[5] During the Extra Life 2017 fundraiser in November 2017, free excerpts from Xanathar's Guide to Everything were released as PDFs when different reward tiers were hit.

An exclusive edition with an alternate art cover by Hydro74 was pre-released to select game shops early in November 2017.

An exclusive edition, with white foil alternate art covers by Joy Ang, is only available through local game stores.

[11] ICv2 underscored that these numbers originate from BookScan and include point of sale "data from most chains and online retailers, but not most [Friendly Local Game Stores]".

It was clearly shaped by community feedback and directly addresses many of the questions and concerns that regularly crop up in Reddit threads and Twitter feeds.

Indeed, plenty of the content doesn't have any impact on the gameplay whatsoever, such as a guide for generating character backstories or long tables of random names for the DM to consult when players insist on speaking to everyone in the tavern.

It's a huge content update that tweaks things here and there, presented with all the usual top-notch design and writing work we've come to expect from the D&D team.

Arguably some of the rules clarifications should be presented as errata or an update to the existing core books rather than requiring you to buy a new one, but when that's the biggest complaint going you know you have a success on your hands".

[15] Rollin Bishop, for Comicbook, wrote that "though the supplement's name does it no favors, it's mostly a reprinted collection of an online article series with some added depth.

Even so, the game of D&D technically only requires three books: the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual.

[16] In a review of Xanathar's Guide to Everything in Black Gate, Howard Andrew Jones said "It's a great 5E book, maybe even an essential one.

Not only does it have the feeling of a campaign plot hook, but it also offers a lot of new subclasses, spells, and tools for new ways to play and understand the game.