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| Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Official Strategy Guide (Bradygames Official Strategy Guides) | 
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| Author: Bradygames
Publisher: BRADY GAMES
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $15.54
You Save: $9.45 (38%)
New (14) Used (8) from $13.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 15068
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 10.6 x 8.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0744008034
Dewey Decimal Number: 794
EAN: 9780744008036
ASIN: 0744008034
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A Fresh Start Once you had neither a name nor a past, but one day a devastating storm frees you from your life as a thrall. A seemingly chance encounter restores your name but to restore your past, you must walk a path that leads through the lands of the Aquilonias, Cimmerians, Stygians, and beyond. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a fresh start for MMORPGs, and if you want to get the most out of your playing experience, then you need this guide! Its pages are filled with everything you need to help you on your journey through the lands made famous by Robert E. Howard's brooding barbarian, the mighty Conan! The Lands of Hyboria: Maximize the time spent during your first days in the land of Hyboria with a head start! Maps of regions and cities, quest data, enemy information. Combat System: A new system that doesn't rely on point-and-click or auto-attacking, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures requires more from the player. 12 Classes covered in-depth: Get abilities, feat trees, combos, skill point allocation, armor and equipment suggestions, playing solo or in groups and PVP Platform: PC Genre: Role-Playing Game This product is available for sale worldwide.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 I cannot believe how completely useless this book is May 30, 2008
37 out of 37 found this review helpful
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 May 31, 2008
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
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 June 3, 2008
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
Conan Laments This Book June 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
I'll have to go along with the rest...... June 9, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
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