The Possession spell will give complete access to a minion's mind, so you can inhabit its body to explore the dungeon and beyond, through its eyes. Vision depends on the creature being possessed.
While possessing a minion, you can select and use one of its spells or weapons.
Any creature under your control can be possessed, including chickens. If you possess a chicken, you have no control over its actions, and, in Dungeon Keeper 2, the chances of you getting eaten are likely.
Possession controls are akin to a First-Person Shooter.
Dungeon Keeper[]
Vampires' vision (DK1)
Dragons' vision
Hellhounds' vision
Ghosts' vision
Beetles' vision
Flies' vision
1/6
The casting animation for Possess Creature
Creatures work faster when they're being possessed, with abilities including fighting, digging, and exploring being accelerated.[1]
The manualfalsely states that you can perform any task that the creature whom you possessed can. In fact, there are many things that you cannot do whilst possessing a creature:
Take over enemy or neutral floor or rooms (Imp)[Note 1]
Passenger Control is a variant of the Possess Creature ability (known as Direct Control). Here, you "control" the creature as a "passenger"; you have no control whatsoever over the creature, and simply observe what it's doing from its own point of view. This is what happens when you possess a Chicken. To Passenger Control anything else, you need to activate the cheat menu.
This mode is only available in prototypes and in KeeperFX. In the prototypes and earlier versions of KeeperFX, this view is buggy: the creature whom you're "controlling" is not rendered invisible, so will mostly or even completely obstruct the view. This is fixed in KeeperFX 0.4.9.
KeeperFX[]
In KeeperFX, in addition to the aforementioned claiming and pickup abilities, the view distance is greatly increased:
Original
KeeperFX
Also, icons for Creature Spells currently affecting the possessed creature appear in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
A prototype Possess Creature in action. Visible are the creature's health and Mana
A tutorial icon scintillation remains on the panel while possessing a creature (21 May 1997 prototype).
Early Possess Creature icon
Dungeon Keeper 2[]
The possessed minion gains a boost to its offensive and defensive stats.[2]
When possessed, creatures do not gain experience, and attack strength is reduced to 60 per cent. However, the creature can strike four times as often, and will walk and run at double the normal speed.
Charge-up attacks become instant, but they still have recharge times.
Creeping and crawling is slower (by how much depends on the creature's experience level).[3]
Instead of being knocked unconscious, a creature will die if defeated while possessed. If a creature dies while being possessed, you lose 100 mana.[3]
Grouping[]
By pressing 7 and left-clicking on a creature, you will be able to recruit a creature to follow you. Up to eight creatures can be grouped with the possessed creature.[3]
Possession grants the player a slightly increased ambient light at the possessed entity's feet at a short 1-2 tile range, which is just slightly more than zero illumination.
You will literally see out of the possessed creature's eyes, with such notable examples being:
Both the Firefly and the Fairy have an observable stationary height fluctuation movement during floating and can see their surroundings from elevated vantage points.
The Dark Angel seeing everything in a blueish tint with weird color contrast artifacts. (May no longer work on modern versions.)
The Vampire seeing everything in a (mostly) red tint. (May no longer work on modern versions.)
The Salamander seeing things in an amber or orange tint (may no longer work on modern versions) and having a side-swaying run, also noticeably faster in lava.
The Skeleton has a red discoloration effect. (May no longer work.)
The Maiden has a "fisheye optics" vision distortion. (Used to have a yellow tint too with properly working past versions of the game.)
Notes: The normal (non-elite) Rogue and Prince Felix have a helmet like a Guard and a Knight respectively, but the possessed view shows no view ports. Also most visual coloration effects do not seem to appear on more modern versions of the game which may at least run on present day platforms. The Princes' possessed POV height also seems to be lower than their actual head position. The Giants' is higher.
When you control an Imp or Dwarf, you:
can't destroy or take over a room,
can't claim a tile which was already claimed by another keeper or belonging to the hero faction,
can't dig a wall when on dirt path which is adjacent to one of your own claimed paths without claiming the dirt path first,
and you can only Teleport to your Dungeon Heart in case of an Imp, but contrary to normal operation, in possession you can teleport through locked doors to get to your heart.
But you can more reliably attack almost any enemy, door, or trap without getting damaged, may freely decide to continue digging even if your own gold bag is already full and there is still space in some Treasury,
can participate in attacking a Dungeon Heart without focusing on defending enemy Imps,
can uniquely gain experience when digging,
and can be a 4th miner/digger on a wall surface.
Tips[]
You can attack enemy creatures, doors, barricades, traps, Dungeon Hearts.
Beside fear, another hard counter to possession is Freeze Traps and the Freeze creature spell of the Mistress.
You can interact with objects by using your melee attack:
Eat highlighted chickens and actually satiate your hunger!! Might be a good idea to end on after a possession adventure. (Not that hunger would come up as an issue during possession, only after. But seemingly you cannot heal from them, possibly as a balancing factor.)
Hit Workshop appliances.
Hit training dummies. (Even if not yours.)
Drink from Casino barrels. (Though this might be missing from later versions of the game.)
Take money from gold chests, jugs, and piles. (This too might be missing nowadays.)
Bugs: While possessing a creature, and using grouping to form a party, as the creatures have a tendency to not walk but run after you if you are far away (or sometimes even if close by), when disbanding the group (either by exiting possession or not) the creatures tend to remain in run mode. Even after being picked up and put down (and possibly after conversions too). This run mode GREATLY helps them to get to Hatcheries and Treasuries compared to their annoyance timer. It also helps them get to and back from Library and Workshop duties. Especially great for Bile Demons, and look really cool for Dark Angels. This is a beneficial bug. This way you can make your own creatures more self reliant. Obviously the less creatures you have, the less tedious this is to do for all your inhabitants. It also helps showcase existing run animations for documentation.
Bugs[]
In possibly all versions of the game, when you turn the HUD off in possession, exit possession without HUD, there will be something similar to a widescreen black rectangular bar on the bottom of the screen which is supposed to make the control panel look more cohesive.
Turning the HUD off in Sniper Mode also removes the circular vision blockage. This probably shouldn't happen because turning the HUD off doesn't remove the similar looking helmet vision from Black Knight (and Elite Black Knight), Knight, Guard, Royal Guard.
When a Chicken gets eaten, its death fade camera may adopt a vision slit, like the Knight's.
They probably just didn't bother to program this before a deadline: You can hear through a wall, everything that is going on in the other side. Possessed creatures have no locational audio limitations. A future remaster could remedy this.
Trivia[]
Unhappy creatures may not cooperate with the possession. Angry ones have a much higher chance not to.
Fear effects from a Fear Trap kick the player Keeper out of possession back to 'God view'.
If a creature is currently actively being intimidated by a strong enough foe, its fear won't even allow possession to take effect when it would go to move into first person mode.
A Jackpot winner can be possessed. The player will not notice any difference in first person.
Unless the player puts it in either the Combat Pit, or Prison, or Temple pool, or a Portal's mouth first, in which he can look around uniquely in first person freely!
Chickens can be possessed, but not controlled while in possession. Rats and bats cannot be.
Some special ability icons never showed up in possessed mode, but they could and still can be used. (A future remaster could remedy them not showing up...)
There is another icon for this spell, which looks similar to the Sight of Evil icon, but it is not seen in-game.
↑By extension, this also means you cannot arm traps or take Workshop crates, spell books, Dungeon Specials, corpses, or stunned creatures to their appropriate rooms
↑Other creatures will steal loose gold piles automatically when they walk over one
References[]
↑Prima's Official Guide To Dungeon Keeper Gold Edition.
p. 94.
Prima Publishing. (1998).
ISBN 978-0-7615-1581-4.
Bile Demon
Giant
Dwarf Chucking
Salamander
Dark Elf
Elven Archer
Sniper Mode
Vampire
Change into Bat
Hypnotise
Firefly
Fairy
Monk
Pray
Rogue
Thief
Cloaking
Pick Locks
Trap Revealing
Troll
Guard
Disarm
Royal Guard
Maiden
Fear Attack
Door Revealing
