Get your norns higher up the evolutionary ladder as Toby Simpson and Mark Ashton teach us all a bit of slap and tickle
Reviewed PCZ #68 score 90%
TIP #1
- Dolly the sheep-cloning specials If you get a particularly cool creature you can create clones. Make sure the creature you wish to clone is the selected one (using the Creatures menu), then export it to a file on your hard drive using Export Current Creature from the File menu. This removes the creature from the world and places it in a file on disk. You can now create copies of this file to make lots of any creature that you wish. This technique is handy if you want to keep copies of the creatures you're about to genetically splice using the genetic splicing machine, just in case the resultant creature is a hideous mutant.
TIP #2
- Berries, berries, everywhere
Take a note of which berries have medicinal qualities, and mark the place where they grow. The little yellow ones that grow in the biopod underneath the desert island, for example, are highly medicinal and useful for combating some of the poisons (such
as cyanide) that a creature may pick up.
TIP #3
- Chemical mixing machine At the bottom far left of the map is a chemical mixing machine that enables you to produce your own chemical concoctions and feed them to creatures. But you need
to be careful with this! Used wrongly you can confuse, poison or disorientate your creature. As a hint, the first four levels of the blue component give various foodstuffs that are harmless. Add a little yellow and you never know what might happen, so
be careful to monitor the results in the Science Kit applet.
TIP #4
- Be sparing with the slap and tickle Every time you tickle or slap your creature, it generates reward or punishment. These are chemicals that flow over the brain and enable the creature to learn whether actions it has taken are good or bad. If you slap and tickle them all the time, they are forever 'taught' that whatever they were doing is a wise or unwise move û which can lead to confusion in the brain.
So think twice before engaging in a long-term tickling campaign.
TIP #5
- Romance is in the air Trouble breeding? No problem. Take a mating pair of creatures to the desert island û this is to the right of the incubator area, and there is a boat that takes you directly there. On the desert island's eastern jetty, there is a massive horn instrument called the love horn (!); the island is the Island of Love. When both creatures are near the horn, click on the mouthpiece to play a tune of love. This puts lots of pheromones into the air and gives even the most stubborn creature a Viagra-like dose of sex drive. They'll soon be at it like rabbits. The best thing is that they'll recover their sex drive
in seconds, so they can have another go. And that includes the males. So no rolling over and going straight to sleep.
TIP #6
- Dealing with short attention spans Some creatures may be particularly unco-operative. The cute little guys wandering around near the incubator are called 'learning critters'. If you click on one, it pops up a little speech bubble with the name of an object û such as food û in it. This then teaches that word to all creatures within hearing range. If you click on several of these, you can teach a lot of the word vocabulary to a norn.
TIP #7
- Attracting creature attention to a particular object If you've already named an object (see tip immediately above for a short cut), you can attract a norn's attention to it by just typing the name of the object into a speech bubble. So if your creature already knows that cheese is called 'food', then typing the word 'food' into a speech bubble and hitting 'enter' usually attracts the creature's attention to the nearest lump of cheese.
TIP #8
- Puffer fish û The puffer fish are a fantastic aid to drowning û stopping it, that is. These cute little green fish wait till a norn falls into the sea, and then they inflate with air and rescue the creature. It doesn't work 100 per cent of the time, but if you have a little shoal of puffer fish, then you're normally safe from norns drowning while you're not around.
TIP #9
- Poisons û a reference This reference table (on opposite page) is reprinted from the Creatures 2 Strategies And Secrets book, published by Sybex Inc (www.sybex.com), priced ú14.99.
Toxins in Creatures 2
Radiation
Creatures exposed to radiation get heavy metals in their bloodstream. Heavy metals damage the bones, and hence the organ repair mechanism. The treatment for radiation is a compound called EDTA, or ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid if you're a chemistry head.
Geddonase
A toxin that breaks down adipose, which is a creature's very long-term fat storage. This reaction releases a small amount of glucose.
Glycotoxin
Breaks down glycogen, which creatures use as an emergency energy store. Injecting the infected creature with arnica acts as a cure.
Cyanide
Stops the creature's heart. The cure for this is sodium thiosulphite. You can normally keep a creature alive by continuously injecting the defibrillant mixture on the Syringe page in the Science Kit applet until cyanide decays (about 15 seconds). A better treatment is a combination of defibrillant and sodium thiosulphite.
Sleep toxin
Converts a reduction in sleepiness into sleepiness, making creatures very tired. Sleep toxin causes no lasting damage and wears off relatively quickly. This usually appears as a result of a bacterial infection.
Fever toxin
Shuts down the skin organ, making it difficult for the creature to cool itself and causing overheating and dehydration. This is usually a result of a bacterial infection.
Belladonna
Slows down the heart. This reduces the rate at which ATP is produced, and can be potentially fatal.
Adipose
Not a toxin in normal conditions, as it is a long-term fat store. However, in great quantities the creature is effectively 'obese', and this can lead to heart disease.
- You can monitor the presence of these toxins using the Science Kit Biochem page, and also even inject them from the Syringe page as long as you've collected the Advanced Science Kit applet pick-up.
