First off IMHO, I think they need to take another look at Honesty before they make any adjustment to Justice. The Honesty virtue might be the single biggest grind in the game.
There's no problem with honesty, if you know what to do. It took me 2 hours a day over 3 days spread out in a week to get knight.
The secret is to have a character with forensics (you should be able to identify all the items once you get into the 60s, though it might take a lot of checks on some of them - all the more chances for skill gains).
- Pick a starting point on the coast (the point where the mountains come to the sea, south of the Blighted Grove and Shame, is probably the best)
- Run along the entire coast of Britannia clockwise, stopping to pick up any honesty items you find (usually, about 20), until you come up the coast from Skara to finish the circuit.
- Then, recall to all the islands (all the island cities, both the original and volcano sides of Fire Island, the prison island off Yew, Skull off Buc's Den, Iver's Rounding off Skara, Dragon Island north of Jhelom, all the islands between Trinsic & Serpent's Hold, the islands between Trinsic & Britain, and Dagger/Ice Island), and do the same on each island. You'll get about another 5-15 items doing that.
- Have the forensics character Evaluate all the items, sorting them by city, and taking notes as to the character name associated with each.
- Have the character wanting the virtue take the bag for each specific city, and look for the owners. They are always Yellow named peasants or nobles. This maximizes the gains.
- Skip a day between runs, to allow items to reset. If you work consecutive days, it's likely that only about half the items will have respawned (there appears to be a cap as to the number of them available at any given time). Some items will also spawn along mountainsides or cross-country, so keep an eye out while traveling cross-country in Trammel (and I think Fel, but VvV makes it difficult for a couple towns, before you take Yew moongate into the equation), or even go out while waiting for the coastal stuff and circle each mountain chain.
- The first round of delivering all items will put you well into the virtue (as much as half-way to level 2). The second round will put you half-way to knight from level 2. The last round should put you at Knight, or within a dot or so.
- If you drop a point, generally just 3-5 items will put you back to knight (been buying stuff like crazy for Trade orders, and worked up to 4-item trade orders, and haven't dropped below knight yet, despite buying lots of gems and armor pieces).
Dot: Humility is even quicker on any character not a weapon user.
Go outside Umbra or Luna to one of the Elven bandit camps, start humility, and just cast summons over and over. It's especially easy for mystics with RCs - the elves die in 1 swing (rarely 2), respawn quickly, and can't d enough damage even with the summons having penalties to kill the RC before it times out. Took me about 5 hours farming those brigands to get knight.