Disabling Seasions But Keeping its Stuff - Want to disable weather or make plants in season year-round? You can do so with my new Seasons Tuner Mod
Improving Sims 4: The past month, I've spent every day tinkering The Sims 4, making quality of life improvements, gameplay changes, and new difficulty settings for the game. If you'd like to learn more about my project, visit the post on Patreon where you can download it now.
Nurturing a Grub in my Sim's Insect Farm from The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle.
The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle comes with a new Bug House object that lets you create an insect farm. While great in concept, they have some serious issues right now that require a mod to fix. Unfortunately, players on The Sims 4 for Xbox One and Playstation 4 can't use mods so I want to lay out what's wrong in order to help those Simmers decide if this pack is right for them.
Insect Farms can be easily found in the new Off the Grid mode's Outdoor Activities tab.
Find the Mitey Mitey Home Insect Farm in Buy Mode > Off the Grid > Outdoor Activities. This new item functions a lot like the bee box, but allows you to choose one of four insect types for each house. The insects have various benefits, which we'll talk about next. Fair warning - the clean out interaction doesn't clean up their poo or something! It resets the whole thing, so don't be like us and do this on the first day to lose the colony and have to start over.
Insects are primarily a source of Bio Fuel, which can be used on Eco Lifestyle's new Generators for Off the Grid play.
There are four types of insect - Grubs (the ones confused for a baby chick), crickets, beetles, and bombardier beetles. This last type can sometimes set your Sim on fire if you have a failure while interacting with them. They require either level 9 Mischief or level 5 Homestyle Cooking.
Bio Fuel is used on the new Generator objects, which can pollute with regular fuel but do not when you load them with sustainable fuels.
Each insect has a unique thing you can farm from them once a day when they are healthy enough and fed. The bugs can only be harvested once each 24h, so you must choose which type you want to farm.
You can collect the following from them:
So the main purpose of these is to feed your Sim when you play Off the Grid and do not want to let them simply magic ingredients out of thin air, and rather live off what they have. Unfortunately it doesn't seem there is much to them, just regular recipes and regular buffs if you make it high quality. I may have missed at least one thing, but in the end it appears the insect farms are good for feeding your Sim and fueling your generators to produce power during Off the Grid play, or in order to offset bills when you have a regular home and want to keep a lot of bugs around. Personally, I think the game has enough of them.
The health stat is not replenished enougy by the Nurture interaction. Given he only hugs one of them, how am I to be surprised?
Your insects have two stats - hunger and health - which must be kept up, else your bug farm will die with dead bugs all around on the ground. Hunger is simple. You don't need anything to feed them, just feed 'em with a few Simoleons and call it a day. Or, collect compost from Dumpsters and you'll be able to feed them that. It's $5 your saving, just sayin. You can start over at any time by cleaning out the bug farm, or simply feed them when dead. Here's the problem...
Insect Health is impossible to keep up with, and clearly wasn't tested beyond the first day. You see, you need to hug the bugs via the Nurture command and it is supposed to replenish that. It would appear that Nurture doesn't restore much health to the bugs. This is incredible realism on The Sims part because bugs do get absolutely nothing out of a hug from a human. In fact, I'd say it would be a stressful situation if they had typical brains.
So with 6 insect Farms, I needed to hug bugs all blasted day, 5x to get them from Declining health to Growing. It took 5 hug animations, which is super long, to get 1/5th of the way there. In all, it meant hugging bugs until my Sim peed himself and me cheating needs to keep going. It took me 24 hours. I'd say with about 8, you could not possibly keep their health up and would be playing whack a mole going around different farms.
This itself is clearly a bug, and a big one. It takes one feature from this Expansion and makes it unusable for console players. If on PC, you're in luck. LittleMsSam put out a mod that fixes exactly this issue, making the hug animation shorter and making it give a lot more Health stat so the bugs will be happy and healthy. You can download it here.
We now have a Youtube Channel with over 50 guides in video format to go along with the huge site I've already created. Check it out and consider subscribing if you like my style.
The Sims 4 Seasons expansion now has options! Want to disable weather or make plants in season year-round? You can do so with my new Seasons Tuner Mod
The past month, I've spent every day tinkering The Sims 4, making quality of life improvements, gameplay changes, and new difficulty settings for the game. If you'd like to learn more about my project, visit the post on Patreon where you can download it now.
Cottage Living Guide! Here is my guide to new features in the Sims 4 Cottage Living Expansion
You can also find handy Cottage Living Cheats
I have much more to come, since you can actually write a few guides about this pack!
Blender has been incredibly useful in video production, so I made my own Physics and Simulation Improvement Addon that lumps a ton of unique tools into one compact interface.
Snowy Escape Cheats
Lifestyles in Snowy Escape
Climb Mt. Komorebi
Sentiments in Snowy Escape
Rock Climbing
Skiing Skill
Snowboarding Skill
I've released a guide to Sentiments in The Sims 4 & Snowy Escape.
There is a new platform tool in The Sims 4. There's also a new Sentiments system, but it'll take some time to create a guide to that. Players can also use rental lots in any world now by changing lot types of builds in manage worlds.
I've created a massive List of The Best Mods in The Sims 4 that should be very helpful to new players and those who have not yet explored modding and how much it can do for your gameplay.
New - Secrets I have a new guide to secrets in the game. If you prefer, you can also watch a video about secrets in Sims 4.
Nifty Knitting is now available. Learn all about the stuff pack on my guide page here.
NEW - Nifty Knitting CheatsNew features in the Sims 4 June 2020
The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle Guide
Eco Footprint: How it Works
Neighborhood Action Plans
How to Cheat in Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle
Civil Designer Career
Insect Farms & Bio Fuel
Fabrication Skill in Eco Lifestyle
Juice Fizzing NEW
Traits and Aspirations in DLC
Gameplay Ideas for Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle
Updated
Trait Cheats Updated
Traits List Updated
Aspirations List Updated
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This is inspired by a new series in which I start at toddler and gradually take on the major bonuses. Here's a link to the full playlist!
I now have a guide page to Tiny Living Stuff where you can learn about Murphy Beds, the new death, as well as the lot bonuses you'll receive if you manage to keep the size of your lot down with this new pack's Tiny Home Lot Type.
New I now have a guide to Making Super Sims in The Sims 4. Look for a text version within the next 72h. It won't have THAT much more info but it will help out as a checklist.
This was inspired by a series, "Let's Play a Super Sim" in which I start at toddler and gradually take on the major bonuses. Here's a link to each part for people who are interested. You can also see the Let's Play as a Playlist on Youtube.
The Sims 4 Discover University has been announced for November 15 for PC/Mac and December 17 for Xbox and Playstation 4 consoles. Click to learn more about the pack, see my summary of the livestream or read our FAQs below.
Other Guides to Discover University:
New Lot Traits: Study Spot and University Student Hang Out
New: Discover University FAQ: Gameplay Features
New Video The Sims 4 Discover University Gameplay Tips Video
More videos coming soon!
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Comments (13)
I wish they’d included a way to get the stuff from insect farms without needing to farm it yourself. I mean, I’ve also wished the same for bees since Seasons came out, but this just exacerbates it. Maybe have it sold via computer at 100% markup, to encourage players to farm it themselves while still providing the option to not.
Thank you for including the link to the mod!
When collecting from the bugs, you also get super fertilizer (I always do, I only collect when they are all fed and thriving).
It seems to be the same fertilizer that one could get from Jasmine during the Growfruit challenge (that's what the description says).
I play on console btw, so it is not unuseable , but yes those bugs need way too much attention.....
If you feed the bugs compost you get the "well fed" status and it becomes MUCH easier to hug them to health. You can get compost in multiple ways: rummaging through garbage, composting discarded food piles, and composting from a toilet with the composting container upgrade.
Hope i helped!
Just really want to highlight this. I know you're working to keep the site as updated and accurate as possible and it may be a while yet still. But, I just don't want this info to get lost in the shuffle. Feeding my beetles exclusively compost made it infinitely easier to care for the bugs thus granting a larger payout when I harvested each time. Therefor, it may be prudent to wait until you have a reliable source of compost. The toilet upgrade is the way I went, it was two servings of compost a day and always kept them well-fed and only needed 2 cuddles a day to stay in the best possible health state
I play tested the insect farms using only compost when the pack first became available and it really didn't make that much of a difference. To keep the insects thriving still took more about 3 - 4 hugs a day, which is still way too long when balanced against other game play objects.
How do you feed the compost to them? Is it an action on the toilet or the bug thing?
Your Sim will get compost piles in their personal inventory when cooking with the Off The Grid lot trait on, or by upgrading a toilet to be composting, rummaging in rubbish piles that get dropped on the floor etc
for some reason, when using the the bio-fuel from bugs in upgraded appliaces (fuel cell upgrade) it turns the appliance industrial, not green. i wonder if this is a bug (no pun intended lol) or designed gameplay.
My game did the same thing! I hope they fix this.
I think this is actually intended. It is far, far cleaner and more economical to have one powerplant supplying 100,000 homes, than to have 100,000 homes running gas generators. And now you've got EACH APPLIANCE burning fuel to run itself. Biofuel or not, you're still burning a hydrocarbon and making air pollution.
I found out that if you do the compost upgrade on your toilet, you can uh hum feed the bugs after your Sim uses the bathroom. You just have to empty the toilet every now and again otherwise it might implode lol it keeps the bugs well fed and healthy without much more effort on your part.
Yeah, I discovered that the "Upgradios" CC spell will automatically do that upgrade on toilets. And the toilet (and my sim) burst into flame before I realized that.
The meal you make with Bombardier beetles will also increase your energy bar.
For some reason it won't let me collect the bio diesel. It says the bugs are ready but not coming up with the option to harvest them.
It may be that the insects health is too low. They have to be at least 'Fine' so cuddle them a few times in a row and see if that brings up the 'harvest' option
Mine is doing that also and my bugs were perfectly healthy ...console needs to fix its bugs
What do normal beetle nuggets do? Can’t find a recipe for it although 2 can be harvested every time with 2 super fertiliser which is quite generous but I yet to find a purpose for those nuggies. Anyone have ideas what they are use for?
Beetle Nugget details:
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/expansionpacks/ecolifestyle/insect-farms.php
I’m sorry but it seems the beetle nuggets section is missing in this guide, that’s why I asked.
Beetle Nuggets make food or bio fuel, that's it, which Carl mentions.
My sim spends a lot of time at the community "Maker Space", so I put some bug boxes there. During the day the NPCs seems to fill, feed, nurture and, if you aren't careful, collect the results.
I'm so glad I got Little Ms. Sam's mod. It makes the bugs useable. It's still challenging to keep your appliances filled, but my Freegan sim loves powering his house with free stuff made from toilet waste :)
The bombardier beetles keep setting my house on fire with invisible fires every time I enter the lot
Clearly this is the latest iteration of a tradition dating all the way back to the original Sim City: Will Wright goes on a green crusade for something silly, and drags all the fans of his games along for the ride. Sim City had magical trains that didn't need stations, or even need to be publicly accessible, to magically erase pollution and traffic, because public transportation was just that magical back in the pre-internet era. Today it's, "You MUST eat the bugs!" with, "You must HUG the bugs too!" just to make sure we all get the message.
You don't need to hug them all the time, i do nuture anytime it says declining and i only do it once, after a couple hrs they change to fine or growing. It just takes time for it to take affect, its not an instant stat change. so you just wasting time hugging them over and over lol