A few collection related questions

KirbySkywalker

1) Where do I get Alexandrite? I know it’s from JA, but is it from the little rock piles in Selvadorada? Or is it from excavating or treasure chests? If it’s from the rock piles, where can I find more of them? All I can find is a few by the vacation homes.

2) How can I get the bizarre plant to produce fruit? I can plant it and evolve it to perfect but it never produces fruit, it just eventually dies.

3) Can you get a perfect Cowplantberry seed? Do cowplants produce their seeds/fruit so you can collect it? I made a challenge to get a perfect of every plantable (the fruit/seed, not just the plant)

4) what’s the best way to get fossils? I find limestone hard to come by. Is there a better way to get them than walking around looking for dig piles?

NRowe

I can only offer a word on the last one. Which you may already know. When searching for dig sites (limestone and the gem or metal ones) don’t forget you have to be in an area for an extended time before the spawners do their work. Often it takes repeat visits and Sim hours to get something good going. Your home neighbourhood can be a help because your Sim spends so much time there.

kalaksed

alexandrite can be found in both the rock piles and occasionally in the excavation sites. it's also an occasional thing from treasure chests (though i believe mostly the ones that aren't the end of the temple). it's a rare gem, so tends to take a while to get

as for the gem spawners, i know there are a few right outside the gate furthest to the right in the area with four gates (to the right of the temple entrance), there are also a few in the second gate from the left if that gate happens to be unlocked on a trip (the fishing area at the base of the royal baths area)

for bizarre fruit, i've heard that you want to splice the plant into a 'regular' plant like basil or snapdragons. then the plant will produce bizarre fruit of the same quality of the plant

the same is supposed to be doable with cowplant berries, though harder because you can't take cuttings from cowplants, so it's got to be one of the two splices that will actually make the cowplant berry (dragonfruit onto snapdragon or snapdragon onto dragonfruit). and then you have to wait for them to actually produce the berry, which can take a while (but isn't as bad as orchids, from what i've heard)

as for fossils, they're not the easiest to find out and about, esp after cats and dogs was released. there used to be three different types of spawners in most worlds: fossil, crystal, metal. and still, over half the time, each of these would give you either a map or a capsule (for a mysim trophy) instead of the type of spawner they are. cats and dogs introduced the 'dig' site that pets and sims can dig into that give you other random things (mostly repair parts or fish in my case). you'll want to have your sim(s) dig up all those dig sites and harvest all the spawners you find in the neighborhood and wait for them to respawn

also know there are some fossils that can only be found in certain areas. there are...i think three unique to selvadorada and one that can only be found via the get to work lots (sixam or, if you're extremely lucky, the science lab)

and, if all else fails on the metals, crystals, fossils you can cheat them up. when i'm actually working on collections for individual sims, i hate doing this, but i'm all about it if i want to use specific things for decor in a house... or, like i feel a sim is fond of a certain type of crystal for whatever reason. also use it to purposefully give some fake artifacts as decor

if you don't know how to cheat them up and want to know, i'll place it in spoilers below:

first up, you'll want to hit ctrl + shift + c and enter two commands:
'testingcheats true' (unless you've already entered that at some point in the save. but it's a good one to start with, just in case)
and follow that with
'bb.showhiddenobjects' (that one reveals...well, a lot of stuff. all the collectibles, debug items and more. great for finding interesting bits of clutter)
once that's done, you can either search the items up by name or scroll through the misc section under the decoration header to find virtually all the collectibles

KirbySkywalker

Thanks for the answers, they were helpful I have almost all the collections completed now.

I’m still struggling to find the ever elusive Alexandrite. I Have have spent days in Selvadorada opening chests and exploring every path. I even loaded all my other sims to see if any of them had it and none of them did.

Anybody have any other tips to help me find Alexandrite?