Out of curiosity, are you playing the old version, or the GOG.com version? The newer GOG version is much improved, with I believe all starter-pack norns having some kind of (improved?) Golden Desert Norn genome.
To exemplify the difference, I frequently do wolfing runs where I set up a world, leave out eggs to hatch, and let the norns breed, die, or travel by their own means and without any form of interference from then on. When I used the old version of the game, nearly all of these runs failed because 75-90% of my hatchery norns would die before they reach a fertile age thanks to OHSS and an assortment of other problems. But with the GOG.com update to their genomes, that percentage of norns that died before they could breed without handish help has plummeted to maybe 25-30%. Though it’s still a fair chunk that pass away, it’s far better and has led to many successful C2 wolfing runs.
(This number, from my experience, drops even further when I let the norn eggs hatch near an imported Popping Mushroom Pack. The sound of them popping into existence inclines these GOG-revamped norns to eat and teaches them the joys and wonders of it early, even without handish supervision. Because I’m obsessed with stats and have run enough games to analyze the difference, this reduces the first-generation norns that die before they reach reproduction age in a wolfing run to approximately 15%, which is incredibly low.)
If you’re using the older version of this game, though, I might actually recommend Canny Norns first, but this could be my bias talking since I love adding third-party breeds to my world and many of the “smarter” ones use the Canny genome over the Nova Subterra one. If you’re not that into third-party breeds, then Kannova Norns would certainly be an interesting set to try!
