Interesting blurbs from Prima's Official Strategy Guide for Kunark

[LazyHydras]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What a waste.

It sounds like the author was not deeply familiar with the game and under pressure to get the guide out fast. We can see he had to way over extend his data (clear copy and paste of internet rumourmongering and speculation as well as confusing the innate abilities of his class with those of his race on his new iksar monk).

This is peak capitalism at work; putting out shit products to milk untapped niches and exploiting customers attempting to overcome their own ignorance.

I feel bad for the team that made it, but someone must have been laughing all the way to the bank.

Sounds a lot like what just happened to Warcraft 3 Reforged. Shitty overhaul of the game that downgraded a lot of features, added models into the game that just didn't hold any fidelity to the originals, took a working battle.net system and killed it by trying to implement an entirely new system from scratch replete with bugs that weren't a thing in the original, etc, etc. Pushed out welllll before it was ready because Activision probably wanted to parlay the money into more Call of Duty content.

[Philistine]

Hoooly smokes! Some of that stuff is nuts! I can only imagine how much gear and grinding was needed to undo some of that bad advice!

[DeathsSilkyMist]

The thing that interests me is this book must have been written while Kunark was being built. I can't find the exact release date for the guide, but if memory serves me right, the Prima strategy guides were released shortly after the game is released. The book also clearly has items that didn't make it into the game. The writers must have been using older item tables.

This makes me wonder if some of these mistakes were actually ideas the Dev's were playing around with, and decided to drop. Maybe Iksar's at one point in development did have racial dual wield, or a special racial tail attack, similar to Slam on Trolls, Ogres, and Barbarians. I know monks specifically get tail rake, but that is class specific, where Slam isn't.

Here are a few more noteworthy things:

1. It looks like a whole visible set of bloodstained armor was planned. The book lists Bloodstained Mantle, Bracelets, Gloves, Leeves (they forgot the S in Sleeves lol), Leggings, Coif, Tunic, and Boots. P99 only has the Tunic, Mantle, and Gloves. What is annoying about this book is they do not list all the stats of the armor. Just the size, weight, AC, and merchant resale value. So I guess we will never know for sure what stats the other pieces would have had. The weird thing is the boots, tunic, and coif all have 13 ac. This seems to be a copy paste error, or maybe the items had temporary values before they were taken out.

2. There was a visible set called "Ebon Mail". It had Boots, Sleeves, Gloves, Coif, Leggings, and Tunic. The AC isn't great (Tunic has 15 AC, Boots have 6 AC), but the name is cool. Again, no way to know if the items had stats or not, sadly.

3. There was a 1HS weapon called "broadsword of the void", 14 Damage, 46 Delay. Cool name, but no way to know what classes could use it, or it's stats.

[kaev]

Even at the time the Prima guides were mocked by the players.

[Somekid123]

The robe of recovery supposedly dropped off guild leaders in south qeynos.

[kitao]

Originally Posted by Somekid123 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The robe of recovery supposedly dropped off guild leaders in south qeynos.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/...tml?item=57005

Had no idea what this was --- but man oh man. Corpse a couple of those!

[Evia]

Lol. Glad I never picked these up with all the terrible info!

[Mota]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Agility here means quick and effective weapon work and more hits per stab.

more hits per stab

[Lune]

I blame this book for 12 year old me continually wanting to roll hybrids throughout classic. No wonder I enjoyed P99 so much more than classic.

[Twochain]

my lord. this strategy guide was my go to pooping book for YEARS