LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

It’s astonishing the amount of game play packed into LOTRO.  With Siege of Mirkwood, it inflates the amount of activities in which you can engage beyond anything I thought they would pull off in this release.  One of my favorites is the skirmish system.  I touched on this briefly in my first impressions article the day after launch.  I want to provide you with a brief survey of the daily quest aspect of the skirmish system.

Ford of Bruinen is my favorite skirmish thus far

Each day, you can run through through each of your unlocked skirmishes and enjoy the normal skirmish marks and creature XP rewards associated with each skirmish.  Once a day, however, you can also gain the bonus of additional XP and skirmish marks similar to Grand Stairs and other Moria instances.  For example, The absence of a ring next to the top three in the Skirmish Join window indicates that I am not eligible for a daily reward.  I can still repeat them, but I won’t get the extra reward.

When you complete a  skirmish, you will get a large notification that looks something like this:

Completed:Trouble in Tuckborough

Completed the Trouble in Tuckborough Skirmish

Completed:Trouble in Tuckborough – Daily

You’ve earned 4,651 XP for a total of 5,899,655 XP.

You have acquired [86 Skirmish Marks].

The big message here:  4,651 additional XP for each of the six skirmishes for which I am eligible.  I usually complete a skirmish with 20-25 minutes, so if I were to just focus on skirmishes, I could earn 27,906 XP in 2 hours of game play just from the bonus (this doesn’t count the normally accrued experience. ) No one can ever say there is nothing to do!

Next week, I am going to turn back to issues around Story Matters, and discuss why I have disengaged from Champions Online.

(matthewjetthall | (615) 266-6654 Feel Free to SMS or leave me a voice message with comments)