Game Patch: 06/19/2018 (Discussion)

[scoed]

@Rangervegas  I have seasons so I don't know but I think not having the pack would be a boon as far as gardening goes. The lack of seasons would mean no need to rotate plants as they don't go dormant thus allowing year round maximum growth as long as you plant them outside. This will far outstrip bees in development of many plants.

The gardening changes outside of seasons and bees are universal so the rest is a go. Splicing as it is now is an utter waste of time, at least in my opinion. The growth rate of things spliced on is low and getting the first rare unlocked veggie will take forever. If you want rare plants the easiest and sometime only way is  buy seed packs in bulk without using bb.showhiddenojects or raiding another played sims already established garden. I do not at all like the way they nerfed splicing, not one bit as a sim would be lucky to get all the rare plants you can graft for this way as it works now in a normal life span. This is not a good change.

[Playalot]

@Rangervegas  a simmer after my own heart! These kinds of things keep me awake at night too! lol I can help you with one question though; any fruit (or vegetable, herb etc) if taken from a spliced plant and then planted itself will revert back to being true to it's type.

@scoed  I agree, sadly, splicing seems like a fruitless exercise now. It's really only useful for maintaining an organized smaller sized seasonal garden. Really a shame as splicing/grafting was such a cool innovation to the game.

I came up with an easier way of coping with the seasons changing, rather than moving the plants in/out and all that annoying nonsense I simply move the roof. Plants do not need to be in a walled room to be considered sheltered. They literally only need to be under a roof. So I have made a formal garden divided into 4 areas with the plants all in planters with 4 posts at the corners of each of the 4 areas...made 3 glass roofs that fit over the gardens that sit on the posts and simply move this to allow whichever seasonal garden that is in season to be roofless. I can't upload a pic currently as my internet keeps timing out today (so annoying) but I think you'll get the idea.

[oshizu]

I came up with an easier way of coping with the seasons changing, rather than moving the plants in/out and all that annoying nonsense I simply move the roof. Plants do not need to be in a walled room to be considered sheltered. They literally only need to be under a roof. So I have made a formal garden divided into 4 areas with the plants all in planters with 4 posts at the corners of each of the 4 areas...made 3 glass roofs that fit over the gardens that sit on the posts and simply move this to allow whichever seasonal garden that is in season to be roofless. I can't upload a pic currently as my internet keeps timing out today (so annoying) but I think you'll get the idea.

@Playalot
Brilliant idea about moving the roof! Can't wait to see what it looks like when you get the chance to share images.
And thank you for directing my attention to Carl's new gardening video. I wouldn't have known it was there otherwise.

[Playalot]

No worries. Carl intends to make quite a few to help answer those queries about game play etc that are just so much easier to 'show than tell'. 

And yep, I'll add a pic when I can. For some reason my ISP seems to be having a tough time keeping up with supply/demand currently and seeing as it is choking at their server there is not much I can do about it.  (1st world issues I guess.)

[scoed]

@Playalot That is a good idea. A lot less work than rotating plants, yet nearly as good. Only issue is the plants with multiple seasons were you lose out on a season but the relative simplicity and labor savings in all but the intensive of sim gardeners who must max a garden ASAP or feel like they are slacking. The rotational gardening I am currently involves lists, four sections in a large greenhouse and a large out door garden are move to and from based on when next they go in season, a bunch of bee boxes, plenty of fishing to get the best fertilizers and lots of work each seasonal rotation. I get max results but it is a pain. I may just adopt your method. Moving a roof is easier than moving 25 to nearly 60 plants depending on season.

[Rangervegas]

@Playalot Yea I figure right now it's a race between Maxis to fix the MEGA NERF to splicing, and someone creating a mod to adjust the splicing percentage. LOL

I can't imagine this was deliberate on Maxis's part. The size of the nerf on this is just way too great for it to be intentional, someone prolly forgot to program in another zero, at the least.

[Playalot]

@scoed I wanted to test this before replying but when you plant a new garden in Winter the plants do not need watering immediately after planting. So getting those 10 plants watered/weeded for step 1 of the Botanist Aspiration can take some time. In fact even though your sim may be planting Winter seasonal plants in Winter they often have to start them off inside the house (or glasshouse etc) as the tool tip can say it is too cold for planting. It can also be too cold for planting even when the planter boxes are brought inside into a sims thermostatically heated house!

I wouldn't mind this so much if the plants would then need watering fairly promptly after this but in my test games it has often been a sim week or more before the newly planted winter garden needed watering at all. And often it would be a change of season before the plants would require any water and then not all of them!

[Tynynounours]

@Rangervegas I don't have season yet. And I didn't do gardening as full time project before so some things below may be wrong due to spending more attention to it.

For my test gardens : it takes longer to grow things. Indoor seems worse, but I may be wrong. If you want the first step of freelance botanist, plant 10 things and water them immediately. if you pass the 5am mark, they'll be marked as watered.

There are no harvestables in festivals planters. It's maybe in purpose given the now very hight value of flowers(love festival) and dragonfruits(spices). I think you can take cuttings, but I've no save with a level 5 gardener yet.

I found a dragonfruit in the middle fishing spot in the north of willow spring park, they're worth 250 simoleon at the lowest stage. I fished grenades at a few other places and found them in the City living produce stall, and they're worth a lot too. So fshing is a good starter. blueberries fell at 3 instead of 16 simoleons....

You can't study plants before level 2 I think, and not fertilise until level 3, so maybe spending a moment in willow creek's library studying the first levels of gardening while you have the flowers around grow enough to harvested may be helping. I feel like running around harvesting doesn't give as much experiences as before.

Fishing is needed as you'll need large fish to upgrade your plant quality. On well tended plants, one large fish allowed a plant to be evolvable immediately, when small dog poop and small fish were only bumping the evolution bar a bit. I'm not sure plants will evolve without fertiliser.

[scoed]

Plants will in time evolve minus furtalizer but it takes forever. On a test trash plant isolated from bees and never fertalized after multiple one week season length sim years it needed evolving. There is no way in my opinion a sim could plant a plant and evolve it to perfect in a normal lifespan minus bees and furtalizer. But it will evolve. A supply of large fish is now mandatory for a sim planning to get rich off of its garden.

[Playalot]

@Tynynounours  it takes 4x as long for sheltered plants to grow, need tending and so on. Festival plants can be used for taking cuttings. I'm glad you mentioned that running about harvesting wild plants doesn't seem to be giving as much experience as before as I had thought this too but then decided I was wrong. But it really seems that way. Normally my sim can run around a particular neighborhood a few times over the course of a day or two and gain a substantial amount of experience but now he gained less than half of what I had expected.

@scoed  Plants will eventually reach the point of being evolved with no input from a sim but, like you say it will take from 2/3 sims weeks or upwards. Also it isn't consistent. Some plants seem to reach evolution fairly promptly (with nothing being done to them, not even watered) while others in the same garden won't improve at all. Very odd.

If you are lucky enough to have some perfect harvestables from another garden in your save then using those are probably even better than an excellent fish and of course you can pause your game and queue up 7 fertilization actions from the one harvestable onto the one plant forcing it to be ready to evolve immediately. It's obviously a game exploit but it is there in the game.

[oshizu]

A question, please? *raises hand

Based on the above comments, may I assume that there's been a fix for taking cuttings from the wild and splicing the cuttings onto plants on the home lot?
I haven't been able to do that for a long while...

[Tynynounours]

So, something I didn't mentionned earlier, and need to confirm in other saves : Apparently, if you plant things, you need to water them asap. at least before you leave the lot.
 If you do leave the lot, they'll count as watered when you come back.

For the indoor growth, I hoped non Seasons games could be spared.

[Nindigo]

Yay, there is no longer fire inside the rocketship when your Sims' step into it And my Sims now grab drinks from their fridge - they never did that before. I love these little fixes that may not be gamebreaking, but still important for immersion.

[Rangervegas]

A question, please? *raises hand

Based on the above comments, may I assume that there's been a fix for taking cuttings from the wild and splicing the cuttings onto plants on the home lot?
I haven't been able to do that for a long while...

Well I guess "Sort of fixed" is about the speed of the changes. Cutting/Grafting definitely work now as intended, except now in general it takes longer for things to grow, longer to hit aspiration goals because the dumbed down watering plants, and added some improvements that are actually kind of ok.

But pretty much alot of the things they did were not well liked by people who are avid game gardeners. The biggest mess is that you've got about a 1/100 chance of getting something to grow on a plant that you specifically spliced that plant for, so it's introduced a grind component to something that was already a bit grindy to begin with. As far as this gardening update, it just seems like another case of '2 steps forward, one step back" that seems to characterize alot of Maxis' updates.

[Rangervegas]

@
Fishing is needed as you'll need large fish to upgrade your plant quality. On well tended plants, one large fish allowed a plant to be evolvable immediately, when small dog poop and small fish were only bumping the evolution bar a bit. I'm not sure plants will evolve without fertilizer.

Sorry....wait....I had to ask.....They ACTUALLY Put DOG POOP in the game???!?!? IN SIZES?!!?!?! 

I'm going to assume this is a Dogs and Cats thing? another pack I don't have yet. LOL I see it making a little sense, especially with a pets pack....but SRSLY? LOL