Things I learned about crystal flowers

[Joria]

My fairy Sim needed crystal flowers to make some chips for robots so I grew a garden of them on the roof.  Here are my discoveries as I played with this concept.

1.  Like any other garden plant they need to be "tended", "watered", "weeded and "harvested".  Using "Tend Garden" command also triggers charging if they have once been charged.

2.  There are 4 emotions that can be charged, Kindness, Humor, Love and Rage.  Each has it's own color, green for kindness, blue for humor, pink for love and orange for rage.  They start out as pastel shades but deepen with the second charging.

3.  You cannot multiple charge at once.  No charge with kindness on a plant and then going immediately after to do it again.  However, if you wait a bit, or charge another plant you can go back and charge again. 

4.  The charges give you the following:
     1st. charge gives you 27% full
     2nd charge gives you 54% full
     3rd charge gives you 81% full
     4th charge gives you 100%     

5.  It takes 8 Sim seconds to charge each flower during which time you will hear different sound effects, color swirls and silly actions.  The one that amused me the most is the one leg up behind during the love charge. 

6.  Fairies can bloom these plants like any other so you can repeatedly harvest them.  Charges weaken after the plants are harvested or if they are ignored for awhile so you have to constantly be tending them.  Fortunately, the tend plant command recharges them.

7.  Like any other plant their quality ranges from nice to perfect.  It does not seem to make a difference when making chips what the quality of the flower is.

8.  They can be purchased at the Bot Emporium but cannot be consigned there.

9.  To change the kind of charge you have to select "Neutralize" first and then charge with a different emotion.

I tried just charging the ones in the wild, and they charge just like the others, but since my Sim was busy doing other things I never got back to do more than one charge and don't know if the charges held.

[Carl]

Thanks for sharing all this, Joria. I don't have them in the Guide properly yet, and this definitely fills a hole in the information on the site. I hadn't got around to using them in a garden, but am happy to hear that the Sim will charge them with tend garden (makes me wonder if charge gives gardening xp after attaining level 1). I think the wait between charges is 20 minutes.. so if you had 3 to charge, your assessment of 8 sim minutes means you could go through 3, then go back to the first and begin the second set of charges.

I would work on editing this into the Plant List, but EA gave me a free copy of Roaring Heights to cover it on the Guide, so I'm busy with that

[Joria]

You're welcome, Carl.  Glad it helps.  I actually charged one and watched the clock to see how long it took from the start of the action to when the flower was charged.  It's a fairly quick action.  Still haven't gotten my ITF gnome yet!  The last one to finish them up.

I got the gold bundle for Roaring Heights but still having fun exploring and learning ITF.  I know you are having a blast with it.  I considered a roller coaster in ITF but then said, naaah.

Do you want the screenies I took of the different colors and actions?

[Carl]

Appreciate the offer, but I'll grab some quick shots when I update the list of Plants. I use max graphical settings and try to get the best angles I can for the Guide. I'm usually rather insistent on using my own shots when I am able. I am having fun looking around Roaring Heights now, which has me distracted from ItF. Just fixed up the classic car and found it's a very lucrative item, perhaps another thing to make the game too easy given its high value ($39k). The Roller Coaster would definitely look out of place in Oasis Landing, but it's got plenty of empty lots to develop such things.

I'm back and forth on Sims and Civ 5, trying not to disappoint either audience so quite busy lately. I will finish ItF as soon as I am able, but your notes help speed up the process for me. I can get other information from the game code and probably make the list have all people need to know about Crystal Flowers.

Thanks again, Joria

Carl

[SigBab]

I'm curious to know whether there's any other point to the crystal flowers other than making trait chips. Are they meaningfully lucrative in the self-employed gardening career? Can they be consigned or sold to the grocery store? Are there any recipes that use them? Do they make good fertilizer (if they can be used as fertilizer at all)? These are thing I know I can find out through my own play, but if anyone already knows the answers, I'd love it if you'd share.

I'm also interested to know if there's a certain level of gardening a Sim must have before she is able to plant them. My Sim had no gardening skill, and the option to "Plant" did not come up. I don't remember for sure now, but I think the only option for it was to "Give Gift" or something like that (I just remember that there was only one option, and "Plant" wasn't it). I don't know if this is a bug or a feature.