Seasonal migrations are exactly what
they sound like, worlds were the Norns have to migrate each season to
survive. I like to think of it as a continuous IQ test, even for the
adults. In a normal feral run you can really only test the children,
but with a migration world you test all of them. It's also pretty
interesting to watch a whole population move from one area to
another, and, with the addition of seasonal flowers, it can also be
really beautiful. Setting them up is another story though.
Choosing Metarooms
There's two parts to setting up a
migration world, the metarooms and the patch plants. I'll be going
over the metarooms first. I've found that using 2-4 metarooms is the
best, depending on how large the metarooms you use are. It's
completely possible to set up a migration in one metaroom, or even
use more rooms then four. Large metarooms like Ainardia or C2toDS are
probably perfect for seasonal migrations. I've only used Chione in a
migration world, but it works out great.
If you use more then four metarooms,
then setting it up will harder then just 2-4 rooms. It's completely
possible to set up a migration world like this. The very first
migration world I set was utterly confusing to me, but the Norns were
just fine. Plus it might make your game lag a lot, depending on your
computer. Patch plants are surprisingly laggy if you have a lot of
them.
As for choosing your metaroom, I like
to choose the rooms based on what season the patch plants are going
to appear in that room. For example Veridia is perfect for a Spring
or Summer metaroom, and chione would be perfect for a winter room, if
it wasn't so big. I chose the North pole room for this blog's
migration run, but it requires the Norn Terrarium to install it. So I
chose the Norn Terrarium as my spring room so I could have both of
them. Size is really important as well. A room like Tulu isn't good
if you want a large population(18-28ish), and a room like Veridia
isn't good if you want a small population(8-16ish). You will have to
experiment with population sizes for your migration world, as each
combination of rooms is different. I had to lower my current
migration world's limit from 28 to something like 20 because Tulu was
to small for my population to live in comfortably.
One Metaroom Migration runs and Linking
Rooms Together
In case you don't want to use a lot of
metarooms, or if your computer can't handle it, then migration runs
can easily be done in one metaroom. Just choose your metaroom, decide
which seasonal patch plants go where, and then add them. You might
also want to use just one metaroom if your using the larger metarooms
like Ainardia or Chione.
Linking rooms together requires the
Magic Worlds room edits agent, other wise your Creatures won't travel
between metarooms at all. You might also want to use the
Interporter
instead of the
Torii agent. With the Torii, Creatures tend to boucne
from one room to the other, and not stop until they fall asleep. The
interporter also has some problems, but at least Creatures can use it
properly. make sure to set the interporter to door mode, so the
creatures don't get confused. You can click on the portal/door part
to see which mode it's in. There is one other door agent, the
Archways, that might not have the "bouncing Norn" problem the Torii has, but I don't know for certain.
The Patch Plants
There's two main ways I've set the food
sources, one where there's barely enough food, and one where you just
put patch plants where ever. With both ways, it's probably best to
use food that decomposes, and doesn't stay there indefinitely. This
usually makes the Norns migrate a bit sooner, and makes sure there
isn't any leftover food that could confuse a Norn. "Perishable"
patch plants include the explodanuts, the spikeball things, the
Eggstravaganza eggs, the plums, and the Aubergines. Patch plants that
don't decompose work just as well as those that do, I just tend to
prefer ones that disappear.
Anyway, one way to set up the patch
plants is where there is barely any food each season, or where the
food diminishes a lot each season. The first one really only fits in
a world like Chione or a desert metaroom where you might not want to
add a lot of food sources to fit in with the theme of winter
wastelands or deserts. This can be very frustrating if you don't want
to have a lot of food, but it also makes the world very challenging
for the Creatures. The second one is really simple, you just lower
the density of the patch a certain amount when you add it. A normal
patch plant starts out at 50%, and I've found that a nice amount to
go down each season is 10%. That means it's 50 in Spring, and ends up
at 20-25%. This has the benefit of making food scarcer as the seasons
go on, but isn't as annoying to set up.
The other way is to not change the
density when you add the plants to each season/room. This is the
easist way to set up a migration run, and has the added benefit of
making sure Norns have enough food. Some patch plants might need to
have their density lowered anyway so they don't flood your world.
Three Metaroom Setup
One specific setup, that I haven't
personally tested yet, would be the three metaroom setup. A common
problem with migration runs is that eggs tend to pile up in all of
the metarooms, and it isn't always easy for a baby Norn to navigate
their way to food. The three metaroom setup solves that, sort of. You
would choose three metarooms like normal, and then use the middle
metaroom and put two seasons in there, instead of two separate
metarooms. I would put Summer and Fall in the metaroom and Spring and
Winter in the other two. Then you would put an egg finder connected
to a timer in that middle room. This puts the eggs in one specific
spot, and makes the babies travel less to get to food. Plus it's less
metarooms and probably less patch plants, so there might be less lag.
Problems with the Concept
There's a few problems with migration
worlds, some major, some minor. Having a lot of patch plants can
cause your world to lag ever so often, and I haven't found a way
around that. Even in my current migration world, the game will lag
ever so often. The game runs fine, and is fairly fast, it just lags
sometimes. Your computer might not have this problem with patch
plants though? I don't know if it's just my game or not. Another
problem with the patch plants themselves. They might crash your game
if you add them to close to a solid metaroom boundary. There really
isn't a way around this, you will just have to keep room boundaries
in mind when adding patch plants.
Eggs tend to build up in the metarooms,
and the only way to fix that is to add an egg finder. You could do
the usual trick of setting up an egg find and making them go through
an IQ test, if you hate eggs laying around everywhere. The last
problem might be that your computer can't handle having a lot of
metarooms, or patch plants. Migration worlds tend to run a bit faster
then a world filled with patch plants, though it also seems to have
lag spikes. Plus setting up the migration worlds takes a bit of
planning and some experimentation. It's a weird way to set up a
world, but hopefully this blog post has made setting one up slightly
easier.
Some random tips:
- Choose your metarooms carefully
- Try putting rooms in a certain order(I
like to follow the seasons, from Spring to Winter)
- Don't put patch plants to close to a
rooms boundaries or the game might crash.
Summer to me means water, heat, and way too many insects everywhere. So I created an aquatic world... for terrestrial grendels. Normally this would end up with a load of dead grendels, but through the magic of magic words I could give these lucky grendels air bubbles so they didn't end up drowning. The rest of the world was setup like most of my pet worlds end up, overly decorated and easy to live in. Sadly, the world didn't have space for all 20 of the babies, so I chose 10 random grendels. I also went with the somewhat fitting theme of "random bodies of water" which meant names that went from Arroyo to Puddle.
I ended up with four males and 6 females, all of which seemed to get along with each other. Firth, Arroyo, Gulf, Spring, and Mere were in Aquanornia, while Puddle, Creek, Cove, Delta, and Bay were in the Oasis. Balmora was also taking a vacation there, but she was more interested in the Vibraphone them meeting her new neighbors. How well did the grendels settle in? Find out next time! For now, here's a list of most of the agents used in the world:
