Black and White 2 How to Grow Your Creature

Creatures

Creatures

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As a god, you usually have many things to do (or at least many things you should do). Multi-tasking can be a little tough, but luckily, you have an assistant.

Very early in the game, you will be able to choose one animal to serve as your Creature, which is basically your physical extension into the world of your worshippers. The Creature can do almost anything you can. Here's a quick list, which is by far not even close to complete…

Common Things Your Creature Can Do:

• Cast four of the six standard miracles (water, fire, lightning, heal)
• Quickly destroy enemy walls
• Entertain villagers and soldiers to keep up their morale
• Fight enemy Creatures and soldiers
• Assist the villagers in constructing buildings
• Fertilize food fields and forests with his poop
• Operate outside the Area of Influence

Things Your Creature CAN'T Do:

• Create blueprints for buildings, walls, or roads
• Break rocks
• Cast the stronger two of the six standard miracles (meteor shower, shield)
• Assist you in completing Silver Scroll tasks

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The last note on the upper list should hopefully catch your attention. Your town is surrounded by a—for lack of a better descriptive—barrier of light. The encompassed area is called the Area of Influence. In the first game, you could only drop stuff outside the Area of Influence; you could not pick anything up or cast miracles. Now, you can't do ANYTHING outside the Area of Influence aside from giving orders to your Creature or armies. This makes the Creature's abilities even more important.

This is not to say that your Creature must be the all-important aspect that gets your attention. Many gamers have gotten by in both Black & White games without using their Creature much, if at all. However, especially if you're a new player to the series, you'll benefit from taking a hands-on approach with yours.

There are five creatures to choose from. You will not be able to change them, so choose wisely. They are more or less the same, but subtle differences may lead you to favor one over another.

The two basic ideas for choosing a creature are "balance" or "overpower." Some gamers go with "balance"; if they are a good god, they pick an evil-oriented creature to fight, or vice versa. Some gamers go for "overpower," where you pick the same orientation and either kill the villagers with kindness, or kill them with lightning and fire.

There is no right or wrong choice here, just advice. Choose something that mirrors your play style.

EDIT: Much of the following is purely opinion based and/or based on personal experience. There are other sources that conflict with the following info given.

Monkey: An old favorite; and by "favorite," I mean "not used by anybody." The Monkey can figure out new activities to do on its own faster without your guidance, and it excels at constructing and gathering. Not bad in a fight, but there are better choices for violence.

Lion: The Lion is pretty strong in a fight, but knows his way around the village too. Probably the most balanced Creature of the four, the Lion can complement you no matter where your loyalty and darkness (or holiness) lies.

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Wolf: Aside from the Tiger, the Wolf is the most powerful Creature. He can help in the city, but is best used on the battlefield. Get him if you plan on giving a couple beatdowns.

Cow: The polar opposite of the Wolf, the Cow routinely gets its udders kicked hard every day and twice on Sunday. However, the Cow also (for some odd reason) gets the most respect out of the villagers and can entertain a smile out of the most hardened villagers. If you pick the Cow and you're a good god yourself, you're in for some difficult matches, as you'll have little help defending yourself when attacks start up.

Tiger: The mysterious Tiger is the strongest fighter, but also knows what he's doing at your city. He is by far the best Creature in the game, so you should pick him… although, you have to unlock him first. His only weakness is his ability to entertain, which is somewhat below the Wolf's, but really, you won't need it with all his other plusses.

EDIT: According to other sources, the tiger is actually just a reskin of the lion. So again, you must be the judge for yourselves in the end.

All creatures want food, rest, and love. They no longer want water, and for that matter they don't require any of it. You can stroke them to give them happiness (explained below), and they'll eat and sleep as they want to. However, they won't die or anything if you keep them too busy to ignore their needs.

Once you have your Creature, you'll eventually get a leash. You can attach or detach the leash from your hand by pressing the L key or clicking the symbol in the upper-right corner of the screen. While the leash is attached, you can give orders by left-clicking anything you see. Again, remember that you can give such orders outside the Area of Influence.

By hovering your hand over anything, you'll get a little pop-up bubble that informs you of what order you'll potentially give. For example, hover your hand over a tree, and the words "pick up" will appear. This takes the guesswork out of what you're doing, and in fact makes your life easier as it stops you from giving an order you did not intend to give. Let's say your Creature is holding a rock, but you don't realize that, and you want him to pick up a villager. Hover the hand over a villager, and you may see "throw," as in "throw your rock at him." Not exactly what you wanted to do, is it?

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As you give different orders, your creature will figure out how to do certain things, and he will do them on his own. Well, he'll want to, but you can teach him just how often to do something. You'll be able to tell exactly what you're teaching him to do due to a new interface for the "lessons." No matter what the lesson may be, you just need to click and hold the left mouse button on the creature, then stroke him gently up and down to signify you want him to do it more, or slap him roughly side to side to stop him from doing it.

One example is what you want him to do with other villagers. When the Creature gets hungry, he will instinctively want to chow down on one of your followers. A bubble will appear over the Creature's head that asks "Should I eat one of our villagers?" in blue text. Slap or stroke him as you see fit.

You cannot tell your creature when to use miracles, but he instinctively knows what each miracle does and what to use it for. Give him the lightning miracle, and he'll know to use it when in combat against an enemy platoon, as you can see from this screenshot. One word: messy.

You can see everything a creature learned and adjust his priorities by going to the Creature Learning bar (F2). By selecting a lesson listed, you can re-teach him whether to do it or not by issuing slaps or strokes. In this way, you can quickly adjust him to the situation, which may change depending on what map you're on.

Speaking of orders, your Creature also can be assigned one of four roles. This way, you can change his priorities on the fly without wasting time re-teaching him things. This serves as a temporary shift in his thinking to help you deal with emergencies or bizarre circumstances. Once in a role, the Creature will forsake all other activities to do that role until you remove him from it. (You can cycle through roles by pressing R.)

If you have the leash equipped, double-left-clicking an area will plant the leash and anchor the Creature to the area. Using the anchor in conjunction with a role allows you to tell him do the role in that area. Here's the list of roles, and examples of what I mean…

Free Will: The default mode, this is not a role. The Creature will do whatever he deems appropriate based on how often you've taught him to do various tasks.

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Entertainer: This role will tell your creature to concentrate on dancing for the villagers, or to do a one-man USO show for your troops. This will raise morale and happiness, and possibly health, for anyone who watches. Anchoring him will make him entertain a specific area.

Gatherer: The Creature will collect grain, trees, or ore rocks and deliver them back to the storehouse. If you have multiple towns, the Creature will make the delivery to the nearest one. By anchoring him, you can tell him to gather everything around the anchor. If you see a thick forest outside your Area of Influence, anchor the Creature in the middle of it, and he'll mindlessly gather the trees one at a time. This is great if you see a large pool of resources that your villagers can't or won't get to due to distance.

Builder: The Creature will help construct buildings in this role by taking ore or wood from storehouses or natural sources. The Creature builds faster than villagers, but can't carry as much material around. Anchoring him tells him to only help out with buildings in the immediate area.

Warrior: When you know you'll be attacking the enemy, or if you're under attack, assign the Creature this role. He will ignore other duties to stomp some mudholes in the enemy soldiers, or knock down walls and buildings. He'll use lightning and fling fireballs as he desires, and if there's nothing else to do, he'll heal and raise the morale of your own armies. He'll also prioritize fighting the enemy Creature if there's one in the area.

Be a little wary with roles, because as a Creature spends time in a given role, he will lose some of his free will and adapt the role as what he needs to do. At worst, he'll always do that role despite any other training and role assignment.

You cannot directly fight anything that comes around. At best, you can send down an aggressive miracle when the enemies are in your Area of Influence, but if they're not?

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Your Creature is your primary defender and attacker. Even if you have your own armies, they aren't as effective as a good Creature armed with plenty of miracles. That said, the Creature is not invincible; he has hit points, and can get fried easily against strong enemies. A bizarre rock-paper-scissors system is in place; swordsmen beat archers, archers beat the Creature, the Creature beats swordsmen. Normally the AI is not smart enough to group their soldiers together, so you'll have patches of archers or patches of swordsmen, and can plan accordingly.

When an enemy Creature is in the area, your Creature will usually move to engage it. Creature fights are completely out of your control. You are nothing but a spectator. Your Creature will fight to the best of his ability, but sometimes he'll be overmatched. If he loses the fight, he'll be out of action for several minutes. He'll be teleported back to his Creature Pen, and he'll eventually wake up.

There's one thing you need to watch out for during Creature fights. All enemy Creatures have an apparently cheap move where they leap onto your Creature, then proceed to pound his face in. Your Creature is unable to counter this on his own and needs your help. Simply equip the leash, and tell him to walk somewhere (anywhere). Both Creatures will suffer a pop animation, and the attack will be broken. You can then immediately order your Creature to attack the enemy again.

Enemy Creatures tend to ignore your Creature. If they fight, normally it's your Creature who engages it.

Black and White 2 How to Grow Your Creature

Source: https://www.ign.com/wikis/black-white-2/Creatures

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