Spore™ Hints and Tips

Start by selecting a stage with your mouse.

Tips Before Installing Spore™

"Start at the very beginning. Nurture your own creation from its humble aquatic origins to its evolution as a sentient species in the epic journey of Spore."

Primary Goal: Collect 6 body parts.

Secondary Goal: Evolve your character using these parts.

End Goal: Attach legs, crawl to land and begin the Creature Stage.

Tip: When you first are making your selections to start this stage, after choosing herbivore or carnivore, if you don't like the default creature you're given you can change the creature by using the back arrow and making your dietary selection again.

Tip: You're not stuck with being either herbivore or carnivore. After you start playing the cell stage you will be given the ability to change/evolve your character. At that time you can select a different mouth. The mouth choices are Herbivore (Herbivores are vegetarian and can only exist by eating plants.), Carnivore (Carnivores can only exist by eating meat.) and Omnivore (Omnivores can eat both meat and plants.)

Tip: If your having trouble being eaten by the bigger fish, like the black one with the seven mouths that's the size of the Goodyear blimp, put a spike at the back end of your creation and split it in two making a "V" shape. The next time he tries to chomp on you he'll get stabbed by the spikes. You'll receive no damage. That big fish will go belly up if it attacks you now. Note: Your not invincible now, you need to be positioned correctly, tail end in his mouth. Side attacks can still hurt you.

Another good defense is poison, but you won't get that part right away as you do with the spike. With poison, the longer they follow the more poisoned they become. Most creatures that have felt your defense will run from you after attacking, however, the colossal creatures just keep coming. With the colossal sized ones stay ahead of them long enough and they will eventually poison themselves to death.

Mega Tip: The history button is your best friend if you are trying to purposely guide your race toward being either herbivore, carnivore or omnivore in the end. Your eating behavior is what guides you to your final classification, not the mouth you choose. In other words, if have chosen a carnivore mouth from the start and have been eating meat throughout the stage then at the final opportunity to evolve you change mouths to an omnivore or herbivore, you will still emerge as a carnivore.

You can see the complication this would cause if you chose the herbivore mouth being a carnivore, you would be unable to eat in the next stage until you changed your mouth back to carnivore.

To sum up: If you want to be herbivore or carnivore, just pick that mouth from the start and you will end just fine. If you want to end as an omnivore you must change mouths throughout the stage and eat both meat and plant matter to guide your history towards the middle. This is very important because in the creature stage of spore you will only find mouth upgrades for the classification in which you end in the cell stage.

Note: All of your actions are recorded in your history and will guide you towards one of three final categories. In the cell stage the eventual outcome would be Herbivore, Omnivore or Carnivore.

Herbivores can only exist by eating plant matter.

Omnivores can eat any type food available.

Carnivores can only exist by eating meat.

"Evolve your creature to become the first sentient species on the planet."

"It is the beginning of a new day... and for you, a whole new strange and wondrous world. Air fills your longs as you stretch into your limbs in your new home... dry land. The race to evolve has begun..."

Primary Goals: Find a new body part, eat, make friends with another nest of creatures, migrate to a new nest twice.

Secondary Goals: Make the majority of your evolutionary changes toward your final look you choose. Guide your history toward your desired finish for this stage.

End Goal: Fill your history meter and move on to the Tribal Stage of Spore.

The main objects of the Creature Stage of Spore are to collect the remainder of body parts needed to evolve your creature into its final appearance and interacting with the other inhabitants of this stage.. There are a few ways of obtaining body parts, I'll start with tips about that.

Tip: Body parts can be found in the skeletal remains left behind from creatures long gone. Though it's best to collect everyone set of remains possible, giving you the most options for evolutionary parts, if in a fight or flight situation try to grab at least the larger bones as they contain body parts with better abilities than the parts you get from the smaller sets of bones.

Tip: Another method of acquiring body parts is to impress the alpha creatures of neighboring nests. Though you'll have to work twice as hard to impress them they will reward you with a body part. The other way to receive body parts from the alpha is to kill them.

TIp: Friend or Foe? If you are trying to build your creature quickly, it may be better to befriend other creatures than to make them extinct. For one, during my personal game play, I found you seem to get more DNA points for impressing a nest than in trying to make it extinct. Also, you only need to impress three members of the nest to win them over as friends; whereas you would need to eliminate 4 or more members, depending on the creature, to make them extinct.

Impressing other creatures:

Tip: There is strength in numbers. As you should know you must sing, dance, charm and pose for the creatures to impress them. The creature you are trying to impress will start by performing one of the afore mention pleasantries. You must then mimic his choice and perform your version. If you have 2 or more of your creature members with you, your impression will go much easier as the number of creatures you have adds to the level of which you can sing, dance, charm or pose.

For example, if you have a level one dance and have two members of your nest performing, the dance will give twice as much impression on the impression meter that shows how well you're doing towards impressing them. you must at least be able to meet them in the middle of this meter.

Tip: If your having trouble impressing one creature in a nest try another. Often times each member requires different things to be impressed.

Tip: Go back to your nest and change out body parts. When replacing body parts in evolve mode you will get a reimbursement for the cost of item you are replacing. This helps if you are low on DNA points. The new parts you find will give higher levels of the abilities thus making it easier to impress your neighbors.

For making nests extinct, the same tips above would apply. Higher level mouths have a higher bite level allowing more damage in fighting. And so on...

One final note: Try to include parts that also give health. I know it's tempting to go for ones that don' t because they usually give higher level abilities for the same price but if you can't withstand an attack longer then 10 seconds, having a bite level of 5 won't do much good.

Note: All actions in your history progress bar of the creature stage of spore will guide you once again towards one of three main ending categories. In this case it's will be either Social, Adaptable or Predator.

Social creatures are constantly searching for new friends and allies. Meeting a new species is the highlight of their day.

Adaptable creatures have many friends and many enemies. They make choices based on the current situation.

Predatory creatures spend their lives searching for prey. They'd sooner make extinct an entire species than "dance" or "charm".

"Complete with rival tribes to build your tribe of three to a burgeoning village on the path toward civilization."

The Tribal Stage of Spore™ is about working together and delegating authority. You will have a tribal chieftain to bring some order to things. You start with three members in your tribe and will eventually grow into 12.

Primary Goals: Befriend and or conquer the other tribes to be rewarded more important huts to build and heads to complete your totem pole.

Secondary Goals: Domesticate an island creature. Produce offspring and forage for food.

End Goal: Fill your history meter by completing stage goals and Impressing and or destroying all the other tribes.

Dress for Success:

You are given the ability to clothe your creation in full tribal gear. Be sure to take note of the abilities of these articles of clothing. Try to pick the ones that enhance your abilities of achieving your goals successfully. I found gathering pouches very useful. They let you carry just a little bit more and every bit helps.

How to Make Friends and Influence People:

Impressing your neighbors into becoming friends takes a group effort led by the chieftain. You must start by offering gifts if they are unfriendly. Once the tribe becomes ambivalent to you, you then hold concerts at the tribes home. At first this is simple as the crowd only demands you to play one type of instrument. As the tribal stage goes on you will need to have a more diverse orchestra consisting of three different instruments and a certain number of players to play them.

Tip: To impress other tribes you must play the instrument they request in their thought bubble. If you play all the instruments correctly as they ask for them and you have enough players, you will be given a 10 for your performance and you will move up a notch on the "Like Meter". You need to hold performances until you totally win them over. This will reward you with a couple of new huts to use and a new head for your totem pole. If you score lower than a 10 the round won't count towards earning friendship.

On the darker side, totally annihilating the tribes will earn you the same things. It's totally up to you and where in your history you want to finish the level.

Tip: Befriend a tribe and they will start bringing you gifts of food. You can bring other tribes gifts as well.

Tip: A properly timed gift has stopped an attacking tribe in their tracks several times. They become ambivalent after receiving the gift and the attackers stop as if they have amnesia and can't remember why they where charging toward you in the first place. They then turn around and go back home mumbling to themselves.

Gathering food:

Food can be obtained by picking it from trees, killing island animals and fishing. Which you choose depends on what you can eat.

Tip: You need food to eat, buy huts and reproduce offspring. Always keep at least one or two tribe members gathering food. You can never have enough.

Tip: You will eventually get huts with tools allowing you to gather food more efficiently. Start using them as soon as you can.

Tip: Domesticating an island creature is simply a matter of giving them a bone. Once domesticated you cannot kill these pets for food. You can have 3 different pets.

Note: Your actions in this stage guide your history towards being Friendly, Industrious or Aggressive. Important: This stage also dictates how you will start the Civilization Stage. If you end as Friendly you will start as Religious in the Civilization Stage. If you end as Industrious you start as Economic and ending as Aggressive will start you out as Military.

Friendly: Friendly tribes understand the importance of teamwork. They form alliances to share resources and prosper with other tribes. (Also leads to starting as Religious in the civilization stage.)

Religious: Religious civilizations use words and ides to convert other nations to their way of thinking.

Industrious: Industrious tribes seize the moment., attacking or forming alliances when necessary. They make great allies. but watch out. (Also leads to starting as Economic in the Civilization Stage.)

Economic: Economic civilizations use cash trade routes to influence other nations. They'll make alliances. but it's usually a better deal for them.

Aggressive: Aggressive tribes try to exterminate the competition. They ruthlessly attack and hoard all the resources for themselves. (Also leads to starting as Military in the Civilization Stage.)

Military: Military civilization thrive on weapons and force. The use every available resource to destroy other nations.

"Develop from city to global nation overcoming opposition from your own species.

Succeed and you'll find the key to the cosmos."

The Civilization Stage of Spore™ is one of the more challenging and fast paced levels of the game. You will be mining for spice, fending off the attacks of other cities, staging your own attacks and more building and creating. This time the creating is toward buildings and vehicles.

Primary Goals: Create a town hall, home, entertainment and factory buildings. Start a Spice mine. Become the dominating species on the planet.

Secondary Goals: Create land vehicles, air craft and sea vessels.

Building Your Town Hall:

Tip: The first time I created my town hall I was so excited to get on with the stage I forgot all about the paint feature and ended up with a totally white building. Thankfully you are able to edit your town hall later on, so if you didn't get it right the first time, try and try again.

Tip: You can add foundations together side by side and on top of one another to make a very large town hall with many stories, balconies, windows and trimmings but keep in mind the larger you build your buildings the more cramped it will appear in your world view above your city. But hey the town hall might as well stick out, right? ;)

Tip: Did I mention? Take the time to use details and the paint feature. You'll be able to publish your creations so take the time to make something really cool. If you get it featured on the Spore website you will earn a badge for it. Now that's a badge I'd be proud to earn.

Building Your Vehicles:

The way you build your vehicles depends on your starting classification. Religious can only build vehicles designed to convert the non-believers. Military will build vessels designed to destroy cities into submission and Economic will be designed to trade with other cities.

Tip: When creating your vehicles, keep note of the statistics in the top right corner. They are the health of your vehicle. The strength of your vehicles power and the speed in which it can travel. These three factors total 100%. You, however, decided how those percentages are split up. The tabs on the top left allow you to add the various parts to your design.

If you want more speed, add more of the items that give you speed and vice versa. Adding to one subtracts from the other two, but you'll get the hang of it.

Tip: If you make your vehicles too strong, neglecting to focus on the health and speed of your vehicles, they won't be around long enough to do that massive damage. It seems best to keep your percentage numbers fairly even, with your dominating choice just slightly higher than the rest.

I don't want to be me!

First of all though it is a little more difficult to change your classification on this level it is possible. You would need to totally not play the way your classification would call for and play towards your desired outcome.

Tip: If you start as "Religious" and want to change to "Economic", you would need to establish friendships and trade routes with the other cities to buy them out. If you want to become Military, convert a military city and the game will give you the option to either keep the city "Military" or convert it to "Religious". Just keep it military and you will be able to build military vehicles and take cities the forcible way. Keep taking cities that way and you'll end as "Military"

Tip: The above is basically the same if you start as any of the other classifications and want to change. If you start as "Military and want to end religious, capture a religious city and keep it religious. This will allow you to build religious vehicles. Use them instead and you'll end religious.

I'm sure you get the idea.

I like who I am!

If you like your classification just keep playing using your style of take over and you'll end just fine.

Tip: You don't have to stick strictly to your classification. Trading with another tribe won't in itself remove you from one classification. Just as being "Military" and keeping a captured city "Religious" won't in itself remove you from being "Military". It is more so in how you take over cities.

So play around with the other options if you like. It takes a bit of nudging to get you from one class to another. (Hmm, sounds like me in high school.)

Note: Your starting classification in this stage is dictated by your ending classification in the Tribal Stage. If you ended Friendly then you'll start as Religious. If you ended as Industrious, you'll start as Economic or Military if you ended as Aggressive.

Religious: Religious civilizations use words and ides to convert other nations to their way of thinking.

Economic: Economic civilizations use cash trade routes to influence other nations. They'll make alliances. but it's usually a better deal for them.

Military: Military civilization thrive on weapons and force. The use every available resource to destroy other nations.

"Take on missions from your homeworld as you cruise the galaxy in your spaceship on your journey through the cosmos.

Note: Once here, your history is no longer guided up or down towards a category, but rather, it's a type of timeline history logging every choice, victory and defeat.The underlying goal is to reach the center of the galaxy.

Primary Goals: Create your spaceship. Establish mining colonies. Grow your empire and reach the center of the galaxy.

Secondary Goals: Explore other star systems and planets. Collecting rare artifacts to sell and tools allowing you to terraform planets into habitable worlds. Establish trading stature and trade routes with the local folk.

This is it! You have finally made it to the space stage, congratulations! So now what? Well, if you haven't already done so, finishing the Civilization Stage will allow you to design the starship that will lift you above your planet for the first time.

After that you'll need to perform a few duties, designed to get you used to the level. Like observing a nearby planet in your star system. Yes, you have your own star system!

If that wasn't enough to keep you busy, you realize a few more zooms out and your star system fades away to a shining star amongst the thousands of other shining points of light in an ever swirling galaxy. A galaxy full of spectacular sites to see, wormholes to explore, planets to mine, and most important of all, new beings and species to meet. That's wonderful... or is it?

Nobody really likes me.

In the beginning, it's rare to find a race that is just dying to meet you from the get go. You must approach new relationships gently if you want to establish lasting profitable friendships.

Fortunately, there are many ways of bettering your relationships to the point that most will just adore you.

Tip: Money makes the world go 'round. Offer them gifts of money, the larger the gift the bigger the advance on the "Like Meter".

Tip: Once they are willing to trade, you will find that their prices are better than the ones offered by your own mines. Start trading right away. Trading will also raise your "how much they like me" score, so trade something to ge the ball rolling.

Tip: Don't just sell everything. You will only earn so many points for trading so sell only the spice for which they are willing to pay a big price. Learn who will pay the most sporebucks and buying won't be a problem as they will all have very good deals on the items you need.

Tip: You need to keep in touch with your friends and visit from time to time or they will lose interest. If they lose enough interest they will cancel any alliances you may have formed and take back the ship they will give you for forming the alliance to begin with.

Mega Tip: Completing missions gives huge amounts of points, check to see it they need any missions performed. By excepting, you get points just for agreeing to help plus another huge amount upon completion of the task. They will also pay you for your troubles. It's a win, win, win situation.

Everyone wants my money!

Some cultures are not as willing to get along and can be quite demanding in fact. Not so much for your attention but more so for your money. Trying to befriend these creatures is difficult and paying attention to these creature to become friends will not stop them from make financial demands upon you.

Tip: I wouldn't bother wasting time trying to impress them passed the point that they will start trading with you. Then just sell them the spice they pay the most for and you will be getting them to basically pay their own demands. Refuse to pay enough times and they will declare war on you. Which means you'll be called to defend your planets often, not leaving much time to collect spice or anything else.

So until you are ready to take them on and conquer them my advice is to pay for a short time, while building your defenses.

Tip: As you play you will gain the trust of other species you get along with and you will be able to form alliances which will allow you to ask them for a ship to accompany you to help fight hostile invaders. As you advance through the stage, completing certain requirements, you will be able to have more and more ships accompany you.

Tip: You can enlist the help of your new friends. If one species is attacking you or if you just want to take out a species, you can ask you friends if they will go to war on these species with you.

How do I get more money or sporebucks, whatever?

You can acquire sporebucks several different ways and it's best to use all of them as quickly as possible. You will want to give your ship all the upgrades available and this is going to take some cash. Not to mention the sporebucks needed to pay the unreasonable financial demands some creatures place upon you. Then there are the other gadgets you'll need to terraform planets and so on.

Build Mines and Sell Spice:

Tip: Get the most from your planets.

You will be allowed to purchase Colony Incredi-Paks. These are used to start colonies on planets in uninhabited star systems. You can have up to 3 colonies per planet so get them up and running as quickly as you can so you get the most mined spice per visit.

It goes in increments of 5 units of spice produced per colony. 3 colonies gives you 15 units. From there just make sure you come back and collect the spice often. Yes you have to fly to those planets to collect the spice. It is then stored in your cargo hold until you sell it for a good price else where.

Tip: Have a good stock of the items you need to bring a planet to its full potential for colonization.

Colonizing means terraforming planets. Depending on the planet and its current state, you may have to raise the temperature or lower the atmosphere etc. This is going to take purchasing machines designed to help with terraforming.

You also need to place the vegetation and animals on these plants in order to maintain each level of terraformation. You have T0, T1, T2 and T3. T0 is the lowest a planet would be and it would start in this state, it is not required to terraform to reach a T0 level but the mining colony is not able to leave its protective environment, since there's no atmosphere to breath, in order to mine until you raise its T level to T1. Reaching each subsequent T level requires more terraforming and the placement of new and different vegetation and animals then you placed before.

Tip: The plants and animals you placed before will now have a green check mark on them when viewing the contents of your cargo hold. This way you will know at a glance which animals and vegetation you have already placed on the planet.

Devices for terraforming planets are sold at your Home World as well as at the shops of the friends you have made.

As for the animals and vegetation, you can collect these from other planets and store them in your cargo hold until needed for populating planets to maintain higher levels of terraformation.

Don't waste sporebucks.

Tip: Never pay to have your ships energy replenished or for repairs. Your Home World will do this for free so if at all possible return there to replenish and repair.

Tip: Never, if possible, buy items from your own planets. Your neighboring friends will offer much better deals and this also helps keep your friendships strong.

Tip: Don't sell yourself short. You will start collecting a wide variety of different color spices. Different species will pay more for certain spices. Learn which pays the most for what, write it down if you have to. Theses variables won't stay constant forever, market prices for spice fluctuate, so when you find a species offering a lot for a certain spice, try to collect it and visit them often.

Find and Sell Artifacts

You will notice that when entering a star system you see a planet with what looks like yellowish waves eliminating from both sides away from the planet. This is an indicator that there is something of value on the planet.

You will need to fly to the planet and zoom down to planet view. Then using your locator beacon you fly to the location of the object and beam it up with your transporter beam into your cargo hold. If it's an artifact you can sell it or collect the whole series of them and sell as a set for even more sporebucks.

Tip: If the planet the artifact is on is in an occupied star system with a sentient being that you have not yet made friends with, taking these artifacts will be considered stealing and an act of aggression lowering your Like Meter score enough for them to declare war on you.

Tip: Certain artifacts are worth more to certain species, so don't be afraid to shop around for the best deals.

Complete Missions

Completing mission will earn you sporebucks as well as increase your relationships with other species. Failing to accomplish these missions will however have the opposite effect.

Tip: If your mission is to fly to a planet and perform a certain task, don't panic and start flying everywhere to find this planet. For one, every planet you have encountered will be stored in the Sporepedia, as well as any plants or animals you have discovered. You can search here for the planet and flag it so it stands out in galaxy view.

Secondly, you can pause the game and at your leisure mouse over each nearby planet in search for the one your are supposed to visit. In most cases the planet is not very far from the world from which you received the mission.

Being Used to Rescue Planets

Frequently you are asked to help save a neighboring planet from either hostile UFO invaders or to prevent an ecological disaster.

Tip: Since you've just saved this planet in one way or another, while you're here don't forget to check how much they are willing to pay for the spice you're carrying. It may turn out they help you more than you do them. This will also get you more familiar with what they charge and have to offer for sale.

More to come!