Given the complexity of this game and its similarity to EQ (which I never played) I found that I was pretty clueless during the beta as to what attribute contributed what effect to what skill. So, I figured I'd wait for Brady or Prima to produce a book that discussed these items. I apparently missed the retail date of Prima's book, and Amazon now says "Out of Stock - Don't know When or If there will be more."

I really am not looking for cheats or tips - hell, you can get plenty of tips in game, or outright help for that matter, but I've never found a game manual that explained much more than "Insert CD in CD-ROM drive to install...." Game mechanics ? Learn'em urself, noobie...

Anyhow, I got some flavor of the game from beta, and liked what I saw. But, with no background in EQ and an obviously very stressed dev team, it seems unlikely that Sigil has any guide, so I'm looking for a third party source - besides community forum boards.

Anybody know if there will be more guides available. The Prima site doesn't even list the book that they sold through Amazon - can't figure that.

Thanks

I can't speak on the availability of buyable guides, but sites like this one and others will likely produce a plethora of how-to guides and detailed information about mechanics in the future once the research has been completed and the information logged.

You may find this useful in the meantime though in regard to stats: If you hover your mouse pointer over a specific stat in your character sheet window, it will display a tooltip that tells you exactly what that particular stat does for your particular class. Stats do different things for different classes, it's not cookie cutter like many other MMOs. :)

For instance Dex may decrease casting time for class A meanwhile for class B it increases chance to parry and makes no mention to casting times whatsoever even if class B has spells in their ability book.

I agree that the fan sites will provide insight to some of the variables. But, they don't appeal to my "engineer" side where I like to see how something actually works. A Prima or Brady manual generally lays these things out in table form where I study them until the light bulb goes off. In contrast, the forums suffer from varying grammatical style (good to unreadable) and where the volume of words sometimes is a substitute for fact.

The sites, and I was posting on the Asherons' Call page back when it was "The Crossroads of Dereth" and found the content (as I'm sure is the case here) to be very good in terms of helping someone through a particular quest, as well as a general "who dun what to who" chat area. I'm looking for understanding of how the nuts and bolts come together for the various classes and its too time consumeing to sift through pages of posts & materials to locate some of the arcana.

I agree that the fan sites will provide insight to some of the variables. But, they don't appeal to my "engineer" side where I like to see how something actually works. A Prima or Brady manual generally lays these things out in table form where I study them until the light bulb goes off. In contrast, the forums suffer from varying grammatical style (good to unreadable) and where the volume of words sometimes is a substitute for fact.

The sites, and I was posting on the Asherons' Call page back when it was "The Crossroads of Dereth" and found the content (as I'm sure is the case here) to be very good in terms of helping someone through a particular quest, as well as a general "who dun what to who" chat area. I'm looking for understanding of how the nuts and bolts come together for the various classes and its too time consumeing to sift through pages of posts & materials to locate some of the arcana.

My only issue with an "official" strategy guide is that material reported in those things becomes outdated very fast. Especially during the first year of a game's existence. Meaning that if you want the most up to date information you'll have to wait for them to publish a new copy and buy it, and when that's outdated, another new copy. The same could be said about forums and websites of course, except that for most of those there's no charge to you. :)

If you absolutely feel the need, there's always auction sites that may have a copy being bid on.

This is actually a great question. I went to the mall last week to buy one from EBGames. They told me they were sold out and didnt plan on ordering any more. Whats up with that?

I agree Inari, guides for MMO's usually do not have a long and "valid" life lol.

No question that as a game content changes, the guides become out of date. However, the materials included by the software company in the "box" you buy are a waste of reading time after you get past the: Insert CD-ROM in CR-ROM drive...... The REASON they are useless is that the software developers have become used to the revenue stream from their share of the "strategy guide" sales and thus DON'T generally provide any useful game play or game mechanics data in the materials you receive from a purchase.

I have never played EQ, and since this game is based around EQ, I'm was lost in beta. Rather than spend the money for the retail software, I wanted to FIRST understand HOW the game is played. Sigil went out of their way repeatedly to tell us how involved the gameplay was. I just want to make sure that BEFORE I plunk the 50 smackers down that I have some understanding of the mechanics.

I've been a long time viewer/reader of the Warcry boards so I understand the type of information that gets passed on here. Typically, it consists of a short "how to" on a specific problem being encountered. As I wrote above, I'd like to have some understanding on not only WHAT the different attributes mean, but HOW they interact. Ain't no one going to spend hours on these forums detailing that - hence, my question about strategy guides.

Where are they ? Yes, I checked eBay - nada. And Prima's site doesn't even acknowledge they wrote one - what's up with that ? Amazon at least listed it earlier this month, but like EB Games, they tell you they're out of stock and have no plans/knowledge of restocks.

To be honest retailers are probably waiting for publishers to print a new up-to-date version. Much of what was written in the launch guide was end of beta information. Suffice to say hardly any of that pertains to the current state of the game today.

Give them a few months and you may find them in stock again. Keep your eye on those auction sites in the meantime though, people love to sell things once they're done with them.

On a side note... The only thing this game and EQ share in common is fantasy themes. This game runs laps around EQ, story wise, graphic wise, and mechanic wise. It's like apples and oranges my friend. ;)

I would say your best bet is learning the mechanics yourself. It's only $50. No book beats first hand knowledge.

(Double post ftl.)