for darkness, wait another hour, exit by side street, go to market area."

Alternatively :

"The easiest way to run into robbers is cycling between the
docks and the secluded grove at night. You'll normally 'meet' with robbers
each time you change between one of these locations. At minimum, you'll get
in contact every time you return to the grove."

Thanks for the tip.

I just visited a small hamlet, attended mass and my Divine Favour went down from 99 to 98. Hmm...

According to the Wiki attending mass is one way to increase regeneration of 'used' Divine Favourd99 but it cannot be increased above the maximum of 99.

But still weird that it should decrease.
I went back and accused them of witchcraft, but it turned out I was wrong. Ooops...

Maybe you were smitten for frivolousness ? ☺

I may as well continue this thread instead of making a new one.
Alchemists highwaymen are annoying. It's like they have a machine gun firing potions.
If you kill the alchemist ASAP do you get more potions from the loot?

If you attend Mass in a village, it will be very obvious if they are celebrating a Black Mass. So I don't know why your DF would have gone down, that's strange.

It's hard to answer the question about the alchemist, becuase who knows how many potions he started with? I hate those encounters because they almost always ruin a perfectly good set of armor, but they do give a lot of loot.

A lot of people here seem to be having Night Watch problems. I follow my own routine and almost never encounter them. Other people follow the advice in the clue book and can't move for tripping over the buggers. Go figger.

The bit with the canonical hours is weird. I can only guess that you are getting there exactly at the end of one hour and transitioning into the next. Either that, or your hourglass is set for the wrong time zone.:)

Suggestion: every morning, go directly to church, take mass, and confess. Unless you are very popular in town, the penance you earn should take you into the dark hours. As a bonus, you might get real lucky and bump up a virtue point on a character. What I do next is side-streets/craft guilds. My chars are clumsy and not too streetwise, so they almost always get lost and run into thugs. I have yet to run into the Watch heading back to the Inn after that. Possibly I'm just lucky, but I don't remember having that problem back in the 90s when I first started playing the game.

One other point: it may be that different cities hold Mass more often than others. I was getting a "come back at Vespers" result in one ville, but I have never had trouble with morning mass in Nurnberg, which is a pretty big city. This game does do a lot of subtle adjustments, but I can't say for sure if that is one of them.

-- Mal