The Art of Killing Death

[Swede1992]

Alright, it was formerly known that you couldn't get children with the Grim Reaper after patch 1.3. However, I advocated a long time that it was without problems possible to make him move in with you through friendly interactions, after which he would be counted as a normal sim and you could get children with him, along with the completely black skin and all.

I tried this again recently for the first time after the latest patch and it's still possible to make him into a normal sim and get kids with him, but where before there were 3 Reapers acting at a given time (according to my personal testing) and a new spawning after one of them moved in, it's apparently now only one. And this guy don't regenerate after he's moved in, effectively making it possible to kill death completely (if he dies after moving in with you). Of course I tried that a great plenty and noone can die afterwards. Or more accurately, they die, but their corpses lay down in the street without anyone picking them up or giving them tombstones.

This goes the same if he just moves in with you without dying since he's then counted as a normal sim and won't go out reaping sims. Now, the reason for this topic is to say to everyone to be careful when experimenting with this from now on.  I lost a good 2h when I had to recover my old save game, which felt horrible. Also, can somebody verify whether this is a game-wrecking glitch just in my game, or if it's something that EA has put in to make it harder to get reaper babies?

[AriaGirl77]

Wow!  That's crazy!  I'm amazed at your experimentation Swede, and even more amazed with your results!  You would think that the game would automatically generate another grim rather than stop death all together.

[The Illuminator]

Well, I think the Grim Reaper wasn't supposed to move in.

[Swede1992]

Wow!  That's crazy!  I'm amazed at your experimentation Swede, and even more amazed with your results!  You would think that the game would automatically generate another grim rather than stop death all together.

Well someone has to check these things, don't they?

Well the thing is that the reapers did regenerate before (I still have a live Grim Reaper in one of my old saves), but now they've stopped. I'm suspecting that EA put this change in one of the latest patches without saying so explicitly. Maybe they think this is a too unusual situation as it is to make any notable difference.

[AriaGirl77]

I'm imagining a town full of grims.  Hee hee!

[Pam]

You're saying that you actually have Sim corpses laying around in your town?  Seriously?  Can you give us a screenshot of that?  That's just an amazing discovery, Swede!

[samoht04]

Great Story Plot  The disease has spread! 

[Swede1992]

You're saying that you actually have Sim corpses laying around in your town?  Seriously?  Can you give us a screenshot of that?  That's just an amazing discovery, Swede!

OK, as I said I dumped that file since it's clearly game-wrecking, but I recreated the situation quickly with cheats (but of course it's the same effect without them; I didn't use cheats the first time).

Here, two are dead in the Riverview library (died from starvation with cheat)

Here it is after a while and with a third sim, just to show you that the Grim Reaper has not arrived in just about 3 game hours. Now imagine this all around the neighbourhood!
There is no way for me to revive them again and the worst part is that they don't disappear from the household so it's very easy to get a full household of 8 corpses!

[Pam]

That is truly amazing.  I never expected anything like that to happen.

[Carl]

Wow the town could start looking like something out of Stephen King's 'The Stand'. If they aren't "harvested" I wonder if the game thinks to add new Sims to the neighborhood. That's a very interesting discovery. My Emperor of Evil's house would have been a lot crazier. It wouldn't have been so bad to have evidence of his wicked ways and not have all those ghosts breaking things and annoying him all night.

It's almost like they're really determined to discourage us from interacting with him. I wouldn't bother trying it now after learning of this.

[Sarah]

The dead Sims look like flies that have just given up and fallen to the ground curled up and dead o.O
Do new Sims spawn to take the place of the dead ones?

[Swede1992]

Do new Sims spawn to take the place of the dead ones?

I don't know. These sims don't disappear from the list of sims in your household (it is as if they're stuck in that state before the Reaper arrives where they are uncontrollable, but still in the household list), so it's possible that story progressions don't spawn new sims if these are not properly dead.

[Sarah]

Eek, so the game doesn't recognise them as officially dead because there's no Grim to ferry their Sim souls away? And I guess there's no way to delete them from your household either?

[Swede1992]

And I guess there's no way to delete them from your household either?

Well actually, with me testing this in a variety of ways when this first happened to me, I managed to take them away with Edit Town, separate out those people from the household and then erasing them. Seems to be the only way I came up with.

Now when I come to think about it, testingcheatsenabled true has a sim-erasing function, so I would guess that that would've worked, but I never tested it.

[The Illuminator]

So these sims could move into another house(hold) as well?