Land four sends you back to the first map--though much has changed. Enraged, Nemesis has ravaged the land; a once lush, green landscape has turned brown and dead. Fireballs rain from the sky and lightning scars the land--and you'll have to deal with both. Land four can be a challenge exercise of keeping your village intact to watching fireballs burn it into rubble.

Guardian Stones

The first section of the walk-through details some ideas on how to survive the initial chaos. There are three guardian stones affecting land four's environment and landscape. You must complete each of the puzzles to restore the map to its original beauty.

Guardian Stone #1: The Totem Puzzle: Located underneath a physical shield outside of your influence. Capture the nearby village to spawn the scroll that activates the challenge.

Guardian Stone #2: The Defending Ogres: Sleg, son of Sleg, guards the second guardian stone, and he won't let it go without a fight. Move your creature to him to initiate combat.

Guardian Stone #3: The Heartbroken Man: Complete this quest after you've already destroyed two guardian stones. You'll spot the scroll above a hut in the middle of the map.

Surviving the Chaos

The beginning of land four is extremely difficult. You have fireballs crashing down from the sky, lightning bolts striking around your village, and pesky gremlins stealing your followers. Where should you start? As with all of Black & White, there are several options at the beginning of land four. Here are some of them:

All that wood you brought from land three could be worthless if those fireballs ignite your village store.

Saving the Initial Village: Can you save the initial village? The fireballs are coming down fast and furious at the beginning but don't hurt anything, which means you do have some time to get your act together before the real danger begins. Once the good conscience observes that some fireballs are coming close to your village, the problems begin.

To save the first village, you can use the spiritual shield one-shot dispenser to erect protection around your village, but without prayer power, it won't stay up for long. So if you want to try to protect your village from the fireballs, you'll need villagers--lots of them! Toss as many land three villagers as you can find into the vortex at the end of land three. Once in land four, crank your totem up enough so that you can maintain the shield. While the shield is up, guide your creature to the nearby village above the shielded totem puzzle and start converting. Or you can send your creature to tackle the ogre and get rid of the lightning--and then the fireballs!

If you don't want to maintain the shield, you can also catch the incoming fireballs before they strike your structures. This is very difficult, though, and it means you must concentrate on grabbing fireballs instead of something else (like converting the nearby village).

Ignoring the First Village: Another way, though a tad evil, is to ignore the first village completely. Concentrate your effort solely on converting the nearby village that provides access to the totem puzzle that controls the fireballs. Guide your creature over there with the leash and attach him to the village center and their houses with the leash of compassion.

Assist in the conversion by hurling trees from the hill above your village. You should be able to get some belief for most of the flying trees. If you have any artifacts from land three, toss them over the village too. Try to make the toss as low as possible; you can score a ton of belief for a flying artifact (we scored 230 with just one rock!). You can even try to toss the artifact so that it lands in the middle of town for a nice chunk of belief and a slow trickle thereafter.

Guide your creature over to the nearby village to start conversion.

This means, though, that your first village will be leveled. Don't fret, though; the lines in the dirt that formed the village center and workshop can be repaired. Simply supply the builders and the wood (plenty of trees on the map). Surviving the initial chaos in this fashion slants you to the side of evil (you did ignore all those crying pleas for help, didn't you?) and means you'll have to start with just a handful of followers. Get them breeding quick!

Spreading Your Influence

Expanding influence around the map can be a slow process if you're just expanding using houses or compounding belief in your village center with nice miracles and gestures. Instead, use the village center drop. Make five scaffolds and combine them into a single large scaffold. With the scaffold in hand, move your cursor somewhere outside your influence.

You can interact with the world for a few seconds after leaving your own influence. Use this time to place the village center, which creates its own influence. Build the center by adding builders and wood and then expand by using houses and other civic buildings--or by dropping another village center.

Use this tactic to gain influence close to neutral or enemy-controlled villages. If you're close enough, you can drop wood or food in their village store, cast friendly miracles, toss fireballs, and do whatever it takes to overturn belief and complete the conversion.

 

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