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Title: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) by IMGS Inc., Dimension Publishing ISBN: 0761522840 Publisher: Prima Publishing Pub. Date: 20 April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.51
Rating: 4
Summary: Should be required for new players.
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not perfect, but very helpful
Comment: 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.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not as good for newbies as you'd think.
Comment: I have a fair amount of experience playing computer games, including some experience playing a MMORPG (massively multi-player online roleplaying game). Specifically, I played Lineage for several months. I got bored with it eventually, and the sample graphics for EverQuest that I saw looked great, so I decided to switch. Consequently, I am not a total newbie when it comes to role-playing games, but I was looking for a good book to walk me through the basics of playing this particular game. In the bookstore, this book looked pretty good. And it certainly does have its strengths. There are LOTS of tables. For example, I've currently got one character that's a Necromancer Erudite and one player that's a Magician Erudite. There are charts telling you what spells each character can learn at each level, as well as maps of the cities of Paineel and Erudin, where these two characters start out (respectively). There are also extensive descriptions of the characteristics of each "race" and "class" of character, including info on what to do if you want to "solo" (play individually) or "group" (cooperate with other players in a group). Since I'm an anti-social person, I like to solo, so I was able to figure out that a Necromancer is good for me.
However, I would have liked a little bit more "hand holding." When you start as a Necromancer, you are in a room with four NPC's (non-playable characters, i.e. computer-controlled characters) also in the room. I could figure out for myself that I should go to each character and use the functions explained in the manual on each one (click my cursor on it for info, and "Hail" it to see if it talks to me). So far so good. But what do I do next? Here are some things I could not find in the book, that I wish I had been told. (1) There are two doors out of this room. It turns out that you're supposed to go into the next room on the same floor, and then give one of your scrolls to the character in that room, who will then give you your first quest. It also turns out that, as a reward for completing this quest, you will get some good spells, so you should not bother to buy any spells even after you get some money (at least not until your character can start using level-four spells). (2) The spell you really want at first is called "cavorting bones." It creates a skeleton "familiar" that makes killing things MUCH easier. (If you don't get it when you complete the first quest, you should probably buy it, if you can afford it.) (3) If you have to buy this spell, you can get it in the spellshop that is downstairs from the room you started in, off the main hall on that floor. (This spellshop is not marked on the map the book provides of Paineel -- parts of this map are very confusing, and other parts are inaccurate.) (4) When you try to leave the city, there is a bug in the use of the key. (You will find the key already in your inventory when you start.) To get out, go to the exit door, face it, call up your inventory, click on the key to get it on your cursor, hold it in the middle of the screen, and type "u". (I only found this out by "petitioning" a gamemaster -- a process which IS described in this book, fortunately.) (5) To return to the city, find the rock near where you go out of the city. You will notice that it is tear-shaped. Stand at the narrow (I think) end of it, put the key on your cursor again, and type "u". (I found this out by dumb luck and mindless repetition.)
I'm not trying to give a lecture on the game here, my point is just that this is stuff that is needlessly tiresome if you merely want to enjoy an immersion role-playing experience. A guidebook should walk you through this stuff, and this book doesn't.
I THINK I would still get this book if I had to do it over again, but I'm not 100% sure it's worth it.
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Title: EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin: Prima's Official Strategy Guide by Prima ISBN: 0761536787 Publisher: Prima Publishing Pub. Date: 04 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: Everquest: Trilogy-Getting Started: Prima's Official Strategy Guide by Juanita Jones, Russell Phoenix, Jimmy Monkerface, Damien Waples, Development Prima, Prima Development ISBN: 0761537627 Publisher: Prima Publishing Pub. Date: 19 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
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Title: Everquest: The Planes of Power: Prima's Official Strategy Guide by David Cassady, Debra McBride, Temp Authors Prima ISBN: 076154013X Publisher: Prima Publishing Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title:EverQuest Atlas ASIN: B000069K5R Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment Pub. Date: 14 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $19.99 |
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Title: EverQuest Player's Handbook (EverQuest Role-Playing Game) by Sword and Sorcery Studio, Stewart Wieck ISBN: 1588461254 Publisher: White Wolf Publishing Inc. Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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