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Contents 1 Introduction 2 Chapter 1: General Strategies 2.1 Time Passes... 2.2 Control Techniques 2.3 Using One-Shot Miracles 3 Chapter 2: Village Management 3.1 Villagers 3.2 Attributes 3.3 Age 3.4 Life 3.5 Fatigue 3.6 Pregnancy 3.7 Other Behavior 3.8 Chilling Out and Nothing to Do 3.9 Dancing 3.10 Desire Flags 3.11 Balancing Desires 3.12 Village Structures 3.13 General Structure Tips 3.14 Village Workshop 3.15 Village Layout 3.16 Village Store 3.17 Village Center Drops 3.18 The Worship Site 3.19 Artifacts 4 Chapter 3: Disciples 4.1 Breeders 4.2 Farmers 4.3 Foresters 4.4 Fisherman 4.5 Builders 4.6 Craftsmen 4.7 Missionaries and Traders 4.8 Other 5 Chapter 4: Creatures and Creature Learning 5.1 Creature List 5.2 Ape 5.3 Brown Bear 5.4 Cow 5.5 Gorilla 5.6 Horse 5.7 Leopard 5.8 Lion 5.9 Mandrill 5.10 Polar Bear 5.11 Sheep 5.12 Tiger 5.13 Tortoise 5.14 Wolf 5.15 Zebra 5.16 Touching 5.17 Rewarding Your Creature 5.18 Punishing Your Creature

[edit] Introduction

In Lionhead and Electronic Arts' revolutionary new game, Black & White, you assume the role of a god summoned to a new world by one single prayer. Ultimately, though, it's your decision how to run the new world. Are you compassionate, and do you gain trust and love from your followers from friendly miracles and wondrous acts? Or do you rule the new land with an iron fist, keeping your people terrorized through frightening miracles and deadly acts?

Peter Molyneux's incredible game leaves the choices to you--there's no right or wrong choice! This Black & White GameSpot game guide teaches you the ins and outs of the addictive strategy game and offers the benefits (and consequences) of both paths. Inside this comprehensive game guide, you'll find:

General Strategies: Some general tips for Black & White, including control and interface strategies, one-shot miracle usage, and an explanation of how time works.

Village Management: This detailed section includes tips on constructing and maintaining a flourishing village--or a playground for your evil deeds! You'll find tips on villagers, structures, and desire flags. Keep your village happy or in terror--it's your choice!

Disciples: Tips for using each disciple.

Creatures and Creature Learning: Black & White's creature is arguably the most innovative feature of the game. Here, you'll learn about your creature, rewards and punishment, and teaching your creature to be good or evil. You'll also find a list of creatures to discover within Black & White and how to access them.

Miracles: A rundown of your godly miracles and how to implement them for your people--or against your people!

Belief: This section includes tips on how to gain belief from neutral or enemy villagers, as well as how to impress your own towns--through fear, compassion, and amazement.

Land One Walk-Through: Complete walk-through for land one's gold and silver scrolls.

Land Two Walk-Through: Complete walk-through for land two's gold and silver scrolls.

Land Three Walk-Through: Complete walk-through for land three's gold and silver scrolls.

Land Four Walk-Through: Complete walk-through for land four's gold and silver scrolls, as well as tips on surviving the tough opening and how to gain important influence.

Land Five Walk-Through: Complete walk-through for land five's gold and silver scrolls, as well as strategies for converting the final land's tough villages.

[edit] Chapter 1: General Strategies

In this chapter, we have collected an assortment of tips, which don't relate specifically to creatures or villages. We discuss how time works in the game, as well as some tips on using your controls effectively.

[edit] Time Passes...

One year in the life of your villagers takes about three minutes of real playing time. As you'll surely have noticed, a night in the game is far shorter than a day. In fact, a night is about three minutes long (thus equivalent to a year of villager life), and a day is about 24 minutes long (thus equivalent to eight years of villager life).

Since a villager's normal life span is between 70 and 80 years, a typical villager who dies of old age will live for about eight game days (or about three and a half real-time hours).

Creatures exist on a different time scale than do villagers, so the creatures age much more slowly.

[edit] Control Techniques

The fastest way to move from one part of a map to another (that is, without using bookmarks) is to zoom out as far as necessary and double-click on the map. This is often far preferable to using the move button alone to click and drag along the landscape at the usual height from the landscape.

Using bookmarks is wise. There is no need to bookmark your temple, however, since double-tapping the space bar will immediately bring you there. There's also no need to bookmark your creature, since tapping the C key will accomplish this.

Some good uses of bookmarks include marking a herd of wild beasts in case you need to quickly feed your creature; the village store in each village you own; and marking important silver scroll areas. For example, you should mark the singing stones spot on the first land so that you can quickly haul any rocks you come across over to that area to deposit them.

You can also observe the behavior of particular villagers by bookmarking them and then holding down the shift key when you activate their bookmark. Watching what villagers do is quite instructive--it lets you peer into the minds of your vassals. If you pick up villagers whose actions you're monitoring, the camera view will automatically follow your hand as you move it around the screen.

[edit] Using One-Shot Miracles

One-shot miracle dispensers don't require worship power to replenish. If you remove a miracle bubble from a dispenser, after a matter of time, another bubble will take its place. You may remove a bubble from a dispenser and place it on the ground, which lets another bubble begin forming. That way, you can store any quantity of single-shot miracles you like. You can stockpile especially useful one-shot miracles for future use or as needed (like a food or wood miracle for resources or a winged creature miracle for village conversion and belief).

If you store a collection of miracle bubbles, you can give your creature a crash course on a particular miracle, showing him an uninterrupted series of miracles and minimizing the number of tasks you have to keep in mind.

Certain miracles, such as magic forest and shield spells, will remain in place until you grab the small icon hovering over the miracle and shake your hand to remove the miracle. Another way to accomplish this task (especially useful if you want to quickly take away a bunch of such miracles without the time-consuming process of finding each one and removing it individually) is to lower your totem to 0 percent, which cancels all worship. The miracles will all fade, and you can then return your totem to the percent it had been set to.

[edit] Chapter 2: Village Management

What would be the fun in being a god without worshippers? Worshippers praise you and fear you. However, they're frightfully mortal and they require all the necessities of life that you don't. In this chapter, we take a close look at what keeps villagers--and their villages--running.

[edit] Villagers

It probably goes without saying that villagers are the most important (and complex) component of a village. Without them, almost all activity halts. Fortunately, villagers have a great desire to exist and proliferate, which makes it simpler to keep your body of worshippers alive.

Remember that villagers are ultimately your source for prayer power, the power you need to cast miracles, either to impress new towns or terrorize prospective new followers. Without prayer power, your miracles are dry. How you treat your villagers to gain that prayer power is up to you. Do you sacrifice followers at the worship site to increase prayer power or breed peacefully and feed worshippers regularly to maintain prayer power? It's up to you!

[edit] Attributes

Each villager possesses a trio of attributes: age, life, and fatigue. (Women may have one extra attribute: pregnancy.) While villagers can't do much about their age, they'll monitor their own life and fatigue. Female villagers are quite interested in becoming mothers--they wait only for your godly permission.

[edit] Age

When children are born, they are 1 year old (which makes one wonder if the new millennium actually begins in 2002). For every three minutes of real time that pass, a year passes in the world of Black & White, and villagers who die of old age do so in their 70s or 80s. Thus, the average life span of a villager, in real time, is approximately three or four hours--unless, of course, they're routinely sacrificed or crushed by stones.

Young children (under the age of 16) can't be made into disciples, and the elderly (over the age of 55) are disinclined to work on their own, but both of these age groups really enjoy dancing around artifacts. Put children to good use by placing plenty of stones inside your village for them to dance around. (Read our section on artifacts for further clarification.)

When villagers die (whether from a natural or godly event, which makes their lives drop to 0 percent, or from old age), their skeletons remain on the ground for a few moments. If their village possesses a graveyard, their skeletons will vanish and tombstones will be added to the graveyard. Before the skeletons vanish, however, you can locate them and sacrifice them on your altar (this is the only way you can sacrifice a human on an altar without lowering your alignment toward evil).

[edit] Life

Villagers' lives are represented by a percentage and are affected mainly by catastrophic events, not by aging or work (although work does play a small role in loss of life).

Life is returned to villagers through sleep, and this process is accelerated if villagers have homes to sleep in. A pregnant woman's life rises quite quickly, as long as she sleeps. The process of giving birth, on the other hand, takes a small toll on her life percentage.

When villagers' lives drop below 30 percent, they'll begin to have trouble walking. When their lives drop below 10 percent, they'll begin to crawl around and cough. Villagers in this state will soon succumb to death unless they're placed beside their homes. Cast heal miracles on villagers in these states for large belief scores.

When villagers' lives drop to 0 percent, they'll die. Unless a supernatural event causes this to happen, you won't need to worry about such deaths. Death, in a peaceful village, will normally come only when villagers' ages reach into their 70s or 80s.

A dead villager may be picked up (and sacrificed); while the corpse is in your hand, it won't vanish but may be held indefinitely.

[edit] Fatigue

When villagers work, they become fatigued. When villagers aren't fatigued at all, their fatigue percentage is 100 percent (if this seems a bit backward to you, it may help to think of the percentage as a strength percentage instead).

When a villager's fatigue becomes too great, he or she will seek out food, which will instantly remove all of the fatigue. Villagers will most often go to the village store and remove a bit of food for themselves, but you may also drop a pile of food on the ground nearby fatigued villagers (and they'll eat it). Villagers won't use the food supply of a neighboring village.

Villagers who are completely fatigued won't die but will be useless for almost any task. If a food supply is readily available, however, you won't need to concern yourself with the fatigue of your villagers.

[edit] Pregnancy

A woman may become pregnant if she's a breeder disciple or if she encounters a male breeder who successfully breeds with her. A pregnant woman, if she isn't concerned with another task, will go home to sleep until she gives birth (if she has no home, she'll sleep on the ground outside).

Pregnant women may, if interrupted in their tasks by a breeder, continue about their work, tossing aside their hoes or axes to give birth at the proper time. Their health isn't endangered at all by their continuing to work. If you find a pregnant woman lounging around, waiting to give birth, you can shake her, which resets the disciple, and then puts her to work as a farmer or other disciple.

When a woman gives birth, she lies on the ground and a 1-year old child pops out, fully clothed (talk about a miracle!). A formerly pregnant woman won't immediately breed again unless she's designated a breeder disciple.

[edit] Other Behavior

Besides the above attributes that all villagers share, villagers display other characteristic behaviors, which warrant some discussion.

[edit] Chilling Out and Nothing to Do

There's an important difference between villagers who are chilling out and those who have nothing to do. The latter are disciples who temporarily lack a purpose--for example, a breeder in a village with full houses or a builder in a village with nothing to repair. Note that disciples with nothing to do won't permanently remain in this state; you'll often see disciples, who have lacked work for a substantial amount of time, turn to some other task that lies outside their assigned discipline.

Villagers who are chilling out are relaxing, but alert, and may jump up at any moment and work on a task that the village requires. Their fatigue level isn't dropping, and they're making themselves available for work.

Not only may villagers who are chilling out be useful for work, but they'll also participate in dancing if an opportunity presents itself in the form of a benevolent creature or an artifact. If your village is quite full of people who are chilling out, leash your creature to the village store or drop a rock into the town to create an artifact.

[edit] Dancing

When villagers are impressed with your creature, they'll often pause in their work (or in their chilling out) to worship the creature. This generates just a small amount of belief, but this is often better than the alternative (chilling out). Dancers are almost always either very young or elderly; children will leave the crèche and come dance around artifacts.

A creature that feels kindly toward your villagers may even summon nearby villagers with a hand gesture and lead them just outside the main village square. Once it has assembled them, it'll lead them in a dance. This activity is not only pleasant to see but also generates a small amount of belief.

If you drop a rock in the center of a village, villagers who are chilling out may elect to dance around it (especially at dusk). Such a rock will, given enough time, become an artifact, which you can use to raise belief in your godship at neighboring villages. We discuss artifacts in more detail in another section.

You may find villagers dancing around other objects that you've moved, whether you've rolled a beach ball into the common area or moved a piece of fencing as you made repairs. In general, dancing is a better occupation for villagers than chilling out, as it provides nice belief benefits--so give your relaxing villagers every chance to do so.

[edit] Desire Flags

Your alignment (especially in the good direction) is affected by whether your villagers have their desires met. Each desire is indicated by the desire flags, which fly over your village store or at your worship site.

[edit] Balancing Desires

Your villagers' desires interact to some degree. If you provide a village with more breeders, for example, you'll find that their desire to expand will increase. If you sacrifice your populace on your altars to keep the population in check, the villagers will desire mercy.

The least time-intensive approach is that of a patient but hard-line parent--note that your villagers have desires and that you can assist them in helping themselves, but don't cater to their whims. Remember that desires are just that: desires, not needs. Having a few desire flags flying isn't a problem unless they're flying consistently high.

When it comes to desire flags, players of evil and good alignments will want to handle them differently. A player of evil alignment won't be disturbed by a high-flying mercy flag but will likely rejoice in it instead. Even an evil alignment god, however, must have worshippers around to wield power, so he'll need to keep an eye on the desire flags--they'll indicate the relative health of the people.

If you're working for a good alignment, aim to keep your desire flags below the halfway point--but don't feel obligated to lower them to zero. What's better is to keep your villagers at a sort of semipermanent low desire so that they'll occupy themselves with meaningful tasks, such as fishing and farming. Villagers whose desires are always instantly met are likely to become lazy, thus demanding even more of your time. Low desire flags will equal more micromanagement. Keep the villagers working to serve their needs for food and wood, for instance, by assigning farmers and foresters.

An evil god can quickly reduce desire in his populace by slaying some of them. The best method is sacrifice, because sacrificed villagers feed your power supply (which is what you use for casting miracles). Training your creature to eat villagers when it's hungry will free you up for other tasks, although this doesn't add to your power supply. Each of these methods requires some of the populace to be dedicated breeders, especially if you're in the habit of sacrificing the village's children straight from the crèche.

A quick way for an evil god to limit population is to slay some of it simply by hurling several into the sea or casting powerful spells on them so that their life drops to 0 percent. If you simply must drop the population quickly, you can construct a small fenced area with no escape route, drop villagers inside it, and destroy the area with a spell.

A player struggling to achieve a good alignment, on the other hand, has a more difficult task ahead. If the goal is to balance population growth, a good player should use excess villagers as missionaries or traders, as this will get them out of town and doing something useful.

The key to the desire flags is balance--it's fine for your population to have reasonable desires, and it's fine for players of either good or evil alignment to ignore low desires to free up time for other tasks.

When responding to desires, take a gentle approach (unless you have an emergency of some kind). If you want to raise your population to respond to a desire for children, make just one or two villagers into breeders, not a dozen. If they're crying out for expansion, slay a few or build a house or two.

One exception is when your worshippers need food; you should respond to this desire with a mound of grain dumped beside the altar. The worshippers will feed themselves from it gradually and then beg for more when they run dry. Feeding worshippers also tends to quench their desire for rest. Keep worshippers fed, and they'll continue to worship--and you won't have the good or bad conscience pestering you about any deaths!

[edit] Village Structures

Just like us (that is, the actual players, not the gods we represent), villagers need support structures to carry out their daily tasks. They like to sleep in homes, guard their children at the crèche, bury their dead in the graveyard, and so on. In this section, we offer some tips on building a village, which will serve their needs--and therefore yours--well.

[edit] General Structure Tips

If a structure is damaged or is in the process of being constructed, you can see how close it is to completion by hovering your hand over the structure. The first piece of information you see is how much wood is required for completing the structure. If you continue to hover for a moment, the information will switch over to a percentage, which indicates the construction's progress.

Clicking the action button over an abode will knock on its roof, triggering symbols to appear above the rooftop of each abode in your village. A similar symbol will appear when you pick up a villager who lives in a particular house: With a villager in your hand, look for a small blue symbol over an abode, which indicates the house where that villager sleeps. You can use this tip to return fatigued villagers directly to their homes, which gets them to sleep more quickly.

[edit] Village Workshop

Even if your village doesn't have a workshop, your villagers may take it upon themselves to build new abodes when their expansion desires are high. However, the best way by far to expand your village is to use your workshop to create scaffolds and then use the scaffolds to create buildings.

You can assign villagers to be craftsman disciples, and they'll ferry wood from the nearest source over to the workshop. Alternatively, you can carry the wood yourself from the store to the workshop, depositing as much wood as you like into its supply.

A workshop will create only as many scaffolds as its main area can hold, but you can combine scaffolds to create room for the workers to make more. In this way, you can stockpile up to seven scaffolds without moving them outside the main area of the workshop.

[edit] Village Layout

Your villagers don't have the ability to zoom across the landscape like you do, but they must rely on their stubby legs for locomotion. Thus, to increase the efficiency of the village, make their routes as short as you can. Build new fields near your village store, for example, and construct your village's workshop near the village store. This will make your farmers and craftsmen more efficient. Shorten the routes even more with a teleport miracle.

Fences can be moved into any configurations you desire. Grab a section of fence, and rotate your camera view to orient it in the direction that suits you best. If you build small corrals, you can grab nearby herds of animals and drop them inside to keep better track of them.

Note that villagers can't pass through fencing, so don't encircle your fields with fencing without allowing for a gateway in and out; plus, don't put fencing in well-traveled routes.

Pull trees from the edge of your influence and relocate them into the center of your village. Foresters won't chop down these village trees unless you specifically order them to by creating a disciple next to them. Villagers become more content when their villages are so decorated, and fireflies will hide beneath these village trees (as well as rocks) at dawn, depositing single-shot miracles.

[edit] Village Store

The village store, where wood and food are stockpiled and desire flags flap in the breeze, is one of the village's permanent structures. Villagers like to have it filled with food because it puts their minds at ease, and you like it filled with wood because it lets you easily repair and build structures.

The fastest way to replenish the wood and food at the store is to use miracles. A one-shot food or wood miracle, or a gesture miracle, can fill the store quite easily, which allows you to forget about it for a while.

To get the most out of your miracles, however, you must go about casting them in precisely this way--activate the miracle and position your hand over the small cylindrical entrance building at the village store. Now, click your action button repeatedly--each click will provide a large amount of food, and a series of clicks will do this many times.

There's no need to click quickly. Just hold the action button down for a moment and release it, repeating this process until the miracle is exhausted. This process, in contrast to a single click of the action button, will provide the store with an abundance of wood or food.

If you plant forests near your village store, you'll reduce the walking distance of your foresters. To plant a forest, pick a sapling or tree from another area by grabbing it and pulling it from the ground and then hover it over a nice, open spot. Click the action button to plant the tree, and a puff of dust will erupt from the roots. If the puff is gray, you haven't chosen a fertile spot; if it's green, you can water it, and saplings will sprout from near its base.

[edit] Village Center Drops

A fast way to create new influence (and additional influence) is a new village center. Combine and pick up five scaffolds at the workshop. Move outside your influence. Notice you have a few seconds to drop the scaffold before you aren't able to interact with the environment any longer. Drop the scaffold as far from your influence as possible. As soon as the scaffold unfolds and the village center plans form, you gain influence. Drop some builders here and a supply of wood to get them started.

To keep the new town afloat, you'll need food and shelter for your new minitribe. You'll also need to make sure they breed, or the builders you moved over could die and leave a ghost town, erasing your influence. Get the village up and moving before you ignore it; use healing miracles to increase your belief (and a hunk of food and wood wouldn't hurt either).

You'll use the village drop to gain influence near enemy villages you wish to convert. You can move your creature there, but its antics will go only so far. You need influence there to cast miracles, drop artifacts, and perform other wizardry and tricks to knock off belief and convert the village.

[edit] The Worship Site

Manipulation of the worship site is key late in Black & White's single-player game and your skirmish and multiplayer games. You must somehow balance your need for prayer power (required for miracles, both offensive, defensive, and resources) with the pain and hunger that the worshippers suffer. Worshippers perform their duty full time and won't make time to eat or sleep. Feed your worshippers to keep them satisfied (as well as your alignment to the good side). Being fed keeps them somewhat rested too, though it's wise to use a healing spell every now and then to restore fatigue.

If you're evil, the worship site takes on a different meaning--sacrifices! Drop a villager (especially a youngster) into the worship site's altar, and you gain a hefty chunk of prayer power. You can use this instead or in addition to suffering worshippers. Be prepared for a nose-diving alignment straight to evil!

Your population directly affects how many people you can send to the worship site. If your village population is 50, placing the totem at 50 percent sends 25 villagers there. But if you take the time to grow your population--expanding and placing enough houses to hold them all--and reach a large village of 200 or 300, that same 50 percent could mean 100 or 150 villagers. Massive prayer power can prove dominating in village conversion or evil attacks.

Here are the basics: If you wish to remain good, feed your worshippers by dumping food on the altar. Heal them occasionally to cure their fatigue. If you're evil, sacrifice villagers and youngsters (breed a lot for more sacrifices!) and ignore the worshippers' pleas.

[edit] Artifacts

If you pick up a rock (and in many cases, other items such as the beach ball, fences, or even poop, though we'll refer to all possible artifacts as rocks) from outside a village and drop it into the common area (where all the chilling out happens) and then leave it there for several game days, the elderly and very young will gather around it from time to time, especially at dusk, and dance around it. As they dance, they infuse it with belief. Eventually, the rock will begin to glow, sending off colored sparks--this indicates that the rock has become an artifact.

An artifact carries with it the belief that it has absorbed from the dancing. If you use an artifact properly, the absorbed belief will exude from it, like a sponge that is wrung out. The best place to use artifacts is in neighboring villages, which don't believe in your godship yet. Toss your artifacts over crowds of unconverted villagers or plop them into their village squares.

The belief that has soaked into artifacts will be used up during these actions--it isn't unlimited. The longer you let an artifact be danced around, the more belief it'll soak up. If you let a glowing artifact be the focus of dancing for quite a long time, your own godly symbol will appear over the artifact. This doesn't create a permanent artifact; it simply indicates that the artifact is very powerful. If you use such an artifact in a neighboring village, you'll see the symbol disappear as its belief seeps out.

[edit] Chapter 3: Disciples

Certain tasks lend themselves to devoted practitioners, and this is where disciples come in handy. By lifting up villagers and placing them next to a particular object, you can create disciples. When you do so, look for a small yellow icon to appear--this will indicate the kind of disciples you'll create.

It's important to note that villagers who are not assigned to a discipline will still perform the work of farming, woodcutting, building, and other tasks. You're not forced to assign disciples to get the daily work of the village done.

[edit] Breeders

Breeder disciples generate children in the usual way. As long as there are spots open in the village's abodes, a breeder will attract mates and give them a big hug (this is how babies are made in Britain).

Breeding isn't always successful, and the age of the participants has some impact. While you'll occasionally see a 70-year-old male impregnate an 80-year-old female, this is a bit uncommon. Thus, if it's a quick population boost you're seeking, choose males and females of typical breeding age (in their 20s and 30s). These villagers have a fairly high success rate.

A pregnant female will carry a baby for nine months (about two minutes of real time) and then drop to the ground and give birth to a 1-year-old child. Understandably, female breeders can't breed while pregnant but will return to this task as soon as they've given birth (so long as there's available housing).

A male breeder won't be ashamed to breed with as many females as housing allows, which means that a single male breeder will raise the population much more quickly than a single female breeder. It's often enough to have a single male breeder in a village to replace the dying elderly.

Female breeders tend to lie down for the duration of their pregnancies, whether in their homes or in the middle of the village. If this isn't acceptable to you, you can pick up the pregnant woman and shake her, releasing her from her discipleship. This doesn't interrupt the pregnancy, and you can then assign her to another task or let her choose her own. When she's ready to give birth, she'll toss aside the fishing pole and do it.

If a village has no breeders, the population will gradually grow older and die out. While it's possible to coax the elderly into giving birth, their success is quite limited. Thus, it's wise to have at least one female villager assigned to the task of providing the village with children (or a male who impregnates the lot).

[edit] Farmers

You might think that the task of providing a village with food is equally important as providing it with babies, but this isn't the case. Cranking out babies is beyond your capabilities as a god, but filling the village store with grain, fish, and meat isn't. Your food miracles can accomplish this task with relative ease. (See our chapter on miracles for some important tips.)

You can, in fact, perform the entire task of farming by yourself, although this would be drudgery. Your villagers will take it upon themselves to farm their fields and bring the harvest in to the store, but it's wise to assign a few of them to this task full time so that the populace doesn't grow to depend on your miracles for keeping a steady supply of food in the store.

Use the water miracle to assist in farm growth. Better yet, teach your creature to do it for you. Also, creature poop can facilitate growth. Teach him to go to the bathroom on the fields instead of the crèche, for instance.

[edit] Foresters

Disciples of forestry will spend their hours chopping down wood from outside the village boundary. They'll cart their prizes to the village store and deposit them for the village's use. While your wood miracle adds far more wood to the village store than a single villager can in a day, it's wise to give a few of your villagers this task, if only to keep them occupied.

[edit] Fisherman

The sea surrounding each land provides fish to your villagers. Fish are visible along the shoreline and may even exist in spots where fish aren't visible. While you can certainly scoop up fish and drop the supply into your village store, it's wise to ask a few villagers to perform this task, as it keeps them from becoming dependent and lazy.

[edit] Builders

Drop a rock onto an abode, and you'll see several villagers stop their chilling and pick up tools to repair the damage. This is one discipline best saved for important building projects, which you would like completed as quickly as possible.

You can't directly build a structure but can only indicate where you would like one to be built; however, you can assist your builders quite nicely by depositing a pile of wood next to the building site, reducing the amount of time they spend walking back and forth to the store. Don't worry about depositing too much wood, as any excess will be picked up by foresters and resupplied into the village store.

If there are no repairs or building projects, a builder disciple will sit for a time in the village square with the status of "nothing to do." This isn't a permanent state of affairs, even if you don't shake him to release him from his discipleship. A builder disciple with nothing to do will soon turn to other matters, such as farming and fishing, if left alone for a while. This releases you from the burden of keeping close tabs on such disciples.

Builders are essential to using village center drops (explained earlier in this section), which are used to gain new influence elsewhere on the map. Drop down a few villagers after the village center to speed construction. Supply them with wood so that they don't have to search.

[edit] Craftsmen

If you drop villagers beside your village workshop, they'll become craftsmen. These villagers occupy themselves with providing the workshop with wood from the nearest supply (usually the village store). They'll stop working if all available spots in the workshop's main area are occupied with scaffolds. The amount of wood taken is low, but it helps release the burden from you. If you aren't pressed for scaffolds but would like to keep the workshop in operation, craftsmen are handy disciples.

[edit] Missionaries and Traders

If you're attempting to increase the belief that a neighboring village has in you, missionaries and traders can be of use, occupying themselves with tasks outside their homelands. To create them, pick up a villager and drop him or her in the appropriate spot in a neighboring village (look at the small yellow icon for help in this task).

A missionary can be used to take over a town with no belief. If you're an evil sort, terminate all the villagers in a neutral or enemy town (it's tough--you must get them all)--then the village becomes a ghost town with no belief. Drop in a missionary to convert the town to your cause. The problem is that there's only one resident, so fill the town with breed-ready villagers to populate the town.

[edit] Other

If there's a herd of animals near the village--for example, horses, pigs, or cattle--a villager may grab a shepherd's crook and go tend to them. There's no way to force a villager to become a disciple in this way. A shepherd will cull an animal from a herd and bring it to the village store.

Dancing villagers can raise your village's belief supply and imbue artifacts with belief, but you can't request a villager to do this task either. All you can do is provide the village with rocks for artifacts and give them access to your creature if you want to create dancers.

[edit] Chapter 4: Creatures and Creature Learning

Your creature brings the game to life, but a creature requires your guidance to bring its character to life. Depending on how you train and react to your creature, you'll find yourself the owner of a helpful partner or a blundering fool--and we assume you'd prefer the former. In this section, we provide some guidance for anyone who is having difficulty attaining that goal.

You can teach your creature all kinds of behaviors, from simple tasks like tossing trees into the village store to complex ones like planting and watering a forest. Watch what your creature does as it ambles about. When it points to its mouth, it's hungry or thirsty; when it yawns and stretches, it's tired; when it points at something, it's learning. Base your rewards and punishments on these observed behaviors.

[edit] Creature List

Below are the creatures to discover within Black and White. Some creatures are available at the beginning of the games, others can be unlocked by downloading a small file (available at Gamespot), and others are offered as rewards for solving quests.

[edit] Ape

The ape is available at the start of a new game; it's one of three different creatures to make as your first selection. The ape's strengths are intelligence and reaction time.

[edit] Brown Bear

You'll find the brown bear on land five. Unlock the bear by solving the silver scroll quest titled "Swap to Brown Bear". In the quest you must rid the town of its awful smell by removing all the bear poo from the nearby forest. As a reward, you can switch your current creature to the brown bear.

[edit] Cow

The cow is available at the start of a new game; it's one of three different creatures to make as your first selection. The cow features above average intelligence…and, well, fatness with below average strength and reaction time.

[edit] Gorilla

Available for download at Gamespot, just execute the file and the creature becomes available to you at a creature breeder.

[edit] Horse

Available for download at Gamespot, just execute the file and the creature becomes available to you at a creature breeder (check the creature breeder on land one).

[edit] Leopard

Available for download at Gamespot, just execute the file and the creature becomes available to you at a creature breeder (check the creature breeder on land one).

[edit] Lion

Complete the Stanley the Wolf silver scroll quest on land five to unlock the lion creature.

[edit] Mandrill

Available for download at Gamespot, just execute the file and the creature becomes available to you at a creature breeder (check the creature breeder on the land one).

[edit] Polar Bear

Obtaining the Polar Bear requires a two-part quest. First, you must successfully complete the Explorers quest on land one. Provide wood, grain, and meat for the explorers so they sail away. When you reach land five, you will meet the explorers again. Click on the silver scroll to receive your reward: the Polar Bear creature has been unlocked.

[edit] Sheep

Complete the Lost Flock silver scroll quest on land one…with a twist. You must return all sheep to the farmer. After you return five, you're rewarded with some food. You must continue to search for all the others (sheep locations are within the land one walk-through of this game guide) and return all sheep to unlock the Sheep creature.

[edit] Tiger

The tiger is available at the start of a new game; it's one of three different creatures to make as your first selection. The tiger boasts excellent strength but lacks intelligence.

[edit] Tortoise

Complete the Fish Puzzle silver scroll quest on land four to unlock the Tortoise creature.

[edit] Wolf

You'll find the Wolf creature at the end of the Treacherous Path quest on land four. In the retail version of Black & White, the quest can't be completed in a successful fashion (though the correct solution can be found within the land four walk-through of this game guide). After a patch, follow the solution and be rewarded with the Wolf creature.

[edit] Zebra

Complete the Riddles quest on land two to unlock the Zebra creature.

[edit] Touching

Your interaction with your creature, at its most basic level, is the touch of your hand. By hovering your hand over your creature and holding down the action button, you can zoom in and reward or punish it as you see fit. Rewards and punishments should be doled out in much the same way as parents do with their children--unless, of course, you're intent on raising an evil creature!

Rewards and punishments should also be administered immediately, or else you may teach your creature the wrong thing. The moment you see your creature do something you approve of or want to discourage, zoom in and give him some love (or pain).

[edit] Rewarding Your Creature

Whenever you spot your creature doing something, which you want to encourage, reward it by stroking it until the "good boy" percentage rises above 0 percent. You can reward up to 100 percent, but you should take advantage of the available range of rewards.

That is, if your creature does something you absolutely want to encourage (for example, for casting a water spell on your fields--or, if you are so inclined, for eating a villager!), reward it to the full amount. On the other hand, if your creature does something you're sort of happy about (for example, tossing an animal into the village store or patting a villager on the head), reward him a little bit.

Your creature will tend to do those things for which it was rewarded fully, in lieu of those things that it was rewarded partially; this lets you prioritize, to some degree, what actions your creatures will take on your behalf. If you always reward up to 100 percent, your creature won't be very discriminating.

Make sure you don't reward your creature too early--especially when it's holding an object. A creature praised while holding an object is very likely to eat that object. If you're interested in teaching your creature to plant a shrub, for example, you should wait until it plants the shrub before you administer any praise. If you praise as soon as the creature pulls up the shrub, the shrub will most likely become a snack.

Of course, this leads naturally to the next point: If you want your creature to eat a certain kind of food, you should offer that food to your creature and immediately pat its stomach (just 10 percent praise will suffice). Then after the creature downs the food, praise it again (to the degree which you would like your creature to seek out this kind of food).

[edit] Punishing Your Creature

In general, you'll use punishments when you want to stop a creature's behavior, even if you're working for an evil alignment. Don't try to create an evil creature by randomly punishing it--you'll just end up with a confused creature. Instead, whenever you see your creature doing something that's clearly evil (like eating a villager or casting lightning on the crèche), reward it.

You can greatly shape your creature's character by punishing it at opportune times. If your creature yawns when its tiredness isn't great, give it a brief slap to convince it not to be so lazy. If your creature points to its mouth when it isn't very hungry or if it eats food when it's far from being needy, punish it. A creature that isn't lazy and doesn't eat up your available food supply is a more helpful creature.

There are other ways to condition your creature--for example, keep it occupied when it's not very hungry or tired so that it learns to eat and sleep only when it truly needs it. But use punishments when you must discourage behavior that you can't tolerate.

As with rewards, use the full range of punishment percentages to your advantage. When your creature does something reprehensible, like snacking on kids, go all the way to 100 percent; but if your creature does something slightly annoying, like pooping on kids, just give it a few gentle slaps.