Which to Buy: Chicken Coop or Gardening Station? «123...Next Go

lanlyn

I've been playing the Sims 3 for a while now. I have all the expansions, 4 stuff packs, and 4 separate worlds. But I think this is the first post I've made to the forum.

I'd like to get either the Chicken Coop or the SwiftGro Gardening Station. They both sound like they'd add something to my game. I've been searching and reading a little about each in this forum, but thought I'd ask for the latest info.

Is there anything I should be aware of about these items? Any unsolved glitches? Disappointments? Good things? Which do you guys think adds the most playtime ... in your opinion, of course?

Karritz

I think the gardening station unless you have the tractor.

HollownessDevour

I love stones throw venue build/buy and swiftgro so much, I like it cause 1-2 of them is enough for most gardens unless you want a huge garden then 3-4+ Especially if you don't have the space for the tractor. Plus if you have the in to the future soil rugs your greenhouse can be full indoors without unfinished room moodlet.

Chicken coop is fun but I don't use as much

lanlyn

HollownessDevour: I do have Into the Future--only bought it recently. I just read about the soil rugs today. I didn't even know I had them! Can I plant anything on the rugs, even trees? Do they work differently than the planters? I saw a thread here that said that trees can't be planted indoors without a cheat.

Karritz

You don't need cheats to plant trees inside when using soil rugs.

You do need to leave more than single story height for trees and gardening station.

Rugs let you plant more in a given area than you can plant in pots.

A_Mom

I didn't know you could plant on the soil rugs either. I thought it was just for the decorative plants. That's good to know. Thank you HollownessDevour and Karritz.

I agree about the Gardening Station. I find I have more use for it than I do the Chicken Coop. Especially to identify seeds so I don't unknowingly plant yet another bell pepper plant.

And the Sunflower is cute and a lot of fun. If you buy the whole venue (don't know if the gardening station is sold separately or not) you'll really like the glass roof pieces. They make nice sunrooms and greenhouses on your home lots.

Conclue

Well my advice? if your looking to make an empire of harvestables then get this PC item; if your thinking it will make your gardening more fun, it won't. It actually takes away from that hard work and dedication factor, almost entirely other than weeding.

The chicken coop is useless. LOL But if you "must have it" (like I do) then it's cute. Don't get me wrong, it's not useless, but it's so limited you forget their there. The worst thing that happens if you ignore it is that the chicks grow up and take off after you've ignored harvesting the eggs. Basically, you can ignore this PC item even being on the lot and you only remember you have it because pop ups will alert you of stuff going on with it. I don't know if my Sims are keeping them fed or not, but I'm sure not. LOL

If you have the tractor I don't know that you need the gardening station. It looks awesome in game however, and is one of my more favorite items. I tend to only use them for those plants that take forever to grow (high quality, high end harvestables) because it takes the fun out of it. If you wanna take your Sims from rags to riches however, "The Newbies" in Riverview went from their Sims 1 house (relived that in 3, one of my favorite saves) to a beautiful 60x60 gardening home/barn/lot with all the fixings and money to send the kids on their own. LOL

However, I'd wait to see what the March set brings before making a decision? I have a feeling that we might be getting a miniature type of greenhouse/plotter stand type PC item that allow us to grow all this stuff. I'd be surprised to just see 8 harvestable's given in a set? IDK they do seem to be getting more creative with how they add stuff to the game. probably why half the stuff doesn't work right. LOL

Sallidra20

I concur with the others. While the chickens are adorable, I always forget to feed them and collect eggs. :oops: I am a bad chicken mama. The station helps cut down gardening time a lot and who doesn't like that?

belakisses

Chicken Coop! Fighting the chicken is hilarious!

lanlyn

Thanks for the responses and info!

It sounds like most of you think the gardening station is more useful; although the chickens might be fun.

I always have my sims garden, but gardening takes sooo much time. I thought the station would help. I don't have the tractor. I tried a green dragon, but I had an issue with it freezing. I should hatch another one I guess and try again. I also just sent one couple into the future, so maybe I can learn how to make a plumbot(?) that can help garden.

If I just bought the station, not the venue--doesn't it come with the glass roof pieces and the full greenhouse window?

Karritz: For trees, does the ceiling have to be two stories or can it just be one with a frieze?

Conclue: I will wait to see what March offers. Good point!

Thanks again for the help.

lanlyn

belakisses!

Those chickens are hard for me to resist. If I use soil rugs and plumbots, maybe I should get the chicken coop. HA!

Karritz

A frieze might work.

Try one tree with a single story and see how much you need to add on.

I was thinking about using CFE cheat to make the walls higher. Then I decided not to bother for now. I had problems with steps up to the next level and didn't want to spend hours trying to work out how to do it.

I found tractor + soil rugs + plum bots is the way to go for me.

Dragon freezes while the game calculates the harvest. So the bigger the harvest the longer the freeze. Especially if there is a computer lacking power. I have 16 GB RAM and i7 processor so even a big garden has only a few seconds of freeze.

rumbutter

defo the station also if your going to build your own greenhouse if you have the seasons expansion pack you must weatherise the greenhouse you build otherwise snow and rain will get into your greenhouse all you have to do there is before you place a roof on your greenhouse use a floortile (even a carpet tile will do ) with the into the future expansion pack we also got glass floor tiles which i have used for a greenhouse roof and if you plant in winter indoors or in your greenhouse for about a sim day the plant will be dormant but will be fine after that OH and for some of my greenhouses instead of the greenhouse windoes i usd a basegame window named something like window shmindow

CravenLestat

The chicken coop is great in my opinion..keep em happy and pretty much everytime you collect eggs you will get a exotic egg that sells for 5,000 simoleans.TIP!! sell it right away because in 24 hours will rot in your inventory.

lanlyn

Karritz: Good info. Thanks! Too bad the tractor can't be bought separately.

RE: my frozen dragon. He didn't freeze while harvesting. It happened to my two dragons at the same time, in the house. They just got stuck with their wings outstretched. I couldn't access them at all through a sim. I went to buy/build mode and was able to grab one into family inventory, but he never unfroze even when I tried setting him out again or restarting the game. I ended up selling him from family inventory. The other dragon, I couldn't even pick up. I had to Object-Delete it.

rumbutter: Thanks for the heads-up about weatherizing. I do have Seasons. I love the expansion, but it does put some limitations on gardening. That's when I started looking at the gardening station and other indoor options. I ended up turning off rain because it was always raining! My sims were miserable out in the garden. They would pop open their umbrella, walk over to the next plant, put the umbrella away, weed, pull the umbrella back out--all while in a bad mood about being soaked ... crazy! :-o

lanlyn

CravenLestat: Hmm, I read about the nice exotic eggs. Sounds like the coop would be an easy money making setup!

rumbutter

lanlyn wrote:

Karritz: Good info. Thanks! Too bad the tractor can't be bought separately.


rumbutter: Thanks for the heads-up about weatherizing. I do have Seasons. I love the expansion, but it does put some limitations on gardening. That's when I started looking at the gardening station and other indoor options. I ended up turning off rain because it was always raining! My sims were miserable out in the garden. They would pop open their umbrella, walk over to the next plant, put the umbrella away, weed, pull the umbrella back out--all while in a bad mood about being soaked ... crazy! :-o

i know right silly sims

actually in one of my games i have a basement built and using the soil rugs from the into the future my sim grows the different grapes for his nectar makeing he tends and waters them there

Karritz

The weather is what started me on my quest to build the perfect indoor garden.

I've found the gardening stations interfere with the floor immediately above them and it is best to leave a space above them even if not planting trees.

The thing the tractor does that the gardening station doesn't do is harvest and weed.

Bots with the gardening chip keep working in the garden. I've found I have to tell them to use the tractor. That's a more efficient way of doing things if it isn't glitched.

I will be very happy when we get the. 8 new harvestables next week.

I need to get my current sim married this weekend as I want pictures of my wedding centre. But I also want a sim to start making lots of nectar as I've never done much with nectar. I have a genie with a green thumb living in the household. He looks after the garden and is invaluable in keeping the house all clean and sparkly. And can clean a smelly sim in an instant. That's good when I forget they have to go to work soon.

I can see lots of gardening for my sims in the near future.

Only problem is I have not much spare time these days and have other things to do too. Things that don't involve a computer.

Flashygrrl

Def the SwiftGro in my opinion. The coop is fun but nearly useless except the random exotic egg.

LatteCrab

IF you have to choose between one or the other, the SwiftGro (Gardening) is better.
I DO enjoy the baby chicks too. SO adorable, & surprisingly similar to how real chicks look! :shock:
But as others have said, I forget about them sometimes. :oops:
(luckily for my RL kids, that a sims-only issue for me )

I have the tractor & harvest stands, without the venues.
(goodie boxes/bonus' only gave me the 2 PC items, not the venues )
After seeing what's in store (lol), coming up for us in the Store, I can't wait to have those 2 venues in it's entirety.
I want to make a country homestead with every pieces of country/farm-type thing I can find! (never made one yet :oops: )

Whatever you decide on, (or to wait for March's set) I hope you have much fun with it! :thumbup:

lanlyn

I appreciate all the feedback, guys!

SimplySimazing: I was looking at those harvest stands ... nice idea.

Karritz: What's the deal about the 8 new harvestables? Will they only be available with certain venues?

I had been away from Sims for a while, but recently bought new things during sales (Movie Stuff, Worlds Bundle, Dragon Valley, Barnacle Bay, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future). A lot of new things at once! I'm still exploring it all.

I only have 642 simpoints right now (from that bonus ad button!), so it's either spend MORE money or stick with what I have.

The family I had been playing lived in Riverview. They got pretty wealthy and had accumulated a lot of things. I also had done a bunch of building in Riverview. It took forever to load my game, so I moved the household, but sold their furnishings (except for some things in family inventory). They're now in Appaloosa Plains because they had a cat, dog, and a pony. The mother is a gardener and already reached her wish for a Perfect Garden. Now I have her in a nectar making career.

I have a very good computer, but still don't want to go overboard again. So I thought it would be better to play more than one family and spread the new content out between worlds. I have one couple living in Moonlight Falls and visiting Isla Paradiso (nraas Traveler mod). The other couple lives in Monte Vista and just stepped into the future.

murfeel

lanlyn wrote:

Karritz: Good info. Thanks! Too bad the tractor can't be bought separately.

RE: my frozen dragon. He didn't freeze while harvesting. It happened to my two dragons at the same time, in the house. They just got stuck with their wings outstretched. I couldn't access them at all through a sim. I went to buy/build mode and was able to grab one into family inventory, but he never unfroze even when I tried setting him out again or restarting the game. I ended up selling him from family inventory. The other dragon, I couldn't even pick up. I had to Object-Delete it.

Debug Enabler's Object-Reset can fix this.

lanlyn

murfeel wrote:

Debug Enabler's Object-Reset can fix this.

I've never used Debug Enabler, but I do have nraas Master Controller. It has an object-reset command. I didn't think to try it. Wonder if it would do the same thing as the Debug Enabler command?

Thank you for this suggestion. There are times when I've had ores or gnomes get stuck in fences and had no way to pick them out. A reset might work. If Master Controller won't fix it, I'll install Debug Enabler.:thumbup:

EDIT: To test things out, I just went into an old save and found the stuck dragons. I didn't even have to use a mod command, but I think I had the testingcheatsenabled true turned on. I used shift-ctrl, then clicked the dragon. Found the reset option there. That did the trick. Sure which I'd have tried this originally.

Glad to have the reminder. I forget this stuff! :oops:

KnowNukes

I like both; I tend to use the chicken coop more often because you CAN ignore it and the chickens never die off. Sim children can interact with it, while the gardening station is still just YA or older. There's a funny animation when you get a new batch of chicks that I won't spoil although you may have heard of it already. The coop's sounds aren't intrusive; even though you sometimes hear a rooster crow it isn't very loud and I've never noticed any Sims waking up from it. You sims sometimes harvest rotten eggs and immediately get the 2-hour countdown from Nauseous to vomiting; the super-eggs are only slightly pretty and will rot in your Sim's inventory or if left out for display; they look like a somewhat shiny regular-sized egg and not like the special festival eggs from Seasons.

The Swiftgro item that's available now separate from the Stones-throw venue DOES include greenhouse windows and a set of decorative greenhouse roof objects. The greenhouse windows are multi-paned and appear to be partly open but are weather-proof, they are also less expensive than most windows. You don't have to use them. The roof deco objects have to be placed on a flat roof; the flat roof becomes invisible while you're on the same lot but in overhead map view you just see the flat roof. The roof sections kinda seem to let more light in when used over the swiftgro object but I tried using them as skylights in an interior courtyard and didn't get any light through them. The swiftgro has its own lights (which stay on constantly) so maybe that's what I was seeing. Haven't tried them with the new transparent ITF floor tiles.

If you make a greenhouse by enclosing a room on an un-tiled ground area you'll get the Unfinished Room negative moodlet; I just recently installed Into The Future and haven't tried using the plantable carpets which might counter this. Also, before the new expansion pack you couldn't plant in these rooms without either deleting a section of wall temporarily or using the Moveobjects cheat; I don't know whether that's been changed.

You can use the Swiftgro without a greenhouse and it still accelerates your plants quite a lot, in fact it's a bit too much! I found a lot of plants became harvestable twice a day; I felt guilty if I let anything go (does stuff rot on the plant in this game?) so my gardening Sims still had long days. What I like the most is you can fertilize all your plants with one item, so you don't have to use so much garlic or whatever you prefer. The megaphone is fun for laughs a couple times. The item covers a 6x6 area but part of that is taken up by the bench, so you get about 24 tiles usable for plants, which is the same as you get from the base game sprinkler. The Swiftgro seems to be scheduled to run its sprinklers twice a day and sometimes a few plants would start to wilt (maybe on hot days?) but always recovered; you can manually run its sprinklers by clicking on it.

You can place other furnishings under the Swiftgro. Sims seem oblivious to the sprinkler or fertizer and don't get soaked so I suppose they could sit & read gardening books out there, surrounded by basil and onions Sims can't play under them but also never complain about NOT being able to play with them, unlike the regular sprinkler. Haven't tried having a Simbot work under one.

lanlyn

KnowNukes: Wow! So happy to read what you'd shared. It tells me a lot. Gives me info I didn't even think to ask about. I like that the sims can't play in the station sprinkler. That gets annoying! Fertilizing sounds good too. I usually only fertilize on first planting because it's so time consuming. With my witch sim, though, I have her stand there and conjure apples and use the "nice" ones for fertilizer. They're not the best choice, but the process is easy--and cheap.

I did some experimenting last night with the grow rugs. I haven't bought the station yet, just wanted to check out the rugs. I put them on a second floor. My sim was able to plant on them with no problem, even trees. The rugs come in different sizes that you can fit together. You can recolor them too. They start out looking like green AstroTurf. I toned down the green with some brown--found a couple of grass patterns under Misc. Maybe the patterns came with ITF also. I was able to put regular sprinklers on the rugs too.

I put windows all around the room, so it looked like a greenhouse. But I couldn't find the ITF glass tiles though. Does anyone know where they're located? I would like to see how they look placed as a flat roof. The glasshouse roof objects look so nice in the pictures! They would be a nice addition and something different from anything I have.

Karritz

The glass tiles are in the same place as you found the soil mats. Under rugs in the living room in buy mode.