Customer Reviews

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames))

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you look through this book when you start playing Tabula Rasa, it would appear to contain maps of every area. This is because you've just started playing the game and don't know what to look for. At lower levels this book is very useful, containing maps of the instances and locations of Logos within them. It even gives you a heads-up on some of the tactics you'll need to employ against many enemies.

After playing the game a few days and getting past these new areas, you'll start to notice some things missing at first. First it will be a few quests missing from the book, then a few of the smaller instances. Later on it will become inexcusable. Large important instances will be missing from the book, without even so much as a map to look at.

I gave this book 2 stars because it does contain a lot of information, and for lower level players it does have useful maps. Later on you'll have to rely on fansites (from about 23-50).

They really should have waited until the game was released before sending this book to the press. The book is a walk through of the BETA TEST of Tabula Rasa. This means it mentions contacts and quests that no longer exist while not mentioning the current contacts. Also this is a rush job on editing, with the text of powers consistently mentioning a 2 minute duration while the table lists a 1 minute duration for the same power and other obvious disagreements. Finally, the book is only usable for the early levels and totally ignores the later levels and maps, plus there are no sample character builds and the suggested levels to train skills and powers disagree between text and tables.

If you want pretty pictures of the game on nice glossy pages, this is your book. It looks very nice.

But if you can read & retain that information and you want accurate hints that will help you through ALL of the game, wait until another book is published that explains the current game accurately. I'm sorry I preordered this.

This product is no longer needed, Tabula Rasa is no more. As for the guide, all the info that was ever needed could have been found online. Guide was dated at publish.

If you dont know by now, this game can not and will not ever function.

It requires online servers run by the production company for you to log in.

Those servers have been taken down and will never be put back up.

This game can never be played.

If you are buying this, know that you are buying a drink coaster.

You have been warned.
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Having said that, if you happen to be a fan of the game designer who created this, and you can pick it up for a penny, its a nice looking box. I bought mine for a penny purely because I am putting together a history of MMO display for a school project using old game boxes.

Just a short note as fair warning. It seems this guide was written during development and beta testing. Thus, it has many small and not a few large errors. Further, the 12 Deployments (read major patches) as of Sept 22, 2008 make the gap between what the guide says and what is in game all that much greater.

Still the guide has a great deal of useful information and is worth the read for now. If you don't have friends already in game to explain some of the mechanics and background information purchase this guide, but purchase it knowing it has flaws.

The manual is help full but does not have that good of details in the walk thru sections leaves a lot of features that would be helpful out as to the weakness of the enemies and their location. Shadowwalker

There have been some updates to the game so it isn't entirely up to date. The maps aren't much better than the ones that come with the Collectors edition of the game and are not as good as those that are available in game. The break down of the basic armor and weapons is good but for items that you pick up in game lacking. For the price get the Collectors edition if you can it is a better value.

The first half of the guide is good when explaining the MMO basics (stats, how to move, interface commands, but my grip comes when they try to do a complete walk though.
The 1st walk though: levels 1-10 is great good details and guidance as expected. The rest: levels 11-50 just show a proceeding lack of interest to the point you just get a map and a very brief description. The author tries to justify this laziness by saying something to the point of `well you made it this far, you can figure how to do the rest...here are the location you have to go to'. I don't like this because typically there are side interesting points in each level tiers and maps that you may not know if you just miss a spawn. Another point is that other guides have a listing of the main and side quests for each area; this guide fails to do so.
Compare to other guides the publisher made (wow and eqII) they fail to do the standards of other guides do, guide people into making educated choices. The maps are details but failed to have the legend that has the name of NPCs and monsters for the quests in that area. The map details are found in other guides- what happened here? We expect a list with specs for all the different weapons and their rarity. Formulas for crafting are NOT present at all in this guide. Finally, the compendium of monsters and NPCs and zones bosses with specifics of damage potential and where can they be found is not found at all. All they give you is a picture with a brief description with sparce verbal points of strengths and weaknesses.
This all shows that they got lazy in publishing this guide.
In the decision to buy it or not you should consider if you want to have a physical guide or go the route of going to fan sites and getting a better picture. If you do not mind ALT + TAB to get info as you play, go the web site route.
Disappointing attempt, if the game keeps getting popular, maybe they make a second edition that matches up with other guides.

I enjoy this game immensely. I have played World of Warcraft and City of Heroes as online games and what I like about Tabula Rasa is the science fiction plot, the weaponry in the game (similar to a first person shooter game) that affects each target differently (for instance, some are immune to lasers, others to electricity, etc...) and that the game is easy to get back into the game after being away for a week as an example. The 8 major classes also play the game quite differently and I like the fact that every starts with the same character and then changes into others. The game also has a great feel for warfare where enemies teleport into a lot of places around you and the atatcks on bases are, well, very intense for about 10 minutes. Pray that you have a fair amount of people there with you otherwise you will be overrun quickly. Big thumbs up!