Birthday Ambrosia Bummer

[Qillz]

My household worked toward the goal of producing ambrosia before any of the adults hit elder. It was right down to the wire. We were able to grow a life plant and harvest 2 fruit as well as catch a few deathfish while our cook hit max skill and finished reading the ambrosia recipe on the morning of her birthday!

She made a serving, ate it and saw her life age bar drop back to 23 days until elder!

That night she aged up anyway!

Through her skill, everyone else in the house will remain forever young, while she lives on as a barren old woman.

Poor Cookie.

[TheChronicR]

Did you make her eat Ambrosia after you received the birthday notification? When you receive it, even Ambrosia won't help to stop the aging process that midnight.

[Qillz]

Yep. That was precisely it. The announcement that it was her birthday came that morning while she was reading the recipe!

If only she had gotten that last skill point one hour earlier...

[TheChronicR]

Yes, if only... Good luck next time!

[Qillz]

I had another Ambrosia issue last night which raised several questions...

I had 4 elder sims reaching the end of their life bars (2 already full). We all went fishing and pulled in a few deathfish, my chef prepared Ambrosia and they all ate it and reset their life meters to 69 day elders. Yippie!

That night Death came and took one of them in her sleep anyway!

(This is a bit off topic, but related... they had 4 deathflowers in the "sim" inventory. Do I need to use it on Death or is it supposed to be automatic? And the "sim" inventory is weird... it seems to be shared inventory, but I often get messages saying this or that "has been placed in (a certain sims) inventory" and sometimes certain items do not appear. Anyone know exactly how the PS3 Sims 3 inventory works?).

I immediately cooked another dish of Ambrosia, but my ghost sim wouldn't touch it. Aren't they supposed to be drawn to that stuff?

In the end, it's fine (aside from the mourning moodlets) because my dead sim was a master painter and my house is filled with her paintings. Upon her death they all increased in value! And I planned to let her and her partner die as soon as their child graduated and was ready to take over the garden. 

[TheChronicR]

In the end, it's fine (aside from the mourning moodlets) because my dead sim was a master painter and my house is filled with her paintings. Upon her death they all increased in value! And I planned to let her and her partner die as soon as their child graduated and was ready to take over the garden. 

Yep, that's a famous Painting exploit. It's like in real life - your art costs even more after your death!

[Hosfac]

I wouldn't really see that as an exploit, unless you urged your poor sim to participate in a particularly dangerous activity for the purposes of killing them to raise the value of paintings lol.

Deathflowers are used automatically.  However, in the PC version, this only buys an elderly sim a couple of days at the most unless you see to their aging before Grim stops by again.  It's possible that in the console version that Deathflowers just don't save sims from death by natural causes.  However, I've never played the console version so this is only a theory.

Death by old age is the final age transition of a sim (a birthday of sorts).  It could be possible that the game decided that "today is this sim's last birthday," and aged them up at the appropriate time, even though you had reduced their age prior to that.

[Qillz]

Death by old age is the final age transition of a sim (a birthday of sorts).  It could be possible that the game decided that "today is this sim's last birthday," and aged them up at the appropriate time, even though you had reduced their age prior to that.

That makes sense from a programming standpoint.

As for the deathflowers, since I'm new to The Sims 3 and this was my first natural death with deathflowers in inventory, I did not know what to expect. And frankly, with the entire household freaking out I didn't have the presence of mind to try to interact with Grim.

[Pam]

Deathflowers are used automatically.  However, in the PC version, this only buys an elderly sim a couple of days at the most unless you see to their aging before Grim stops by again. 

In my experience, giving Grim a Deathflower resets the age back to the beginning of whatever life phase the Sim is in at the time of death.

[Esther1981]

I had a glitch like that! She had her adult birthday but her age said YA so she went to the mirror and it set her age at the end of adulthood almost an elder. I immediately made her eat Ambrosia and made her age reset to the beginning of adulthood. I then saved and exited. The next time I opened it, she was an elder. Man was I upset!!

[Hosfac]

In my experience, giving Grim a Deathflower resets the age back to the beginning of whatever life phase the Sim is in at the time of death.

Perhaps that's been changed then, because my only experience with that was with my very first sim.  I didn't even know what the Deathflower was for back then, and I'm not even sure where it came from (possibly a "leftover" from science career, but again I'm guessing).  Or perhaps I just remember it wrong...it was a long time ago.