If you’ve been playing Star Wars the Old Repulbic long, you’ve either found or heard of datacrons. World objects that give you stat boosts that are hidden across all the different maps. Some are easy to access and some are extremely difficult; all of them provide a worthwhile reward and some bragging rights.

Look no further than this walkthrough: here’s the datacrons available on the 10-16 level city-world of Coruscant.

Old Galactic Market – Shipping and Receiving Docks, +2 Presence Datacron

Not that difficult to locate, but it’s guarded by an elite (11) enemy and his pals. After entering the area, and picking up the first few missions, head immediately north through the firefight in the double-bridge. Turn west (do not use the elevator in front of you, it’s broken) after heading west for a bit, you’ll come to an area with crates and such, turning back north again you’ll notice a working elevator.

Take the elevator there up to the platform and the datacron and the elite enemy will be hard to miss.

Black Sun Territory – Black Sun Market / Graffiti Square, +2 Endurance Datacron

You’ll want to wind your way into the Black Sun territory and find a section called Graffiti Square, it’s a bit deep into Black Sun Territory, but with a little perseverance you can make it. You’ll find a giant clutch of boxes and equipment crammed into a corner to the north section of the map.

Start by leaping up onto the barrels, work your way up onto the equipment (looks like an open top hauling container), then from the equipment to the boxes nearby. Keep leaping up, and you’ll find it leads to some small pipes that lead to a balcony. Follow the balcony until you come to a broken section, use the pipe to go to another balcony across a corridor, then use the second pipe to get back to the original balcony.

Follow the balcony down to a dead end, there’s a sign that you can jump atop, follow that across and onto yet another balcony and there you’ll find the datacron.

Justicar Territory – Shipping Docks, +2 Cunning Datacron

At the Shipping Docks, before you get into the landing zone with the ships, there’s an area that forks around that leads out to the docks proper—in this area you’ll find a large stack of boxes that look like they’ve been designed as steps. Clamber up them and onto a lengthy pipe until you come to a series of pipes to jump along.

Just follow the pipe along the wall until you’re brought around to a platform and the datacron is visible atop a box.

The Works – Pipeline Passageway, Yellow Matrix Shard Datacron

To reach this one you’ll want to head down the path that you take when you first visit, after heading south through the northern works area, turn east, follow the path around the southern bend until you’re headed north again. Eventually you’ll walk down a corridor where there are cthons hanging out. You’ll see a wall with some debris and a diagonal pipe.

Run up that pipe and follow each pipe that arrives to meet it. You’ll traverse quite a distance, all running on pipes; this will take you through numerous areas of the Works. Be careful, it’s easy to fall off the pipe if your incautious about movement.

Eventually you will see the datacron shining in the dark along a ledge and you’ll just need to walk up to it and grab it.

Jedi Tempe Ruins – Mezzanine, +2 Strength Datacron

When you enter the Jedi Tempe Ruins via the first elevator you’re deposited in a circular map with lots of debris. Head north proper and then wind near-ish the wall on the eastern side until you clear a gigantic fallen column. Avoid the small group of enemies and run up the fallen pillar to the balcony above.

From there, simply follow the balcony around the wall counter-clockwise until it opens out into a broad platform. Move to the edge of the platform and look for the datacron. You’ll notice it set along an extended scaffold that you just have to drop down onto.

Link, via MMO Anthropology YouTube and MMO Anthropology

There are six scavenger missions in Borderlands, each one sending you off to some rusthole looking for gun parts to put together a working weapon. Here’s the trick, though. Your mission waypoint marker only lands on the general area for the scavenger hunt. It won’t lead you over to the parts. So, you’ll have to scour the land and dig up those parts yourself. But, really, there are better things to do on Pandora, like killing a whole bunch of people and taking their stuff, so here’s a handy guide to all the scavenger locations.

Scavenger: Sniper Rifle

Grab this mission at the Fyrestone bounty board. You’re going to be looking for the Sniper Rifle Body, the Sniper Rifle Stock, the Sniper Rifle Sight and the Sniper Rifle Barrel. Go the location given by your waypoint marker. The Sniper Rifle parts are somewhere nearby.

First off, don’t bother with the round hut down on the ground floor, the parts aren’t anywhere near there. You’ll find the Sniper Rifle Stock up on top of a building near the center of the upper level of the base; look for the arrow pointing up.

The Sniper Rifle Barrel is on a table on the upper level, on a balcony overlooking the valley.

The Sniper Rifle Sight is in a pile of junk near the dirt ramp leading up on the westward side of the base.

You can find the Sniper Rifle Body by going across a bridge to a shack on the upper level, passing through the shack, and picking up the part lying on a couple boxes. The boxes are on a little balcony facing southward, toward where you entered the base.

Scavenger: Combat Rifle

The second scavenger mission, you can pick this one up from the Fyrestone bounty board. You’ll be after the Combat Rifle Stock, the Combat Rifle Body, the Combat Rifle Sight, and the Combat Rifle Barrel. Head on over to the bandit camp bolted to the cliff face opposite of the Circle of Death cave. Keep in mind that all the pieces are up in the buildings, you won’t find anything down below in the ravine.

To find the Combat Rifle Stock, run across the bridge to the camp. The Stock is on box on the bridge.

From the bridge, turn right and head down a ramp. The Combat Rifle Barrel is just at the end of that ramp, off to the side.

Turn around and go up all the ramps to the big covered area at the top of the camp. The Combat Rifle Body is sitting on a crate just inside this area.

Then, to grab the Combat Rifle Sight, you’ll have to leave the covered area where you came in, go down a ramp, through a shack, up another ramp, and to a shack at the far side of the camp. Don’t go in the shack, go around it to the back. The part is on the floor.

Scavenger: Revolver

The third scavenger mission, this one goes down in the Dahl Headlands. You’ll be looking for the Revolver Body, the Revolver Cylinder, the Revolver Sight, and the Revolver Barrel. First off, head over to the waypoint marker, which leads you over to an abandoned Catch-A-Ride station. The pieces are scattered around there.

The Revolver Body is on the floor of one of those little parking garages, right out in the open.

To get the Revolver Sight, head on up to the second level of the station, near the cage around that big pump and pipe. Climb up the huge rock next to the cage, then jump across to a metal platform. The Sight is on that platform.

While you’re up there, jump from the second level to the roof of the parking garages. A power line tower is next to the far roof, and there’s a platform on that tower. Jump over to the platform to scoop up the Revolver Cylinder.

The last part is tricky. Turn away from the parking garages to see a wrecked car on the edge of a cliff. The Revolver Barrel is sitting in the car’s front seat.

Scavenger: Submachine Gun

This mission takes place in the Rust Commons West, you can get there by Fast Travel to the Outeryard. You’ll want to find the SMG Body, the SMG Sight, the SMG Magazine, and the SMG Barrel.

The SMG Barrel is up on the large shipping container half-buried in the scrap on the left side from where you enter the area.

The SMG Magazine is hiding inside a tire next to the little low wall in the center of the area. Not the tire with the pole sticking out, go around back.

The SMG Body takes a little work. Go through the area to the gate on the far side, near the Circle of Death fellow. Turn right, go up the ramp, and you’ll come to a walkway that goes to the hotel-looking building at the side of the scavenger area. From the third floor of the hotel, fall down to a narrow second-floor ledge. The part is on that ledge.

Finally, the SMG Sight is on a girder sticking out over the area. Turn around on the ledge and you’ll see a pillar. Jump on the pillar, then over to a platform on the girders jutting from the wall. The Sight is on a cot set up between those girders.

Scavenger: Shotgun

Catch this mission at the Middle of Nowhere bounty board. It’ll send you hunting for the Shotgun Body, the Shotgun Magazine, the Shotgun Stock, and the Shotgun Barrel. It’s possible that some parts may spawn in the location for another. Don’t worry, just grab it and head for the next location on the list. Start by rolling out to the waypoint marker in the Rust Commons East.

From there, walk through the gate near the Catch-A-Ride station and turn to your right. There’s a crate here, jump up on it, and from there up on the wall. The Shotgun Magazine is on top of that wall.

Then, go across the bridge to the house building with a crate on the side. The Shotgun Stock is there atop the crate.

Jump on the crate to leap up on top of the building, and head for the power line antennae. The Shotgun Barrel is right there.

Next, turn to the left toward the far end of the dam station. You’ll see a round building, so go jump over to it. From here, you can jump on the wall near the fence. Hop on over, grab the Shotgun Body, and you’re done.

Scavenger: Machine Gun

The final scavenger mission, this one sends you out to the Salt Flats. Pick it up at the Middle of Nowhere bounty board. Follow the waypoint marker to the giant construction machine. The parts are in the camp around the machine’s tracks. You’ll be searching for the Machine Gun Body, the Machine Gun Magazine, the Machine Gun Stock, and the Machine Gun Barrel.

The Machine Gun Body is on one of the round silos across from the vending machines.

The Machine Gun Barrel is up a ramp along the inside of the wall near the gate into the area.

The Machine Gun Stock is on top of a shipping container near a campfire with a roast skag on the broil.

Take the Machine Gun Magazine from the roof of a round hut near the Claptrap. You can jump up on a short concrete barrier to reach the hut’s roof.

Prospector Zeke has a few hide-and-seek quests for people to do, the second one that most players run into is a search for Beetles. These bugs happen to be in Krokotopia, so you’ll need to have reached that world first.

The Oasis Beetles: (1) Check around the back of the Robe and Deck shops–you will be near the edge of the island. And then, (2) the other one is lurking on the right side of the Library–this one is also near the edge.

Altar of Kings Beetle: After entering the PYRAMID OF THE SUN, follow the stairs down on the left side and then carry along the wall down a few ramps, the beetle is behind some rubble at a blocked exit.

Chamber of Fire Beetle: From Assistant Danforth go up 3 hairpin ramps and then follow the wall until it forces you to turn right. Take the right turn, continue forward until you see a crane above and some crates (about half-way) and the beetle is there.

Krokospinx Beetle: Take the FLOATING BOAT to Krokosphinx Island. Go around the Sphinx on its left side (you’ll see some wood bridges). You’ll see the beetle sitting up on a platform dead ahead.

Entrance Hall Beetle: Upon entering THE KROKOSPHINX go straight head, take the left-hand stairs up and around to the back wall, immediately turn right before the large door. The beetle is sitting in plain view.

Emperor’s Retreat Beetle: This beetle is located on a plank platform at the center of the frozen lake. Can’t miss it.

Tomb of Storms Beetle: After entering the portal to the TOMB OF STORMS island, look behind the stone head portal. All you have to do is run around it.

Well of Spirits Beetle: It’s in the very back of the chamber. Go down the stairs on the left, climb up the first stairs on the left, finally follow the path until it forces you to turn right and look behind the giant krok statue.

Karanahn Barracks Beetle: A lot of running to reach this one. Look by the door of the non-accessible building to the far right side of the non-battle area. It’s in a little walled area with barrels and a sarcophagus.

Based on this lovely walkthrough but written with better diction and details to help you find what you’re looking for.

As a malign parasite entity driving around a stolen corpse body like a little car, I have a natural affinity for the undead. Left 4 Dead is a great game that helps feed my hunger for zombie action, but it has become painfully obvious that no matter how many of the ravening dead we throw at the survivors, well, sometimes those bastard breathers get out alive. This must end.

To assist my fellow brain-eaters in their tireless efforts to devour the internal organs of the living, I have collected a set of fine instructional videos on how best to use your unhallowed and repulsive talents. With a little study, and alot of practice, soon you too will feel the flesh of humanity slithering down your clenching throat.

The Smoker: It’s all about the tongue, baby

The Hunter: Death from above!

The Tank: Backbone of Team Zombie. Three or four backbones, really.

The Boomer: Must have been someone I ate.

RANT WARNING: This is a rant, be prepared to disagree. It is an editorial treatment of a problematic subject. If you have an angle that was not explored, anecdotes, or other commentary please feel free to throw in. Your two cents are welcome.

People probably have already heard from us about the white-listed filter that exists in Wizard 101. It is not as badly implemented as similar for-tweens offerings in the market—things that often implode under their own weight as unusable. While it is nice that the filter is less cumbersome it is still a filter. It’s a form of censorship that doesn’t really add to the experience, it doesn’t offer any actual protections, and exists solely to damage the immersion for the players and make KingsIsle Entertainment look better to potential investors and overzealous parents.

We are going to continue to refer to the use of the filter and the choices made into its white list as the responsibility of KingsIsle Entertainment. It is their doing and their donkey to drag should it get untenable.

It’s hard to fault KingsIsle Entertainment for this behavior at first glance. After all, it does make good business sense. They are attempting to market this game to the tween/teen age groups, and that age group comes with the demographic most easily scandalized and drawn about by the nose: parents. The good business sense comes in to pandering directly to the fears of those parents by producing a deceptively comfortable “safe zone.” Even if all it takes is a little prodding to tear through the veil of verisimilitude; it will draw in the beau coup bucks.

There are numerous examples where good business sense does not make good moral sense or even good sense for society at large. Such as when factories used to dump their waste chemicals directly into nearby rivers rather than going through expensive processes to store and clean them up. It made good business sense at the time because it cost far less, and the cities largely ignored them because the factory gave them lots of jobs and brought in a great deal of money. Of course, then people started to get sick and die.

Practices like censoring communication pollute our communal consciousness in a very similar way.

Does censorship make children stupid? We abridge the experience our children have of the world in a myriad of ways because it could be harmful to them. Like putting plugs in the wall sockets, locking cabinets full of poisons, and putting sharp objects out of their reach… But all that while if we are not educating them and not supervising them, these actions will not benefit them—eventually they will be older, taller, more likely to get at those poisons, knives, and electrical sockets. If they had no experience of them up until that point they will get into trouble.

Can we really equate language and words to sharp knifes in the kitchen? No, not really. That’s certainly not it.

With knives we are afraid of cuts and lacerations, but with censorship we’re afraid of communication. A fear of knowledge. KingsIsle is white listing language in a way that puts a perfunctory sugarcoat on everything said in the chat, it demonizes strange words and strange wording, blocks insults, and a lot of vulgar aphorisms. It certainly creates a false sense of decorum—but none of this actually does anything more than shift the use of language to other more creative ranges.

“You have sheet for brains!”

See how easy that was? It was even totally within the bounds of KingsIsle’s white list. In fact, our friends and us have gotten down to saying “donkey brains” instead of “damnit” when we’re annoyed at a function of the game. In a lot of ways the filtration just acts as a bad replacement for supervision. Like people want to be comfortable with this sort of interaction to allow their children to run about in virtual worlds unsupervised because some fragile veil has been spread between them and the rest of the world.

How exactly is this training children playing the game? It reminds us of a particular come-across with a good friend of ours when we were standing in a cell phone store with her son. He’d found a particularly strange phone that only had four buttons (programmable, for children) and it was said to the effect, “Oh, might get something like that for you one day.” And when he asked about it, she said, “Oh no, honey, when we get you a phone I’ll get you a real phone.” Yes. Wizard 101 chat is not real chat. It is a grim parody of Fischer Price chat: dumbed down, patronizing, patting the players on the head as if they’re cretins.

Language finds a way, donkey brains!

The use of filters in video games to modify or blur language is an insipid expedience done out of cover-your-ass foolishness at best and morally questionable at worst. This filter does not raise the bar high enough to prevent “bad people” from soliciting our children online (of course this is because most of that solicitation is being done by their own classmates.) It will not prevent kids telling other kids where they live or their phone numbers or giving out their IM info. What it will do is give them a sense of frustration at the agonizing censorship the filter provides as it cuts words out of their newspaper.

The only thing that protects people online from these extremely rare potential threats is going to be actual education and this sort of hell-paving good intentions gets in the way of that. How does one explain exactly to a student that we don’t trust them with their own language while trying to educate? How exactly can we teach them about the world without the world available even to us to provide the materials.

Worse. KingsIsle has created an interesting experiment in how to make everyone conform to the same linguistic rules. The filter manages to strip out what’s left of “body language” on the Internet; it makes it more difficult to tell if someone else is actually on the level or not. Having been compressed into a particular vocabulary means that they don’t have a chance to step out of bounds as easily, giving them the same veneer as everyone else. Sure, we will never suffer chatspeak on Wizard 101, but whatever, Ignore and Report have worked for ages.

We won’t exactly deny this video game to our children, but we will probably tell them over and over about how communication isn’t a piecemeal experience.

This sort of thing actually harms our children. It does not protect them from anything. Especially not themselves. Certainly not reality.

As a parting gift, our particular bête noire about the filter.

What is with KingsIsle’s dislike of English diction? To wit, much to our chagrin we discovered that semicolons are verboten, our favorite part of punctuation ripped from us like a babe who has been divested of a doll. We cannot even use the word “semicolon” because it’s not in the white list—to make things worse, discussing the problem is also impossible as the word “semicolon” itself is not permitted, neither is the all important “grammar.”

Oh yes, and before we leave, a moment of zen.

As of this posting the KingsIsle filter blocks the word “censorship.”

Prospector Zeke has a few hide-and-seek quests for people to do, one of the first ones that newbies like us run into is the search for the Smiths. Here’s the locations of those Smiths so that you can more easily find them.

Commons Smith: The very back of the Fairgrounds, look behind a tree between two tents.

Ravenwood Smith: You can find him between the Myth School building and where the Death School campus used to be, go up against the back wall.

Unicorn Way Smith: Look near the entrance to the Hedge Maze. Tucked into a nook that makes him difficult to see while approaching, pretty much against the left wall as you walk towards the Hedge Maze.

Golem Court Smith: Directly opposite the Golem Tower, standing next to a tree, the Dragon’s Mouth Cave entrance is nearby.

Shopping District Smith: Between buildings. After entering the Shopping District, walk towards Olde Town. Upon passing the first tree turn right, and go between the buildings. He’ll be waiting next to a tree near the back wall.

Olde Town Smith: Right next to Gloria Krendell. After entering just walk down the incline, take the first right onto the road that branches between two buildings. Cannot miss him.

Cylcops Lane Smith: In the park area behind Nolan Stormgate. Go through the stream towards the far wall. He’s standing next to a tree.

Triton Avenue Smith: Near the waterfalls. Once passing into the middle-area with Susie Gryphonbone and Duncan Grimwater, you will cross a bridge. Turn left immediately. Cross two streams of water and viola.

Firecat Alley Smith: At the Fireglobe Theater. Look on the right side, next to the tail of one of the fire cat statues.

Colossus Boulevard Smith: Look near the Gobbler Palace.

Based on this lovely walkthrough but written with better diction and details to help you find what you’re looking for.

For those who don’t know, Black & White is a god game dumped into the market by Lionhead Studios in 2001, roughly six years before it was actually ready for publication. I recently picked it up at the local used vendor for the respectable price of them paying me to take it out of their store. As this might imply, the game did not deliver on the majority of its promises, and was ejected from the gaming community as a whole with a speed not unlike the meteorite which wiped out the dinosaurs.

This judgment was, in fact, entirely fair because while Black & White promised an experience between raising your own baby Godzilla and bombarding your foes with holy wrath from space, what you actually got was an exercise in tedium broken only by your divine cow pooping on the temple to your magnificence. Again.

None the less, there is an actual game here if one is willing to look closer, or at least a good excuse to pretend there’s a game here. What I’m talking about is that temple to your magnificence, which changes and alters itself to match what sort of god you really are as determined by your actions. Not that many gamers noticed, though, since once their temple turned solid black, acquired a fine collection of blood-drinking bats, and put on enough spikes to send a biker gang into envy, there really wasn’t any further changes it could make. That would be the evil temple, by the way, and you got it by doing anything fun.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. Well enough that burning your enemies with fire and hurling them off the edge of world might be considered a little on the aggressive side of things, but it’s still perfectly possible to crush and conquer while keeping up what the game itself calls a 1.0 alignment. Or, in a game where the designers paid a little more attention to the fact someone other than they might play it eventually, “Good.”

The biggest problem with staying good in this game is that your fate is tied to the sort of brainless mouthbreather who would pledge his eternal and undying loyalty to a disembodied, floating hand the size of a small pony. Fortunately for you, you get a whole village full of these inbred cretins so you’re not directly out of a job when one chokes on his own armpit. Fine, but what does that have to do with me, you ask? They all want something, and being morons are mostly incapable of doing it themselves. They look up into the sky and see not your divine radiance sheltering them with wisdom and love, but a sort of five-fingered pickup truck that has nothing better to do than help them move house.

This behaviour leads toward what we call micro-management and it the first thing you must learn to avoid if you want to play the game without losing body parts to bouts of frustrated rage.

Before we go any further on the subject I would like to mention a few things. The first is that you should patch up the game to version 1.1 from http://www.lionhead.com/bw/downloads.html as quickly as possible. This patch kills most of the major show stopping bugs that caused gamers to chew their CDs in half. Note the word “most” in the preceding sentence, as Lionhead still left in a small and precious selection of show stopping bugs to delight and amuse.

Also, I have no intention of covering the story campaign in this guide. Partly, because the techniques learned here can be applied readily enough in story mode, but mostly because the campaign can be best described as being punched in the face repeatedly by a cutscene and then, while you’re still fishing around through the blood on the floor for missing teeth, the next cutscene in line slips on the brass knuckles and steps up for a fresh go. So we won’t be doing that. This is a guide for skirmish mode alone.

Now then, back to the micro-management. More than any other factor in the game, this is your enemy. Left to their own devices, your people will do little more than lie stupidly in the grain fields and shovel the occasional handful of half-ripe seed into their drooling maws. Illness, starvation, and rampaging giant monsters will phase them not in the least, nor stir them from the furrows their unmoving bodies are slowly wearing in the earth itself. Why should they bother, after all, when they have you to do it all for them?

Don’t let that happen. You’re a god, not a valet, and your job is to protect and expand your realm. You were not hired to wipe the ass of some British immigrant to Generic Fantasy Land, so put a stop to that foolishness with the swift boot of discipline. Or, to be more accurate, the heavy chains worn by Disciples.

Disciples are those lucky, lucky individuals to whom you have assigned a task for them to perform for the rest of their natural lives. Pick up a villager, move him near the area in which the task is performed, and then look for a little symbol to appear next to his struggling carcass. Set him down, and he will gain the healthy glow of an employed Disciple. From then on, the villager will do that task, whatever it might be, until he no longer can. You will need to set new Disciples from time to time, as age, lightning bolts, and the occasional predations of a gargantuan cow thin their ranks.

Setting Disciples should become your hobby, the sort of thing a god does to relax after a hard day of hurling flaming boulders across an enemy village. The vast majority of your population should be employed in this manner or else they could go soft, and a soft villager doesn’t cause quite as much damage when flung.

In general, what you’ll want to set up is a small number of Disciple builders, maybe two Disciple craftsmen per town, perhaps a forester to help build up the ol’ lumber mill, and two female breeders because nothing says Just and Wise Rulership like temple whores. Once these bases are covered, every other living thing in your village should be assigned to the fields and sent to farm until their backs break. This is vital because without a constant supply of grain your villagers will spend their time bitching at you about food, and not humping like bunnies as they should to expand your power.

Okay, so now everyone in the village has their own little aura of slavery to your divine will, it’s time to take he next step on the path to destroying the scourge of micromanagement and bring in your creature. Yes, that monolithic farm animal who sold you on this game in the first place. Amazingly, he is good for something and that something is casting Miracles so you don’t have to.

Your village will always and forever be in desperate need of healing, rain for the fields, even more food, and crucially, wood. Wood is the go-to resource for pretty much everything you might want to do, and you’ll need an awful lot of it. While in fact, wood does grow on trees, the trees themselves won’t last long under the assault of a village determined to expand. That’s where your creature comes in.

At the start of a skirmish game, you will only know a few spells, er, Miracles, as provided by your pathetic villagers. None of those are going to be Miracle Wood, which is a damn shame because it’s the most useful Miracle in the game. However, if your creature knows the Miracle, he’ll cheerfully cast it even when you can’t. That means more wood, more wood means more better, more better means the other god gets a boot up his ass more sooner. The best way to make this happen is to teach your creature the Miracle Wood spell with a quickness, then take him into a new game and start over from there. Slap him up with the Fluffy Pink Leash of Compassion and chain the bastard down to the village store. Give him just enough leash to walk around the village so he can reach the fields and whatever forestry lives inside the village walls.

Now, if all goes according to plan, your creature will amuse himself by being compassionate, which means casting his Miracles on the villagers and their surroundings. He’ll water the fields, he’ll rain on the trees to make them grow, he’ll heal the sick and wounded. Most important, and you’ll want to watch him like a hawk to reward him for it, your creature will Miracle up fresh wood for the village store. Spend time on this, and soon enough your holy colossus will be transformed into a miraculous vending machine that frees you from the drudgery of paying attention to the needs of the people who give you power and life.

Once your villagers are no longer attached to your celestial power like leeches at a blood bank, you’ll be free to go about the business of being a god instead of some kind of ethereal quartermaster on a ship of fools. Being a god is all about power, and you’ll soon want to expand yours. The best way to do that is through lots of lots of villagers offering up prayer power and expanding your control radius.

The obvious solution is to make lots of breeder Disciples, but that’s entirely wrong. Let your villagers breed out of control and you’ll end up scraping through dumpsters for half-spent prayer power, desperately pulling together enough mojo to cast Miracle Food for the twenty-seventh time in a row while dirty little children pull on your non-existent ears. Don’t be that god. Instead, force your people to expand at a regulated pace by providing housing.

Housing is a great thing because your population will expand to fill it, but they’ll also slow down their sinful rutting as space becomes more scarce. Once your Disciples are set, get to work building a bunch of homes, spicing things up a bit with the occasional civic building. The best place for these new houses is right on the edge of your village’s control radius, heading toward some juicy target like another village or a strong forest that you might want to reach over and grab. This will expand your control radius, giving you a better shot at laying your radiant claw over whatever resources are to be had in that direction. In fact, build homes like a Californian condo developer on a phenomenal meth binge, just surround your town with deserted suburban real estate. I’ll get to why in a bit.

In Black & White, the goal of the game is to take over the other god’s villages and then lay waste to his temple once his worshipers have abandoned him. An evil god does this by killing anyone who doesn’t have the Mark upon his hand or forehead, but you’re not that sort of god. As a good god, you must fight this battle as a war of ideas and loyalty, bringing your gospel to the blighted and deprived followers of that bastard heathen up in the sky over above the other temple. In practice, this means subversion and kidnapping.

Just like any other disposable resource, you can reach out and pick up enemy villagers if they wander too near your control radius. Do so whenever possible, and pick off those oblivious schmucks with all the hesitation of a starving hawk that just spotted a field mouse wrapped in bacon. Once you’ve got him, it might be tempting to fling the enemy villager off into the vast deep, but you wouldn’t want to do that because it’s an evil act. Also, there’s nothing in it for you beyond a mild sense of satisfaction. Instead, wing the surprised little heretic off to your own village and hover him near an empty house. You’ll get a symbol, just like Disciples do. Place him down, and a random female voice from nowhere will burst out something like, “Live here in peace” which is exactly what I’d do after being stolen away from home and family by a grasping, heavenly fist. Spend a moment to turn the new meat into a Disciple, then watch him slouch merrily off into the fields with the other slaves. Congratulations! You have just increased your own power at the expense of your enemy, and best of all, kidnapping counts as a good act! Presumably, when the enemy god isn’t eating babies with a side of broiled puppy, he’s off playing the bad touch game with his villagers behind the woodshed. Really, a sudden and violent relocation is to the best for all involved.

However, this only works if you have a free corner in one of your houses to stuff the fresh meat puppet into when you’re done with him for the day, and that’s why building homes is so important. A good-aligned god not only has to find a bed for his own followers, but those unexpectedly late of any other gods, as well. This works too on neutral villages, which can be nice, since you can depopulate the place rather quickly and then send a single minion out to claim the deserted town for your own. Shuffle the stolen population back to their homeland, and you’ll have a spanking-new village to call your own while the other god is still trying to impress the neighbors by puking birds out his ass.

If you’re the tricky sort who likes to abuse the incredible idiocy of game AI, and I’m betting you are, it’s possible to simplify the whole process by placing a lure of some sort just beyond your luminescent border of Mine Now! and then waiting for the computer’s villagers to come poke their heads out in an attempt to claim the bait. A pile of wood works nicely, as does a couple trees if any happen to still exist by then. Drop them down, then crouch behind a mountain or something like a fourth grader waiting to jump out and scare his sister. If all goes well, a steady, ant-like stream will flow from the nearest village, and you can commence with El Swipe-o Grande at will until either your keyboard breaks or every nook and cranny is filled with enough stunned converts to make a Cuban refugee raft seem roomy and comfortable.

But I also mentioned the gentle art of subversion, that is, converting people by going out to their towns and showing off your holy spiffiness, rather than simply plucking random waifs from their lives for a quick trip through the mind-control booths hidden inside those log cabins of yours.

There are two main ways to do this, you can drop off holy artifacts for the heathens to worship, or you can send over folks to spread the good news of your mercy and love by punching people directly in the theology and wallets. Neither of these methods are exclusive of the other, and they both work just fine while you’re off kidnapping anything on two legs that you can flush out.

Artifacts are perhaps the most potent weapons in your holy arsenal, but they take a while to get rolling and the game isn’t really very helpful in teaching you how to use these tactical theological nukes. Fortunately, I’m a little more forgiving of those who lack the sort of cybernetic telepathy Lionhead expected their players to possess.

To make an artifact, hunt down a portable rock and haul it back to a village center. Larger rocks produce more potent effects, but take longer to transform into a proper billboard for your divine protection racket. Because of this, smaller stones are more useful in the early game when you need some philosophical firepower right here and right now.

Once you’ve planted the stone near the village center, it should only be a matter of time before your people notice the sudden appearance of a boulder in their lives. When they do, the more energetic amongst them will begin to dance around it, singing praises and chants to the most benevolent spirits that blessed them with so much wonderful pumice. After a bit of this, the rock will gain a slight divine glow as your symbol hovers over it like the transparent ghost of a playful puppy. Once you see the symbol, the rock is done cooking, and now it’s completely the same in all ways except anyone who comes across the stone will be compelled to dance and sing and otherwise go through the motions of joining your service.

A couple artifacts strewn around the home and hearth do very well in keeping the populace happy and ready to offer up that wonderful prayer power, but the things have other uses as well. You can use artifacts as a sort of Miracle-Gro for Wonders by building the Wonder over a handy glowing rock, which can lead to truly game-breaking levels of spell, er, Miracle-casting powers as the roid-raging SuperHellMondoWonder that results is less of a handy bonus and more like a slot machine that buries you in inexhaustible riches just for pulling the handle.

However, if you don’t feel like strip-mining the world to build that Wonder, you can also toss artifacts into enemy villages. Mysterious rocks always being a cause for celebration, the heathens will flood away from their homes and loved ones to admire the geology you just plunked down in front of them. This gives you belief in a big chunk right away, plus a good whack more belief every now and then forever more. Any other artifacts you might roll in do the same thing, and it all adds up amazingly fast. Of course, trying this against a human player will see the artifacts returned rather quickly, at a hefty velocity, through your temple. They will also be on fire. So don’t do that.

While artifacts have limited use against a player, the computer has a deadly fear of god-cooties and won’t touch the things to save its life. You could quite literally wall up villages with artifacts, surrounding whole populations with an inescapable barrier of proselytizing masonry. Since artifacts don’t disappear or run out of gas, you can re-use them by simply swiping the holy boulders from conquered villages and sneaking them into the next filthy enclave of sinners and heretics.

Villagers also have the rather helpful habit of gathering around artifacts to do their worship thing, which means a good dozen or so of the hapless meatbags will always be right there, out in the open, just itching to be caught in the blast range of anything you might call down from the heavens upon them. Sure, you’re playing the sort of god who fills the world with love and kittens and shiny happiness for all creatures, but you know. Lightning happens. Just sayin’.

Anyhow, so if artifacts won’t work against another player, what’s left besides trudging over to piss doves at unfriendly villages? Why, rabble-rousing, of course! You have two flavours of destructive influence to inflict upon an enemy village; Missionaries and Traders. Missionaries drop by to spread the word about your good deeds and that kitten business, while Traders do mostly the same thing with fewer kittens and more bribery.

You can make either by snagging someone from your vast domain and carting them out to enemy territory. Hover your covert agent near a building, and you’ll see a little yin-yang symbol. That creates a Missionary, who gives you belief in chunks over time. Park the fellow near the village store, and he’ll sport a symbol that doesn’t really look like a pregnant cripple in any way, meaning he’ll become a Trader. A Trader offers up resources like wood and food, cashing in over time on the belief that sort of thing generates.

A single agitator won’t summon up the kind of belief that an artifact produces, but they don’t stand out either, which makes it rather tricky for the other guy to hunt them down and mail their pieces back to you in tiny baggies. They also work well together with artifacts to create a poison dagger of dogma, seeping your religious venom into the other god’s heart. Just like artifacts, your guerilla subversion squads work best in great scheming hordes. Feel free to send them over in swarms while your opponent isn’t looking, maybe yank your creature over to get his attention while you smuggle in whatever you can before the screaming and the lightning stops.

So then, those are the basics. To sum up, kill the micro-management aspects by bending everyone you can reach into Disciple slavery, train your creature to cough up resources with the reflexive instinct the rest of us use to breathe, and build enough homes to see your village right into the centerfold spread of Tract Housing Monthly.

Once that’s done, take over villages by kidnapping the people, tempting anyone who’s left to kick their old, unfashionable religion in favour of your idols and artifacts, then seal the deal by sending over Missionaries and Traders to steal the town outright. Congratulations! You are now a total vicious bastard of a god with a shiny white temple of purity and love for all things that are, or soon will be, yours. Enjoy.

Oh! One last thing, you might find it useful to know. Your creature’s actions do not reflect on you. I’ll say that one more time to hammer it in. Your creature’s actions do not reflect on you. So if kung-fu fights between barnyard titans appeal to you, and it should, don’t worry about the bodies being laid at your own door. So long as you’re willing to handle the Miracles back home, feel free to name your cow Blood-Eater and send him off to devour the nations of man and stain his hooves with the viscera of the unbeliever. So long as the flames and terror don’t emerge from your own hand, why, you’re still everyone’s bestest buddy and the shiniest, most wonderfulest god on the block. I guess so long as the gore and giblets are washed off before anyone back home sees your creature, they think the scars and darkness and flaming pitch bleeding from his eyes are just some kind of skin condition, poor thing. They probably even send him Get Well cards with little jokes in them he can laugh at while pooping on the glowing white 1.0 temple to your magnificence. Again.