Haven't counted how much i did to get quests of the next tier, but yes, just doing quests gives you the next tier after some quests.
I didn't do anything else.
So LBD is somehow back anyway.
Hopefully there will come something like a standing system to traders, which is affected by doing quests, trading... even negative when canceling quests and so on. Maybe something similar is already done in the background but not visible yet?