51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not perfect, but very helpful, January 24, 2001
This review is from: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark--Revised & Expanded: Prima's Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
First off, yes, it's not 100 percent accurate. Everquest is a BIG game and it's constantly being tweaked and updated. But this guide is extremely accurate, well-organized, and full of more useful information than any EQ Web site I've visited (and that's been plenty).
That's the biggest selling point for the book: It's nothing if not comprehensive. The guide includes:
* EQ Jargon dictionary -- Read it, otherwise entries on why "training an NPC" is bad will just be mystifying.
* The explanation of the "play nice" policies. -- Kill-stealing elves, and you know who you are, please read this already
* Information on what the in-game GMs can do
* Character naming policy -- The guy loudly outraged the other day that dirty rotten Verant made him change his name from "Buttpick" should have read this
* Commands
* Emotes -- And it also includes which are animated, since those are the best kind ...
* A list of Web sites sorted by category
* Information on how to creat a character, including what the abilities mean, racial tensions in the game and class modifiers
* More detail than most people will ever need on Norrath's pantheon of gods
* Several pages on each of the classes, including gameplay and roleplay suggestions, whether or not they're suitable for group or solo play and suggested races for each
* A similar write-up for each race, not sparing, say, humans; they're a bad gaming choice in most cases, sorry.
* Write-ups of the in-game skills, including information on trade skills (what sort of stuff a tailor can make, and what it requires, and comparable information for the other skills)
* A long section of general advice on the game, including how to make hot keys and macros, what server to choose (although this advice seems a little naive, as most people will dive right in when they install the game), group play, general tactics and etiquette
* A guide to Norrath, continent by continent, with accurate, but not super-detailed maps of the starting cities (so you can, say, find the bard's guild, but you won't know where to find an individual bard in the city without actually looking for him or her), a list of the various political factions in the game (aka Why Do Those Guys Keep Killing Me For Walking Down the Street?) and a general overview of what can be found on each continent. (Want to see unicorns? This will tell you where to look for them, and warn you that you probably won't make it back alive ...)
* A section on items in the game, although here it's a little politically correct about some elements of the game (bows and arrows are very, even unreasonably expensive in the game, making, say, elvish archers something of a rarity in my experience)
* An encyclopedia of several dozen creatures of Norrath. The information here isn't extremely detailed, but you can, at a glance, know whether or not you should bother hunting minotaurs when you start. (The answer, of course, is no.) This information isn't critical in the game, at last for people who've learned to hit the letter C when selecting a monster and thus sizing it up. Of course, a lot of new players don't seem to do that ...
* Finally, there's the spell listings, which include all the spells and bard songs in alphabetical order and more detailed information on the ones level 24 and under, including what category of spell it is, mana cost, estimated damage (if appropriate) and a very general description of effects.
All in all, a very solid tome of information, fat with useful information that players will find themselves using over and over again. (Just where IS that stupid bard's guild in Kelethin?)
I also applaud Prima for making it a non-spoiler guide. Starting cities are mapped, general information about the continents are given, and spells up to level 24 are fully detailed. Beyond that, information gets very sketchy (although all the spells in the game at the time of publishing are included). And you know, that's good. EQ isn't a videogame to be solved. It's one to be experienced. And if you have a guide book open in your lap while playing, guiding you through it, you'll miss what's great about the game.
And a final note: I own a number of Prima guides, and this one has the best dollar-per-pages ratio of any of them. I suspect they could have gouged consumers at least $$ more without them noticing (I certainly wouldn't have), and I thank them for not sticking it to the poor EQ-addicted masses.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Should be required for new players., January 19, 2001
This review is from: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark--Revised & Expanded: Prima's Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
Every player really should have this book when they start out playing Everquest for the first time. There's nothing more annoying than a "newbie" asking questions that are already answered in the manual that came with the game and in this book. If they want to know where the bank is, they really should look it up rather than begging people for handouts and a complete tour. This book was literally my bible when I first started out in the game. I reached for it every day, took it to work with me, photocopied the sections that were relevant to my character, and made notes as I went along. I found the maps every helpful and still continue to use it in my travels. The spell book section is enormous, but provides the basic information each spell-caster needs to know such as who they can cast the spells on and if there are any ingredients required to make them work effectively.
Advanced users may not feel that this book teaches them anything new, but I find this book invaluable as it has everything in one place and is within reach. Sure, there are websites you can look up for more information, but you'll have to figure out which ones are worth going to and exactly where the information you want is buried under. What the book also offers are etiquette rules on how to play the game, where to go to when you need help, what certain slang terms mean when you hear other people in conversation, and how to set up your interactive features (hot buttons, change window views, etc.). I used the book so much that my husband went out and bought one of his own to keep besides his computer as well.
When I decided to start a new character in addition to the one I already had, I did some enormous research with the book, reading through the character sections and ultimately the class section to find the right combination for the kind of roleplaying I wanted to do. There was so much to choose from and the book provided the right kind of breakdown I was looking for so I could narrow down my choices. I feel this book is well-balanced without providing any "spoilers" about the game. It serves to help the new player to get started off on the right track and allows them to experience a whole new world as they go along. If everyone had this book, there would be fewer panicked "newbies" screaming on the chat channels for help.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Save your money for a good Internet Provider, August 15, 2000
This review is from: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark--Revised & Expanded: Prima's Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
If you've spent any time on EQ this book is pretty much worthless. If you haven't even opened the box and installed EQ this book is probably pretty good, for maybe the first 2-3 weeks.
First thing you read in the book are the various Verant policies related to acceptable names, misbehavior, etc. Save time, go directly to the EQ Website and read the same thing almost word for word verbatim. For newbies it has maps of every city in Norrath (for those with some xp under their belt that's all it has are the cities, no surrounding areas, no "that dungeon you just can't figure out", nothing you expect to see in a book of this genre). For newbies it has pretty extensive breakdown on every race and class with some OK tips on playing them (for the more experienced why would you want that, half the fun is playing a bunch of Char/race combos and talking/grouping with folks to figure out the inside scope). It does have some pretty nice info. on items and some monsters but absolutely nothing to help figure out that ultra-rare spawn you've lost a week's sleep over trying to get it to show up.
All in all I've blown $20 on things that turned out more worthless so from that perspective I suppose you could do worse. I would say if you are an EQ vetern or have been on for more than a week or 2 you're likely to get nothing earth-shattering out of this book. My suggestion to all is, do a Yahoo search on Everquest, and start following links. In much less time than it takes to read this book you'll have 10-12 great Websites dedicated to anything and everything you can think of about EQ including some of the absolutely best maps around (sites like EQ Atlas and others) for all areas not just cities.
For newbies, use this book to get you started. If you're not into building Characters up a couple levels only to figure out a better way to play them or that you don't like the Char/Race combo and then deleting them to start over, this book should help you avoid that to some degree. You'll have to go the Web route for more extensive and comprehensive info. on EQ once you get some experience because this book definitely isn't it.
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