Earth and Beyond (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) [Paperback]

Inc. IMGS (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Prima Games (October 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761540032
• ISBN-13: 978-0761540038
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,479,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Out of Date before it hit the store, October 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Earth and Beyond (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) (Paperback)

This book was written too early in the game development and does not cover many things in the final game. It doesn't even cover character creation as it is in the game. There are only one or two things of use in the book,The only thing I found of real use is the "Trade Routes" section

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly organized by anyones standards. Missing Data, November 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Earth and Beyond (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) (Paperback)

This title would seem like a good buy on the surface and its pretty [inexpensive]. Don't allow yourself to think it would be worthwhile even as a throw-away reference... Don't be fooled.

This book suffers from being out of date early in its life... But that can't be a major hit against it. I say this because its a guide to a MMORPG - change is their bread-n-butter so no hard-copy reference will remain relevant for long. The major hit against this book is that its imcomplete and poorly organized.

It does a decent job on the surface but lacks key information - for instance, it includes an extensive MOB list but leaves out loot lists for them (it would be nice to at least list special loot items - even if all loot items were not included) and fails to list where these MOBs can be found.

Additionally, not all vendor available items are listed and those that are listed are sometimes listed without a location where they can be purchased. Drop only items (items only gotten through killing a MOB) are listed as drop-only - no reference to which mob drops them. LAZY! More than 50% of listed items are listed with missing stats, missing purchase locations or are just plain incorrect - in some cases by orders of magnitude.

Engines in the game use Thrust and Warp numbers. Warp is in the thousands and thrust in the hundreds. The book lists warp for engines in terms of warp level - something which defies translation into warp speed making the guide combersome as a reference.

Weapons are organized in a haphazard way making it difficult to compare similar items of the same class and level. No additional calculated statistics (damage/second, damage/energy) are provided making it even more difficult to make comparisons.

Devices aren't even listed - no where! Devices are a large part of the game (Engines, Shields, Weapons, DEVICES). Its icomprehensible that they were omitted from this "official guide".

As a reference guide, this is no great guide. As a strategy guide its even worse leaving out key elements of the game and not describing those things that even in beta where passed by word of mouth amongst the players:

1) never take your Cygni engine - which is irreplacable - out on combat missions (items over level 3 can be permanently damaged when your hull takes significant damage or you are disabled);

2) analyse all items at your current build item level before increasing your skill level to maximize experience points eanred, etc etc... - this is especially true for analyzing components which rarely fail and can provide good explore XP;

3) Never use exploration experience gained by visiting unexplored navigation pts to pay off experience debt from being killed. Explore experience is the hardest to get in the game for all races. Its best to go on a killing spree - MOBs are always available; etc etc

Terrible! Terrible! Terrible!

Don't buy it. That's my advice. If I could, I'd have given it negative 5 stars. I fully believe that should the book be updated, the new edtion should be sent to all current owners by way of compensation and the book should include a CDROM containing all data collected from the game in a format which is completely accessible. At the very least, a website should have been created in concert with the book which contains the data from the game and is kept up to date and can continue as a reference.

Halek L100 Terran Enforcer

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars outdated, January 30, 2003

By 

CAgamer (CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth and Beyond (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) (Paperback)

The description and tactics of each race/class was just repeated. There is no detailed information on the individual mission beyond the basic. The list of MOBs are outdated. The description of items do not include any skills. They gave some excuse of not revealing too much information in the map section. The game has a interface that gives you all the nav points for every system. The game provides more information than the book. The reason I buy a game guide is so that I would have this type of information which it fails to deliver. There are a lot of web sites out there that do a better job of providing information for this game. If you still want to get it, I'll sell you mine. A waste of money.