Skirmishes, first hand reports.

[Ingmar]

WTB a level 20-25 skirmish. 

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

[Stormwaltz]

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

Which seem to be mostly broken.

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

[Numtini]

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

[Lianka]

I'm using a warrior with my guardian.

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

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

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

[rattran]

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.

[Tannhauser]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am always down for group versions.

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm using a warrior with my guardian.

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

Solo skirmishes are easy.

[Soln]

I'm using a warrior with my guardian.

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

Solo skirmishes are easy.

Try Tier 2

[Arthur_Parker]

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

[Tannhauser]

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.

[Tarami]

If you hate fun, why not go for it.

[Arthur_Parker]

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.

[Tarami]

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.

[Tannhauser]

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. 

[Tarami]

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.)

[Rishathra]

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

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.

[Ingmar]

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?

[Tarami]

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.

[Arthur_Parker]

Breezing through them on easy-mode seems contrary to their design.

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

[Tannhauser]

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.

[Tarami]

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.

[rattran]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, it's only the southern half of Mirkwood.

Its not even that.  

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)



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:

[Tarami]

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.


(I'm not actually inside DG here, that would put me at the very edge.)

[Mrbloodworth]

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.



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.

[rattran]

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:

[Tarami]

Nerd arguments are the only kind of arguments that matter.

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:



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:



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..."

[Soln]

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

Angmar and NW Eriador

Rivendell and East Rhudaur and others

[Yegolev]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.