Skirmish Preview

With the Skirmish stress test coming up on the 17th, I thought that I’d take the time to write an overview of the skirmish system so far as we know. I’m going to run through it in an informal way, and I’ll try to include links when I can to site my sources.

Before the Skirmish

When you first decide to join a Skirmish, you’ll look at the new Main Menu and select Skirmish.

You’ll be able to bind the Skirmish menu to one of the buttons now (Link) or, of course, use the shortcut (Looks like CTRL+K now, but that may change before release).

Once you open the Skirmish Join panel, many options will be available to your. First off, you’ll be able to see which Skirmishes have daily quests available (the Ring next to the skirmish name).

You’ll also be able to see the level range of the Skirmishes, and pick a specific level difficulty that you want this instance of the Skirmish to be. for example, the Defense of the Prancing Pony Skirmish has a level range of 50-65. That means that you can pick any level between 50 and 65 for the Skirmish. This will affect the difficulty, as well as the rewards that you receive at the end, but more on rewards later.

Next you’ll be able to select a difficulty for that particular level, from Tier I to Tier III, with Tier I being the easiest, and Tier III the hardest. This will affect the difficulty of the instance, as well as the rewards. So, if you’ve got a group of level 53 players, and they are experienced and capable at instances, you might want to pick Tier III to give themselves more of a challenge.

And Finally, you’ll see the size of the instance. The size available will be Solo, Small Fellowship (3 members), Full Fellowship (6 Members) and Raid (12 members). This will also affect the rewards.

Once you have made all of these choices, you will see that there is a Skirmish Marks percentage listed. This will take all of the variables stated above and the more difficult the instance will be, the more Skirmish Marks you will receive. Link

Once you click Create, you will launch the Skirmish, and the other members of your Fellowship (if it’s not a Solo Skirmish), will see this window, which will give them all of the information they need to decide if they are going to join you in the Skirmish.

If they choose Travel Now, they will, well, travel now. If they choose Travel Later, a small icon will be place in the UI that the player can click on (until it expires) to be transported to the Skirmish.

During the Skirmish

First of all, most of the skirmishes will be based around Control Points. You will either have to defend, or capture these points. There has not been much elaboration on what the other types of Skirmishes will be, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps we’ll be able to give you more details following the Skirmish stress test on Tuesday, November 17th.

As far as the enemies that you will be facing, there will be a theme throughout each Skirmish. For example, in the Tuckborough Troubles, brigands, wolves and Orcs will be the monsters that you face. Each time you enter the Skirmish, however, there will be an element of randomization. This will take place in the form of how many monsters there are and exactly where they spawn. There will also be 2 Encounters, optional objectives for the Skirmish, that will be picked from a list of an unknown amount. These may be shown at the beginning of the Skirmish, or they may be triggered at some point during your time in the Skirmish. Turbine is being somewhat vague when it comes to specific Encounters, as they see discovering what these encounters are as part of the fun.

During the Skirmish, you will also fight Lieutenants. Lieutenants are mini-bosses that make regular fights more interesting. Each Lieutenant is unique, and many of them will have specific strategies that you need to employ to defeat them, and they have a chance of spawning with any of the groups of monsters in the Skirmish. They will again gain new abilities and/or “twists” to them with larger group sizes.

One of the coolest features that you will notice during the instance is your soldiers. Soldiers will be semi-pet/semi-npc addition to your group, but only during Skirmishes. These are the people that are left behind after all of the heroes and trained soldier go off to war, and therefore, they don’t have much training. This explain some of their limitations.  These are several different aspects to soldiers:

1) Customization

You will be able, with Skirmish points, to purchase new traits for your soldiers and “level” them. You will then use these traits to give your Soldier a specific role. You will also be able to have some cosmetic changes that will make your soldier unique. Link

2) Direct Control

You won’t have direct control over your soldier, but you will have a skill, on a fairly long cooldown, that will allow you to direct them in a limited way. There isn’t much information about this yet, but here is a screenshot with the new skill. Link

What really exciting for me is that when there are Skirmishes with 12 players in them, there will also be 12 soldiers, AND any pets that Captains or Lore-Masters. Very epic!

When you fight the regular monsters during the skirmish, there will be no loot. This will keep this moving swiftly, without players having to stop and loot every single corpse. A nice addition. The only monsters that will have loot will be the Lieutenants, Bosses and optional encounter monsters. Bosses will drop a significant amount of coins, to make up for the rest of the monsters not dropping any. The loot will exclusively be Skirmish Marks, with some drop of Tokens. More on these later. Link

After the Skirmish

Skirmishes will introduce a new form of currency to the game: Skirmish Marks and Token. Skirmish marks are the general currency, and Tokens will be required for some special purchases and the Skirmish Vendors. Skirmish marks and Tokens will be awarded in a few different ways:

1) Lieutenants, Bosses and optional Encounter monsters will all drop Skirmish marks, and there will be chance that they also drop Tokens.

2) You will get Tokens from optional encounters that have been grouped together in a campaign. For example, there may be 3 Skirmishes that are grouped together as campaign X. During the optional Encounters in all of the Skirmishes in campaign X, you will have a chance to receive some Campaign X tokens. These can be redeemed at the Skirmish Vendor for loot.

3) Completing Skirmishes will reward you with Skirmish Marks.

Starting to get worried about all of these taking up inventory space? They will go into your inventory, however they stack into the millions, so no worries about taking up much space.

Once you’ve completed the Skirmish, and received your Marks and Tokens, you will be able to go to Skirmish Camps, where there will be many Skirmish Vendors, who will gladly sell you everything from weapons and armour and other equipment, to cosmetic items for you and your house, to traits for you Soldiers. There will be LOTS of stuff for you to spend your Skirmish Marks on.

Overall, I’m very excited about Skirmishes, and I can’t wait to see them in game!