Health Kit

''Health status and doctors page for day to day Norn health monitoring. The Health Kit takes all the complex chemical reactions and brain activity and presents them in an easy to understand form. At a glance, you can see if your Norn is running a high temperature, and how tired or hungry it is. There is even a simple brain monitor to show activity taking place in the different brain lobes. A doctor's page helps you to heal them when they are sick by providing herbs that can cure different ailments. ''

Heartbeat and Temperature Monitor
The heart rate is an indication of how hard your Norn is working. The strength of the beat gives a rough idea of how healthy your Norn is. Too much rapid heart activity can be dangerous for your Norn. You can monitor adrenaline levels in the Science Kit Biochemistry Monitor.

The temperature gauge can give you warning of possible infections your Norn may have.

Drives and Needs Monitoring
Mapping directly from the drive lobe in the brain, this display shows the state of selected drives and needs of your Norn. These meters are generated from a combination of chemicals which can be monitored separately from the Biochemistry Monitor page in the Science Kit.

Note the difference between Exhaustion and Sleepiness - you can be tired and not sleepy (drink too much coffee after 20 hours without sleep to see what we mean by this!).

Brain Activity Monitor
Your Norn has a number of brain lobes which contain neurons which learn over time when to fire their outputs. This screen takes the average brain activity in each of the main lobes and highlights them according to how many neurons are firing. Lots of activity on this screen usually tells you that your Norn is considering many actions for a situation, or is performing a complex task.

Doctor's Page
A selection of herbs which have properties when eaten by creatures Cycle through the available herbs with the left and right page turn buttons.

The amount of each herb available is shown in the "herbs remaining" box, and a brief description of what they do is in the description box.

Press the ADD button to move a herb into Albia.

Beware! You have a finite number of each herb! You can use the Emergency Kit to replenish your supplies, though. The Hypodermic Needle page in the Science Kit allows specific Chemical compounds (the IV chemicals) to be injected.

Watch out for side effects, and make sure Grendels don't steal your herbs before your Norns get them!

Macintosh Issues
Under MacOS 8.0/8.1, there are a few problems with the Health Kit and scrolling performance. To work around these:

''You have to set the System font to CHICAGO in the APPEARANCE CONTROL PANEL. Restart the computer and the Health Kit should work just fine. For added performance improvements, also turn off the system wide platinum appearance in the appearance control. After this scrolling should work better in Creatures.''

GOG.com The Albian Years Issues
If using Windows Vista or a later OS to run the GOG Creatures Collection edition of Creatures 1, it is recommended to run Creatures 1 as an administrator to solve problems with the Health Kit.