Berephon walks us through the much talked about and long awaited changes to the 2.5.5 Instance group.  This is part of the overall re-vamp of Volume 2 to make it soloable but it slightly different as they’re making these instances fully scalable skirmishes as well.  These fights shape up very well for skirmishes as they share many of the same characteristics, but this still was quite a bit of a change.  Sadly they’re not applying the same touches to the Angmar Battles or the Battle of Lothlorien, but with enough prodding who’s to say what’s possible.

He does a bit to explain why they went the skirmish route as opposed to just applying to the existing sage system. and the short answer is that the skirmish system is the proper place to handle all the right scaling issues.

As for the instances themselves, they occur in the same locations as the originals although slightly different is that with the skirmishes you need to initially do them in a set order with increasing difficulty in each instance, although none terribly difficult on Tier 1.

As for the instances, they do receive various changes:

The Battle of the Deep-way – The story is unchanged but works similar to the Siege of Gondoman with various waves coming towards the 2 control points.  Once 4 waves are defended there’s a final assault on the central point followed by the boss fight.

The Battle of the Way of Smiths – Again the story remains unchanged and the fight itself seems pretty similar with waves attacking one of the three forges.  The final wave appears at the Supervisor’s platform with the boss fight following at the Entrance Hall.

The Battle of the Twenty-first Hall – This instance seems again to remain similar but they did debate quite a bit about what to do with this story which again tells about the expedition eventually failing regardless of what efforts we and the Iron Garrison make.  Waves come to each of the various barricades before forcing retreat to the Northern Hallway with the final boss assault coming at the Chamber of Mazarbul.

Finally with regards to the rewards, we will get a new Campaign Token (shocking I know) which also will bring the Sage of Moria barter items into the Skirmish Vendors.  These items will still be available on the Sage but they’re expanding them to the Skirmish Vendor as well.

Overall a great change and nothing earth shattering in the diary but as always a good read to get their take on the changes.