PlanetB&W | Articles | Reader | C.R.E.E.D.
Project CREED is an on-going investigation into the titans/creatures of Black & Whiteto provide players with advice and details regarding their creature and it's mind. This will provide everything from the most basic information for new players up to the more advanced ways to train your titan and get the most from it.


Contents
  • Chapter 1: You and Your Creature
  • Chapter 2: Welcome to Bootcamp
  • Basic General Information
  • Chapter 3: Intermediate Knowledge
  • Intermediate General Information
  • Chapter 4:Advanced Knowledge

    Chapter 1: You and Your Creature

    Despite many players only taking a passing interest in the creature it's actually one of the main features of the game and can be an invaluable tool. Perfect for basic maintenance of towns, crops and villagers. To ignore the titan is just asking for a tougher game. The creatures will also provide a perfect method of taking over distant towns without you dipping into your mana reservoir to conjure up a fireball or storm to pass over the town to impress them. But your creature should always be your right-hand man in your plans for world domination. J

    Depending on how you want to play the game the titan's role may vary. You may want it to simply be a workhorse for looking after towns; then again you may want to have it off impressing distant villages while you deal with town management. The uses and flexibility of the creatures are nearly unlimited once fully trained.

    It takes time and dedication to create a truly great creature but that care and attention will pay off when you find that your noble beast is taking care of most of the work for you. The AI in the game is adaptive and a skilled trainer can mould the titan's mind in whatever way they want. One thing to remember that a creature has it's own personality and that it needs a greater understanding than other artificial life programs like the Tamagochi or Norms. It's possible to turn a creature into a mental wreck if it's exposed to enough punishment and mistreatment. Sometimes trauma caused during its early years can have a lasting effect. If you severely beat a titan who's eating too much when they are young then it may end up never wanting to feed itself later. And in the most severe of cases the condition is final and cannot be reversed. To avoid this problem it best to not punish a creature to 100% or reward to 100% all the time. In most cases the reward or punishment should be directly related to the event and frequency. It should NEVER be a case of 100% reward for good things or 100% punishment for bad since you don't want to make a titan's mind a simple case of Yes or No regarding matters. A healthy creature mind should be able to define that an action is only good or bad in certain circumstances. This detailed reward/punishment system will be covered in the intermediate section.

    This guide is going to be broken into skill levels. Basic training will cover the absolute basics for working with your titan. With this information you will be able to play the game without paying attention to the early tutorials on island 1. Intermediate training will cover the more generalised knowledge that you'll accumulate from playing the game and will help you to mould the creature into whatever you want. It'll also cover the complex issues of titan learning and growth. The advanced section is going to be where the groundbreaking discoveries will be made. It'll cover specific areas of the game that won't be required to complete the game but will be helpful in perfecting your titan training abilities. The advanced area will be where the majority of updates will be made once the Basic and Intermediate sections are complete. At the end of each section will be a general knowledge chapter covering smaller facts that don't warrant a chapter of their own due to the simplicity or because they are merely quick facts.

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    Chapter 2: Welcome to Bootcamp

    In Island 1 you learn the basics of using your titan, this section is going to review what you learned and look a bit deeper into using the leashes.

    First off you need to know that each species of titan will have different attributes from others, this difference is negligible and the final choice really comes down to the appearance of the titan and your tastes. However some players like a titans to learn quickly so they opt for the smarter ones like the Chimp, Ape or Mandrill. But saying that some people want a good and strong fighting creature like the Tiger, Lion or Bear. Below is a chart of the estimated creature attribute provided by Bwcenter.com

    *f.strength is the time in minutes to recover from being killed

    • Green = Creature�s best stat(s)
    • Blue = 2nd best over all stat
    • Red = 1st best overall stat
    • Grey = worst overall stat
    • Underlined = The creature�s best but also something else

     

    Disclaimer :These stats are from BWCenter.com and are not (in my opinion) totally accurate. Project CREED will be compiling a data chart similar to this at a later date. I would suggest using this information only as a loose guide .

    Now that you've decided on a titan, let's get on with some basic training for both you and him.

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    Chap. 2 - Section A: Eating Habits

    There are many types of edible things in Eden and not all of them are good for your titan's stomach. In fact some are quite hazardous if you want to avoid certain side effects (more on that later) Teaching a titan to eat certain food is simple. You simply pick up something like a cow, some grain or a rock and then give it to your titan. You can then encourage him to eat it by rewarding him. This will make him eat it. It's wise not to reward to much for handing him the food cause this can lead to a titan only accepting food that you give him and not learning to hunt for food himself. Simply rewarding up to 10% is enough to give him the idea. Once he's eaten then reward him on a scale of 10% to 100% depending on how often you want your creature to choose to eat that kind of food. When you first start off it's best to reward to 50% on most occasions so that your creature doesn't turn down other types of food that you offer him. If your titan eats something that you don't want him to develop a taste for then smack him. Depending on what the object is this should be around 20% to 100%. If you are playing as a good god then you should avoid smacking your beast to 100% on the first few occasion cause you may make your titan scared of going near humans causing some problems later if you need his help. Naturally your titan will slowly learn what to do and not do with each item in the game. Be wary of how much to punish and reward your titan since eating habits can reach a point where they are nearly irreversible later on in the titan life.

    Once your titan starts feeding himself then you should reward him the most so that he understands that feeding himself is better than having you giving him food. Making a creature independent will save you much time and grief later. More in depth information on creature eating habits will be covered later.

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    Chap. 2 - Section B: Leashes and Commanding

    The tutorial that Sable gives in the game is basic to say the least. The leashes are more useful than simply encouraging violent or peaceful behaviour and focusing your titans attention. The more advanced tactics are covered later. The basics are simple and this will help you get early training done faster for certain things.

    The Fluffy Leash Of Compassion will encourage your titan to simply be peaceful when he's on it. This is helpful to reduce the chance of a titan destroying something or to help ignore an enemy titan who's taunting your creature. Using the fluffy leash and attaching it to certain item will cause specific default actions. Attaching it to the town centre will cause your titan to try and help the town in general and defend it against attacks and fires. Naturally your titan will need some encouragement in these areas when they are young. Once your titan knows the food and wood spells then you can set about provoking precise actions. Attaching to the store itself will encourage the titan to deal with the town's desires. Teach him to be able to turn villagers into breeders by doing it your self while letting him watch. Soon he'll catch on. You can get exact responses by attaching the leash to each flag on the town store as well. While this will lead to the titan having default knowledge of certain ones like Food or wood he will however need training to respond properly to defence desire and offspring desire. Given time a patience you can get your titan to use the wood desire flag to even water trees and put wood directly into the workshops or buildings that are under construction. When a titan is holding an item then clicking somewhere with the fluffy leash will make him put it down on that spot. If you want your titan to sleep in his pen then clicking inside it with this fluffy leash will help him to get to sleep.

    The Aggression Leash does exactly as it says. Any building or object that you click on with this leash will cause the titan to be hostile towards it. Given more advanced training you can provoke specific forms of violence. If you want your creature to throw the current item that he's holding then you use the Aggression leash and click where you want him to throw it. Aside from these the Aggression leash only has one other use that will be covered later.

    The Leash Of Learning is used to focus your titan's attention. If he's on the leash while you perform certain actions yourself then the titan will learn faster because he's paying attention to you. You can also use this leash to teach your titan to JUST pick up objects rather than perform some other action. If you have a peaceful creature then using the Fluffy leash on a sheep you want him to pick up could lead him to heal it instead if that's something that you taught him to do. This leash can also be used in a similar way as the leash of compassion in that most titans will put carried item on the floor if you use this leash to click on an area. This leash also helps to just tie your titan to an object without him trying to destroy it. It can also be used to get a titan to drink from water if you click on it.

    Despite all these predefined conditions that the leashes provoke it's still possible to get a titan to behave in a totally opposite way to what the leash is supposed to do, with enough training it's possible to get a titan to be destructive on the leash of compassion and vice versa. But all these leashes can be used to tie a creature to an object and get them to move to a fixed area. Although I didn't mention that the aggression leash would make a titan sleep in an area you direct him to there's still the possibility that he might settle down once he arrives there. But from experience this rarely happens unless it's something that you taught your titan to do, like I said, the predefined behaviours can be overwritten to an extent.

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    Chap 2. Section C: Combat and Strength

    Fighting is one of the more skilled areas of the game and is almost detailed enough to become a section unto itself. In this chapter we'll just cover the bare bones of what you need to know. Creatures will fight when both are provoked into combat. This can be forced by the players who use the aggression leash and clicks on another titan or attaches it to one. It's possible to make a creature ignore the taunts if you are working on making your creature 100% good however by using the leash you'll make him fight no matter what he's learnt. During the taunting phase the two titan's will square up and start insulting each other and generally making a lot of bold gestures in an attempt to get the other titan to fight. Titan's who have been encouraged to show their feelings will sometimes start to cry if they're feelings are hurt, thus stopping the fight from starting in some cases.

    Once both titans decide to fight a glowing ring will appear in a suitable place that's dictated by one of the titan's. This titan is the one whose alignment will drop the most because they started the fight. The fight will start and the player's will move to the side of the ring and see the titan's health bars in the top of their screens. Underneath the health bar is the energy meter, this is used for knowing if you titan can do a miracle attack like a fireball or weakening miracle. When this bar is full you can get about 2 to 3 miracles out of it before having to wait for it to recharge. Click on the opposing titan will make your creature strike at that area. Clicking on your creature will make them block. One thing you must remember is to only click on your titan ONCE, clicking several times will make him defend several times and possibly let strikes through his defence. Once the energy bar of one titan reaches zero then the fight end with the titan that's still standing being the victor. That's a basic's of fighting, for more detailed information and learning how to fight better please read the Intermediate guide.

    A titan's physical and mental state will effect how well it fights, a titan who's very tired will move a bit slower and not string together attacks very well plus they might collapse from exhaustion during the fight and thus forfeit the match. Strength and fatness are the 2 key factors in the arena since fatness increases how much damage your titan can take and strength increases the amount that he can cause. However these two factors also effect the 3rd factor that is speed. A fat creature naturally will move slower and thus not be able to string together attacks easily. But weak titans will also move slightly faster as well to compensate for their lack of strength. For a player who's building a good fighter they will want to fight a good balance between speed, strength and fatness to suit they're combat style.

    Building up strength is simple; just have the creature run around with something in his hand like a large rock or tree. If the object is heavy for your titan then his strength will increase. A young titan's strength will be tough to increase and sustain at that level since it can't carry very heavy object and the strength drops quite rapidly when he stops. A creature's whose about half way towards maturity will be able to build muscle a lot faster since the body isn't growing as fast as a younger titan. The strength of a titan varies from one species to another so some will naturally be better for fighting than other. The tiger and Lion are among the fastest and strongest fighters in B&W but there are alternatives. The quality of the fighter comes down to how well the titan is trained and how good the player is at commanding him during a fight.

    Fatness is by far the simplest factor to build up. Just make sure that your creature eats even when he's not very hungry. Because the energy level of a titan is related to the hunger meter it's easy to tell when to feed him. If the titan is at 10% hunger then his energy level is at 90%, so 90% of the energy from the food will be converted into stored energy as called fat. Good sources of fat energy are cows, pigs and sheep. But really any meat item is ideal. Grain and fish will still cause an increase in fat although the energy that's converted in fat won't be as high.

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    Chap 3 Section D: A Blessing Or A Curse

    The heart of B&W is the alignments. This is a very simple thing to explain but we still get folks who are new to the game asking how they can lower or raise a creatures alignment. Plus there are some things that effect alignment which you wouldn't expect. First of all let's look at good.

    Getting a good creature is actually quite simple. Just have them running around healing villagers, gathering crops, putting villagers to bed at night, dancing for them and general making them happy. In regards to a good creature capturing a village then it's a case of using a combination of impression tactics like telling stories, dancing and posing. And the impressive miracles themselves. Flock of Flying animals is a very impressive trick and will get over 100 belief points upon it's first casting. Then there's tending to the needs of a town and using things like miracle wood and food to help with that. If a town is being damaged or attacked then getting him to put a shield around the vulnerable buildings would be wise and putting out fires is a must.

    You have to be very careful what a good creature eats. He won't be able to eat fish since this is classed as stealing since the villagers claim fish store for themselves even if they aren't using them. The only way around it is to find an unclaimed school of fish. The same goes for claimed cattle and grain. If a creature eats a cow that's being attended or is close enough to a villager for them to own it then you can't do that. Even eating meat can be considered evil since your creature is killing something. But in most cases anything that has 2 or more than 2 legs is out of the question. Taking grain from the store or the field is also wrong, the way around this is fro you to take the food to the creature yourself, that way it's you who is stealing and not your titan.

    He also can't be allowed to get into fights or be aggressive in any way. Just like you he needs to be totally peaceful. Don't teach a good creature any hostile miracles so that he won't be tempted to use them.

    On the flipside we have the fun bit, were your creature needs to become the personification of evil itself. Let it eat whatever it wants but encourage them to eat villagers. These don't provide much nutrition so it may take 2 or 3 to satisfy the creatures hunger if it's high. But the more killing the better. Encourage him to randomly attack buildings but not so much that you spend your time rebuilding the,. Get him to cause a decent amount of carnage by throwing rocks at the cr�che. That's another thing, killing kids is totally sadistic......do it as much as possible. :)

    For impressing towns you want things like thunderstorms, fireballs and packs of wolves. You will probably end up killing a towns population before you impress them so try to leave as many buildings as possible intact for when it's finally yours. A good trick is to set fire to things and then put the out with miracle shower. This will keep your creature's alignment balanced. A good way to win over a town with an evil titan is to stage fight near the village. The winner will always get a lot of respect and belief. Just to make sure that you don't lose........cheat. When the fight is about to start you should soften up your creature's opponent with a few attacks of your own. When it starts you should have your creature set fire to the other creature.

    It's really as simple as that. With evil creatures you need to control the amount of damage he causes or risk losing because you have no buildings left or no one to worship you. Being good you will need to avoid anything hostile and feed your creature on miracle grain that you make (I suggest have a food pile near the temple just for him) or feed him by hand which unfortunately makes him dependent on you.

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    Basic General Information

    To reward or punish or your titan you hold down the action button when your hand is over your creature. You will then be able to slap or stroke him to reward or punish for behaviour. Quick movements of the mouse will slap while smooth movement will stroke. It is important to reward or punish the creature immediately after the action it has performed to encourage or discourage it to do or not do that action more.

    Getting a titan to drink requires some encouragement since young titans will not always drink naturally. Using the leashes you should click as far into a body of water as possible. Your titan will then move to that spot and hopefully drink by it's own accord, however some rewarding while the titan is standing in the water may be required. But remember that a titan has it's own mind and may not ant to drink even if it is seriously dehydrated.

    Tattoo's can be applied to creature in the creature cave or through the player options menu. These can be accesses via your temple, the start menu or by pressing F5 while in the game.

    For details on how to make your own tattoos then please check the "HOW TO..." section at the end of this guide.

    To change your creature into another species/animal you will need to use either the creature trainer who can be found on Islands 1 and 4 or use one of the many external utilities. The trainer can be found in the northwest of the island just beyond the large gates in a small glen with a single hut. The finer point of exchanging titans will be covered at a later date.

    Despite all the so-called 'Official advice', creature poo has no beneficial properties to crops or plants in general. It also doesn't bother villages or other titans which its presence. This means that it's pointless encouraging a titan to poo by or on fields or trees since it won't increase the plants growth or a crops final yield. But it's advisable to make sure that your titan goes regularly to avoid complications that will be explained later.

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    Chapter 3: Intermediate Knowledge

    Now that we have the bare bones of the creatures covered, let's move onto the real meat of the game. Now we'll look at the sort of thing you will encounter in the game on a regular basis and learning to get your creature conditioned to the sort of behaviour you expect of it.

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    Chap 3 Section A: It's a Miracle

    Obviously you will want your titan to learn to cast certain miracles throughout the game, this is where the creature intelligence becomes obvious since learning miracles will give you a direct indication of how well the creature is learning the current spell by having a lightbulb appear above their head with the percentage of that miracle they currently know. This increases as you cast the spell more while the creature is looking or when you hand them a one-shot miracle bubble. A creature can however cast a miracle when it doesn�t know the miracle to 100% as strange as it seems the creature only really needs to know it to about 80% to use the miracle. This does however increase the chance that he�ll mess it up.

    There are two types of miracles in the game. Aggressive and Passive. Each time you or your creature uses a miracle then your (or his) alignment will be effected. Spells like Fireball and Xlightning will naturally cause the alignment of the user to drop, Food and Spiritual Shield will raise the alignment. One thing to remember is that while the Regular Storm miracle simply waters crops it is still classed as an aggressive spell.

    When teaching a titan a certain spell it�s a good idea to have them on the leash of learning so that they pay attention. The creature need to also be looking at where you are casting the spell meaning that he must be in close proximity. Now creature like the Ape will pick up on miracles very quickly but titans like the Tiger will take a bit longer. A perfect example of this would be the MegaBlast miracle that takes the longest time of all to learn. It is known that a Tiger needs to be shown the miracle 7 times before it�s learned it another 1%, the Ape however can learn this in half the time or better. The best trick however allows you to teach your creature a miracle without spending any mana whatsoever casting it. Simply find 2 one-shots and then hand the first one to your creature. Then before he can cast it you must hand him the second one. He�ll throw the first one over his shoulder having not used it yet and take the new one. You need to then grab the old bubble and hand that one t him before he uses the second one that you handed him. The nice thing about this method is that his knowledge of the miracle will rise but he won�t become tired from casting it and you won�t be using any mana to create the miracle yourself. That�s the very crude way of doing it cause your titan will be learning the spell but not knowing who or what to cast it one like he would if you were showing him. So in a certain way it may save time to use the traditional method. The best place to do this sort of training is in a Skirmish map or Playground where other Gods and their titans won�t disturb you. The best ones are user-made maps which have a large number of miracle dispensers that give you quick and easy access to the spells.

    Creature miracles are another matter entirely since some of them need to be cast on another titan for your creature to learn them. Spells like �Freeze� will only ever be learnt if your creature sees you cast them on another creature or if another creature is present to cast on. However, �Strength� and �Weakening� can be cast on your own titan and he�ll still learn them. Getting a creature to cast a miracle like �Expansion� on themselves is by far the toughest task to manage since he will have learnt to only cast it on another creature.

    Getting your creature to use a certain spell is no different than teaching them anything else. You simply put them on the learning leash and have them watch you as you cast the spell on or at the desired object. Given time the creature will soon catch on and then you reward or punish them depending on what results you are trying to achieve. Advanced techniques in getting a titan to perform specific spells on certain targets will be covered in the Advanced Section.

    One thing o remember is that certain miracles will become available in fights. Things like Heal and Lightning can be very handy in tipping the balance I your favour. However, a titan need to know a spell to 100% to effectively use it in a fight since it�s much more fast paced than being out of the ring.

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    Chap 3 Section B: Creature Growth and Development

    If there was one set of questions that get asked the most then this is it. The number of people who ask about titan growth or how to get your new beast to become the strongest in the land is amazing. So here are the facts.

    Robert Hale, AKA SchizoSlayer, wrote the first article about titan growth. And took a very biological look into the factors in creature growth. The article is fairly long and if you want to read the full article, you'll have to wait until the next release, in which I'll include the link. I will however break in down into the main points and explain in detail how you can achieve this in game.

    Rob�s article says that a titan could reach its full size by 18. I find this doubtful for a number of reasons. The first is that each titan has it�s own unique maximum growth rate. The Cow being among the slowest and the Ape being among the fastest. So there�s the first piece of fact since you will be greatly effected by this factor. The next is that age and growth are measured differently. Age is measured using the PC�s internal clock while the growth of a titan is related to the number of Frame per second have passed. This means that by running at double speed (alt+2) then your titan will be growing faster in one year then if you had the game running at normal speed. In double speed it takes roughly 45 minutes for a titan to age one-year, the same applies for normal speed. So if you ran the game like this then you might be able to get a fully-grown titan at 18 but only if you raised him perfectly.

    Growth in the game depends on energy levels and how exhausted your creature is. Fatness is also a factor in the growth process. It�s know that when a titan�s energy level drops to around 40% then the titan�s body will start to dig into the fat to supply itself with energy. The drawback being that fat is used for the titan�s growth. A titan who is at 0% fatness will not have the extra energy needed to grow properly. In fact, it�s best to keep your creature at around 50% for the best results. You also need to be wary of the titan�s energy level, which is directly related to the hunger meter. The energy is part of what helps a titan to grow but not as large a factor as the fat. The trick is to basically make sure that your creatures hunger doesn�t exceed 50% and that he gets his rest also at around 50% tiredness. A damaged titan will also take longer to grow since the body is busy repairing itself and not growing as it should due to the energy being focused elsewhere. This is why you shouldn�t let your creature be seriously hurt or neglect it. The more times that a creature is killed and then resurrected in the pen then the slower it will grow. Miracles are also a sore point in regards to growth since they dip straight into the energy and tiredness reserve of your titan each time that one is cast.

    If your creature is skinny or recovering from a certain occurrence in the single player game then it�s time to start rehabilitation. While strength isn�t an issue it�s still a good idea to make sure that your creature doesn�t become over weight from doing this. It�s not currently known if obesity effects growth in a negative way but that�ll be one thing that Project CREED will be looking into later. Meat from villagers, pigs, cattle, wolves etc. are the best source of fat. One animal like a cow can bring a titan�s hunger down to 0% in one go. This is however effected by the size of him. It�ll be easier to make a small titan fatness rise than it will be for one who�s half grown. Grain should be your titans staple food once you have his fatness at around 50% since it satisfies hunger but doesn�t cause much of an increase in fat. Fish is somewhere in the middle between livestock and grain in terms of it fat content.

    Healing your titan is imperative. A titan who is healing while sleeping will not be putting that energy into growing so make sure that you creature gets healed whenever he�s hurt. It�s best to teach him to do this himself.

    That�s growth covered so onto strength.

    So you want your creature to be buff but are having trouble keeping him at that nice 1.00 strength rating. It nice to see your titan looking in good shape when your opponent is I pretty bad shape because of neglect. One thing to remember is that strength is only really a bearing if your titan gets into a lot of fights or doing more physical actions like throwing boulders around.

    The key issue here is regular exertion. A titan who is working out regularly isn�t going to be growing at his best so moderation between this and a growth regime is needed. Getting a titan to carry rocks around is the best method. Get him to pick up a large boulder or hand him one and send him on a walk to the furthest part of the island and then back again while carrying it. It�s annoying but you aren�t going to be able to teach your titan to carry around a rock all the time. This is because if you reward him while holding the rock then he�ll eat it. L You can however get him into the habit of bringing home rocks or throwing large boulders at neutral or enemy towns. That way he�ll pick up rocks and carry them around anyway while getting to his desired destination.

    The idea is to get them to carry the largest rocks possible, there will be a limit on what they can physically carry but there�s also a minimum where titans will be able to carry the object without straining themselves. The effect can also be achieved with any object that can be carried, only to a lesser extent. One of the glitches in the game involve abusing the �Expansion� miracle to make your titan full size and then handing getting them to carry the largest possible object. When they return to normal then they will still be carrying the object that is way to big for them and their strength will rapidly rise�.their tiredness will also rapidly rise because of the exertion. A funny side effect of this is that I some cases the creature mesh will become distorted. For instance, a cow how�s very young and carrying a rock the same size as him will move at triple speed and have his ears stretch so that he almost looks like a rabbit because of the speed he�s moving at with the ears flapping out behind him. J

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    Chap 3 Section C: Stepping Into the Arena

    Following on from strength and growth we�ll be looking into the art of creature combat and tactics.

    Despite what some may think there�s just as much chance of a strong titan losing as a fat or skinny one. As long as the titan is skilled then a skinny and weak titan can still beat a strong and well built one. It�s just a mater of tactics. The main ways to tip the balance I the fight is miracles. But first we�ll be covering the non-spell casting ways to gain the advantage but also create a disadvantage.

    Fatness is actually a wild card in the arena. While it allows the titan to take more damage it will also effect the speed of his movements and attacks. So the trade off is justified. Strength will also have a minor effect on speed cause of that extra muscle mass. However it�s still preferable cause the drop is negligible. Having a skinny titan will mean that he�s fast as hell so you�ll be able to lay into your opponent with impunity but beware since you will take more damage per hit. Size is still a factor in fights. While in v1.0 it was possible for two titans to have to much of a difference in height to fight and normally resulted in the largest one simply stamping on the little one and killing him out right. With V1.10 that�s been remedied so that the largest one will shrink down to the maximum size that the smallest one can fight. So while losing the massive advantage you will still be larger. Big titan�s can take more damage, quite a bit more actually and they also dish out more punishment. The draw back being that such a large target is tough to miss so they�ll not be able to dodge quite as well.

    Now for the miracles. Something of a tough issue for some, who consider it a cheesy tactic used by the llamas in the MP community. Naturally setting fire to the opponent is the best option sine they will continually lose health and can�t put themselves out easily unless there�s some water nearby or it starts raining. This can be achieved by lightning or the ever handy fireball spells. Heal is naturally handy in fights but once again some people find that a player, who constantly heals their titan during a fight, damn annoying The weakening miracle is hardly used yet still very handy since it instantly takes a chunk out of the opponents energy. That�s the main miracles that are used in fights and they are just that little bit extra.

    Fighting tactics are at the heart of the arena experience. A player who has taken their titan through many fights may feel confident enough in the titan�s own skills to let his fight without help. This can prove to be most beneficial since a titan can string together attacks much better then any player who�s commanding them can. But that require experience at fighting by themselves which means that you will need to sit back through many fights to let your creature learn. After a successful fight it's imperative to reward them depending on how well they didn�t. This needs to be done right after the fight when the creature is standing there thinking about the fight. It�s normally followed by some sort of action like posing or pooping on the loser. A bad fight should be punished with a light slap. Depending on your titan and style you will have your own tactics that work well for you and him. But here�s some friendly advice;

    • Dodging can be very helpful against human opponents but isn�t really needed against the Ai. However it best to click about 3 times to make sure that you move far enough and not simply take a step to one side which will not normally be enough to dodge an attack.
    • A counter attack is perfect if timed well with a dodge. Side stepping an attack just in time and then laying into the opponent�s side allows you to set up a string of uninterrupted attacks. It�s also good to have a special attack to guarantee a hit with it.
    • Remember that blocking will only work if you don�t command the titan to do anything afterwards. Click on your titan ONCE for them to start blocking. Clicking several times will result in several short blocks that attacks can easily get through.
    • Fool the opponent into attacking you with a sustained block. During the attack you should strike out with a few hit of your own or let lose a special attack when they are between attacks and recovering. The player will have lined up a long succession of attacks and won�t be ready for an attack.
    • Skinny creatures need to make use of their speed. Dodging and blocking are essential. Hit and run tactics hold true since you won�t be able to take much punishment. Using a succession of attacks you will need to chip away at the opponents health.
    • Fat creatures or slow titans will need t be more defensive to win. Blocking attacks and then countering with one of your own is the only option since dodging will be near impossible. A fat creature MUST be strong since you won�t be fast enough to string together attacks very well. Single powerful strikes are your best option.

    When in an intense fight you need to remember to always leave enough energy to perform a heal spell. Hit the opponent and then back away to heal while they are recoiling. Miracles are good to use in a fight but remember that you don�t have an unlimited number of them cause your titan needs to recover the energy.

    Lastly you must remember to have your titan in a good enough state to fight. If your creature is near to dropping from exhaustion or hunger then try to avoid fights. If you see a fight starting then direct the creature away by using the leash and either clicking on the ground elsewhere or on an object. If a fight seems inevitable then soften up the opponent with some attacks yourself. The last thing you want is to have your creature lose a fight cause he dropped dead from a lack of food. Of special note is the effect of a fight in a populated area. The fight will naturally draw a lot of attention and it�s sometimes beneficial to set up a fight near a town you are trying to win over cause nothing increases the villagers� belief in you like your titan kicking another creature�s butt.

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    Chap 3 Section D: The Learning Dynamic

    Now to get a little bit technical on you. We�ll be looking at HOW the creature learns so that you can better train your creature. This was going to be an Advanced topic but this kind knowledge is best in the Intermediate section because it�s a requirement of the game to understand how your creature thinks.

    In the creature�s mind, everything in Eden has a class, alignment and value. Everything from trees to villagers will have these values and it�s all understood when a creature learns something new. There are 3 prime factors in the creature mind:

    The Environment, Itself and the Leashes.

    The Environment is naturally the outside world and something that you as the player don�t have any direct control over when it comes to what the creature interacts with. This is the wildcard in the learning process since you can�t define what is involved when your titan learns something. The creature itself, or rather its current state is partially under your control. When a creature learns something its current state is also remembered. This includes things like it�s hunger; it�s energy level and other things that appear in the creature cave stats. Finally there is the leashes. Earlier in the article I mentioned that these have a special function as another factor in the learning process. This is the only part that you can totally control and allows you to get a creature to perform 3 different variants on a fixed condition.

    Let�s take a scene from B&W as an example to explain in better detail.

    Island 1, we all been there so you should know it�s layout like the back of your hand. We�re looking over at the second village, which you currently don�t own; your creature is standing a short distance away and attacks a hut in the middle using Xlightning. The lighting spreads out across the village setting fire to nearby people, piles of wood, the towns� store and other things. You reward the titan for being so vicious so that he�ll attack neutral towns more often using that spell.

    So to the average player you�d then think that your creature is now trained to attacks towns with Xlightning. He does this several more times and you reward him to 100%. Later on when he�s wandering around by himself you notice that he�s attacking trees and cattle with impunity. You have taught him to not do this so it puzzles you.

    Here�s why he�s doing that.

    The lightning naturally spread out and hits other objects. In that town on Island 1 there�s several trees and sometimes some cattle nearby. Now although he wasn�t attacking them directly it was harming them. But because he did this several times and got rewarded a lot for it then in the titans mind this was allowed. What was also noted by the titan was the distance from the target he was standing, his current status, and the status of the target. Everything. If there was a bird flying over and the lightning hit it then you might find your creature is attacking the bats/birds that are flying around your temple spire. It all goes into his memory. This means that you have to careful when rewarding or punishing your creature cause there�s a lot of information that they take in.

    With this in mind it�s possible to get a creature to switch between spells and attacks depending of the circumstances. Let�s say that he�s attacking a village but is very tired with low energy levels. It�d be wise to switch to physical attacks like throwing object at buildings or simply kicking them over. To achieve this you will need a very careful reward and punishment system.

    To trick to getting complex actions like this from a creature is never do something to excess unless you want the end result to be in excess. If you constantly reward or punish to 100% then a creature will only understand a situation as either yes or no. The trick is making the creature understand that in some cases something is acceptable and in other is isn�t. This is done by making the punishment or reward fit the instance. If a creature were eating your villagers then you would probably smack them all the way to 100% to stop them quickly. This would work but your creature has just learnt not to even touch your villagers for fear of being smacked again. Punishing to 50% is probably better since it may take longer but your creature will still be inclined to pick them up. In most cases you should only reward to 100% on the very first time a creature does something. He�ll then do it again so you reward to 80%, and again he�ll repeat it. Depending on how often you want him to do something then you may reward again at 80% or move down to a lower reward. The trick is trail off the rewards relative to what result you want. The same applies to punishment.

    Occasional reminders are needed since a creature will slowly forget, but even then a reminder should only be about 20%.

    Fine tuning something is what takes time. If you want your creature to like a certain attack over another then you�ll need to be very careful. One of the common questions is why a titan won�t use the Increased or Extreme version of a spell. It because he�s received a lot of rewards for the standard version or from the version he learnt first. When he knows the next version then you�ll need to encourage him to use it by punishing him slightly for using the regular miracle. A little slap to 10% will discourage him from using it but not enough to stop him from trying to accomplish his goal. If a town needs healing for instance then you don�t want him to never do it again because you hit him to hard. You want him to heal it using the Increased Heal. When he gets it right then reward him to something like 70%.

    The point I�m trying make is that the creature mind is very specific. It�s possible to teach a creature to only throw fully-grown trees because that item has a value that the creature can recognise. The same applies for many, if not all objects. You can teach them to only attack enemy towns because alignment is also read. The sort of behaviours can you can promote is nearly unlimited, as long as you are careful with your training. One thing to remember as well is that the first 10 years of a creature life will pretty much determine his personality and inclinations. If you spend his early years teaching him to be destructive then when left to his own devices he will behave like that. Even with a lot of training you may never remove that underlying spirit.

    Finally I�ll say a little about the leashes. These are the final prime factors in the creature mind. Like I said, you can have complete control over their presence to you have the ability to fine tune a reaction to 3 possible out comes (4 if you include �without leash�). This also requires careful training but given time you can crate something as complex as �Pick up rock� with one leash, �Attack rock with fireball� with another leash and �break rock in two� with a final one. It�s best to define these action using the correct leash like the compassion leash for simply picking it up and Aggression for attacking it.

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    Chap 3 Section E: The Priority Scales

    One of the more common questions that arises is to do with counteracting obsessive behavior or breaking a habit that your creature has. These can occur from training or some trait that your creature was given at the start of the game. As you know, the creature mind is randomly created at the start of the game with base stats and desires. Some maybe naturally lazy, others might over eat. This is because there is more to a creatures needs than what the game shows you. Lets take an example:

    Your creature's stats are reading as - Hunger: 50% Tiredness: 50% Damage: 50% Poop: 50% and Dehydration: 50%

    From this you can see that he's needing everything quite badly, but without the priorities this might confuse the AI. The priorities will dictate which of these has preference over another. If you have taught you creature to eat at 50% by rewarding him to 100% a hell of a lot of times then that conditioning will be added to the overall value. As you reward and punish the creature you are adding and removing priority points from it's mind. Let's say that 100% reward is +5 points, and 100% punishment is -5. Using the stats above the creature priorities might look like this.

    Hunger: 50pts * Tiredness: 20pts * Damage: 40pts * Poop: 20pts * Dehydration: 5pts

    So by looking at this you can see that the creature will deal with his hunger first, his damage 2nd, Tiredness or Poop 3rd and Dehydration 4th. Now this can be effected by your training. If he's at 50% damage then he's quite badly hurt and in need of healing. The trouble being that he will think satisfying his hunger is more important so he'll go looking for food before dealing with his injuries. You may want him to heal himself first however.

    You have 2 options, first you could let him eat first. He'll then he will heal himself some how. You reward him to 100% for doing this, his stats then will appear like this.

    Hunger: 50pts * Tiredness: 20pts * Damage: 45pts * Poop: 20pts * Dehydration: 5pts

    So even after that, he'll still want to eat first if the need is high enough. The titan's mind will compare the current percentage need with the priority points to decide what gets preference but from your training the priority may be further modified. If we look at the Hunger priority in more detail then you'll see what I mean:

    Hunger: 99% : 50pts

    Hunger: 89% : 20pts

    Hunger: 79% : 35pts

    Hunger: 69% : 70pts

    Hunger: 59% : 72pts

    Hunger: 49% : 30pts

    Hunger: 39% : 30pts

    Hunger: 29% : 15%

    Hunger: 19% : -5pts

    Hunger: 09% : 5pts

    Now it gets more complicated. From your training the creature has a number of priorities for each percentage of hunger it has. Now of course it'll be far more detailed than this. It will be set at every percentage with a points value assigned. Here you can see that he'll have a higher priority for eating at 59% because you've encouraged him to eat when it hit's this level. So from all your rewarding to 100% he's learnt to he needs to eat sooner rather then later. However, if he get above this point then his training has been neglected. Since he's rarely reached the higher levels he hasn't got such a high priority for them. No doubt a good trainer will have the creature damage priority extremely high if his damage is at the 80-90% mark. So it's read something like maybe 80pts. So he'll then heal himself before eating no matter how hungry he is. In relation to the Hunger priorities here, if it was at 70pts for Damage then he'd only eat if his hunger was at 59% or 69%. That would mean that he could be at 99% hunger and ready to drop but he still would want to heal himself first. Not an ideal situation.

    One thing to note is that the hunger at 19% is -5pts. This means that he'll NEVER eat at this level unless something else drops even lower. This is how you can get an irreversible condition, or nearly irreversible anyway cause you would have to drop ALL priorities into negative numbers to get him eating that soon. Naturally this would take an eternity since you would have to re-teach him everything.

    Now looking back at the simple scales we shall work on changing two values to benefit the player.

    Hunger 50% : 40pts * Sleep 50% : 20pts

    Both values are at the needy level. You are trying to get your creature to sleep more because you want him to grow faster. The trouble is that he keeps wanting to eat before sleeping. The obvious thing would be to reward him when he finally sleeps. So lets say that he sleeps and you reward him for that at 100%.

    Hunger 50% : 40pts * Sleep 50%: 25pts

    You would have to reward this action (sleeping in this case) 4 more times before he stopped waking up at 50% hunger to get something to eat. This is an ineffective use of time. You will need to bring one value up as you bring the other down. So if you punish him for wanting to eat at 50% Hunger by smacking him up to 100% in punishment ( -5 pts) then you would get him trained much faster because you wouldn't be waiting for the creature to sleep to effect these values. You would have one priority rising and another falling so that they change sooner.

    Using this explains many things that can happen in the game. But there's more to the priorities than the statistics you can see. Behavior like wanting to be helpful or destructive will also have priorities. If your creature keeps wanting to kill something when he should really be eating then you need to alter the values quickly by rewarding a lot for eating and punishing a lot for being destructive. Now of course this should ONLY be done when he's in desperate need of food, but is tearing up some village. You would smack him for doing that and then send him to pick up some food. Then reward him. His priorities will be changed to reflect this. But with no way tell how long it could take to break such a habit then all you can do is persevere and keep at it. So the next time he's being stubborn, think about what you would prefer him to be doing, rather than what you don't want him to be doing.

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    Chap 3 Section F: Creature Miracles

    This section is for the specific creature miracles. Some people may have trouble getting your creature to learn these but this will also include methods to get it to work.


    FREEZE : A very simple miracle to use. Simply cast it on the creature to have them frozen to the spot. The duration of this spell will be shortened by the size of the creature you are casting it on. The creature's version of this miracle lasts only a very short time unfortunately. Best used if an enemy creature is attacking your town or if you need time without the creatures interference. More of the defensive spell. A good tactic is to freeze the enemy continually and let your creature attack it. Must be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    The icon appears as a bottle that's freezes over.

    Mana Cost: 8000


    SHRINK/REDUCTION : Make the creature that you cast it on shrink down to just below an age 0 size. This can be helpful to limit the creature's impressing abilities and to slow the damage that it causes to your buildings. In version one this would have been more helpful since your much larger creature could kill the little one by stamping on it. Now it's slightly useless. Needs to be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    Icon appears as a bottle that shrinks.

    Mana Cost: 6000


    GROW/EXPANSION : The opposite of the above. Gain the advantage by enlarging your creature. Causes and increased impression rating, greater strength and allow for the trick whereby you enlarge your creature to carry objects that it wouldn't normally be able to. Must be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    Icon appears as a bottle that grows.

    Note: At this point there doesn't seem to be any way for your creature to cat this miracle on itself. This cannot be correct but may require specialist training. Project CREED will be looking into this problem in the near future.

    Mana Cost: 7000


    STRENGTH : Handy if used on a weak creature just prior to a fight as it puts them straight to 100% strength for a limited period. Cannot be used during a fight however which makes it's usefulness questionable. Can be cast on your creature for him to learn it.

    Icon appears as a bottle with muscular arms.

    Mana Cost: 8000


    INVISIBILITY: Kinda obvious really, make your creature invisible for short period of time allowing him to pass through heavily guarded areas. Ideal for sneaking past a God who isn't watching closely enough. Your position with be given away if your creature casts any miracles or move objects so be warned. The main drawback being that like growth, the creature doesn't seem to be able to cast this on themselves. As mentioned we'll be looking into this shortly. Must be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    Icon appears as a vanishing bottle.

    Mana Cost: 9000


    COMPASSION: A greatly underestimated defensive miracle. The effected creature is incapable or anything negative like attacking or harming anything of any kind. Ideal to stop a rampaging enemy titan dead in their tracks. Very handy if you are the ultimate good god. Must be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    Icon appears as a bottle releasing hearts.

    Mana Cost: 6000


    AGGRESSION: Compassion's alternate miracle. Turns any titan into a walking engine of mass destruction. Can be used to enhance your own creature's aggressive nature or to make an enemy god's own creature tear up the town it was only seconds ago helping to care for. Definitely an offensive miracle. Must be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    Bottle with a angry label on the side (can be hard to recognize)

    Mana Cost: 6000


    HOLY FLIES: Not so much an attack on the creature but more of a way to lower is impressiveness and make him useless to villagers. They see the huge flies around the creature and run like hell and keep their distance. Also distracts the creature itself. Must be cast on another creature for yours to learn it.

    Icon appears as a bottle with flies buzzing around it.

    Mana Cost: 8000


    WEAKENING: Turn the other creature into a weak and pathetic shadow of it's former self. Completely drains the creatures strength. In a fight this can be used to take a chunk out of the opponents health bar. More useful than it seems but most definitely a miracle suited to the arena or just prior to it. Can be cast on your creature for them to learn it.

    Icon appears as a bottle with thin arms.

    Mana Cost: 8000


    In version 1.0 and v1.10beta of B&W there was a bug whereby you perform a multi-click in much the same way as the wood or food multiclick that was in v1.0 but was removed afterwards. It allows you to cast the miracle on the creature many times over without any extra cost of mana. This means that you can freeze an enemy creature for a whole game or make your own creature into a giant for a very long time. When you cast the miracle your hand needs to be over the creature's body. You'll click one and your hand will start pouring the miracles bottle. However, your cursor is still in the same place it was originally. If you click again and again then the miracle will repeat over and over. You will know if your hand has moved away from being over the creature because a red cross will appear along with a noise meaning that you can't cast that their. Using the crosses as a guide line you can move the invisible cursor over the creature again and continue.

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    Intermediate General Information

    There is discussion as to the matter of certain mushrooms causing titans to grow faster. From certain sources and experiments we know that the Tall Purple mushrooms will only act as a narcotic to certain creature and cause strange behaviour. Toadstools have no effect except to poison food stores so at this point I would advise NOT giving them to your creature. The small White mushrooms are however a possible source of increased titan growth however this is just rumour and speculation. Project CREED will be investigating the effects of mushrooms in detail at a later date.

    The full size that a creature can reach is roughly the same size as the creature on island 1 who is known as the guide. Using the Expansion miracle is also an indication of your creature�s maximum size. A good indication of your creature�s current size is the sound of his footsteps. A fully-grown creature makes large booming thuds as they walk.

    Creatures can eat anything. A tiger isn�t restricted to meat and cows are not restricted to grain. There is currently no evidence of certain foods having a negative effect on some titans but we will be looking into this. However things that they throw up after swallowing naturally aren�t good for them.

    Creatures will slowly forget things over time. They will need their memory jogging from time to time. Forgetting how to fish after 100 years is understandable.

    Your titans cannot die. No matter what you are told it is impossible for your creature to suffer any kind of permanent death.

    Scars are permanent unless removed by third party software. If you don�t want a scarred creature then don�t get into fights and avoid letting him become severely injured. However scars are more likely to occur to a creature that has been in a lot of fights regardless of the fact that they won or loss.

    There�s strong evidence that the Single player maps have a limit of the creature�s growth. It has been shown that his height and growth will not increase after a certain point on some maps in the game. This might be something by Lionhead to encourage the player to progress further into the game. Again, this will be something we�ll be investigating.

    It is possible to transfer the creature from one PC to another. There are a pair of files in the �Scripts/creaturemind� directory which start with the prefix �C4� one is the mind file while the other is the physical reference file. However it will be up to you to work out which file is which titan. It�s possible to copy the file and rename it to something like "MyTitanCreature" and use it in a custom playground script.You can quickly file the name of the file by using the 'regedit' command by typing it into the 'Run' start menu program. This will bring up the registry editor. I would suggest that you back up the files since messing around with this could ruin your pc settings. Follow this path to get to the correct directory: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Lionhead Studios Ltd\Black & White\LHMultiplayer\Profiles . Find the name of the profile that you want to back up or copy. Inside will be the name of the mindfile meaning that you just look for that name on the 2 files in the 'creaturemind' folder.

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    Advanced Knowledge

    This is the section that will be covering late breaking facts that you will find invaluable if you want to fully understand the Creatures in B&W, this section will be receiving the greatest number of updates and will be essential reading for any good Creature trainer. Our first article is on a very special part of the game, the mushrooms. There has been debate for some time about the nature and effects caused by feeding these fungi to your creature. There is obvious proof that the tall purple mushrooms behave like a narcotic and that the toadstools can be used to poison a food store, but there was much speculation on the effects of the short white/grey mushrooms found on maps like Bombardment and found on Island 1. Now for the first time we bring you the solid facts and figures about these strange white mushrooms.

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    The Dreamers and Accelerated creature growth

    Following on from the Intermediate section's introduction to growth we now look at ways to accelerate this to the maximum possible extent by forcing a very lazy lifestyle and a specific eating habit onto your creature.

    Our test subject was Newton, a new Ape who was about to break records in creature growth. Using KOng (a cheat program with a very handy way to check your creature's current height compared to his maximum) and the in-game statistics, we monitored his growth over a period of 5 years. The base height for the Ape is 11%, this is roughly the same for all creatures when they are 0 years old. The default negative value that appears in your stats when your creature is in his pen was at -2.72. However, this value should not be used directly as a value to measure growth by since it reaches about -75.0 when the creature is 50% grown. This means that it will appear to the person who's using this to monitor growth that the titan's growth rate is slowing. The best in-game measurement of growth is the value seen in the stats when the creature is out of the pen. This value shows by how much your titan has grown since he entered the map. It uses the creature height upon loading the map to read on how much he's grown from that point on. This way you can tell if his growth is increasing or decreasing.

    Before giving you the results I should explain how you achieve the maximum growth, if you came to this chapter from the Intermediate section then you will already know how effective this method is. But for you who are just reading this I'll explain what this can do. Using these methods you can have a fully grown creature by the age of 10. Now this will of course vary slightly from one species to another, this was after all tested on the Ape but the difference in the natural grow rates of different species will mean that you certainly manage it by the time the creature is 15.

    Now, the first word of warning.

    By doing this your creature will not have time to learn anything special, you'll be creating a creature who's sole purpose will be to sleep, drink and eat. Once your creature is fully grown it will be up to you to reverse this conditioning. I hold no responsibility if you end up with a creature who can't help but be lazy because of what he learned earlier in his life. You should know by now that creatures can be severely effected during the first 20 years of their lives and that their overall personality will default to how they were originally trained. This should not be attempted by the casual player since you will need to put a lot of work into creating this rapidly growing creature and then undoing it again once they are matured.

    The trick first of all is to teach your creature to OVERSLEEP. He needs to learn to sleep for extended lengths of time even if his tiredness rating is at 0%. You will also need to keep him comfortable by making sure that he doesn't become dehydrated. You will also need to keep his energy levels high and maintain his fatness at the 50% mark. At one point during the test his fatness hit 80% and there was a drop in growth, now this might have been caused by some other things as well, but it's best to steer to the side of caution since we have yet to investigate the effects of fatness on creatures in better detail.

    To get them to oversleep they will need to be conditioned by using a very delicate system of punishment and reward. I'd suggest reading through the earlier sections if you aren't too familiar with how the punishment and reward system works in the creature mind. On the first occasion you creature will probably sleep for an extra 4 seconds over the 0% limit. This can be measured by his snoring. He will snore once every 2 seconds. Putting the game into double speed will help with his growth because you can get more happening in one year of his life so he's essentially getting an extra 30 minutes worth into a single year. When he wakes up after oversleeping you need to reward him to 100% on the first two times. After each reward he'll go back to sleep for exactly the same length of time. You will be telling him that over sleeping is good. Next, you will need to trail off the rewards. This will depend on your own understanding of how well your creature learns things like this . But you will need to hit the 10% mark quite soon for speed purposes. The first time that you'll do this your creature will probably get hungry cause it takes about 15 minutes on the first time but this will vary. But keep reading since we'll cover what he needs to eat later. Once you've rewarded at the 10% mark about twice you will then need to start punishment. A light smack to 10% when they wake up after over sleeping will often result in them going back to sleep again ( that is if there is nothing else the creature needs to do or feels is important to do). If the creature tries to wander off looking for food or water when you don't feel he needs to then a light smack or two will have him running back to his pen for a nap. Keep punishment up at the 10% mark only, going over will result in your creature not wanting to sleep. After a while he'll sleep for an extra 2 seconds, 1 snore more. Keep this training going for as long as you feel is needed. The more he over sleeps the better and he'll always increase in steps of one more snore. If you do it correctly you can have him over sleeping by a full minute by the time he's 4 years old.

    Always make him sleep in the pen, why you ask? Well you knew that it increased growth, but by how much you never knew. Until now. In the pen he'll grow at 3 times the speed when he's awake. If he sleeps outside the pen then it's about times 2. That means that you are missing a huge increase by letting him sleep outside in the open. If he does that then give him a quick slap and drag him into his pen.

    So what do you feed him? You feed him nothing but the White mushrooms which we are now calling Dreamers ( which will become clear later), this means that you will need a special map with a plentiful supply of these handy fungi. But you can find some of Island 1 in the swamp, on the Skirmish map Bombardment o the mega-blast mountain and on Island 2 around the guru's mountain. The Dreamers have the effect of boosting the growth by 0.01% so 5 mushrooms will result in a boost of 0.05% when he eats them. The average mushroom is worth around 16 point of hunger for a medium sized creature so they are a fairly poor source of nutrition. For some reason, Dreamers don't appear as mushrooms in the creature cave. No matter how many you eat the stats will always stay 0. Now the best use of these is to feed them to your creature before they sleep. Because the boost lasts about 4 seconds you can feed one to a creature just before they go to sleep then you will benefit from the effects they cause. In the test, Newton grew by 0.20% in 30 seconds while asleep in his pen. By feeding him a mushroom this was upped to 0.28%. So the effect of the pen also increased the mushrooms affect by eight.

    That's basically all you need to do. Now of course this means that you get a weak, lazy and unskilled yet massive creature, but for some the effort of retraining them is worth it. Now this is proven to be the single best method. Before now some folks recommended that you over work your creature to have them sleep more. Naturally this not only means that they aren't sleeping as much cause they are awake while you are wearing them out but also because they won't benefit from the sleep until they have recovered from their tiredness. So don't wear them out cause you will also have to feed them more to recover the lost energy. If you follow the guidelines laid out above then you can squeeze a full 10% out of your creature towards their full height. So in 10 years he'll be fully grown.

    For your information, here's the data from Newton's 5 years:

    The following section is as follows, The first value is the age, the value in the [ ] brackets is the percentage of the creature maximum height they were at. The ( ) brackets contain the negative value from the B&W stats.

    Age: 0 [11%] (-2.72)

    Age: 1 [20%] (43.72)

    Age : 2 [29%] (62.06)

    Age: 3 [35%] (68.12) - the year where his fatness hit 80% and he spent more time drinking due to dehydration

    Age: 4 [45%] (75.38)

    Age: 5 [55%] (n/a)

    How to perform these tests yourself

    You will need a stopwatch or something to measure the time in seconds. Something to log the note in and of course the game. You may use a current creature or create a new profile creature as we did.

    The first test is getting the regular growth rate out of the pen, this should be measured over 30 seconds. But what ever time you use, it must be the same all experiments in this test session. Check the creature current amount of growth using the game's stats. If you just started on the map it should say 0.00% or a bit more depending on how long after starting the you checked it. Start the stopwatch as soon as you leave he pause menu. Then again pause the game and check the stats after 30 seconds has passed. Not the amount it's at and work out the amount that he's grown. Repeat if you feel the need.

    Next you repeat it for sleeping in the pen. The same as above only this time you will need to check the growth of them out of the pen. Once you have that you will then need to quickly get them into the pen and sleeping. Wake them up at 29 seconds and lead them out of the pen to get the reading. There will be a discrepancy but by waking him up early you can remove some of this.

    Repeat this with feeding them mushrooms outside of the pen and monitoring the growth, fr the sleep test with mushrooms you will need to do as before only as quickly as possible to catch the mushroom's effect in action. For that you MUST check the growth AFTER they eat the mushroom since it'll increase the growth by the normal 0.01% when they eat it. You just want the effect cause while asleep and under it's influence.

    Compare the readings with our own to see if we or you did it right. We appreciate all data you can supply us with to create a creature database regarding these findings. All submissions will be checked for validation and your name will be mentioned in our credits. Do not falsify data since we will check the findings ourselves.

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Creature clinic

This is here to catalogue various abnormal creature conditions that have or are occurring in the game. This can be caused by bug in the programming or some odd conditioning from the trainer. Each case will have the official name and the symptom followed by the cause(s) and finally the known cures if they exist.

TML - Titan Memory Loss

The subject will not retain memory of miracles or common tasks plus any general knowledge that it has been taught. This memory is lost during the transition between islands or gameplay modes. This leads to the creature's memory being jogged each time a new island or game starts by repeating the action or miracle.

This was a bug that was present in version 1.0 of B&W. When this problem was identified the developers solved this problem in the v1.10 patch. The possible cause of this was random crashing of the game while the titan's memory file was being written to, in most cases the memory loss only occurs to things that were learnt after the initial event so a titan may only retain the memory of things from it's early years.

Cure: Install the developer patch or the official v1.10 patch (currently not available)

Creature Constipation

Subject will not relieve itself even when the poo level is at 100%.

Another bug that was found in version 1.0 of B&W. The cause of this is unknown but may be possibly related to over punishment leading to the titan having the inability to poo.

Cure: Install the developer patch or the official v1.10 patch (currently not available)

Living Dead Syndrome

Subject refuses to die when injured in a frozen state. Damage is at 100% but the creature is still moving around as if it was unharmed The effect is also observed in CPU titan's who can take severe damage but still behave as if unharmed and on rare occasions can stand up after losing a fight if the winning titan poo's next to their body.

A bug that was present in version 1.0 of B&W is the cause of this. While the developers fixed the cases where a frozen creature would remain alive there are still reports of this phenomena occurring in other instances. The cause for this problem is unknown to mere mortals.

Cure: Install the developer patch or the official v1.10 patch (currently not available) to resolve some issues.

Obsessive Villager Consumption

Subject continually eats villagers even after severe punishment and when other food sources are freely available.

Two things cause this. The first is that a titan can become rebellious and resistant to punishment if he is subjected to enough of it from his trainer. Naturally this leads to more punishment if the trainer does not understand what is happening leading to the titan becoming even more hateful of it's master and not responding to them. The second cause is that villager's taste too nice. The developers fixed this tastiness in the V1.10 patch by coating the villagers in sweat and dirt making them less appealing. J

Cure: Install the developer patch or the official v1.10 patch (currently not available) or consider teaching your titan to prefer other food sources through excessive rewarding for these foods instead of punishing him for eating the villagers.

Dry Clean Only Syndrome

Subject continually shrinks and is now the size of a normal villager; condition remains even in multiplayer and skirmishes.

Caused by a major bug in version 1.0 of B&W. Island 5 has a wonder that causes your titan to shrink until you take control of it. The reason for this is unknown although it is theorized that any damage sustained to the wonder during the game will cause this problem. Additionally the creature is also known to shrink if they sleep in the pen on the first night on Island 5. The condition is permanent and passes through to multiplayer and Skirmish games.

Cure: The developer patch and the official v1.10 patch is said to resolve the matter In some cases, however some patients only return to their normal size in skirmish and multiplayer games. The only way to prevent this problem from being permanent is to back up your files prior to entering island 5 and restoring them later.

 

Phantom Creatures & Rigormortis

Subject is invisible with only his shadow appearing. Also not responding to commands.

Caused by a bug in version 1.0 of B&W. Unknown reason but there is also reports of creature being visible but unable to move.

Cure: Taking the creature into a skirmish map and then back into a Single player game often resolved this problem with regards to the frozen creature and invisible creature problem. If that doesn't work then installing the patch should fix the problem.

 

[ index ]

How to....

This section covers specific information on non-training matters like creating new skins and backing up important creature files.

How to.... Create a Custom logo.

The details are in the Lionhead readme files and are as follows:

Black & White comes with 16 pre-defined player symbols/Creature tattoos. The same images are used for both. You can replace any of these images with your own. To do so, place a 64x64 greyscale .bmp image (8-bit) called symboln.bmp (where n is a number from 1 to 16) in your profile directory (default directory will be c:\program files\Lionhead Studios Ltd\Black & White\profiles\yourname\ - where yourname is the name of the profile you created). The player logo/Creature tattoo will then be available to select in the usual ways.

To swap back to the default logos/tattoos, simply delete the image files you created.
Tip: Design your logos on a black background for best results.

I would suggest using any standard art package like Photo Shop or Paint Shop Pro for the best results. However there is also a way to make a full colour tattoos. This is done by layering tattoo's to create a single image since tattoo's can be placed on top of each other.

Logos will also show up during On-line games so you can show off your design skills to others. This can also be used to have a custom icon for yourself. However these can only be a single image.

 

How to.... Create Custom Skins for Creatures

Much like other games, B&W gives you the ability to create a new skin for your creatures. This is done using an extraction program to remove the TGA file from the L3D file that holds the model and skin information. Using an art program you are then free to edit the skin as you see fit. If you want to quickly preview the skin then you will also need the model viewer.

First you need to backup all your creature L3D files that are in the Data/Creaturemesh folder. You then need to open the extraction tool and crag a l3D file over it. A *.TGA image will be made with the same file name as the L3D one. You will then need to edit this image and ONLY THIS IMAGE. If you make a copy of this file or save it as another file name then you will end up with a corrupted image when you import it back into the L3D file. You import it into the file by dragging the *.TGA over the extraction tool again. The image will need to be in the same folder as the L3D or the program will crash. You will then have a new skin on the existing model.

There are various sites that have many skins already made and available for download. One of them is Raw|Hide which I have made skins for myself and is hosted by PlanetB&W.

 

 

How to.... Back Up Your Profile and Creature Files

Using a program called BWbackup you can save all your profiles information and creature files if you are worried about losing all this important information. Just download it here and follow the programs' instructions. It's simple; you just select 'Backup'. The program also saves a short message that you can attach to it so that you know which backup is which. The program can also restore the file if needed.

 

This guide is currently under construction. Information herein will be subject to change in light of new data that arises and from patches or updates to the Black & White programming. The guide will be updated whenever I find the time to do it and all information contained belongs to the original authors or researchers and is used with permission of said person(s). Planet B&W has no direct involvement or responsibility for the information contained in this project so any and all questions or comments should be directed to me at:

[email protected]

--------------

[ index ]

Revision History:

Version 0.3: First complete edition of Project CREED on 13/6/01 . Covers basic creature matters, Creature Clinic, How to... and Basic general Knowledge.

Version 0.7: First publication of Project CREED on 26/6/01 and was hosted at PlanetB&W. Includes previous Basic chapter along with added creature stats table. New addition of Intermediate chapter covering Titan growth and development, creature fights, Miracles and the Learning dynamic. Added Intermediate general knowledge section. Added Quick link contents section.

Version 1.0: Second publication of Project CREED on 4/7/01 and was hosted at PlanetB&W. Include previous Basic and Intermediate chapters. Added Advanced Chapter covering the best possible way to achieve growth and revealing the nature of 'Dreamers'. Also updated Intermediate and Basic general knowledge sections. Added Priority Scales section covering a deeper explanation of the creature mind in relation to learning. Fixed minor spelling errors and added 'Unified Theory of Titan Growth' to off-line version. Altered table colours for better viewing when reading the version at PB&W. Updated Contents. Minor text alterations like new Viking title font. Added creature miracle section to explain effects, tips and tricks. Updated credits. Updated the 'To Do...' list.

--------------

To do list:

  • Start advanced section with looking into intelligence and related stats.
  • Include listing of all creature spells (done 3/7/01)
  • Investigate mushroom phenomena (done 3/7/01)
  • Include locations and details on how to get all creatures in the game. (awaiting wolf bug fix)
  • Investigate growth caps on SP maps.
  • Create complete stats record for all titans including Ogre and Chimp.
  • Example creatures archive for extreme case (obsesive/bizarre) creatures.
  • Add full coverage of MP3 supported behaviors and training. (once available)
  • Build this into a large enough guide to warrant a site of it�s own.

--------------

Thanx to:

Planet Black & White for giving me the idea for this project and putting it on their site.

TitanWEB for their impressive coverage of Titan Growth and theories.

B&Wcentre for the stats chart.

All the visitors to the PB&W forums who tolerate my presence and help to provide this project with new ideas and questions.J

PhsychoDuck and Stubbz for their valuable input on advanced creature growth which made my first Advanced article possible so soon.

Nicholas 'Yo_So_Dios' Perry for the extra info on creature mind files.

Fileplanet for having all these handy utilities available for d/l despite the annoying new d/l system.

And finally to all the people who worked on said programs and utilities so that players can get the most from B&W.

--------------

Credits:

Chris 'Tal-N' Blane - Original creator and researcher for Project CREED





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