So far Almarune is up to level 38, and I’ve been continuing the skirmish experiment with great joy. I’m really liking the fact that I can pop onto my Rune Keeper and just do a few of the skirmishes without having to run around from one place to the other as you have to with quests.

I’ve made a few observation about this experiment, as I’ve been leveling:

  • I’m still really missing the +25% XP bonus that we got on skirmishes when they launched.
  • I make quite a bit of gold. I started with 400 silver at level 30, and at the moment, I’ve got 4 Gold and 600 silver. I’m just about to get my Horse however, so that will go down significantly. What this does show, however, is that you can definitely make money doing skirmishes.

I’ve tried a few different things while going through the skirmishes to see if I could make the experience a little faster, gain a little more XP, etc.

1) Changed from a Protector to a Warrior

I was having a lot of luck with the Protector with my Rune-Keeper. I found that if I stayed in healing mode, there was nothing that we couldn’t go through. I did find, however, that I had to stay in healing mode most of the time.  I could rarely go into attack attunement without having either my soldier or myself die. This make skirmishes very, very slow. I then decided to try out the warrior and WOW, what a change! I’ve been able to stay in damage attunement most of the time, since between the Warrior and myself, we burn the mobs down fast enough that I don’t have to worry about healing. He’s also still armored well enough that he can survive a reasonable amount of time without requiring a heal.

Next step? I’m going to try a Bannerguard. With the combination of heavy armor and good DPS, it should be fun!

2) I tried increasing the level to 3 levels above me to gain more XP per skirmish.

That didn’t really work, although probably not for the reason you would think. With increasing the level of the skirmish to 3 levels beyond my Rune Keeper’s level, I found that I could still survive, but that the XP gain was negligible. I just wasn’t getting enough extra XP to make it worth the challenge and the extra time that it took to get the mobs down. I could do more lower level skirmishes in the same amount of time, and get a little more XP from those then from the higher level skirmish.

3) At low levels, skirmish marks aren’t worth much

I’ve been finding that my skirmish marks are not good for much throughout the 30s. I’ve so far amassed approximately 2,500 skirmish marks, and am currently sitting on about 1,400. Although I know I will need them when I get to the mid 40s, I think that I’ll be able to save them up even if I use a fair amount of marks now to try out some different soldier types. I also use the marks to purchase some different potions to use during the skirmishes, rather than using gold. I still have a very comfortable amount of skirmish marks though.

4) Using your skirmish marks to upgrade your gear is not quite enough.

I’m finding that my gear is falling a little behind. Not only am I not getting any gear through questing, but I’m also not buying anything from the auction house. The problem is that there are not upgrades at each “tier” of skirmishes to allow me to deck out my character with all new gear each time I pass one of those thresholds.  So I’m not being as efficient as I can in skirmishes. This means mostly sticking to tier 1 skirmishes. I can get through the tier 2 skirmishes, but I don’t find that the extra time that is required is worth the extra skirmish marks, and there is not significant XP gain from going with a more difficult tier.

Overall, 8 levels in, I’m still having a great time. I’ve slowed down a little in the amount of skirmishes that I do per day, usually sticking to about 3-6, although I may increase that as more skirmishes become available.

At this point, would I recommend it to others as a way to level your character? Not really. You miss out on too much content, and your character is not going to be well rounded when you reach your desired level. Am I going to continue? Absolutely. I think that for me, going back and completing the deeds required to make my character well rounded won’t be too much on an issue.

See you in-game!