Skirmishes!

Well, I attained my level 30 goal over the weekend and promptly ran to the skirmish captain to complete the introduction.  So promptly, in fact, that I forgot to train my level 30 skills until afterward.  Whoops.

After successfully graduating from skirmish school, I dove right in and played through Trouble in Tuckborough, and then Siege of Gondamon.  I had a great time!  I died once in Tuckborough thanks to a careless pull that brought more mobs to me than I could handle all at once – mind you, if I’d noticed that I hadn’t traited my soldier at all before starting my first non-intro skirmish, that might have helped too.  Somehow I missed the part where selecting the bannerman reward from the intro quests didn’t actually turn my soldier into one right off the bat.

I liked Tuckborough overall, although I was a little bit confused here and there about where I was supposed to be going next.  Playing solo, the Lieutenants weren’t any more difficult than a regular signature mob.  My soldier died once, but I don’t think I let any of the NPCs die – I’m not entirely sure how many there were to be saved in total, so perhaps I missed some along the way.  Siege of Gondamon felt much more hectic with all of the running back and forth, but it was a lot of fun too.  I was confused when the ‘flag dropped’ message popped up, and until I ended up at that gate to defend against the next wave I didn’t see the box/flagpole I was supposed to interact with.  I nearly missed seeing a few mobs nearer to the end head straight for Magni – by that point I was expecting everything to come from the north/south/west gates instead of having enemies appear up top with him.  In the end, however, success!  Both Tuckborough and Gondamon felt very satisfying and fun, so I’ll definitely be running more skirmishes.  Having them available as daily quests is a good incentive too.

I picked up a couple of marks (rank, campaign and challenge), but I’m not quite sure where to spend them just yet.   One of the things I haven’t found yet in LOTRO resources is a nice clear database – with WoW database sites I’m very used to being able to enter in, say, “First Mark” and obtain a full list of everything that I can obtain using that piece as currency.  I’ve run into the same issue when trying to see where certain recipes and the like come from.

Hm, now to figure out my next goal..