Creatures 1: Raising Norns

I received an interesting comment on my last post with quite a few interesting questions about Norn raising. I started writing a reply, then realised how big it was going to be and thought it might be worth dedicating an entire post to the topic. So here goes:


I'm curious - do you have a strict methodology you use when hatching, training and investigating each individual Norn?

Even after playing for 10 years or so there's still so much I don't know. I've no idea if there is a 'best way' of hatching and raising a Norn. Do you give them one tickle or many when they behave nicely? How many smacks is too many?

So no, no strict methodology. Although I do hatch, feed, then try and get them to the learning computer ASAP. I try and keep them around the garden as babies (not always effective). If possible I like to take them around the world once to teach them, then let them go off on their own, although as the worlds population increases this becomes harder.

I use the observation kit to keep tabs on them, and if their health drops below 65% I usually need to encourage them to feed. At least for the moment I'm trying to keep the Norns alive more as pets and learn about their biology and genetics at the same time. Once I have a solid number of Norns and a better understanding of their innards I'll start looking into some more experiments.

What do the other [Norns] get up to in the meantime?

Mostly? Breeding. With a population of about 13 Norns I've found I've usually got at least one Norn pregnant. I remember the C1 Norns not breeding nearly as much as C3 Norns and although that's true, it's not as wide a margin as I remember :S

And do you have any kind of endgame or direction in mind as you investigate their genetics or are you just wanting to see what happens as they breed and let the chips fall where they may?

I would like to have an endgame idea. At the moment what I'm really doing is looking for one. I think what I'd really like to do is have a collection of Norns, then do some selective breed to achieve...something. I'm not sure what that something is yet.

Perhaps I'll learn enough to craft my own breed from scratch. Perhaps I'll just seletively breed a new breed into existance. Or perhaps Grandroids will be released before I get around to it and I'll get massively distracted :P I don't know.

If anyone has ideas of what would be fun to aim for, or knows of some other interesting breeding experiments that have been done, or even has a method of hatching and raising baby Norns, I'd love to hear about it.