Thread: Drop rate for Marks

I am a level 70 Champ, with average gear. I run skirmishes solo at level 70 and don't fail, but I only get about 40 to 45 Marks per skirmish. Is this right? What amount of marks and Medallions should I expect from on-level Skirmishes?

Originally Posted by mac173

I am a level 70 Champ, with average gear. I run skirmishes solo at level 70 and don't fail, but I only get about 40 to 45 Marks per skirmish. Is this right? What amount of marks and Medallions should I expect from on-level Skirmishes?

Don't know the exact details as I must have missed the patch notes, but I believe this was nerfed a while back. I find skirmishes hardly worth running at level these days, so have all but given them up.

These days I only do skirmishes with some kinmembers when we don't have the numbers for other content. They're just not worth farming anymore. Friends make the skirmishes bearable.

Yes those seem like the correct amount of marks from a skirm. They aren't really worth it for the marks anymore. I've found that the best way to get marks is to do t2 foundry since you get a good amount of marks plus you can downgrade the medallions. The only problem is you need to be lvl 75 with 5 friends to do it with.

I spent maybe a week (or less) farming skirms and maxed out everything on every skirm soldier (until the turbine point expansion on levels) and had some left to buy some equipment that I can't even use for 5 levels lol You have to do skirms 2-4 levels above your level...

Originally Posted by Wraithlord

Yes those seem like the correct amount of marks from a skirm. They aren't really worth it for the marks anymore. I've found that the best way to get marks is to do t2 foundry since you get a good amount of marks plus you can downgrade the medallions. The only problem is you need to be lvl 75 with 5 friends to do it with.

I don't get any marks.

Wow, not happy to hear that. I was looking at Classic armor on the Skirmish vendor, and at 700+ marks and 120 medallions each piece, these drop rates make it impossible. I never know how long I can be on, so grouping is difficult and raiding impossible. I thought this would be a way to get good armor solo.

Originally Posted by mac173

Wow, not happy to hear that. I was looking at Classic armor on the Skirmish vendor, and at 700+ marks and 120 medallions each piece, these drop rates make it impossible. I never know how long I can be on, so grouping is difficult and raiding impossible. I thought this would be a way to get good armor solo.

It is all been designed to make you buy stuff from the store. The suits are in control.

At the moment, the best way to get marks is to kill mobs and enter lotteries. You can trade Calenard Tokens for 40 marks each.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Originally Posted by mac173

Wow, not happy to hear that. I was looking at Classic armor on the Skirmish vendor, and at 700+ marks and 120 medallions each piece, these drop rates make it impossible. I never know how long I can be on, so grouping is difficult and raiding impossible. I thought this would be a way to get good armor solo.

Same - looking for a worn symbol and need something like 2400 and 200 respectively - crazy just for part of one LM book.

The drop rate sounds about right. You can get more if you use Instance Finder for bonuses.

Yeah, that part of the game is seriously broken, it's not worth running skirms and you still need stuff that costs thousands of marks.



"Sometimes survival comes down to not being hit. Actually, most times." -the chicken skill, Bob and Weave

Turbine has a big price distortion.

Even lvl 50-65 sets need marks and medallions that cannot be gotten by normal skirmishing. Most people wont do group content at lvl 50 for that.

Everytime I give skirmishes a try it end in the same frustration, bonus or no bonus. 1-3 instances? -> 4 medallions a boss lvl 75 in the Library, thats enough to proves everything.

And please stop with the foundry advice. People deserve to play the game in the way they want and they paid for. Skirmishes aren't free and they dont give enough marks/medallions thats a fact. The solution is fix the rewards not make players do foundry.

Level 75 skirmishes, solo, Tier 1, seem to give a three-digit number of marks per run, depending on the skirmish. There's also a few medallions - a few from completing the final objective of the skirmish, as well as additional marks and medallions for completing the encounters. I'd say you get about 250 marks and 15-20 medallions per run, completing everything in there.

Edit: That's with full +50% bonus from instance finder, of course. You get that by using Advanced tab, selecting skirmish, 1 player, tier 1 and clicking "select all" from above the list of skirmishes.

Worn Symbol, with those numbers, would cost you approximately 10 solo t1 skirmishes. If you want your gear solo, don't expect to get a full set for three runs. It's meant to be a horrible grind to get everything solo, just to encourage grouping.

Originally Posted by Laerien

Even lvl 50-65 sets need marks and medallions that cannot be gotten by normal skirmishing. Most people wont do group content at lvl 50 for that.

Looking at the Classic vendor at the skirmish camp for lower level gear is pretty much pointless in my opinion. That gear is waste of your hard earned currency, as you'll do fine when leveling up with quest rewards and some crafted pieces. They're better too - except for the level 65 Epic Helegrod sets.

Though, even those are very questionable choice; I recommend you to save your marks and medallions for later and spending them for something that is useful at level 75. Stats given by armours go up a lot at that point; up to +122 to your main stat per armour piece, depending on class, should be something that sounds way better than anything in in the skirmish camp.

(And yes, you do get those with medallions. Four pieces of the class set from Galtrev costs you a whopping 3520 Medallions, but that's not really very much considering how easy they are to get by doing level 75 instances instead of skirmishes.)

Originally Posted by mac173

I am a level 70 Champ, with average gear. I run skirmishes solo at level 70 and don't fail, but I only get about 40 to 45 Marks per skirmish. Is this right? What amount of marks and Medallions should I expect from on-level Skirmishes?

A single Calenard Token (mob drop during anniversary from lvl 71-75 enemys) will get you the same amount of marks if you exchange it at the gift master. As long as the event is still up, grind those tokens and stock up marks.

As for the drop rate in skirmishes: there's hardly any reason to run a skirmish at all other than with a lvl 75 raid in order to get some seals, relics and a chance to win symbol, jewellery and exp runes. The only skirmish soldier you'll see in those raids are herbalists all the other soldiers have basically become obsolete.

Originally Posted by Elaida

Level 75 skirmishes, solo, Tier 1, seem to give a three-digit number of marks per run, depending on the skirmish. There's also a few medallions - a few from completing the final objective of the skirmish, as well as additional marks and medallions for completing the encounters. I'd say you get about 250 marks and 15-20 medallions per run, completing everything in there.

Edit: That's with full +50% bonus from instance finder, of course. You get that by using Advanced tab, selecting skirmish, 1 player, tier 1 and clicking "select all" from above the list of skirmishes.

I grinded 4 Impossible Shot -armour pieces for my hunter, mostly skirmishing. I wrote down all the mark and medallion numbers I got form each skirm but I have forgotten the exact amounts :/ IIRC typical skirmish was something like 190-210 marks and 10-13 medallions, and thats with the +50% bonus. There were a few that gave ~10 marks and ~1-2 meds more (edit: or less) but 250/15-20 might be a bit too optimistic value I think.

Originally Posted by TharbadThief

IIRC typical skirmish was something like 190-210 marks and 10-13 medallions, and thats with the +50% bonus. There were a few that gave ~10 marks and ~1-2 meds more but 250/15-20 might be a bit too optimistic value I think.

I recall getting 7 Medallions per encounter and 4 for completion of the skirmish, which means 18 from a single run. It may depend on which skirmish you do - how many events there are along the way to grant you marks and if different encounters give different amounts. That makes the real average value of what you get per skirmish very hard to figure out. They give different amounts.

However, the way how I would rather look at it, is the amount of marks per hour in skirmish stats. I did Icy Crevasse once last night, and once couple of days before that. As of now, the marks per hour rate for solo tier 1 shows me a whopping 816 on my minstrel. That's the best I've seen from any solo skirmish at level 75.

Fastest one to run (for me that is) seems to be Thievery and Mischief - solo T1 in 10 minutes, 3 seconds, with both encounters cleared. I didn't pay attention to how much marks and medallions it granted though. Also, skirmish stats don't really show you the rate for "medallions per hour", but you can do some math to see which skirmishes are the most profitable in this regard.

As a "warning", that skirmish can be a real PITA and I wouldn't recommend it for an impatient player. In last nights attempt, my max ranked herbalist died four times and I had to use Still as Death twice to avoid dying myself. Challenging, I'd say, but at least it teaches you how to use your "oh bleep!" -skills. :P

Originally Posted by Elaida

I recall getting 7 Medallions per encounter and 4 for completion of the skirmish, which means 18 from a single run. It may depend on which skirmish you do - how many events there are along the way to grant you marks and if different encounters give different amounts. That makes the real average value of what you get per skirmish very hard to figure out. They give different amounts.

It may be that the purchased skirmishes give more than free ones (The only one I've bought is Amon Sul, for reputation purposes obviously :P), as I'm 100% certain I never got 7 meds/encounter. Typically 4, some might have given 5. As the only thing that matters when grinding for lvl 75 equipment is the medallions, I'm truly sure no skirm I did gave me that many of them, even with the 50% buff.

But even with that few marks/meds it didn't really feel as a grind tbh The expansion packs (Moria, Mirkwood..) include enough free skirmishes for a random soloer. Plus I'm a masochist.

Originally Posted by TharbadThief

It may be that the purchased skirmishes give more than free ones (The only one I've bought is Amon Sul, for reputation purposes obviously :P), as I'm 100% certain I never got 7 meds/encounter.

Purchased skirmishes? Eww. I've never purchased any, and never will. I'm a lifer, after all. :P
...or a no-lifer. That truly depends on the point of view!

Edited further:

I just did two skirmishes, both solo, Tier 1 and with the full bonus. Here are the medallion counts:

• Rescue in Nurz Ghashu: 7 medallions; 3 per encounter, 1 for completion.
• The Way of Smiths: 10 medallions; 4 per encounter, 1 for completion, and apparently 1 bonus medallion for the daily quest. I didn't see this bonus in the previous skirmish.

So, I got 17 Medallions from two skirmishes. Total time these took was 26 minutes, which, with a little help of a calculator, tells me the average rate from such a small sample size would be roughly 39 Medallions per hour. With this rate, gaining enough Meds for those four pieces of lv75 armour set would take about 90 hours of solo skirmishes.

Of course, if you choose to do so, you can always exchange your marks for medallinos, with 1:50 rate. If we take an average of 200 marks per skirmish into consideration, that would give 4 extra medallions per skirmish. This would increase my total into 25 medallions from 26 minutes of skirmishing, thus taking the rate almost up to "one medallion per minute" or 60 medallions per hour.

As for getting those four armour pieces, counting these in would reduce the time into roughly 60 hours; that's one third off from the first bit of math here. 3 hours a day, three weeks. Sounds quite a bit better, doesn't it? It takes a lot of work and dedication, but it's far from impossible.


Now, something to the OP. You say you're getting only 40 marks from the whole skirmish? I doubt that's correct. You must be looking at what you get at the time of completing the last bit. Here's some quotes from my log during the Way of Smiths skirmish:

This was from the completion:

Harna says, '''URRRGGHH….''
You have acquired [34 Marks].
You have acquired a [Medallion].
Completed:
Skirmish: Battle of the Way of Smiths
You've earned 13 silver pieces and 44 copper coins for quest completion.
You have acquired [61 Marks].
You have acquired a [Medallion].

As in, 34 Marks and 1 Medallion for completing the skirmish, 61 Marks and 1 Medallion for completing the daily quest for that skirmish. That's nearly a hundred Marks. (I think they're listed in that order. Anyway, that's not so important at this point, numbers are.) Next, let's see what happened when I killed a Lieutenant:

You've earned 393 item XP.
You have acquired [10 Marks].
Taking the contents of the Corpse of Forest-born Reaver...
You have acquired [2 Bounties: Sergeant-at-Arms].

See? 10 Marks bonus only for killing a lieutenant. I recall there were 4 Lieutenants within the skirmish, giving a total of 40 Marks. I didn't really pay that much attention to it, might have been only 3 of them. Anyway, let's move on to clearing an encounter:

Fire-heart has been defeated
You have acquired [27 Marks].
You have acquired [4 Medallions].

That's 27 Marks, per encounter. There's always two of them in each skirmish. Worth killing, right? Also, after each of those four assaults during the skirmish, there was this line in the log:

You have acquired [34 Marks].

I guess you should see the point by now. One small amount of Marks being acquired at the very end of the skirmish is far from the whole truth. Now, let's count all these together...

Code:

 
Assaults      4 x 34 = 136 Marks
Lieutenants   4 x 10 =  40 Marks
Encounters    2 x 27 =  54 Marks
              2 x  4 =   8 Medallions
Skirmish Completion  =  34 Marks
                     =   1 Medallion
Daily Quest          =  61 Marks
                     =   1 Medallion
--------------------------
GRAND TOTAL          = 325 Marks
                        10 Medallions

That's not too bad, really.

As someone who solos and absolutely HATES skirmishes, with alts from level 31 to 52, is there any way other than the anniversary festival to earn marks? I'm cashing in everything I get for marks right now, since I found a good use for them, but will need more someday. Do the other festivals give marks, too?

Originally Posted by whheydt

At the moment, the best way to get marks is to kill mobs and enter lotteries. You can trade Calenard Tokens for 40 marks each.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

I WAS making a killing off the lotteries over my 10 toons, but there hasn't been a new token lottery available for me to enter in 2 or 3 days now. Is this happening for everyone, or have I hit some kind of limit where I'm being penalized?

Originally Posted by whheydt

At the moment, the best way to get marks is to kill mobs and enter lotteries. You can trade Calenard Tokens for 40 marks each.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

This. So far during the anniversary event, with 12 chars entering the lotteries, I have racked up over 12,000 marks

If you're level 75 and want to make lots of marks, go clear out Urugarth and Carn Dum. Then trade in all of the Platinum Coins you get for marks. You get a TON of them in there, and you can easily solo these instances. Should be around 2k per run, or so.

@elaida:
Yes, those numbers seem familiar to me. With the best possible bonus, 3-4 meds from a typical encounter, and IIRC some may even grant 5. I have all the armour pieces now; did the grinding few weeks ago. It took some hours but fortunately I had some medallions saved up before the skirmish-balooza. Glad you took the time to test it. I can't access the game at the moment.

@jcmanda:
Few days ago I was deeding at Carn Dum. After a couple of very casually spent hours I got tired and noticed I had earned ~60+ platinum tokens Yea nice rewards there if you don't want to do on-lvl content.

Hm were you really getting 325 marks from one run? I started recording some numbers a while ago (somewhen between U5 and U6), that's what i had so far, all level 75 solo T1 with maximum bonus from IF:

(Marks/Medallions, in parenthesis the values per encounter)
Trouble in Tuckborough:
275 / 14
Battle of the Way of Smiths:
233 / 10
Breaching the Necromancer's Gate:
259 / 12 (35 / 5)
Thievery and Mischief:
176 / 9 (24 / 4)
Rescue in Nûrz Ghâshu:
141 / 7 (19 / 3)

I was especially disappointed from Thievery and Mischief as for me it doesn't seem THAT much faster than Tuckborough to justify such a low reward...

I hit 75 after ROI came out and spent about 3 weeks running skirms to get my soldier up to par. I ran 2-3 solo skirms per day for approximately 3 weeks. I did not keep track of the numbers but my recollection is that using the full bonus on the instance finder I was getting 12-15 medallions and 200 marks per run. I noticed that tuck seemed to give only 180 marks. The flip side of that was that The Icy Crevasse seemed to give more than 300 marks. I know that a dev once said that they went and rebalanced the skirms so that they give approximately the same rewards when looked at by difficulty and time taken.

Originally Posted by Qwyxzl

I know that a dev once said that they went and rebalanced the skirms so that they give approximately the same rewards when looked at by difficulty and time taken.

In terms of Icy Crevasse, it's much higher rewards are perfectly justified if that's how developers have designed it. I think it was indeed Icy Crevasse, where I had 7 Medallions per encounter and 4 from the completion, and in which the marks per hour rate is by far the highest.

For a skirmish, it can be very nasty to complete, depending on your class. Especially if you're a rag-wearing minstrel...

Just something else to note, I've been getting tokens dropping at about the same rate as I get them outside skirmishes. Meaning- extra marks for corpse loot.

It seems I need to up the difficulty, as I did level 1 difficulty. Most of the replies with examples of Mark drops are from level 75 people, and I am 70. I am guessing I can get something close to that, if I can survive the difficult setting.

I will run one tonight that way and let you know.

Thanks for the help.

Originally Posted by Qwyxzl

I hit 75 after ROI came out and spent about 3 weeks running skirms to get my soldier up to par. I ran 2-3 solo skirms per day for approximately 3 weeks. I did not keep track of the numbers but my recollection is that using the full bonus on the instance finder I was getting 12-15 medallions and 200 marks per run. I noticed that tuck seemed to give only 180 marks. The flip side of that was that The Icy Crevasse seemed to give more than 300 marks. I know that a dev once said that they went and rebalanced the skirms so that they give approximately the same rewards when looked at by difficulty and time taken.

You can't really use the numbers from right after RoI. The currency change and massive mark nerf took place with Update 5 in December. Prior to that....yeah, decent yield. After that....not so much.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Ran Rescue tonight on Tier 1, got about 45 marks and 1 medallion. I went back, and could not finish on Tier 2, I gave up after dying 3 times in second fight. I guess my Soldier needs upgrading, and maybe by the time I get to 75 to make the drops worth while, I will have better armor anyways.

Seems you were right, skirms are no longer worth doing.

Originally Posted by Zombielord

The only skirmish soldier you'll see in those raids are herbalists all the other soldiers have basically become obsolete.

You better not bring out your bannerguard or protector. Those things are daaaangerous!

Also warriors... they like to pull everything within a mile.

In raids, herbalists may be the favourites. Or any types that don't charge into melee, as they'll be dead in a matter of seconds. However, in solo skirms, there are various options.

For example, high-ranked protector can be very useful. I had serious trouble pulling any mobs away from one with the full dps of my minstrel. He had stronger superglue in his shield than my friend's guardian apparently. This was in fact a problem at times, especially back when Warspeech had the healing penalty and tail effect. I couldn't really heal him properly with those penalties in WS, so I never ranked him back up after the ranks were reset in some update and marks refunded.

Now, I'm a "tankstrel" in solo skirms, charging head first into battle, while my herbalist heals me well enough for me to forget any other heals than HoTs from occasional Chord of Salvation, Soliloquy of Spirit and Cry of the Valar.

Also, anything that gives buffs is always a good thing.

I've tried a warrior too, on that same minstrel. I ended up buying a skirmish soldier reset thingy from the store, only to get rid of those ranks. So totally pointless. My minstrel's dps was around 900-1k, warrior did less than 100 with all his skills etc ranked up to 30.

I fail to see how that would really be useful - it's only 10% addition to dps (for a class for which doing dps is far from being the main role) when compared with doing the skirmishes without any kind of soldier. Having to heal myself, as well as the kamikaze warrior if I chose one, would slow me down way more than 10% depending on the skirmish and types of lieutenants coming at me.

Do the math - having a herbalist, whether you're a healer yourself or not, seems to be making things smoother and quicker. You can almost forget everything about survivability - just go ahead and beat them. Just try not to kill yourself due to reflecting mobs or lieutenants...

On my 75 hunter, using the instance finder to full effect and running Tier II skirms I can get around 250-350 marks per skirmish. This includes doing both of the optional encounters in each skirmish.

Using a +25% skirmish mark tome I can grind out around 1000 marks an hour.

Having said that, I haven't felt the need to do a single skirmish since the Anniversary festival started. I have easily farmed 20k+ skirmish marks in that period.

On Tier II my Protector is absolutely essential for tanking.

Drop rate for max level skirmishes is fine - with 200-300 marks per run on average (and decreased prices) it's actually quicker to obtain most items/upgrades than before.

However, mark acquisition scales down pretty badly. Doing skirmishes while leveling is still worth it for the exp (if you enjoy that, that is), but you will probably have a difficult time getting enough marks for anything.

I used to do lots of solo skirmishes on my 9 chars, since they made that playstyle not as rewarding with the IF I basically quit.