Breeding C1 Grendels

There are various ways you can create breedable grendels, but I'll discuss some easier ways to deal with it.

One thing you should consider first is that grendels seem to live longer than norns. Many people have reported on alt.games.creatures that they have had grendels who have lived 80 hours or more! They could possibly outbreed your norns simply because of their longevity, and you may have to watch out for limited food stocks. Please watch your game carefully if you're using breedable grendels, and consider using various COBs found around the web to limit their sex drive or "neuter" ones who are too productive, if it looks like it may become a problem. Also, you must monitor their health carefully, using a grendel selector COB. They don't appear on the Observation Kit, and so you can't tell at a glance when one is ill. This could spread disease among all of your creatures, both grendel and norn, if you don't watch them.

First, you need to make your world so that grendels kiss when they mean to, rather than hitting, or they won't be able to try to breed at all. To do this, you can install the "grendel-friendly" world that was created by Slink at Slink's Burrow Online (Creatures portion of site now closed). However, to do this you need to export any norns (and grendels, if you can and want to - visit my COBs page for a grendel selector) first, and be aware that this will "reset" your world - unhatched eggs will disappear, food will be set back to where it was, and so forth. If this is too much hassle, then you should just get the grendel-friendly COBs by Kinnison at Kinnison's Creatures Pages. You can just use the Object Injector to install them while you're playing, rather than having to export norns, overwrite a file, etc.

Now, you need to get fertile grendels. You see, Cyberlife didn't create them with reproductive systems. That means that the grendel running around in your world right now will be more friendly, and will kiss, but cannot breed. One option is to look around the web for fertile grendels - so far I only have two on my Grendels page - and import them.

You can also get genetic codes for fertile grendels and install them. Slink created genetics for "multi-colored" breedable grendels. Their skins will have highlights of a color like red, white, magenta, etc., but they will still mostly be greenish. Copy these files to the Genetics folder of your Creatures directory. (Note: After you're more comfortable with this, if you want you can delete the genetics for the infertile grendel - gren.gen - and make a copy of your favorite color base grendel .gen file, naming it gren.gen. Then if you're out of grendels in a world, the "grendel mother" will lay a fertile grendel instead of the old kind.)

But how do you use these new, fertile grendel genetics? One simple way is to download a free preview of the Genetics Kit from Cyberlife's Creatures site at (in the downloads section, I think). There's a full version that you have to pay for, and can buy and download over the web from them, but it isn't necessary for this. Install it, start it up, and click the "Load Genome" button on the "front page" of this utility. Find the Genetics folder, and scroll through the files until you see things like "blue grendel.gen" and so on. Choose which color you like - remember it only affects the highlights, not the whole grendel - and click open. After the genome is loaded, click the export tab. Select which gender you want the grendel to be, choose an eggshell color if you like, and - be sure Creatures is running when you do this - click the "Lay Egg" button. The egg will be placed into your world. To get it to hatch, you must place it in the incubator. If the incubator doors are shut, you should use the COB set called the Pregnancy Toolkit (courtesy of LummoxJR's site, The Norn Underground, and it works on both norns and grendels!). Install the COBs properly, then inject the "Egg Unpauser" COB to make the egg ready to hatch on its own again. Don't pick it up or let a creature pick it up, or you'll have to "unpause" it again. After you've taught your new baby grendel what it needs to know, repeat the above process, and choose the opposite gender so you'll have a couple that eventually will be able to breed.

What's that? You say that grendels come out of the egg as adults? Well, actually, no they don't. There are only sprites (graphics) for adult grendels in Creatures, so they just look like adults after they're born. To fix that, download and copy to the Images folder the graphics for the baby grendel (from Greg Poehlein at Norn Holiday) and the old ("pensioner") grendel (created by Lis Morris at The Palace of the Evil Shee).

If you use the program CrEd32 from Kinnison's Creatures Pages, you can scroll down the list on "Plugin Main Menus" and choose "COS Assistant". There, you can create a grendel using much the same method, and inject him or her as an egg, a creature, or use a female grendel (an already-fertile one, of course) as a "surrogate mother"!

If you want breedable grendels and a change of scene, try Terra Nornia. It's a new world to explore, with new foods, plants, and animals, plus seasons and more! It also allows grendels to breed. Find it, and an explanation of how to install it, on Lis Morris' site.

Legal info: This page is © 1998, 1999 Denise L. Voskuil. These COBs, other files, and images are all © their respective creators. I am distributing them through explicit permission only. If you would like to post them on webpages or Usenet, or even just put an image up on your webpage, contact their creators and ask first. Do not link directly to any of them as an alternative to putting them on your own server. If you have problems with a file, contact the creator of it; I have given contact information for each. Green page decoration graphics are courtesy of Windy's Fashionable Page Designs, except for the base green rectangular button design, which is from Bimsan's Free Web Graphics.

Last updated April 7, 1999