Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Official Strategy Guide (Bradygames Official Strategy Guides) Reviews

• I cannot believe how completely useless this book is

  
  By A268EEWUXYCA8Q on 2008-05-30
  Age of Conan has a lot of minute details from crafting to quests to building your city to a variety of common and not-so-common ideas in MMOs. I had pre-ordered this book before the game came out and after spending time in beta. Basically, my intent in the purchase was to have a one-stop-shop for things like the crafting system, how to go about building a guild city, where to get quests, maps of areas and, at the end, information concerning the raids.
  
  This book has basically none of that.
  
  Classes
  
  Let's start with the classes. This book spends a good deal of time presenting feat trees, class skills, etc. but it never does a good job of dissecting the information. After reading this book, you will know nothing that you didn't know prior to reading your skill list and feat trees. The skills are simply taken word for word. So if you're wondering what exactly that particular feat does or if it's worth it, this book will not help you.
  
  It also uses image placeholders instead of the actual spells at times. For instance, all of the beta placeholders for summoning minions are intact...meaning there's no picture. Just a little dash. With a lot of the pictures and content looking like it's from beta, I wonder if the spells themselves aren't different since I've noticed changes moving from closed beta to release.
  
  Zones
  
  There's a lot of details here concerning Tortage and the beginning levels. After that, you're given a few pages per zone...but not every zone is here! It breaks it down to Cimmeria (Conall's Valley and Fields of the Dead), Aquilonia (Old Tarantia, Noble District and Tesso...along with a couple of the instanced zones) and Stygia (Khemi and Khopshef). Obviously there's more zones than those above for questing. There's a ton of content that's not even here! Where's the higher level areas like Eiglophian Mountains? Or the resource areas, for Crom's sake?
  
  Quests
  
  The zones that are actually included in the book have a quest breakdown, but the information isn't really very user-friendly. They list the name of the quest and if there's a quest prerequisite. They don't list the level you can get the quest, what the rewards are, or anything, you know, useful. Complete waste of time, you're better off exploring the world and discovering them on your own than you are reading the name of the quest.
  
  Crafting
  
  Here's the area I had most hope for. And it's the only area where it does above a crappy job...it even verges on mediocre! The Strategy Guide breaks down the five crafting professions and tells you what you can create during each of the crafting levels. Good so far. It even tells you the names of the crafting levels. Then it gives the "helpful" advice that you move between the crafting levels based on your level, not on spamming the recipes like in most MMOs...but it doesn't tell you when those levels are. It doesn't say, for instance, that you can start crafting at level 40. Or that you can start harvesting the first two tiers at 20, but you don't rank up until level 50.
  
  Additionally, while it does tell you what you can make at each crafting level, the book doesn't always explain what it takes to make things. For instance, as an architect you can draw up plans to create your guild city. You'd know this, though, by playing the game. Once you've drawn your plans, I would think you'd like to know how many joists, for example, it takes to build a keep. Won't find that information here. No sir. It'll tell you how much Ash goes into making one joist (10, in case you're wondering), but it won't tell you how many joists (among other parts) make a keep. Useless.
  
  End Game Content
  
  Finally, those looking forward to participating in end game raids, the Border Kingdom's fierce PvP, sieging or other PvP minigames will discover this book doesn't even mention them. There's no talk about the raids. No mention of the Border Kingdoms, nor sieging. There's a "PvP Primer" of sorts based around PvP minigames but that is absolutely not helpful.
  
  The end.
  
  This books is absolutely useless, a complete waste of $17 or $25 or however much you end up spending on it. It doesn't have one piece of information that's helpful. It's incomplete and feels completely rushed (with is ironic, since it was supposed to come out three weeks ago), lacks crucial information, doesn't address any content after level 40 or so and completely ignores end game content. I have never seen a strategy guide this incompetent.
  
  Do not waste your money on this product.
  
  

• Complete Waste of Paper

  
  By A32SZNN9FJ4ALC on 2008-05-31
  Save your money! There's nothing in this book that you won't know after the first time you've played the game.
  
  Just as an example, it has the expected Map section - - but they are unlabeled! There is absolutely nothing of value in this book, whatsoever.
  
  I'm sorry that I can't give it less than 1 star.
  
  

• poor layout, sadly lacking in useful information

  
  By A2PZHW92U2WRIB on 2008-06-03
  No discussion of inherent powers. The layout of the class abilities makes it extremely difficult to locate anything without leafing through several pages back and forth. I'm going to see if I can return it tomorrow.
  
  

• I'll have to go along with the rest......

  
  By A2CE698NV05JHT on 2008-06-09
  I really can't add anything to what's already been said, this has got to be about the most useless "guide" I've ever seen or purchased. Useful for starting fires, that's about it.
  
  

• Conan Laments This Book

  
  By A3042MZTUF3CXN on 2008-06-05
  Any MMO hint guide is, at best, a dubious idea. After a few months, its textual contents are redundant due to ready access to other players, assuming no balance or design changes. If it's released with the game, odds are it's a book based on a mid-beta design, and missing and misrepresenting major portions of the game. This is often countered by releasing detailed maps (which are unlikely to change significantly), presentations of core concepts which have remained consistent throughout beta, or even waiting until a few months out to have rock-solid understanding of what's going on. Sometimes, too, the developers and the hint book writers work so closely that the information is almost wholly accurate, and remains useful.
  
  Or, you could do as Brady Games did, and gloss over everything. With the exception of the early level content information, which may be useful to players seeking to eke the most out of Tortage and/or decide which race may present the most enjoyment, everything in this book is a waste. Skills? Just like what they say in game, without further mechanics breakdowns. Feats? Hit the N-key once you logged in, and you're looking at the same information the book provides. Crafting guides tell us how to make items, but not what they're good for beyond knowing that, yes, indeed armor is worn on various bits of the body. We get page after page of maps without any markers or content, cheap filler in a book already content-poor.
  
  I've seen badly done hint books before -- the City of Villains hint binder was legendarily useless. It still provided more information than this book. I am, frankly, amazed that this book isn't shrink-wrapped, as anyone who flips through it should likely realize what a phenomenal waste of cash this is.
  
  Either Funcom or Brady Games really ought to review what happened here, and make certain to avoid it in future planning. Hint books are already considered iffy expenditures. The people producing them should try to change our minds.
  
  
• Worst strategy guide ever?
  By ACIXF3UO5XIMC on 2008-06-06
  I was shocked at how useless this is.
  Just a few problems with the book:
  
  1) Not all zoned are covered. All of the 50+ zones are missing.
  2) Most feat descriptions are vague like the tooltips in the game itself and provide no numbers.
  3) A lot of the information they do provide is simply incorrect.
  
  
• well
  By A1ALD09SAYLVYI on 2008-06-20
  The only thing i use this book for is to see what abilities i get for each player and spells and feats, other wise this book is no help at all, of corse the game is an mmo where it is constantly changing the world.
  
  
• Do not waste your money
  By A2L4PIOJ1DY5HR on 2008-06-22
  Ok so I read a lot of guides and most of them are help even for mmos at times. But this one is useless.
  
  Lets start with the characters page. After coping ghe skills and feat descriptions iut of the game they explain the class in about half a page. Yep all the skills,armor,and strategies all in half a page. next they well cover the first 20 well and r about done there. the crafting section is junk and so r the maps. you can find better guides right of the forums which r free.
  
  
• JUST A PLAIN WASTE OF MONEY
  By AU28OQ4FGQ5Q4 on 2008-06-12
  This book could have been better written, I have seen a website that has more information on quests, crafting, classes. This was nothing more then a waste of $25. Good game, lousy book. Bradley Games should know better then publish junk like this.
  
  
• Oh Hum
  By A130GI7WOYNATZ on 2008-06-23
  This product did not impress me at all. It was basically an extended game manual. Not to mention that the game is in a constant state of change.
  
  
• A rushed and largely unhelpful guide
  By A1Y3J2UJ6O8F4T on 2008-07-08
  There's a lot of unknowns in Age of Conan: from the peculiar stat system to the actual numerical effects of certain buffs and skills. I purchased this guide hoping it would expand on the pitiful game manual -- suffice to say, it doesn't.
  
  Everything in the guide can be read from the game tooltips, and there's no in-depth explanations at all. Class descriptions are sanitised and mostly the same ("an excellent solo class, but don't forget to buff up before a fight blah blah"). The back of the guide even devotes pages to "maps" of hyboria that are simply screenshots of the game... just press the "m" key.
  
  A total waste of money, especially considering the massive patch changes that Funcom continues to implement.
  
  
• Worthless
  By ACTS5UDYZNFU1 on 2008-06-07
  The majority of the feats are wrong, and some are even not the correct name. It is clear this book was written from a version of beta. It is a shame that they could not even use the initial release of the game to base the guide on. I know mmo's change, but you can not write the book based off a beta and not release.
  
  Very Very disappointed. Do not even buy this... will not help you at all.
  
  
• Not really worth it.
  By A39YBBK8671UIW on 2008-07-03
  I guess my main issue is with the way the book presents material. It doesn't give any hard numbers for feats or skills. On any given feat or skill it'll say something like "give small chance" or "gives small increase". What I want to know is, is it worth my time to learn that skill or feat. How much of a chance does it give? That's what I need to know. Half the book is on character creation and all the info they give is fuzzy. Not really useful at all.
  
  
  Also the maps are useless. They are there but they have no info on them. No markers on where people or places can be found. Aside from looking nice they have no function. You get better info from the in game mini-map.
  
  
  Professions and crafting are there but once again they're missing important info. If you want to make potion X this book will tell you what ingredients you need to make it. That's good. But the book doesn't tell you what potion X is or what it even does.
  
  
  All in all this book is good for some quest info. I had some trouble locating a few things in dungeons that had no mini-map. Sure, it had a quest marker but with no map I had no idea how to get there. So the book did help with those which is why it gets 2 stars instead of one. But that info can be found online for free.
  
  
  Don't bother with this book. We didn't even get an in game free item for it.
  
  
• Meh
  By A20XFLJX3Q91M on 2008-07-09
  This was sort of helpful in picking what class to play, but didn't really give in depth guides to anything.
  
  
• Dont buy...YET!
  By A1AV2O5HVEQJBQ on 2008-07-22
  This guide is incomplete, its a rush rush job with very little help full detail. Maps are blank with no important details.
  
  you can't get updates from the website either.
  
  Wait for V.2 of the book to be released.
  lvl 45 ranger
  Wishbone
  
  

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