Manual still Useful?

[ttomm46]

I notice that the game has been updated a lot..Is the manual still useful if I order the game with the manual?

[Knai]

It isn't really all that useful to begin with, given that it contains outright lies about the mechanics. That said, it does have some useful information in it, and goes into the inspiration behind a bunch of the nations, which is itself worth reading.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually the player made wiki only lists about 10 errata (errors) in the manual.

However there have been years of patches and upgrades. Many things have been changed or tweaked. There are entire nations that are not in the manual because they came later.

The manual is still good for learning the game which is actually all it was ever meant for anyway. It says alot about this game that it takes a 300 pages to do that.

[thejeff]

Lies is is a bit strong, implying actual intent.

There were misunderstandings about how the mechanics worked. Many of which have been figured out over the last 5 years.

The manual was wonderful when the game first came out. I still use it as a first reference for a lot of spells and items, as well as some of the finer points of the mechanics. Now a lot of the basic information is online. And many things have been changed in patches (or mods) so it's less useful.

But really, there is a lot of very good basic info in it that isn't really collected elsewhere. Some of the finickier stuff isn't quite right, I'll admit.

[ttomm46]

Thank you..

[Chazar]

I found that the manual still contains information that is missing elsewhere, for example:

• Province Defense Troop Composition (although I have the feeling that they are not 100% correct)
• Castle Type for each Nation
• Item overview (If you want know which items provides effect X, the manual seems much easier to use than the wiki. The spell reference is good to learn what you can forge with Path Y & Z; the wiki is good to look up a specific item or about path boosters)

[Gandalf Parker]

Im still vastly appreciative that for a 300 page manual, they did not hard-back bind it like most game companies. The spiral back was a good move

[JonBrave]

Forget all these complicated replies --- without a doubt, pay for the manual

[Hrum]

I'm sure there are players that have memorized the relevant details from most of the (hundreds of ?) spells in Dom3, but I'm not one of them.

The wiki is awesome, and I'm grateful to the guys that maintain it, but as far as I can see it was never meant as a replacement for the manual - it complements the manual more than replaces it.

Ex:

For each spell, the wiki lists path requirement, research level, gems needed to cast, and fatigue. And it has the flavor text, and frequently (but not always) additional info on the spell mechanics that isn't in the manual (this is the stuff that really makes me cherish the wiki - well, in addition to all the other things that make me cherish it).

What the manual gives you that the wiki does not is a bunch of other basic but critical info on each spell: damage, range, precision, AOE, AP?, AN?, contested by MR?, UW vs NUW, etc.

And other than the manual, the wiki is the only place that comes close to gathering all of that info together. The game itself can show you most of this info for most of the spells, but even the game omits this or that (I think?) in it's spell descriptions.

The guys who have been playing the game for a while have internalized a lot of that data on the most commonly cast spells (they already know what situation they want to cast Fireball in, or Thunderstrike, or whathaveyou). But if you were to try to get familiar with the game without having all that data from the manual available, I think that would be rough.

End result, I would estimate that at least 90% of what's in the manual is still relevant / useful to a new player. And since the manual was actually really well written to begin with (despite of the occasional inaccuracy), I think it's totally worth it.

That having been said, if you fall in love with this game there a lot of threads here on the forums that you may want to read up on to learn some of the subtleties / errata that's been uncovered over the years. And some of those are in other places too (Calahan's in-depth study/description of dominion spread mechanics springs to mind).

So, basically what JonBrave said.

[Chazar]

One thing to consider is that the download version comes with the manual as PDF. This has the advantage of being automatically searchable (Ctrl-F, etc.).

This is why I choose the download version over the shrink wrapped one. The drawback of the download version, however, is that you get the game only for one OS, while the CD allows you to play on different OSs (in the sense that you can play turn 37 with Linux and then turn 38 with Windows - or with whatever OS happens to be active when the sever tells you that it has hosted). For me this was a drawback, since I am frequently switching between Linux and Windows. I had not thought about that in advance and Shrapnel does not exchange download versions for understandable obvious reasons (I did ask politely for help already, but either I buy again or I need to run a virtual machine or reboot).