Welcome to Annette's FAQ.

Just choose the section you want to go to and click on it. I have included some tips so both newbies and oldbies might find it interesting.
All download(s) here are posted with the authors' permission because they don't have a section on their website anymore for people to download them.

Items:

Ball Starting Your Albia
Ball Feeding & Training Your Creatures
Ball Kit Applets
Ball Exploring Albia
Ball Help For Drowning Norns
Ball Cheats
Ball COBS
Ball Machine With Colored Liquids
Ball The Statue
Ball Grendel Splicer
Ball Creatures & Your Website
BallMiscellaneous Tips & Tricks


Links To Other Parts Of My Site

Starting Your Albia
First of all, there is a mistake in the eggs that came with the C2 game. The norns do not sleep or eat well. But there is an update genome pack that updates all the eggs in the hatchery so that your norns can survive better. Available at
Creatures 2 .
Once you've done the update for your world, you might want to consider hatching a female first then, a male later. Because females take longer to reach adolescence. Bring her to the computer to the left of the incubator to teach her words and tickle her often when she repeats the right words. Another computer can be found at the floor below. It teaches expressions like "cold", "friendly", "angry".. etc…
If you do not want to use cheats, (see Cheats for more info.) then, try to get the round things floating around Albia as soon as you can. Those are called Applets, and are explained in the Kit Applets paragraph.
Another thing you might see is the yellowish thing floating above a creature's head even though it's not sick or unconcious. That's your creature indicator. It tells you that is the creature you've selected at the moment and is nothing to worry about. Just turn it off by clicking the button on the left of your toolbar with the picture of the disc.

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Feeding & Training Your Creatures

Getting your creatures to eat and sleep properly is the first step to ensure their survival. Once you've got the update ( the one mentioned in the first paragraph), you should be able to train your creatures to be pigs like mine.
It might be easier to export all the others and train one at a time because they're easily distracted like two-year-olds when there's a bunch of them. Make sure the norn sees and repeats the words "sleep" and "eat" from the computer because those are the two most important words. Or you can use teaching aid cobs (see
COBS if you don't know what they are) like J Dino's learning computer, or Slink's wonderful Encyclopedia Nornica that teaches every word in Norndom you'd want your norns to know.
To download EN, click HERE. Many thanks to Slink for allowing me to post this cob here. Here's a link to Slink's Site .

*Note: A lot of Jay Dino's cobs are mentioned here. If you wish to download any of them, please go to his site .

To go on, once your norn knows what is "eat", the next step would be to put some food near him, and call him by name and say "eat" eg, "Andrew eat food". You might have to wave the food in front of him to make him focus on it, and repeat the command several times (ctrl+S to repeat). If he takes the food from you and eat it tickle him for a long time. He'll learn to eat by himself in this way. Another great cob to download for this is the Tasty Shroom Patch by Jay Dino . It can be sprinkled all over Albia, on any kind of ground, and is so tasty, norns just cannot resist it. It even rewards norns for eating it.
As for sleep, he cannot sleep if not he's tired. So watch him. When he falls asleep, tickle only once or better still try not to disturb him, but tickle him a lot the minute he wakes up. Same goes for doing things you like. The keyword is "tickle" and reward him a lot when he does things right, and he'll keep doing it.
In the same way, you have to train him to "push" or "pull" objects, as this could be important for his survival later. Use toys and push them for the norn to see, and give it to him, e.g, saying,"Andrew push toy", and if he obeys, reward him as usual.

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Kit Applets

These are the floating discs you see, e.g, in the space to the left of the incubator room, next to the elevator is the applet for the science kit. Scroll around a bit more to the left and you'll see the advanced science kit and neurology kits in rooms around that area. You'll have to get your norns there to push them. Then you'll be able to use them. Very useful for sick norns.
Someone suggested you push your norn into the sea, so that you'll be able to pick him up and hold him next to the applet until he pushes it. But be careful about doing this because norns will drown or get sick when they're in water, especially for a long time, and you might want to use other methods to get the activates. See
Cheats for more details.

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Exploring Albia

To encourage your norns to explore is a good thing because you might find useful things like a source of honey/beehive, where you can re-fill your jars when they're empty, or get new fruits/herbs without worrying that the ones in the health or breeders' kits will run out. Or if you need them to push applets for you to activate the science kits.
Start by making sure your norns know simple words like "come" and "left", "right". You might want to try a simple command first, like, "Andrew come hand", where Andrew gets a lot of nice tickles when he obeys. Then gradually extending it to a further distance each time. Use toys or food to get their attention, or just wave your hand in front of them when you want them to concentrate on you. Or you can use the push buttons on your toolbar to push them in the direction you want them to go. Get them to use the elevators, because that's the main way to get around. Take them for rides in it, and make sure there's plenty of food and drink wherever they are. Then reward them when they start moving around by themselves.

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Help For Drowning Norns

A lot of people have problems of norns drowning and don't know what to do to stop them, so I have included this as one of the topics here.
The simplest way would be to get the electric gate from
Spirit's Creatures' Shack or the porcupine pufferfish from Albia 2000. The former just saves every norn that jumps into the ocean, the latter saves only LAND norns, and leaves mernorns that MUST live in water alone.

*Note: Also check out the Ocean Bridges cob by Jay Dino at his site

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Cheats

There are basically two major cheats in C2. One is the Blueberry4$ cheat, and the other is the Coconut cheat. And there is also a NO CD cheat that allows you to play the game without a CD. All three can be found in Bobcob, the utility for making cobs (see cobs for more info).
All you need to do is download Bobcob from Frimlin's site and open it. Go to tools-> preferences-> cheats-> select the cheat, ok, and open your game. You should have the cheat installed for you.
If you decide to edit your registry (only if you know what you're doing!!), then open up regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ->SOFTWARE->CYBERLIFE TECHNOLOGY-->CREATURES 2. You should see a file named 1.0 below that. Open it and you'll see a lot of values in the right coloumn. Look for "privilages" or "Millinium", and change the value to "blueberry4$" and you'll have the cheat. If you can't find "privileges" like in my pc, you better go get the Bobcob like I did.
The blueberry is great because you can pick up your norns and have many worlds at the same time. But the world needs to be saved manually every time you exit or you'll lose all progressions in your game. And you can't select your creature by right-clicking any more because that is used for picking them up.
The cheat that can be found at Cyberlife the game state controller, in their object pack 2. It activates all your science kits and stuff for you without you having to wait for your creature to push the applets.
Another option is to get the pick the creature up cob if you don't like the blueberry. It can be found at Madame Mim's site You can use the right and left hand push buttons to pick the norns up instead of right-clicking on them. See COBS if you're not sure about them.
Another option would be to use the Cheatmachine. It has lots of cool options like making your own norns and injecting them into Albia. The freeware version is available at Stephan's site. But be sure to have your windows display at 800 by 600 pixels when you want to unzip it and while using it as well.

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COBS

These are short form for "Creatures Objects" and can be placed anywhere in Albia if you know how to use them.
You have to put the right files in the right folders for them to work. The files are named, cob., gen, s16, wav at the end. The cob files go into your creatures "Objects" folder, the gen. into your "genetics" folder, the s16 into your "Images" folder and wavs into your "sounds" folder. Some cob authors (like me) have the files built into a setup.exe program that will install the files into the right folders automatically. But ONLY if your creatures directory is the default c:\program files\Creatures2 directory. Otherwise you'll have to change the directory when the installation program opens. So, to be safe, always check the directories before you install the cobs.
If you're interested in making cobs, you can always find good tuitorials around, like at
The Norn Underground or at Helen's Norn Adoption Clinic or Spirit's Creatures Shack. The first two sites also have the utilies for making the cobs, which you might be interested to download.
Sometimes, you might find problems with cobs crashing your game or cobs not even appearing in the injector kits. Relax, it happens to nearly everybody at times. We authors certainly do not wish that to happen. But everybody experiences different things on different computers. Like say, the same norns do not always hatch on different computers. So it's the same with cobs.
One cause of a crash could be that two different cobs have the same class numbers, and that could cause a crash because the game is confused about which files to use. The other reason could be wrong macro. That one is the least likely to happen, because normally, cob authors test out the cobs on their own computers before actually putting any on their sites. But there is a small possibility, with more complicated cobs (and those are the more interesting ones, too) that the authors might have forgotten to put in some macro, and so, when an action occurs, say a creature pushes the object, and the game cannot find the macro for what should happen when the creature pushes it, the game could crash.
The other reason is one of the most common, and almost everybody experiences it. Some people get the error message "…images could not be found.." A good point in case, is Cyberlife's own Christmas 1998 pack. The image files appeared to be missing, but they were actually embedded and hidden. So the solution for such a problem is to get Bobcob , the cob utility that enables the files to be seen. Availble at Frimlin's site. You open Bobcob, then click on "Embedded Files…" You should see a window with an s16 image file name in it, choose extract, and your Creatures2 Images directory, and the file should be saved there. All the images should appear when you inject the cob now.
Now on to the problem of cobs not appearing in your injector kit. Normally, no matter how many cobs you have in your kit (even up to a hundred) they should appear. But a lot of people mistakenly put in some cobs for Creatures1. It causes the Creatures2 cobs to go missing as well. Some might get the error message, "so-and-so is not a Creatures2 cob". But the solution is to take out all the C1 cobs. Remember to take out the images as well, they are called spr. files in C1. Wrong images may not harm your game, but I personally feel they're wasting space since they cannot be used in C2. You might want to consider getting the cob converter if you feel like having a C1 cob in C2. Available at Creatures Developers Resource. Thanks to Chris Double for making it!

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Machine With Colored Liquids

This machine only has all the same chemicals as the advanced science kit. So, it's not very useful, unless you know how to mix the chemicals in the right proportions. The Creatures Developers Network has some information about mixing them, but generally, even the Creatures oldbies do not bother to mix them when we can inject them right off the science kit (^_^) The wrong concoction could prove fatal!!

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The Statue

That is a Shee statue. For many norns, that is an object of awe and fear. They stay rooted at the spot for hours if they see the statue. Nothing you say will get them to move. You might have to export them and import them again to get away from there. But there is a trick about it too. Save the statue as your favoutrite place, then go to the barrel on the far left on it and click on it. Quickly rush back to the statue using the favourite place shortcut. You'll see the Creature's creator, Toby Simpson's face there. This must be done quickly in order to catch his face, because it can only be done once in each world.

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Grendel Splicer

This is useful because you can splice the norns you like best in it, and get a cool offspring. But the drawback is that the norns will be killed instantly. Although someone said they can be found in the recycle bin after splicing, it's a nuisance to have to retrieve them everytime. Besides, there is a bigger drawback in using it. Norns that are spliced too many times, have weak, sickly offspring. But if you want to try it, the male and female should be in the correct stool. Because otherwise the owner's kit will display, eg. "George" as the mother and "Mary" as the father. LOL…. But sorry I'm not very sure who should go where. I Think it is the male on the left and female on the right. I hope I don't mix up somebody's parents, but if it proves to be wrong, could somebody please mail me so that I can fix this part of my Faq??

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Creatures & Your Website

Now that you are a cobbler or have some really cool creatures you want to put up on your website, you might want to learn how to make it work. This is the place for you.
To put your creatures on your page and make them downloadable by just a click on it, you upload the file onto your server, and make a link to it, like just any hyperlink, only it might look something like this…. < a hr… and all that… www.yourserver/yourpage/Norn.zip > to make a connection to that particular file.
A lot of people must see the creatures to decide whether to download them, so, you should try to take a picture of them with the owners' kit and click on export.. to save the picture in bmp format. Then you can convert it to a browser-viewable format from there.. eg. jpg or gif. If you really want the Creatures to pose nicely but can't wait the whole day for them to do so, or if they just refuse to pose properly for you, don't fret. There's a really good utility out there called NornPose by Lummox Jr, available at
The Norn Underground . It can take any creature you have in your world and pose them in almost any position you want them to and save those pics in bmp format. Only you gotta know the moniker of the creature, or the filename, eg 5WXT etc… (the name can be found in the science kit) or the backup files. Select the creature you want to pose, look at the science kit for the moniker, open Nornpose, type in the moniker, and start posing the creature. In the same way, you can make cool gifs for your site with NornPose and a gif editor.

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Miscellaneous Tips & Tricks

1) You can fill up the syringe faster by double-clicking the chemical you want to inject your norns with.
2) If you turn off the sound in the blueberry cheat mode, you might get your world to run faster.
3) Grow some carrots with the carrot re-seeder at the waterwheel, and the rabbit will come out and eat them.
4) If your kits do not appear when you open them, they might be just invisible. Press Ctrl and Alt and then Delete. Look for the kits, and click end task. Then try to open them again. It should appear ok this time. Normally this happens when you close the kits manually as creatures is exitting. You should let them close by themselves or use Ctrl->Alt->Delete to close them if they remain open.
5) If you still have problems with the cobs not appearing or the injector kit not opening, try this. Close creatures. Take out all the cobs. Open creatures. Open the injector kit. It should open ok. Then close creatures again and put back all the cobs. That should do the trick.
6) You want more than 8 Creatures in your world? Then open your windows registry (regedit), open HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE-> SOFTWARE CYBERLIFE TECHNOLOGY->Creatures2. You should see a file named "1.0" or something like that right under Creatures2. Click on that. Look for the MaxNorns value. If you can't find it, go to edit -> new-> DWORD value. Create it yourself. Name it MaxNorns and double click to enter the number of norns you want in your world. You can also increase the number of kits you can open in your world by doing the same thing with the MaxKits DWORD value. But a word of caution:- having too many norns can really slow down your computer. Use it wisely (^_^)
7) To use the No-CD cheat, then you do the same as above, except after the EditàNew, click on string value instead. Name it "No CD-ROM Needed" and you should be able to have the cheat. But you must copy the introduction from the CD to your Creatures directory. That's what I was told to do, I don't know why either, since I never watched the introduction a second time anyway. (^_^)
8) Sometimes you might find you cannot speak to your creature. Well, the problem is, you might have a kit selected and you have to click on the window to select it to be able to speak to them.
That's it for this section. I will try to put in new tips here now and then, so do come and visit again.

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To go INDEX .
To go to my NORNS DOWNLOADS Page.
To go to my Creatures' LINKS' PAGE
To go to myCOBS Page.
To go to my MERNORNS DOWNLOADS
To go to my Creatures' PICS Page.
To go to my C2 STORIES Page.
Or see my List of C2 Sites.