Line #44 YMMV/Spore


1	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:
2	** Are [[spoiler: the Grox]] {{Absolute Xenophobe}}s by nature, or did they take on that philosophy out of perceived necessity? After all, every other empire makes a habit of terraforming planets to suit their needs, and some missions have you terraforming planets you'd otherwise have no interest in. Since terraforming planets makes them uninhabitable to [[spoiler: the Grox]], they might see anyone who does this as a potential threat.
3	** It's not 100% clear if the Bards are a race of [[TheAntiNihilist Anti-Nihilists]] or [[StepfordSmiler Stepford Smilers.]] The Blocks of Chance could be taken either way.
4	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Like everything else in the game, part of the soundtrack is generated by a program made by Music/BrianEno!
5	** ''Galactic Adventures'' has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ppuyvv6B34&feature=related Ambush]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0to_enMF8KA Epic Adventure]][[note]]Original title: "Heaven's Warriors" by Richard Harvey[[/note]].
6	** Slow the "Epic Adventure" music down and it sounds like something from an epic boss fight.
7	* BaseBreakingCharacter: Clark and Stanley. Originally featured in three silly adventures made by [=MaxisCimino=], their near-instant popularity across the casual playerbase caused disgruntlement with more serious players due to the ubiquity of the adventures coupled with their formulaic template and low quality.
8	* ComplacentGamingSyndrome:
9	** It's all too easy to get attached to certain parts and to use those in all your creations. Just try finding a late-game creature without wings.
10	** Ditto for ''Galactic Adventures'', in which everyone uses warrior parts because they're the best weapons.
11	** Of the Shaman parts, the weapon most preferred is the Swarm Magnet, which not only deals damage over time but sends your opponent in a blind panic for a few seconds, potentially giving low-health captatins enough time to escape and get to health ups or take out a fleeing foe. [[DiscOneNuke Making it more complacent is the fact that it's the second part unlocked from the Shaman weapons pool.]]
12	** In a more general sense, omnivores. Since being an omnivore makes it easier to choose between social or aggressive states, the vast majority of downloads you'll find - especially of creatures from other players' campaign mode - will be omnivores. Dedicated carnivores are very rare - it's not uncommon for people to honestly not know that playing as a social carnivore is possible (even easy). This becomes especially noticeable in the Space Stage: as terraforming requires two unique herbivores and one omnivore/carnivore per level. 9 times out of 10, planets will be populated with herbivores and omnivores, with few or even no carnivores. Experienced players, however, tend to go carnivore because its Space Stage bonus of increased energy capacity is far better than the other two bonuses, though even they will often keep a cell stage mouth that lets them be an omnivore for at least the Creature Stage.
13	** One of the more common paths for more experienced players is Red-Red-Green-Blue, which gives what are considered the best consequence perks in the Space Stage (Increased ship health, increased ship energy, bonus to relationships with new empires, and faster spice production). While the resulting ability could be considered sub-par[[note]]Summon Mini-U, which just summons a smaller version of your ship to add to your fleet; the only advantage this has over just having allies in your fleet is that it won't piss anyone off by being destroyed.[[/note]], you can always go through a Change Archetype mission later on in the Space Stage. Similarly common is swapping the second card for Blue (faster travel speed) and/or the the last card for Red (reduced pirate attacks).
14	** If you'd rather start as the archetype of your choice and skip the hassle, thereby restricting what cards you get, the most common card to always get is Green in Tribal if your path allows a Green card (the only one that doesn't is Scientist, which mandates that you get an even Red-Blue split), as having other empires dislike you a bit less never stops being useful.
15	* CriticalDissonance: It got decent reviews on release, but fans were much more divided. The main point of controversy among fans was the marked difference between the actual game and the game "promised" by early coverage.
16	* DemonicSpider:
17	** Epics in every stage. In the Creature Stage, they're capable of killing you in one hit, so trying to pick a fight with a spitting Epic is basically impossible. In Tribal stage, they're also very dangerous and capable of felling your villagers with no effort, but the ability to sic multiple on one makes it a little easier to deal with, especially since they give enough meat to last the whole stage (or, if you're feeling devious, you can lure one to an enemy tribe). In the civilization stage, they're capable of smashing buildings without effort, including turrets, and only Military vehicles can hurt them. Religious vehicles just make them follow the vehicles (which you can use to lure them to an enemy nation, but that's about it), and Economic vehicles can't do anything to them, obviously. Lastly, in the Space stage, they can fire explosives at your ship, and they're surprisingly damaging. They also have more health than a city.
18	** Fighting an enemy captain using [[ScaryStingingSwarm Summon Swarm]] without a projectile attack will quickly become the bane of your existence, especially if there are multiples of them, [[BossInMookClothing are very]] [[DamageSpongeBoss tanky]], or both.
19	** The [[spoiler: Grox are a race you find in Space Stage, and they surround the interior of the galaxy. In fact, they ''crowd'' '''EVERY SINGLE CORE WORLD''' and they're so powerful they can kill a low-to-mid level ship in ''moments'']].
20	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
21	** Bean is probably the most popular of the Maxis creations due to its comical appearance, and has been featured in many memes on the subreddit.
22	** In terms of creatures in the Cell Stage, Ducky is one of the more noteworthy ones. This is like likely due to the name and how it fits for a duck-billed looking cell.
23	** The Willosaur (actual name "Tripod") has gained a lot of re-creations and fan art, mainly because it was one of the first creatures ever seen when the game was first shown off at GDC 2005.
24	* FetishRetardant: Just go ahead and make yourself a shapely female captain... She'll have a very "[[{{Pun}} commanding]]" voice. This was so problematic for many adventure makers that a voice editor was petitioned to Maxis in a following patch or upgrade, though such a feature was never added. It can be remedied by giving the character a bird mouth; as long as the character is an NPC and not the captain, it will use a chittering, high-pitched voice, though it also means you'll have to make do with every female in the galaxy sounding like a bird.
25	* GameBreaker:
26	** If you manage your Tribe well enough to start as an economic Civilization, no other empire will automatically hate you (whereas Religious societies and Military societies automatically start as antagonists), your vehicles are almost never attacked, and you gain money by your method of conquering (which also requires money, but whatever). Because of this, you can win the stage just by allying with one or two cities using your substantial cashflow, and buying all the rest. The only real downside is that your only real way to prevent rival Civs from disliking or even attacking you is via bribes, as your vehicles will be unarmed. And considering that you'll be raking in money relatively quickly compared to the other Civilization types, paying the other nations to stay off your back is still relatively trivial.
27	** If you ''didn't'' start as an economic Civilization, you can raid unevolved Tribes for easy money and free land vehicles. If the RandomNumberGod is feeling generous enough to give you an economic vehicle this way, you'll at least be able to trade with other nations on your continent until you can buy one and make it economic for more vehicles. It's a bit harder since other nations will be more wary of you, but it still makes it a lot easier.
28	** Also, the Tribal Stage can be made ridiculously [[PacifistRun easy by going]] [[ThePowerOfFriendship social]] since giving gifts will always bring other tribes to a (temporarily) ambivalent opinion even if said tribe already declared yours their sworn enemy. Bringing their relationship higher then becomes a mere matter of taking at most your entire tribe to perform for them, since enemy tribes are so easily appeased and their opinion of yours will never sour after getting a content face unless you are stupid enough to attack them. Even more so if you have the "Fireworks" special ability, which temporarily raises a tribe's relationship to you to "friend" even if they were your sworn enemy before. Even in the Hard difficulty, if you act immediately you can befriend the newly spawned hostile tribes before anyone actually attacks you; doubly so if you triggered those tribes spawning by gaining 70 food instead of allying the first tribe, as you have the food on hand to immediately pacify them and can just give all 5 tribe members the same instrument.
29	** Even if you don't go for a PacifistRun in Tribal Stage, the "Fireworks" ability can actually be used as an offensive weapon; attack a tribe, then after a little bit [[ISurrenderSuckers use the "fireworks", and suddenly they are friendly to you and you can finish them off before they know what is happening]].
30	** Set up a planet with a valuable spice type, uplift a species with the Monolith, and once the race reaches space stage, conquer the planet, and you'll have a colony with at least five or six cities that produces large amounts of valuable spice! To note, you can only place a max of three cities if you set up a planet yourself.
31	** The Zealot archetype in the Space Stage has ''Fanatical Frenzy'' which instantly captures an enemy colony, but comes at the price of a half-hour cooldown time and a severe relationship penalty with nearby empires, enough for them to declare war on you if you didn't attempt to raise relationships beforehand. However, the former can be mitigated by simply reloading the save file, and since you can automatically steal an enemy colony, it ultimately doesn't matter what they think of you. Especially useful against the Grox since rarely are other empires near enough to them for the penalty to matter and the Grox actually like you to use it, even if it's on them. You can get the same superpower by having all of the Zealot parts in ''Galactic Adventures'', which you might be inclined to do anyway as they are all useful defensive parts(the last one even converts some damage back into energy). Even if you don't want to use all them on your captain, you can use ''Fanatical Frenzy'' as long as they're all unlocked.
32	** To a lesser degree, reloading also makes the Diplomat's ''Static Cling'' a GameBreaker as it immobilizes the enemy into being unable to attack, and this doesn't come with a relationship penalty. Like ''Fanatical Frenzy'', non-Diplomats can still access it with the full set of Diplomat parts, but considering Diplomat parts just offer socialization abilities, you're probably gonna be less inclined to do this.
33	** Giving your captain wings (especially for the starter missions) will make everything way easier. Even easier if you give him high-jumping feet to supplement the flying.
34	** Stealth can completely neuter missions that require more than combat. The only thing that will harm the captain are "[[ActionBomb Kamikaze Creatures]]", creatures that have the sole purpose of picking up a bomb and moving over to the captain and waiting for it to explode. And unlike the Creature Stage, your invisibility will last ''forever'' unless you take damage or attack something.
35	** The Ecologist parts; mostly because they allow for health recovery and even the level one health capacity increase adds roughly ''double'' your health level. Just having the first two will really make things a little easier if your captain doesn't have a whole lot of health.
36	** Find the biggest, meanest, most ruthlessly combat optimized creature you can find. Use Siren Song. Make friends with it. Go on interspecies murder spree with bottomless army of expendable goons.
37	** Rogue creatures are even better. Having 250 health and being guaranteed to have high combat ''and'' socialization abilities make them ideal pack members no matter how you're playing the Creature stage. The former benefits carry into the tribal stage, where your different-species pack members become your pets, and your pets will help defend your tribe from attackers. (And bringing pets into the Tribal stage is always recommended, since they also provide a steady food source--eggs--that every creature can eat regardless of diet, even herbivores.)
38	** Herbivore, Adaptable, Friendly, Religious. You now have the Return Ticket ability and Speed Demon perk. Enjoy your ability to instantly teleport out of danger, repair at your home world and get back to the front lines before your enemy has had a chance to recover from your assault. Random teleportation murder is fun! And yes, you can get Return Ticket via Galactic Adventures if you decide you want to be something else, though it's a wash as to whether or not you want to do this (the Shaman set is an alternate weapons set that costs no energy, but is more strategic than just doing direct damage like with the Warrior set).
39	** If you're playing Creature Stage as an omnivore, you can, if you're careful and have the patience to hold off on Tribal until you've accomplished this, maximize all four socialization abilities ''and'' all four attacks. Twenty and twenty, good luck facing that creature in future save games; it had better be a rogue against your pack of four. If you feel like it you can even max out the mobilization abilities (sneak, sprint, and glide). You can come close with the other two diets too--the caveat is that Herbivores max out at Level 3 Bite and Carnivores max out at Level 3 Sing, but everything else can be brought to Level 5.
40	** Poison in the Cell Stage, especially if you're playing in hard mode because of all the {{Super Persistent Predator}}s. It's especially useful late-stage when you get {{Zerg Rush}}ed by Juniors; just spin in a circle and they're all dead. There's an interesting quirk about the poison part that makes it even more useful: while it can't harm Epic Cells per se, it will make them constantly cough and gag, preventing them from biting you.
41	** If you got a red card (carnivore) in the Cell Stage, you'll have the ability to set traps in the Tribal Stage. These traps can take out [[GiantMook Epics]] in one shot, providing you with enough meat to last the rest of the stage on top of getting a bothersome foe out of the picture.
42	** As mentioned on the main page, you can use SaveScumming to get planets with ideal spice types early on. If you're sent to a yellow star during the tutorial, you could theoretically use this tactic to gain a green orbit-planet with purple spice--the rarest and most expensive spice type--as your first colony. Once it's terraformed, money essentially ceases to be an issue. Even if you're sent to a red star, you can hope pink or green spice, which are still decently expensive.
43	** Carnivore, Predator, Friendly, Economic. Not only does this give the overall best bonuses in the Space Stage[[note]]Increased ship health, increased ship energy, additional relationship bonus, additional spice production[[/note]], but it also gives you the Mini-U ability, which summons a smaller ship that deals damage to enemy ships. No wonder this is the go-to path for savvy players.
44	** Having trouble with a particularly tough boss fight in Galactic Adventures? Just get Summon Swarm. This deals a decent amount of damage, but also makes the target scream and run around instead of attacking. The ability also recharges before the creature is done running. Lastly, it costs no energy, so you have nothing to worry about in this scenario.
45	*** Alternatively, if you really want to make ThatOneBoss, just plop down a win condition to kill a near-Epic that has at least [[DamageSpongeBoss 1,000 HP]], has Level 2 HP regen, can use Charge and Summon Swarm and it has +200% attack. Good luck trying to kill them.
46	** If you're an Omnivore, you'll start the Tribal Stage with Throwing Spears. Equip every tribe member with one, have the Chieftain play damage sponge, and picking off attackers and defenders one by one becomes ridiculously easy. Spears can also be used to hit-and-run Epics since Traps won't be an option.
47	** Allying yourself with the Grox gives you uncontested access to the Galactic Core and [[spoiler: the Staff of Life]]. Despite the process [[GuideDangit being fairly complicated]], it's still generally easier than fighting them, and the "everybody now hates you" drawback is mitigated by the fact that you now have the greatest military power ''in the galaxy'' on your side.
48	** At the beginning of the Civilization Stage, after taking your first spice source, create as many builders as possible and send them to other sources, but do not activate them. When they are all in position, take the sources. Now you have no rival in your own continent and you'll be getting a lot of spice for the rest of it. [[note]]Note that this doesn't seem to work in Hard mode.[[/note]]
49	* GatewaySeries: Similar to Creator/DougalDixon's [[Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture vari]][[Literature/TheNewDinosaursAnAlternativeEvolution ous]] [[Literature/ManAfterManAnAnthropologyOfTheFuture wo]][[Literature/TheFutureIsWild rks]] and ''[[Literature/{{Expedition}} Darwin IV]]'', if you find someone on the internet or in real life who is interested in the SpeculativeBiology genre, chances are they first got started with the genre with this game.
50	* GoddamnBats: Spiked Shysters in the Cell Stage. They have a spike at the very front and [[SuperPersistentPredator will relentlessly hunt you down with it.]] The only thing keeping them from being DemonicSpiders is the fact that you usually have access to the spike yourself by that point,[[note]]putting a spike on your rear will prevent them from poking you[[/note]] but they'll still pursue you no matter how many times they bounce off. You can't even put a spike up front and attack it head on.
51	* GoodBadBugs:
52	** If you have ''Galactic Adventures'' and use the Holo-scout, the colonist outfit for your creature is replaced with the captain outfit. This opens up new opportunities allowing you to make colonists that use otherwise restricted parts for the colonists. This ''can'', however, lead into a problem as you cannot remove the captain parts afterward.
53	** When fighting a KingMook, if you can lure it to your nest, your species will attack it and become invincible, allowing an easy kill. Just don't let it kill you.
54	** The Creature Creator's Asymmetry Glitch and Invisible Limb Glitch won't affect gameplay, but they greatly increase the game's creative potential, allowing you to make lopsided creatures before patch 1.05, {{Hive Mind}}s, FloatingLimbs, and all sorts of other fun stuff. Some mods make the glitches easier to use, and unlike many modded creatures, they ''can'' be loaded onto the public server. Asymmetry became an AscendedGlitch in a patch a little bit before ''Galactic Adventures'' was released.
55	** If you're lucky, if you get called to take care of ships pirating your spice, you'll get the message thanking you as soon as you enter the planet being raided, saving you the trouble.
56	** In the Creature Stage, if you attack another species's egg, they'll revert to an angry orange face. [[MamaBear This makes sense]]... until you realize this also applies to "Innately Hostile" (red face) species that can't be befriended otherwise. Since orange face species ''can'' be befriended (albeit with some difficulty since they can and do still attack you until you befriend at least one), this bug is invaluable for those attempting to get the green card since it allows players to befriend otherwise unfriendable species. Just make sure you don't completely eat the egg.
57	** A different flavor of "good"[[note]][[SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome Visually pleasing]] rather than helpful.[[/note]], but following a certain sequence of events (detailed in the video description) treats you to a pretty [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66iJ2tYnAIY light show.]]
58	** If you get the Omnivore card in the cell stage, you get a discount on all standard equipment in the space stage. This includes your ship's interstellar drives...and the interplanetary drive you get at the beginning of the stage. If you play through the tutorial(instead of picking "I know how to fly a spaceship. Been there, done that."), you're given 10,000 Sporebucks to purchase the interplanetary drive so you can leave the planet, but with the Omnivore card, it only costs 8,000 Sporebucks, leaving you with a 2,000 Sporebuck profit before you even leave the planet.
59	** Some T1 planets will randomly spawn a Tribal species as part of normal gameplay, indicating spontaneous evolution. Occasionally, this can happen even in a Wildlife Sanctuary (a common trigger is if one is visited by another save file), which otherwise should not be capable of hosting settlements, and afterwards, it will randomly flip-flop between Tribal and Civilization Stage (and can even revert back to a regular Wildlife Sanctuary if you're not careful). Unfortunately, such species cannot be Monolithed into Space Stage, but it's still possible to watch the strange interactions unfold.
60	** In the Tribal stage, if you purchase an egg and then change your graphics settings as soon as the egg hatches, the animation will reset and you'll get a free egg. And you can do it again as that egg hatches.
61	* MemeticMutation: The [[TheChewToy Clark and Stanley]] adventures were wildly popular within the casual Spore community because of the easily gained points and [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments humorous deaths]].
62	** Chain adventures, like "add your captain", also ran abound and flooded the Most Popular New feed back in the day.
63	** The Hugmonster and for the (now defunct) forums, the emoticone.
64	** [[SpeakingSimlish You really qualmed up an inzard/inzerg! / Rofriolio humphrood and rolfriolio!]][[labelnote:Explanation]]Some of your colonists' voice lines in the Space Stage. You'll be hearing them a lot.[[/labelnote]]
65	*** On the same note, the Grox saying "9994!" or "Nine nine nine horse!"
66	** Dammit Crikiit[[labelnote:Explanation]]There's a bug where socializing in an Adventure, apart from Concert in the Park, while in a save file will scramble the timeline. There's a random befriendable Crikiit in the "Ruins of Doom" Adventure, which you're likely to play in a save file due to it being the unique Adventure for Trader empires. Apparently, this is where a lot of unwary players mess things up by trying to ally the Crikiit, resulting in it being blamed for the timeline glitch.[[/labelnote]]
67	* MisBlamed: [[WordOfGod Will Wright]] personally took responsibility for the controversial shift in game direction from "Science" to "Cute" when one of his teammates, Chris Hecker, was accused[[http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/210/8555.page#137577]]. People still like to place the blame elsewhere, [[WhatMeasureIsAMook for various]] [[CorruptCorporateExecutive reasons]].
68	** Also, many claim that the reason why Will Wright left EA is because his game was ruined by the people who published it. This is not true but the reason why Will left is because he wanted to work for The Stupid Fun Club, which is a company he formed with his friends. But Will says that EA will still publish games, so nothing really major happened.
69	* MoralEventHorizon:
70	** [[ChildEater Successfully]] [[EatsBabies killing a baby creature]] in both Creature and Tribal Stage will instantly make [[TheMostWanted every member of its species blacklist your kind to]] KillOnSight.
71	*** Successfully destroying an egg in the same 2 stages will also cause its species to want to kill you on sight, but in Creature Stage, this is somewhat inconsistent as some species don't immediately get mad at you for killing their unborn young, even if you frequently raid their nest.
72	** Empires in the Space stage follow a "Galactic Code" prohibiting unethical warfare tactics like planetary destruction and mind control. Using these tools (two of which are archetype-exclusive) will cause a significant relationship hit among neighboring races (even the borderline fascistic warrior and zealot empires) and can even start wars.
73	** [[DealWithTheDevil Allying with the Grox]] could be considered one, and definitely seems to be considered such in-universe. ''Everyone'' except for your closest allies will want to kill you. Even species you've uplifted afterwards.
74	* OvershadowedByControversy: This game suffered two large examples of this.
75	** The shift from the scientific themes shown before the game's release to a more child-friendly "cute and fun" approach is one of the primary reasons for the game's CriticalDissonance. While this shift appealed to more casual and creatively-minded players, it also alienated much of the fanbase that looked forward to the game for its original premise.
76	** The game's use of CopyProtection led to a controversy that overshadowed even the above; on launch, ''Spore'' came packed with the [=SecuROM=] DRM, which demanded constant internet authentication and forbid a single product key from being used in more than three (later five) computers, and software upgrades on a user's machine ''counted as a new computer for the DRM''. To make matters worse, the presence of [=SecuROM=] was not mentioned anywhere in the game's box, manual or EULA. This was met with widespread outrage, and while EA would later release a "de-authorization tool" that would restore a computer "slot" to be used by the DRM, it didn't stop them from being subject to a number of lawsuits and for ''Spore'' to become one of the most pirated videogames of all time, and the most pirated game of 2008, as well as massively review-bombed on Amazon even before its release. The game would later be distributed through UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} and Website/GogDotCom without [=SecuROM=].
77	* PeripheryDemographic: One of the more infamous cases. The game was originally conceived as a scientifically-rooted evolution simulator, but due to the change in direction, scientific accuracy gave way to ArtisticLicenseBiology (one scientist compared it to ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}''). The primary playerbase ended up becoming more artistically minded players who [[JustHereForGodzilla just wanted to create the coolest creatures or buildings they could think of]], while the more science-inclined players were vocally unhappy with the end result.
78	* QuicksandBox: This can be a problem in the Space phase, but fortunately your homeworld gives you a series of missions to help you get acquainted with the basics. [[spoiler: And eventually your homeworld sends you to contact the Grox, then tells you they're obviously doing something in the galactic core, the reaching of which is arguably the main goal in Spore.]]
79	* ScrappyMechanic:
80	** The complexity meter. While it might be necessary to prevent lag in certain in-game situations, it's a huge handicap for players wanting to build complex creations. Notably, it can be excruciatingly difficult to make multi-limbed creatures without sacrificing detail. You can cheat to bypass the meter, but you can't share your creation.
81	*** Cell parts have a disproportionate amount of complexity points assigned to them, annoying anyone who tries to keep cell parts on their creature, especially if they're trying to keep a mouth on them for a more varied diet.
82	** Then there's currency for parts in the Editors. This makes sense to have in-game to challenge the player, but outside of your game world it's nonsensical and painfully arbitrary. If you run out of DNA, you can't add any more parts, regardless of how much you've filled the aforementioned complexity meter. This makes the addDNA cheat all but necessary for players who want to make intricate, detailed creations.
83	** Due to how the event mechanics work in the Space stage, periodic attacks from enemy empires will occur ''all at once'', across multiple star systems, inevitably requiring players to decide which colonies they can afford to potentially lose. While a fully turreted city can stave off an attack, if you miss the attack and don't wait long enough afterward, you'll have to deal with the colony [[WhatTheHellHero chewing you out for not showing up and refusing to trade with you until the scars of the invasion have healed]]. Even allied empires aren't this annoying--you'll get a "you failed missions" relationship ding if their colony is taken but they won't say a word either way.
84	** In the Space stage, allying yourself with numerous species ends up being a pain since your allies can and frequently do go to war with each other, meaning that they will beg the player to help them. What this means is that you are going to be unable to avoid pissing somebody off and eventually making one of your allies your enemy regardless of what you do.
85	** In the Space stage, getting the warning that you, or even your allies, ecosystem is on the verge of complete collapse is perhaps the most annoying to have to deal with; especially if your ship is nowhere near the planet that is about to lose its ecosystem. Unlike pirate raids, which can be safely ignored for only a minor relationship penalty, the ecosystem warning goes on for a long time until every creature is gone and it starts taking out the plants. Not only do you get the "You failed missions" penalty for not responding in time which becomes increasingly severe, having all their creatures taken out leads to a "Hurting our planet" penalty. Combined, this can completely ruin any alliance or relationship you had with them.
86	** The "it's time to go to war with another empire" tutorial mission in the Space Stage almost always sends you to attack the target empire's homeworld, which is ''very'' heavily defended, with whatever puny weapons you have on your ship at the time. It can be a huge chore to take down a single city, and there can be anywhere from six to ten of those on the planet.
87	** You can't edit your creature at all post-Creature stage. If your creature ends up being too complex for certain parts in the outfitters, there's nothing you can do about it. The game tries to be nice and increase the meter by five points when going from Creature to Tribal, just in case you maxed out your creature's complexity before proceeding. However, Space Stage lacks this mercy, which causes problems in Galactic Adventures, because it can lock you out of using the captain parts you worked so hard to acquire.
88	** You can't rate creations in the game -- for that you need to log on to the (notoriously slow) Spore website.
89	** Creation descriptions can only be a few sentences long unless you expand them on the website.
90	** Downloading Maxis adventures made post-launch, including the ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' ones, is a surprising hassle. You are supposed to subscribe to a pair of official "Sporecasts" in order to automatically receive them, but more often than not, the adventures will simply refuse to download. While there are mirrors of these adventures floating around from other players, often times they were edited and none of them do not provide 100 points upon completing them due to the way the game handles user-made adventures. This is bad as 100 point adventures are often desired by players to level up their captains quickly. Thankfully, there are user made Sporecasts that host the original Maxis versions without these problems.
91	* SelfImposedChallenge:
92	** There's a Website/{{Reddit}} post on the official fandom Reddit which has a list of challenges you can do that alters the gameplay depending on which challenge you're going for. The list can be found [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Spore/comments/doe5a8/spore_challenges_if_youre_bored_masterlist/ here]].
93	** Try playing the cell and creature stages without eyes.
94	** Aditionally, some people have tried to completely eradicate [[spoiler:the Grox]], who are normally a KarmaHoudini in the main game. It's extremely difficult, if not nigh-impossible to do so, thanks to your limited reach in the center of the galaxy.
95	*** Similarly, [[AllianceWithAnAbomination allying with them]] is also nigh-impossible, due to their extremely strict requirements for friendship.
96	** A more obscure challenge involving Creature Stage involves completing the stage as an [[EvilEggEater Ovivore]], or a creature that specializes in eating eggs. Since destroying eggs always rewards the player 25 DNA and 1,000 DNA is the mimimum required to advance towards Tribal Stage, the player needs to eat at least 40 eggs in order to complete the run, and not all nests will have eggs readily available, especially ones by early creatures. Another problem the player must accommodate for is that creatures have a high chance, especially on harder difficulty levels, of becoming permanently hostile when you destroy an egg.
97	*** Interestingly, this challenge is not only the only other option for carnivores to achieve a PacifistRun other than scavenging for dead bodies or luring prey to another nest that's hostile to them but not to the player, but it's also the only run in the game where you don't have to ally or drive any species to extinction in order to progress. This essentially makes pure Ovivorous creautres {{Technical Pacifist}}s as egg thievery doesn't endanger the target species like it would if you went after a baby creature (assuming you don't consider destroying the egg of another species is the equivalent of killing an already hatched creature).
98	* ShockingMoments: For every player, the first time they saw an Epic Creature trundling around. Also, the first time they start probing into Grox territory and realize just how ''big'' their empire is.
99	* ThatOneAchievement:
100	** The two secret badges in the game require dealing with the Grox in some way. Needless to say, going for one is bad enough, but going for both of them should only be done if you’re very good at this game.
101	*** "Badge Outta Heck" requires you to destroy the Grox empire and eradicate their race. While this seems easy on paper, the Grox are a force to be reckoned with. They have 5,000 planets, are in control of 2,400 star systems, are insanely difficult to win over (so if you thought you could just buy them out, have fun), have the strongest ships in the game, and will attack your ship if you're anything short of officially allied with them. So you’ll have to be really, really good at combat (as well as really, really patient) if you want to wipe them out. This used to be even worse in the early versions of the game, where the badge was [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable impossible to obtain through normal means]] because some of their systems were unreachable in the travel radius limit imposed.
102	*** "Dance with the Devil" isn't much easier. This requires you to ''ally'' with the Grox instead of destroying them. Not only are the Grox more resistant to standard relationship bonuses, but these alone won't make them willing to ally thanks to them starting with a ''-70'' "We Distrust Strangers" penalty. To close the gap, you have to use Galactic Code-breaking Superweapons within a certain distance of the Grox. However, doing this will also anger neighboring empires. All the while, the Grox will continue to attack your ship as it flies through their territory, and you can't even fight back without ruining your hard work. And if you thought your troubles would be over once you finally allied with them, think again; you thought those few angry neighbors were a pain? Try having ''every empire in the galaxy on your tail'', because allying with the Grox gives a -200 modifier to everyone else, meaning everyone except for any allies you completely spoiled before making this forbidden alliance will instantly declare war. And no, you can't uplift a bunch of species to have a few more friends to defend you, because uplifted species will immediately aggro for the same reason once they reach the Space stage. The cherry on top is that, if you're going for OneHundredPercentCompletion, this is the one you have to do first, meaning you'll then have to backstab the Grox and destroy them while also dealing with every other Empire attacking your colonies.
103	** The infamous "Bad Baby" achievement that was eventually patched out, which you earn by getting one of your creations ''banned'' from Spore. This effectively rewarded players for creating less than tasteful content.
104	** The hardest achievement of all entails getting your content featured on the main site. Good luck with that.
105	* ThatOneLevel:
106	** ''TX-5000 Superweapon'' is very difficult for what should be an easy Maxis adventure, and requires specialized captains.
107	** If you get around such adventures via [[GameBreaker the Sneak skill]], "Infestation" will throw you for a loop. The first enemy type you encounter is a "Kamikaze Creature"[[note]]A relatively weak creature that carries a bomb and will approach you in hopes of having it explode next to you[[/note]], which is the one enemy type that will still attack you if you have Sneak on. Once you're attacked, Sneak gets disabled and you have to wait for it to recharge, during which [[TheLegionsOfHell the Dronox and Insectrox]] will be more than happy to ZergRush you.
108	** The Tribal Stage is thought to be the section that had the least amount of work put into it, and is considered by many players to be quite dull and boring to play through. Its difficulty is also highly lopsided: going friendly is braindead easy, but going aggressive is a massive pain, particularly the mid-section on Hard mode which has two tribes gunning for your guts at once while the third steals your food. It's not like the aggressive path is DifficultButAwesome either; the friendly path's Space Stage perk Gracious Greeter (boosts relations with other empires) is widely considered superior to the aggressive path's Arms Dealer (discount on weapons).
109	* ThatOneSidequest:
110	** Getting specific 'classes' for the space stage can be rather difficult. Probably the hardest would be the TrueNeutral Trader route, which requires getting the blue middle class every stage, with ''maybe'' one era in the other evolution routes, which is a ''lot'' more difficult than it sounds. It often requires a lot of forethought and constant checking of evolution paths to not go one way or the other. The cell stage is hard because of how quickly your cell develops making it surprisingly easy to swing one way or the other in the final parts of it, the creature stage can get very grindy to get an equal amount of social and combat parts, and the tribal stage is hard because of how much destroying or allying with a tribe influences your evolution path, often rocketing you into one or the other without any in between unless you're ''really'' careful. The only [[BreatherLevel breather]] part is the civilization stage, which many consider to be the easiest stage if you're playing as an economic society. It is possible to cut the knot and just start from Civilization stage, but then you miss out on the earlier bonuses, particularly the Creature Stage's Speed Demon bonus which cuts travel time by 2/3 (or, if you choose to go red for one stage, either Cell Stage's energy capacity boosting Power Monger or Creature Stage's health boosting Prime Specimen).
111	** On the flipside, trying to get the Economic card without starting with an Economic city can be borderline ''impossible'' depending on the distribution of cities on your planet. You have to nab an Economic city at the very start of the stage and buy everyone else out -- only problem is, said Economic cities are pacifist and are almost always the first targets of more hostile rivals, and catching a city too early will anger other nations because "Your Nation Is Too Big" and "Your Boundaries Are Too Close". The alternative is to raid unevolved tribes and pray to Spode you get an Economic land vehicle, but if he doesn't answer right away, you'll have to save-scum quite a bit. Once you have your Economic vehicle, then you have to make other nations happy enough to trade with you, which is harder for non-Economic nations due to Military and Religious cities automatically being disliked by other nations. You also have to be careful to not make rival nations ''too'' happy, which is harder than it sounds since trade routes automatically boost relations; if only one empire remains, and that empire is allied with you, they'll offer to merge with you regardless, which could potentially cost you the last few city buyouts you needed for the blue card.
112	* UglyCute: It's difficult to make a creature that ''doesn't'' come off as this, even when attempting to make either a RidiculouslyCuteCritter or EldritchAbomination.
113	* UnintentionalUncannyValley:
114	** It's VERY difficult, if not impossible, to create a human in the creature creator without falling into this trope.
115	** Likewise, many users have attempted to recreate characters from other franchises using the creature creator, but they almost always come off looking disturbing.
116	* UncertainAudience: A LighterAndSofter athmosphere compared to early builds was chosen for the final game to better appeal to kids, however the writers of the Creator/AdultSwim show ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' were hired to create official adventures in a CrossOver marketing campaign.

Context YMMV / Spore