f13.net

So, last night I tried a full group set to 60, tier one.  The group (kinship) has its ass handed to it. A few times. It was quite exciting, and the challenge level was high, I can only imagine that on tier three, how insane this would be, or fuck, 65/III/Raid. That has got to be insane.

Anyway, we played a few times, trying to figure out the lieutenants, needless to say, this was a bit tough, as when you reset the skirmish everything changes. Some of the lieutenant are ROUGH, but they all seem to have a trick to them, and the tactics seem to be rather varied.

Later, Rattran and I attempted to do a 55/I/3 man (but with only two of us, Duos are quite viable with the right settings and marks output expectations). The lowering of the level (we are 60's) seems to help greatly with survivability, however under your level skirmishes mean that the % of marks you get goes down, I  think at those settings we were getting 54% marks. It ended up being about 50 marks each for us. The skirmish we did was the same one I attempted with a group, with the settings above, it was greatly different experiences in the make up of the mobs and positions (including randomly spawned optional bosses).

The system is rather fun, and is definitely designed not to be simply run though, the objective are rather tactical, and every time you take a point (Note here, not all skirmishes have the same goals/mechanics) there is a chance that the opposition may counter attack, and that force may even contain a lieutenant. Exciting to say the least.

The system drops out skills, or consumables that are usable by anyone, but are removed when you leave the instance. Some of them are rather useful, such as DOT, or HOT circles.

Rewards, are vast. Like, really really vast. Not only do your soldiers "level up" using the skirmish marks (the currency if you will), but you can customize just about everything about them, from skills, to traits, to training and weapon use, to what hair color and what race they are, even what they are wearing. The rest of the rewards range from crafting critical items (Optional components) to faction barter items, to level 45 class quest items, to armor for you, to weapons, to legendary items to cosmetic items to housing items.

It is extremely vast what you can use those skirmish marks for.

This system, is awesome. I can see many people really enjoying this. The instances and scripting (and full voice overs!) are extremely immersive. The system being scalable as such, in one swoop seems like it would satisfy the hardcore (Good lord can you make it difficult), and casual (Perhaps at the cost of marks output) in one swing.  With that first group attempt, we even brought a level 35 (Starring Arthur_Parker) with us, other than we failed the objective, he survived and was STILL useful in the skirmish.

Over all I only ran into one bug in 3-4 attempts at doing skirmishes, and that was my little dwarf guy getting stuck running into a wall. Thankfully, all I needed to do was re-summon him, and he was back at my side.

Out of 10, I give them, at first impression a 9/10. I also, happen to think this may bring back the culture of grouping as a side affect, it is so assessable, even to casuals, "Time to find group and content" seems to be a removed factor for grouping.

I hope others post first hand experiences as well. (Oh, apparently there is a survival mode for the barrows, it has no solo option. I look forward to trying this one)

I didn't know anything about the new system, stumbled on it yesterday and think it's great.  Except, no cash rewards means I'm still way behind saving for my horse.

I thought there were cash rewards at the final boss?

The way to cash is to put in the time at the AH. The crafting special ingredients mostly sell for junk, but there's some that go for 100+ Also prospecting for copper and silver in particular.

We didn't get that far when he was with us. lol.


You should be able to get a horse at 20 now, from a quest... I have yet to track this down yet though.

They dump a huge pile of cash on the final boss, and there are "bounty" items on some lieutenants that can be sold for cash.

I played the Skirmishes quite a bit in beta, but don't have the time to give a lengthy review. I will offer a few pointers:

• Stand at Amon Sul is my favorite, but you absolutely must keep those bonfires lit.
• In Ford of Bruinen, put the arrows in a basket near the right-hand archer. I noted in beta that this was poorly explained, but they did nothing to improve it.
• In Siege of Gondamon, once the gate NPCs are dispatched to the camps, get to Mathi. They don't explain this well either, but the final wave is an attack directly on his position.
• The Daywalker troll puts up a shield that prevents it from taking any damage whatsoever (easily visible thanks to a particle effect of GIANT ROTATING SHIELDS). If its in tank mode, stun it and focus on the little guys.
• Shepherd of Filth summons fast-moving crawlers that explode when they reach their target, sliming it and reducing attack rate. The crawlers have minimal hit points. As an LM, when I see him dig, I start warming up my AoE Gust of Wind. By the time they spawn, its off and wipes them all out.
• The Stormcrow looks silly. Also, it gets stronger the more allies it has within that garish particle effect, so try to lure it away from the pack.

EDIT: Got the name of the "filth" guy over lunch.

We fought a few with this effect (not just the troll), I was attempting to figure out its trick. It was, usually our downfall. Of course, when he is a 60 elite master, the stun option becomes a bit more..... inconsistent. :)

The 20 horse is 220sp without a quest. I haven't heard of any quests that give one to you. It's really not that fast, probably not worth getting if you're concerned about cash. And you're still going to want the one at 35.

Oh, ok. Thought it was buy quest. And you are right, you will want a faster one at some point. but hay, its something, and its early. Faster than walking =)

The biggest non-obvious thing I've run across that'll lead to group wipes is that most people don't realize their soldiers start off at level 30.  You need to dump some skirmish marks into leveling up their class to get it up to 60 and be on par with what you're doing at max level, which means you may need or want to start at a lower level skirmish.

Apparently this is also about horses... the quest, if I read correctly, gives you a discount on buying horses.  I don't remember what the lv20 horse cost, but I went to Hengstacer and looked: the regular lv35 horses were all under 2 gold to my lv 42 where previously they had been over 4 gold.  I was tempted to blow a couple gold on some new horses because I like collecting (moneysink!) but came to my senses.

I'll be taking Fatwing (lv24) over to Hengstacer ASAP and can then give a firsthand report of any changes to the horse quest.

Slightly related, the fields north of Hengstacer are now infested with lv19 orcs.  More of note, Oddvar's pack is now guarded by two live orcs instead of one dead one.  Interestingly, lv19 orcs means that you will be in the right place for both horses and orcs.

Yeah that was pretty crazy, all those 60 level purple mobs, I was just running around lighting the bonfires and didn't have a clue what was happening until that boss we couldn't kill.

well I'm 35 now so don't want a slow horse.



Didn't seem that much to me, I'm mostly in purples so the repair costs hit me pretty hard, I'm probably gaining cash but not as fast as normal.

On my 58 hunter, I'm still using the slow horse. It's not THAT slow. And saved me over 4 gold.

As for skirmishes, some are more fun than others, the one last night with MBW was amusing, the one where you have to keep the baddies from burning down the Prancing Pony? Not fun. And I expect quite a few more to show up that didn't make it from the beta. Healing in skirmishes seems to do okay if everyone takes herbalist pets, but dps and especially tanking needs pcs. As a guard, solo skirmishes were fun and relatively easy, as a chimp or huntard they were hours of frustration. Small fellowship seemed to go the same, the pets just can't tank worth a damn.

Overall, skirmishes are fun, but for the already 60s it's going to mean some grinding to get your soldier pet up to speed.

As for the pet tanking, and all that. I think the 60+ are at a disadvantage. Because our soldiers are "under level". Looking at the skills I picked up for my little dude before I logged off, seems there is great room for improvement as a companion for my 60. I think that is the main thing that we felt last night.

I had already beefed up my pet when we started. But I was referring to fully buffed pets in the beta, decent healing, okay dps, crappy tanking.

Zombie Columbus' Skirmish Public Service Announcements (hints and tips). (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=4227997#post4227997)

I did the tutorial and the Gomandong (dwarf settlement under attack) skirmish at lunch, but I did them solo. I didn't get my pet leveled up before I went in there and the default Warrior pet get hammered. Which meant I got hammered soon after. It got so bad that before the NPC I was supposed to protect died, I was weaponless and mostly naked, swinging empty fists at the mobs. Had I had the tanking pet that I'd spent marks on, it might have been different. And I had set the difficulty up to tier 2, so there was that. The lieutenants were pretty cool, but I didn't have much of a chance to see any weaknesses. Overall, I like the system a lot.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the range of improvement possible with the soldiers.  They start out hugely crappy, but become pretty awesome once you upgrade their profession and skill traits.  They are smarter than I expected them to be, too.  It's inconsistent, deliberately I think, to illustrate their commoner-not-hero heritage, but it works well, and they are smart more often then they are stupid.  I like when I start attacking a lieutenant with my hunter, and as its companions close in, my warrior drops an AOE and pulls them off me, letting me focus on just the boss.

I'm not exactly a lore-nerd, but smashing orc face with the sons of Elrond in the middle of the Ford of Bruinen, with Mordor's siege engines looming above you, while the archers on the bank yell out, "we can't fire through this rain!" is pretty epic.

I did the Gondamon instance on solo, Tier 1 difficulty last night and succeeded. Goddamn, is the fucking pet of the end boss loads of awesome. Then a buddy of mine tried the same instance with me today, at 44, tier 1, but set to small fellowship. Holy shit, we got our asses handed to us. The first set of attacks we took down fine, but then they sent a lieutenant after us, and he kept ass-pounding us so badly that we couldn't finish his wave before a second and third wave with lieutenants showed up. It got really ugly. They overran us, soldiers or not.

Can you still an instance with a group even if you have it set to solo?

No. You can only have less than the setting.

I still really want to do more kinship full group runs of this stuff.

What level do you have to be?

30 to start them.

Other than that, we can set what ever level we want. I have a 35 as does my girlfriend (32-35?), and I am sure some others. So, even running something on a middle of the road setting level wise would be good, as all the 60's in kinship may not realize how much we need to buff our dudes up.

skirmishes are pretty impressive.  I mean, it captures the OCD Achievers to level up their pets, the Socializers who want to customize their pets as pets...  it just works.  Honestly, I'm really surprised so far how good and challenging they are.  And it's breathtaking what they could do with this technology via the War of the Ring.

Not to sound like some kind of treadmill whore, but is there XP from these? And how is it?

You get XP from killing the mobs. For the skirmishes I went into, there was a good bit more XP than I expected simply from all the mobs I had to kill. All the mobs are set to the level you set the skirmish as, so everything I killed in the ones I went into were white and worth decent XP.

You also get a daily quest from each one that rewards xp as well.

my wife dinged 61 last night and is 6-7 bulbs ahead of me just from doing skirmishes solo.  She was 60 and only did the skirmishes tutorial and solo's.  We did the same Bk9 quests and she is that far ahead.  Great XP.

Sorry for the twenty questions, I started from scratch and just hit 26, so I haven't had a chance to check them out yet.

Don't forget to ask your Friendly Local Skirmish Vendors about the gear rewards, too. They're pretty damn worthwhile if you aren't capped.

Skirmishes are cool, wish they had made it easier to figure out how to use them.  My 41 Cappie has  been doing lvl 39 skirmishes; got annoyed dying so much.  So far I leveled up my follower to 39 and bought some sweet purple pants. 

I have two Attribute slots, but can only slot my warrior?  Can't figure that out.  Thought we could have more than one soldier. 

Skirmishes are a great idea and the implementation seems good, but I can't help but wonder if they have taken the MM out of MMO.

At any one time, you can have only one "role" (essentially the class of your pet), the rest are for cosmetics and appearance stuff. Skills, training ETC.. are rather self explanatory.

Thanks Blood, that answers a lot of questions.  What solider type do you recommend me using as a cap?

I have no clue. I am using a protector with my Hunter. I know Rattran is using a Herbalist on his champion, and Issa is using a banner man on her Burgler.

You can switch your pets role when ever you want by switching his "role" attribute, just keep in mind other roles have its levels too so you will need to build that one up as well.

Thanks.  I have two open Attribute boxes; the warrior is in the first box.  What's the second box for?  I tried putting an Archer in it and it didn't take.

You can only have one role at a time. The rest seem to be for cosmetics.

You can slot a different race for your pet, with another slot at higher levels you can customise appearance further.  I'm using a warrior with my guardian.

WTB a level 20-25 skirmish.  :heartbreak:

I guess I actually have to level. The Lone-lands revamp is in now anyway, right? That's why I was waiting.

Which seem to be mostly broken (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=306391).

In other news, the Barrow Downs skirmish has been shut down for unstated technical reasons.

Just finished my first one solo. O M G these are a blast. Total win.

How's that combo working out?  I'm using an archer with mine..


Yeah, i'm finding them MUCH more fun solo, than grouped.. but I've really only tried a small fellowship..

I'm using guard with an herbalist, love it. Solo are easier than small fellowship, but it's more fun with more people. Until MrBloodworth takes a nap in the street.

My Cappie is tanking for my warrior.  Once I get him up to my level, I'll be very interested in seeing his damage output.  My pet is a decent tank but has absolute rubbish for damage, even with traits helping. 

I really want to try a small fellowship skirmish or two, then work my way up to the big ones.  At least until I hit the srs bsns players.

I am always down for group versions.

Solo skirmishes are easy.

Try Tier 2

Yeah I did, I don't think the extra marks are worth the effort.  I wasn't complaining about it.

My current thought on skirmishes is run them two levels under and at Tier I.  Why sweat it at Tier II when I can coast thru Tier I and get almost as many marks.

If you hate fun, why not go for it.

Different strokes and all that.  In beta there weren't enough quests to level, so I enjoyed doing quests up to 7 levels above as a Guardian.  I haven't gone to that extreme yet since playing again but I have killed a couple of +5 level rare signatures.  The dragon was bugged in the 30-35 skirmish yesterday, I enjoy them for a change and the fast exp.  But I'm kinda restricting myself to the daily skirmish quests at the moment, doubt I'll try tier III again for a while, it's pretty tough and I don't see the rewards being high enough to cancel out the risk of dying and having to repeat.

To me, pretty much the entire point of skirmishes is challenge, seeing how they are completely optional content and the rewards mostly being fluff and seldomly needed odd bits. Since they are arenas with a small amount of variation I think they work great for iterative gameplay like that. Breezing through them on easy-mode seems contrary to their design.

Leaving skirmishes for a moment, and heading on to incoherent nerdrage, the Mirkwood Landing questline is absolute fucking horseshit. Good God what a rancid mess of Turbine's trademark mob spread (just enough so you have to run in the perfect middle between two mobs to avoid aggroing either) and overpopulated camps.

I thought you liked a challenge. :)

As for skirmishes I say go ez mode to level up your soldier.  Why?  Because maybe I am guessing when Rohan comes out skirmishes might be more than optional content. 

:wink:

Challenge is fine! Most of the landing quests are fine, really. However, trying to do some of the camps (siege machines in particular) with my less than awesomely geared guardian (she's pretty much how I imagine characters will be when they haven't been held up at 60 for months) is just an exercise in frustration. Spawn rates need a bad nerf if people are going to get through this on their own (which will be the default scenario in a few months when there isn't a landrush to enter Mirkwood.)

I'm pretty sure the spawn rates and densities are deliberately inflated to handle the rush to new content that typically happens when an expansion releases.  I can't imagine it remaining that high after the player population diminishes; it would be damn near unplayable.

Still, I agree in general with

I'm only 25, but kill xp at my level is pretty significant, so I'm not too bothered about having to fight my way through things. Does it become insignificant later?

Kill XP at later levels is pretty insignificant, yes. At 60 I get 254 XP from a 61 mob and I need 334 K to level. So that's about 1340 mobs (the most brutal deeds are 360 kills I think), or each kill giving 0.075% of a level. Double/halve that if you're rested.

Not sure how it comares to level 25, but I doubt you kill more than 100-150 mobs during a level, so kill XP is maybe 20% of total XP.

I think to Turbine's credit they have designed LOTRO so it can be played in as many ways as possible.

First impressions of Mirkwood are not good.  Should be called Slightly Dreary Wood.

And playing in Mirkwood is not fun.  Too many mobs, lag due to population.  Poorly laid out area.  I can't solo!  Hey Turbine, if I can't solo I'm not playing your game.  Where are the solo-friendly quests?  I have to charge into fast-spawning forts to steal crates?  No thank you.

Mirkwood, so far, is a big step back.  Disappointed.

Tannhauser, it sounds like you're in the Mirkwood Landing instance, get together with some random dude and tough it out. It only takes an hour or so, then you'll get into Mirkwood proper which is better. What you're experiencing is the same thing I raged about earlier. As for Slightly Dreary Wood, it gets better once you're out of Mirk-eaves and I think they've realized Mirkwood rather well.

However, personally I'm beginning to get seriously concerned that we won't get any significant new landmass again. Mirkwood is tiny, or atleast it feels tiny. It's more like a collection of funky landscape features (look, here's a pink marsh, look, here's a haunted place, look, here's a spiders' nest) strung together than a wood with these occurances inside it. Mirkwood could have been twice the size just to better contain all the points of interest.

Well, it's only the southern half of Mirkwood. And yeah, the landing area quests are a mixed bag. Having the first three quest all in a choice of 2 small contained forts 'tank for 2.5 mins in a doorway' 'click boxes surrounded by mobs' and 'eat 2 signatures surrounded by spawns' seems a poor plan. Easy for a guard, big pita for a hunter.

Overall I enjoyed Mirkwood except for the spider area with it's long twisty paths, and excessive bank and forth.

Its not even that.  :grin:

Just want to put a bit of perspective on this.

I have found a map of Mirkwood (scale is of course, slightly different then the full map turbine uses, and turbine does change scale depending on what sub map you are looking at)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1725660/Posts/SoM.jpg)

I have circled the approximate land mass that SoM includes of Mirkwood. The largest forest in middle earth. Now, looking at this, then thinking about how large Mirkwood is in game... This area they have completed (that is about the size of some of the other zones in game) is only a fraction of the total of Mirkwood.  They could easily spend the next 5 years fleshing out the whole of Mirkwood.

Considering we have at least 1-2 free zones this year coming (book updates), we just may be only seeing the tip of the iceberg here. Of course I am being optimistic. They could quite easily ignore the rest of Mirkwood.


All of middle earth for comparison:

It doesn't match the in-game map, however. If you go to Dol Guldur and zoom out to the Rhovanion map, you'll see that you're standing on the far east border of the forest, and not close to the west border. This is the scale LotRO is at, because they can't just change the overall scale of the world map depending on which subzone you're in. So, judging from that map, the current Mirkwood area covers the entire southern tip, everything south of the Narrows, more or less.

(http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/8476/mwmap.gif)
(I'm not actually inside DG here, that would put me at the very edge.)

Turbine uses diffrent scales between maps. They do not translate very well to the large, overland map.

Looking at Dol Guldur, it is on the very eastern side of the new zone, right on the edge. There is no way that is the eastern edge of southern Mirkwood. Look at where Dol Guldur sits on every single middle earth map, including turbines.

(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2009/10/mirkwood-devtour-1-sms-1026.jpg)

They are allowed this fudgeing, because the in game maps are "hand drawn" I suppose.

Of course, none of this truly matters, and I am being nerdy, and speculative.

Yeah, they don't follow the 'real' map religiously. What we have is everything below the narrows, with Dol Guldur getting shifted due to an infestation of Plot Fairies.

Better Map:

Nerd arguments are the only kind of arguments that matter. :awesome_for_real:

The maps ARE to scale, it's just the topography that's wonky. The truth is somewhere in between what we've said. Here's me outside Moria, at the harbour, in Mirk-eaves and in DG, then I offset the topography to actually match those positions and got this:

(http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/4404/mwmap2.gif)

Originally, before I shifted the topography, the harbour resided some way into Mirkwood, which was obviously wrong. Still, Dol Guldur has moved from its real position to about the middle of the forest, but not completely to the eastern edge, and, there's a large strand of unforested land between Anduin and Mirkwood that's unaccounted for. Closing this gap by moving Mirkwood alone, we get this:

(http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/3006/mwmap3.gif)

Now this is starting to look like the actual zones.

The reason I persist that all (overland plus Moria) maps do share the same coordinate system is because if they didn't we'd see snapping on the world map as we transferred from one system to another. The only other option is using a weight map to smoothly blend between systems and that's a lot of complicated and unneccesary work (when they could just draw the map to match), especially as it becomes more and more unmaintainable as you add new regions with their own coordinate systems. It would also mean that running in a straight line would show up as a curve on the world map and all sorts of other weird artifacts.

The regional maps have their own scale, obviously, but they do share the same basic coordinate system.


Rattran:
That map makes you go "Hm, waaaaait a minute..." :awesome_for_real:

here are some MERP maps from my old blog that I scanned:

Angmar and NW Eriador (http://tidehorizon.blogspot.com/2007/02/lotro-merp-maps-of-angmar-and-nw.html)

Rivendell and East Rhudaur and others  (http://tidehorizon.blogspot.com/2007/02/lotro-merp-maps-2.html)

I did my first PUG skirmish... PUS?  It was bad.  The main reason was that the guys putting it together were not able to get six people but set up a fellowship skrimish anyway.  It was Tuckborough and we actually did mediocre until the final boss gangbang.  Back to solo for me.

Yeaaaaah..... Full group skirmishes are no joke.

I did "Thievery and Mischief" Tier II solo over lunch today.

Back in beta, Tier II skirmishes for solo were very nicely balanced. Now? Not so much. Every time I faced a Lieutenant, I ended up running away, kiting it across the map while my soldier (a Protector who can't hold aggro with Tier 10 skills) or pet nibbled at his heels. Over the course of the skirmish, I used a half-dozen ath pots, four superior perfect pies, and both of my full heals, twice each. Plus I had to respawn my pet and soldier at least three times each.

And all that for the privilege of an extra 7% Marks, and 210 silver. Which might cover my armor repairs.

Yeaaaaah. Back to Tier I for me, thanks.

I did that same one on tier two. I didn't have much of an issue, after doing Tier one so many times, Tier two was a welcome challenge. It was not imposable for me, but yes, the challenge was indeed greater than one.

My problem here is that Tier I was too easy, and Tier II was too expensive. Not too hard - I didn't die. But the cost in pots, food, and armor damage was not enough to balance the increase in loot.

Seems to be an issue many have brought up. So i hope it will be addressed.

When I did my first one or two, it was hard and I was pretty sure it was that weak-ass soldier.  Now, after making him a protector (for a RK) and getting a few key parameters to three, I'm having a far easier time.  Not so much that I'm ready to do more than just adjust the level a bit, since it seems very touchy and it's easy to go overboard.  Personally, I'd much rather run a solo quickly twice than get a fraction more SM from something that makes me spend 315 silver on repairs.  Of course, the rare marks are harder to get.

At lower levels skirmishes bring good xp and good gear.  But at 60 the gear blows.  I'm really enjoying them, but yes, they need some tweaking. 

I'm 43 and I don't see anything that looks incredibly better than my combination of quest and crafted gear.

I really enjoyed skirmishes with my GRD. Much less so with a RK.  Who is the best pet for a RK?  My logic says protector, but mine, even after I've leveled him, still dies about 5 times per skirmish! 

I finally got someone to skirmish level, and I <3 these things a lot. Playing as a champion with a (an?) herbalist for a minion is a joy, I really get to hammer those AE skills.

The gear is pretty great for the level I'm at (although I just hit 40 and accidentally dumped all my marks into a full suit of level 43 armor /facepalm).

I mostly skirmish.  I dunno why, but I love it.

edit.  Also Skirmish is one of the most efficient ways to level legendary items.  260ish marks for 60k xp?  SIGN ME UP! (at level 62 I get 250ish marks per)

My guild switched back to lotro from wow for a while, and we're looking at doing skirmishes for our ~1h of daily play-together-time... the problem is that there are 4 of us playing right now. As I understand it, skirmish group sizes are 1-2-3-6; is it possible to do a 6man skirmish with 4 people (by underleveling etc) and is it worth it? Other option is just to split up into 3+1 or 2+2, but we want to avoid that.

Ok, so we tried it today. 4-man team with 52 minstrel / 49 minstrel / 49 burglar / 50 loremaster (me); only tank was the 52 minstrel's protector pet. We were doing a level 49 tier 1 full-fellowship (6man) skirmish [mischief and mayhem, iirc?].

Verdict: :ye_gods:

It actually didn't go too bad until the end. 'Trash mobs' were easy, and with the sheer healing throughput + kiting we could deal with single bosses (even nemesis-level) no problem. The biggest problem was only 1 tank, which manifested in a few wipes to a tag-team of two elite master-level wraith bosses; we had the protector pet occupy one while we burned/debuffed/kited the other, but a single slipup meant someone was going to die.

We got to the last encounter which was three [!] nemesis-level [!] bosses, at least one of which had heals, and the entire fight taking place in a tiny space in front of a town hall with no kiting possible. Yeahhhh. No chance.

We've been thinking of lowering the level enough so that the 52 minstrel would still get xp/marks... not sure if that'd do it by itself, though. Having a single pet tank for three nemesis-level mobs is not a very pretty thing; looks like I'll have to level my warden after all.

Don't forget soldiers also have levels and ranks and such.

Yeah if you're just starting out your soldiers are the equivalent of level 29 dudes. Spend a bunch of marks on getting them up to snuff and things will be a lot better.

For lack of a better thread, is anyone playing right now?  I just resubbed and I'm playing around with a runekeeper right now which I don't think I like.  To many abilities spamming back and forth it seems.  Anyone playing a Warden?  How do they seem?

Edit:
My level 9 Warden is pretty fun to play.  If there is a Kinship still "active" who should I talk too?

I can hop on and get you in.

Yup, still active, still has most the same people.  Feel free to /tell Arzogar (thats my main dude right now).

Two and a half weeks and I'll be back playing again. Months without decent intarweb are makin' me stabby.

My kinship ran through a variety of skirmishes (mostly tuckborough and gondamon since those are the only two available at 30ish). Feedback has been a bit "mixed". This is from the POV of a level 32-ish group with quest gear and very low level soldiers.

Solo t1 skirmishes seem easy (which is at should be imo, it's tier1 after all), never really had any problems with them.

Small group t1 skirmishes were mostly fine and a good challenge, except for one gondamon where we got a priestess of flame and tempest of flame in quick sequence while we were killing an encounter boss... they killed the defenders in about two seconds, and since our group had exactly one melee-range-only interrupt, trying to interrupt the aoe fire spell of the tempest of flame who was standing in a fire patch that kills you in about 3 seconds [created by the priestess of flame] was... yeah. Finally when we were at the end, Mathi [the guy you're supposed to keep alive] made it his #1 priority to break all CC on the dragon, resulting in the entire team getting firebreathed and him dying. We'll just chalk that one up to the RNG. :p

However, duo skirmish balance seems way, way out of whack. Both gondamon and tuckborough are basically identical to the 3-man versions [same mob types + numbers] with only marginally lower stats on the mobs. Two of my kinmates ran tuck-2 and thievery-2 quite a few times*, but only managed to win when they downleveled it by 4 or 5. Then I joined them on my same level captain and we burned through the small fellowship version effortlessly (on same-level, even).


* I know there's a bug that resets duos to small fellowships, but they triple-checked before joining the skirmish so that can't have been it

duo's are indeed bugged.  No idea how to avoid it.  GLFF unhappy.

Some more first-hand reports, now with a whole lotta skirmishing experience at 35-ish (alts) and 52-ish (mains). This is mostly from the pov of 3-man [small fellowship] skirms at tier 1 (we actually did a tier 2 prancing pony the other day as lm/guard/burg, wasn't bad at all... just had more mobs and some more hp on the bosses).

Siege of Gondamon: A bit too long; there are what, 32 waves altogether? I think it'd be fine with just 20 or so. Sometimes Mathi behaves, other times he makes it his #1 priority to break any and all CC.
Trouble in Tuckborough: This skirmish forced my warden alt to 'l2p' and now I can aoe tank (sorta). The last boss can be nasty, I think having a CCer for the lieutenant adds is crucial, along with saving all big-damage abilities until the end.
Thievery and Mischief: Pretty straightforward. I think the end encounter of this one is more intense than the others, we frequently win with everyone on low morale/power and all cooldowns used.
Defense of the Prancing Pony: One of the easier ones I think. Never really had a problem (on our tier 2 run a torch-bearer got to the inn once, but that's because someone facepulled an encounter boss while we were fighting a lt).
Stand at Amon Sul: Something must be bugged with this... candaith practically soloes the entire skirmish as long as the torches are lit (especially on solo). The only trouble seems to be keeping him alive when he draws all aggro on the cargul (I had to spec my captain for healing and it was still a very close call).
Survival - Barrow-downs: oh god. :ye_gods: I think we survived for 12 mins once, but we were just completely overwhelmed; everyone ran out of power (including me as the LM with power drain, potions, etc) and they just kept coming. Is there a trick to this? Or do we just need more dps (our makeup was ancient master traited lm / guardian / burglar)... I've heard of people surviving the entire thing solo with a herbalist soldier, so there must be something.

Specific LTs we had trouble with (but dealt with them... mostly):
Enraged uruk-hai dude: I think the key thing is to pull him with a CC before he reaches the group; his first move is to pop his 'CC immunity and hit like a truck' skill. Needs Benny Hill music when that happens.
Priestess of Flame: this boss used to be hell, but we've adapted... just gotta keep running around like crazy (kiting her around the map if possible), and most of the fire patches will be harmless.
Tempest of Flame: now THIS dude is pain city. In one of our alt groups [lm/cap/hnt] we have no interrupts (captains get one at 40+) and few stuns / mezes to interrupt the fire thing. It does a ridiculous amount of damage and outranging it doesn't seem to work (I think?).
Frozen Squall: we still haven't figured out what makes him blow up the group when he gets low... we just have the tank kite him far away (if possible) and have everyone else range it. Is the big-splosion interruptable?

We might start doing full-fellowship skirms soon, though only with 4-5 people... will be 'interesting' for sure.  :awesome_for_real:

I've been running solo skirmishes from level 30-35 with my Hunter alt.

My soldier is a Protector. I did find, as has been noted already here, that my protector started out really squishy and died often. Now that I've leveled her up a couple of times, and slotted out her skills and training, she only dies if something goes wonky. (For example, in my Tuckborough mission yesterday, one pull somehow consisted of two louies, and all their attendant trash mobs. We both died o.O)

The protector has idiot AI. Maybe they all do, but I've only really run with a protector so far. She only aggroes if I direct her to (one time per minute), or if something comes into melee range. Even if I'm dueling it out with a Hale ranged opponent, she'll just stand there unless I move closer.

That's another thing. Once my protector thinks a fight is over, she'll try to stay in the same relative position to me, if I start moving around. This can come in handy, but it just as often ends up with her running into walls and such. Or worse, aggroing something. Is she trying to stay "in formation"?

Gear: At level 33, I upgraded every piece of armor with the skirmish set. Melee weapons too, and by spending a First Mark I was able to slightly upgrade my bow. IIRC the next skirmish set is for level 37 toons.

The herbalist acts exactly the same in terms of trying to stand in the same relative position. Of course it doesn't really matter where she stands as long as she can heal you.

If its an issue, just re-summon, this will rest the distance and position as well as refresh the moral and power.

What level so you have to be to do skirmishes and how to you do it?

30 + and you will get pointed to a skirmish camp to start around that time.

Thanks

Just as reference, I think this is still current for the most part even with the recent changes: Getting started with the LotRO Skirmish system (http://www.massively.com/2009/12/04/getting-started-with-the-lotro-skirmish-system/) I think the things that really only differ are locations,the new skirmishes, and the addition of the two man and such.

The button which opens the skirmish screen, I had to put that into my toolbar.  The game told me exactly one time which keypress to use to open it and I forgot it sometime during the tutorial skirmishes.  I spent way too long asking the Skirmish Captain to open the window, thinking he worked like other questy NPCs.  Eventually I figured it out, possibly by visiting the keybinding options page or by customizing my lefthand toolbar.

Ctrl-J!

Somehow, CTRL-J does not say "Skirmish!" to me.

The J is silent.

Surely you have heard the great barbarian war cry "CTRLJ!!!"

Think of jambalaya, it's like a skirmish in the frying pan.

Good God I should be sleeping.

I just click that small up-arrow to the far left of the toolbar, everything seems to be in there.

I've just started having a go at a few skirmishes and the protector AI is indeed complete garbage.  Already I've been clobbered brutally to death a few times while my "protector" was stood 5 yards away twiddling his thumbs. 

I also tried a warrior and his AI seemed a good deal better.  He did have a tendency to charge off head first into anything in the vicinity, but I prefer that to the protector's gandhi-esque approach to violence.

It also seems that every soldier possesses the complete inability to scale hills.  This happens all the time in the Tuckborough skirmish where I have to frequently resummon them.  It's a minor annoyance really but it's puzzling how my herald skips along at my side with no problems at all, while my soldier can't even scale a mild rise.

Overall skirmishes are fun so far, but they'd be far less frustrating if they could somehow copy/paste the herald pathfinding and lower the cooldown on the direct soldier action a tad.