Post by amariedan on Dec 4, 2009 19:00:42 GMT -5
It's peanut butter skirmish time, peanut butter skirmish time!
This part of my skirmish writeup willl cover from the tutorial quest, to traiting/slotting and ranking up your soldiers... part two will cover skirmishes themselves, including some tips/strategies I've figured out for each one
SO, finding skirmishes to be insanely fun but somewhat overwhelming at the same time? There is SO much to them after all! And especially so if you are jumping in with a higher level character tho they can be started as early as level 30!
So I'm compiling here some very handful information to help you get the most bang for you buck and pick on the whole skirmish thing a bit faster.
SO let's start at the beginning, some of which many of you have already been through- for those such persons, go ahead and skip ahead a lil...
Begininings
Upon reaching lvl 30+ you get an ingame mail which starts the skirmish tutorial quest. get it, then go see the nearest skirmish captain at the nearest skirmish camp... it doesn't matter which one as they are all the same as far as game mechanics wise.
You now hae to go farm war orders and a target list from any humanoid type mob. It doesnt matter which, so long as they are AT LEAST green con to you.... IOW if you would get xp from it, you can farm it.
Don't be dismayed at how long it can take. The drop rate is quite random. I did it in a group with my cpn, my hunter and Alysaundra. Aly had all his within about 15 mins... by the time he'd gotten his 10th order I had only gotten 5 on me and 2 on the hunter! SO be prepared for that.
Once you have it all, return to any skirmish captain and you get to start your first solo skirmish!
Thievery and Mischief, the solo tutorial version is simple enough. Talk to Heathstraw, get your soldier and head in. Kill all the enemies in an area, then use the glowing pole to claim it in the name of the Free Peoples!
When done, talk to Heathstraw to exit, talk to the skirmish captain again and then start the second half- Protecting the Prancing Pony from Brigands!
For this one you simply kill the waves of enemies until they stop- be wary the lieutenant(s)! and in this one this lieutenant is simple tho, just kill him first asap! You can use your DIRECT SOLDIER skill to get your soldier to focus their attacks on the lieutenant with you (but what attacks they use and such is up to them still).
When saved, talk to Heathstraw to exit and then talk to the Skirmish Cptain to recieve your rewards!
One of your rewards is a choice of a new role type to use for your soldier. What you choose is pretty important here, tho not vital as you can now also train up any role type you want on your own as you will! But her eyou get a 'free' one
Soldiers: Roles and attributes, Skills, Trainings and Personals.
Let's start with Roles. As you can see in the below SSHOT, there are 6 roles a soldier can perform. Tho they are limited to one at a time!
Each role is a base equivalent to one of the 6 original classes in the game.
Archer = Hunter
Sage = Loremaster
Protector = Guard
Bannerguard = Captain
Herbalist = Minstrel
Warrior = Champion
Altho, as their names may suggest, their roles are a lot more basic than the classes. For instance, the Herbalist doesnt do any attacking, only healing. The Sage can't mez (tho they can root), and the Bannerguard is really more like a Captain's Herald than a captain himself- it gets one small heal and attack, and everything else it can learn is some sort of buff for you and your group.
SO which to choose? Well that is all up to you. The great thing about this, is that YOU get to choose the role that suits YOU and YOUR playstyle best... BUT you can also eventually learn and skill up ANY role so that you can swap and change depending if you are going solo, small fellow, full fellow, raid, or different instances!
The important thing however, is how to get the most out of your soldier and have them be truly effective in battle!
NOW this part in particular is for those of higher level jumping into the skirmishes!
Each, attribute roll, skill, training, etc starts at an effective level of ONLY level 29! now remember, this is because skirmishes start at level 30, so it is intended that your soldier always be one slight level step behind you! (Pet classes will understand this better, knowing how your pet/herald is always 2 levels below you).
SO what do you at lvl 50, lvl 60, etc, when you are just starting out on skirmishes and have all these options? Well, you grind of course. Thankfully Turbine foresaw this and they made it that training up as a higher level will cost less SM, initially, until the skills start to get caught up to your character level.
Note a few things in the above SSHOT. First the tooltip- under Training it shows you the Level. In this case level 29, this is a rank 1 Training that hasn't been bought yet. Note the red text- some few trainings require certain roles and will only work with them (will ahve more on that in a lil bit). Note the panel itself, showing all the skills, the option to show only 'earned' (purchased) ones, the rank of each one as is current, and the number of Skirmish Marks (SM) to increase to the next rank.
Leveling/Ranking up your soldier!
Your soldier will automatically level with you (altho if you level up mid-skirmish you will need to resummon them to get their new level, just like a pet), but their skills and training will not!
To get the most effectiveness out of your soldier, you must seek out a SKIRMISH TRAINER in a Skirmish Camp and rank up their ROLE and SKILLS and TRAINING.
ATTRIBUTE: ROLE, this is your soldiers basic role in combat, ranking it up will increase one important attribute (ie archer gets ranged critical rating), their maximum morale and maximum power... for a level 60, this is one of your very first thing you want to pump all your garnered SM into, IMO, until you get your soldier's rank to an effective level of mid 50s+ or else you will hardly notice their presence- especially in harder tiered skirmishes.
ATTRIBUTE: Race/Sex, Hair Color, Hair Style, Outfit... these are all purely cosmetic, but allow you to affect the appearance of your soldier. You can purchase them from the COSMETICS vendor in any skirmish camp. Each Race/Sex type has it own hair stles/colors/outfits, so if you decide to change from Hobbit Lass to Elf Man, you'll have to buy all new ones.
SKILLS, these are your soldier's bread and butter, and depending your playstyle, can make or break your soldier's effectiveness even moreso! I recommend, at first, pumping a lot of SM into just one main skill first (after raising your ROLE), then going back and forth into various others. You are limited on the number of skills you can slot at any one time, so I reccomend only putting SM into skills you are slotting that your soldier will use.
UTLIMATE SKILLS are purchaseable via the Skirmish Captain's barter option. They are, in very basic essence, an equivalent to a player character's Legendary Skills. You purchase and learn TWO Ultimate skills per role, currently, however you can only ever slot ONE!
TRAINING! Training is important, tho perhaps not as vital as the others and is what I have been ranking up tertiarily. Some might find it more important however because of the uniqueness of Training... Aside from some few trainings (like in the SSHOT above showing the sage only one), most of the TRAINING skills can be kept up and utilized by ANY role! Meaning you don't have to pay to reslot it at the Skirmish Captain! Unless of course you are switching Roles that can't use some of the same things.
PERSONAL traits affect you, yourself! Yes! You can enhance yourself as well! but alas these affects will only work while within a Skirmish! Still, it can be very handy! Find yourself a bit squishy? Buff your armour? Captains, Minis, want to heal EVEN BETTER? Buff your healing output! Using an Herbalist and want even more better heals from them? Buff your Incoming Healing! There are so many options to choose from!
TRAITING/SLOTTING
Now you've trained all these things, how do you use them? Talk to the Skirmish Captain and choose MANAGE YOUR TRAITS, because all these things work just like your virtues and class traits and stuff at a bard. As you level up, you will open up new slots for more of each options!
REDEEMING SKIRMISH MARKS
You get SM from completing objectives and optional encounters within the Skirmishes, as well as completing the skirmish itself, and each day you get a daily bonus the first time you complete one.
Alternatively, randomly some Lieutenants, Bosses, and Optional encounters will give you CAMPAIGN MARKS as well as "RANK" MARKS (ie esquire mark, guardsman mark, third mark, second mark, etc).
You can take these extra marks to the CURIOSITIES vendor and under REDEEM MARKS you can trade them in for even more Skirmish Marks!
Of course, you might not want to do that all the time. Some of those extra marks- campaign ones as well as the numbered (1st 2nd 3rd) ones are used in bartering for cosmetic items as well as the ultimate skills!
But that is all up to you. In time you will always get more of them, so it's just a matter of what you want first. Take me for example, I traded a few at first for the cosmetics to alter my soldier's appearance, after that I have redeemed them all for bonus marks in order to lessen the grind in pumping up my soldier's roles and skills til they are an effective level of 60 to match my character level of 60. Now that I have done that, I intend to save up for the ultimate skills, then go get me some cosmetic items for myself
This part of my skirmish writeup willl cover from the tutorial quest, to traiting/slotting and ranking up your soldiers... part two will cover skirmishes themselves, including some tips/strategies I've figured out for each one
SO, finding skirmishes to be insanely fun but somewhat overwhelming at the same time? There is SO much to them after all! And especially so if you are jumping in with a higher level character tho they can be started as early as level 30!
So I'm compiling here some very handful information to help you get the most bang for you buck and pick on the whole skirmish thing a bit faster.
SO let's start at the beginning, some of which many of you have already been through- for those such persons, go ahead and skip ahead a lil...
Begininings
Upon reaching lvl 30+ you get an ingame mail which starts the skirmish tutorial quest. get it, then go see the nearest skirmish captain at the nearest skirmish camp... it doesn't matter which one as they are all the same as far as game mechanics wise.
You now hae to go farm war orders and a target list from any humanoid type mob. It doesnt matter which, so long as they are AT LEAST green con to you.... IOW if you would get xp from it, you can farm it.
Don't be dismayed at how long it can take. The drop rate is quite random. I did it in a group with my cpn, my hunter and Alysaundra. Aly had all his within about 15 mins... by the time he'd gotten his 10th order I had only gotten 5 on me and 2 on the hunter! SO be prepared for that.
Once you have it all, return to any skirmish captain and you get to start your first solo skirmish!
Thievery and Mischief, the solo tutorial version is simple enough. Talk to Heathstraw, get your soldier and head in. Kill all the enemies in an area, then use the glowing pole to claim it in the name of the Free Peoples!
When done, talk to Heathstraw to exit, talk to the skirmish captain again and then start the second half- Protecting the Prancing Pony from Brigands!
For this one you simply kill the waves of enemies until they stop- be wary the lieutenant(s)! and in this one this lieutenant is simple tho, just kill him first asap! You can use your DIRECT SOLDIER skill to get your soldier to focus their attacks on the lieutenant with you (but what attacks they use and such is up to them still).
When saved, talk to Heathstraw to exit and then talk to the Skirmish Cptain to recieve your rewards!
One of your rewards is a choice of a new role type to use for your soldier. What you choose is pretty important here, tho not vital as you can now also train up any role type you want on your own as you will! But her eyou get a 'free' one
Soldiers: Roles and attributes, Skills, Trainings and Personals.
Let's start with Roles. As you can see in the below SSHOT, there are 6 roles a soldier can perform. Tho they are limited to one at a time!
Each role is a base equivalent to one of the 6 original classes in the game.
Archer = Hunter
Sage = Loremaster
Protector = Guard
Bannerguard = Captain
Herbalist = Minstrel
Warrior = Champion
Altho, as their names may suggest, their roles are a lot more basic than the classes. For instance, the Herbalist doesnt do any attacking, only healing. The Sage can't mez (tho they can root), and the Bannerguard is really more like a Captain's Herald than a captain himself- it gets one small heal and attack, and everything else it can learn is some sort of buff for you and your group.
SO which to choose? Well that is all up to you. The great thing about this, is that YOU get to choose the role that suits YOU and YOUR playstyle best... BUT you can also eventually learn and skill up ANY role so that you can swap and change depending if you are going solo, small fellow, full fellow, raid, or different instances!
The important thing however, is how to get the most out of your soldier and have them be truly effective in battle!
NOW this part in particular is for those of higher level jumping into the skirmishes!
Each, attribute roll, skill, training, etc starts at an effective level of ONLY level 29! now remember, this is because skirmishes start at level 30, so it is intended that your soldier always be one slight level step behind you! (Pet classes will understand this better, knowing how your pet/herald is always 2 levels below you).
SO what do you at lvl 50, lvl 60, etc, when you are just starting out on skirmishes and have all these options? Well, you grind of course. Thankfully Turbine foresaw this and they made it that training up as a higher level will cost less SM, initially, until the skills start to get caught up to your character level.
Note a few things in the above SSHOT. First the tooltip- under Training it shows you the Level. In this case level 29, this is a rank 1 Training that hasn't been bought yet. Note the red text- some few trainings require certain roles and will only work with them (will ahve more on that in a lil bit). Note the panel itself, showing all the skills, the option to show only 'earned' (purchased) ones, the rank of each one as is current, and the number of Skirmish Marks (SM) to increase to the next rank.
Leveling/Ranking up your soldier!
Your soldier will automatically level with you (altho if you level up mid-skirmish you will need to resummon them to get their new level, just like a pet), but their skills and training will not!
To get the most effectiveness out of your soldier, you must seek out a SKIRMISH TRAINER in a Skirmish Camp and rank up their ROLE and SKILLS and TRAINING.
ATTRIBUTE: ROLE, this is your soldiers basic role in combat, ranking it up will increase one important attribute (ie archer gets ranged critical rating), their maximum morale and maximum power... for a level 60, this is one of your very first thing you want to pump all your garnered SM into, IMO, until you get your soldier's rank to an effective level of mid 50s+ or else you will hardly notice their presence- especially in harder tiered skirmishes.
ATTRIBUTE: Race/Sex, Hair Color, Hair Style, Outfit... these are all purely cosmetic, but allow you to affect the appearance of your soldier. You can purchase them from the COSMETICS vendor in any skirmish camp. Each Race/Sex type has it own hair stles/colors/outfits, so if you decide to change from Hobbit Lass to Elf Man, you'll have to buy all new ones.
SKILLS, these are your soldier's bread and butter, and depending your playstyle, can make or break your soldier's effectiveness even moreso! I recommend, at first, pumping a lot of SM into just one main skill first (after raising your ROLE), then going back and forth into various others. You are limited on the number of skills you can slot at any one time, so I reccomend only putting SM into skills you are slotting that your soldier will use.
UTLIMATE SKILLS are purchaseable via the Skirmish Captain's barter option. They are, in very basic essence, an equivalent to a player character's Legendary Skills. You purchase and learn TWO Ultimate skills per role, currently, however you can only ever slot ONE!
TRAINING! Training is important, tho perhaps not as vital as the others and is what I have been ranking up tertiarily. Some might find it more important however because of the uniqueness of Training... Aside from some few trainings (like in the SSHOT above showing the sage only one), most of the TRAINING skills can be kept up and utilized by ANY role! Meaning you don't have to pay to reslot it at the Skirmish Captain! Unless of course you are switching Roles that can't use some of the same things.
PERSONAL traits affect you, yourself! Yes! You can enhance yourself as well! but alas these affects will only work while within a Skirmish! Still, it can be very handy! Find yourself a bit squishy? Buff your armour? Captains, Minis, want to heal EVEN BETTER? Buff your healing output! Using an Herbalist and want even more better heals from them? Buff your Incoming Healing! There are so many options to choose from!
TRAITING/SLOTTING
Now you've trained all these things, how do you use them? Talk to the Skirmish Captain and choose MANAGE YOUR TRAITS, because all these things work just like your virtues and class traits and stuff at a bard. As you level up, you will open up new slots for more of each options!
REDEEMING SKIRMISH MARKS
You get SM from completing objectives and optional encounters within the Skirmishes, as well as completing the skirmish itself, and each day you get a daily bonus the first time you complete one.
Alternatively, randomly some Lieutenants, Bosses, and Optional encounters will give you CAMPAIGN MARKS as well as "RANK" MARKS (ie esquire mark, guardsman mark, third mark, second mark, etc).
You can take these extra marks to the CURIOSITIES vendor and under REDEEM MARKS you can trade them in for even more Skirmish Marks!
Of course, you might not want to do that all the time. Some of those extra marks- campaign ones as well as the numbered (1st 2nd 3rd) ones are used in bartering for cosmetic items as well as the ultimate skills!
But that is all up to you. In time you will always get more of them, so it's just a matter of what you want first. Take me for example, I traded a few at first for the cosmetics to alter my soldier's appearance, after that I have redeemed them all for bonus marks in order to lessen the grind in pumping up my soldier's roles and skills til they are an effective level of 60 to match my character level of 60. Now that I have done that, I intend to save up for the ultimate skills, then go get me some cosmetic items for myself