A few days ago Zombie Columbus wrote a Mini Diary about Skirmish changes and fixes with latest Patch 1.
- Item wear on defeat has been reduced while inside Skirmishes.
While individual results may vary, we feel overall Skirmishes are providing a reasonable amount of rewards. As jwb has implied, we will be making more adjustments in Book 1, mainly focused on Tier and group size. For patch 1, we wanted to take the step of reducing the amount of gold lost when getting defeated in a Skirmish. We believe this will not change the high end amount of gold players can achieve, but will raise the average. If in the past, high item wear kept you out of Skirmishes, now is a good time to try again!
- The monster kill XP buff inside Skirmishes now has a buff icon associated with it. The Skirmish Monster Kill XP buff will remain in effect until the release of Volume 3 Book 1.
Monster kills in Skirmishes have always granted 25% more XP then landscape. We put this buff in place because we were concerned that questing would be too lucrative relative to Skirmishes. In retrospect, this 25% bonus was not needed, and has helped make Skirmishes a bit too efficient vs. other gameplay styles. To combat this, we changed the XP bonus to be a visable buff, the "Skirmish Boon." This buff will be in place until Book 1, when it will be removed. It will come back from time to time during promotional events.
- Herbalist and Bannerguard healing will no longer be reduced by armour.
As was pointed out, and confirmed, Soldier healing was being treated as "negative damage". This led heavy armour wearing classes to gaining less healing then light armour classes. The bug has been globally fixed, and should greatly benefit heavy classes who pair with a Herbalist or Bannerguard.
Besides that, I just want to re-iterate that we have been working or tails off to cram lots of goodness into Book 1, and I can't wait for the dev diary on it to drop. The Skirmish system is here to stay, and we will be updating and adapting it based on player experiences.
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