The June 19th patch made changes to the gardening system. There are now only five stages to evolving plants from normal to perfect. And if you have the Seasons EP some plants will grow during certain seasons and be dormant during others. Sounds good ... right? Except, like me, many players are finding it difficult to get plants to evolve in a timely manner. There are also changes in the splicing system. I am sharing some of my research in this thread and welcome any feedback of your own experiences.
Edit: Please be kind when posting.
Information I have found helpful
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Comments
(Not evolving)
Quote from SimGuruNick
"I'm not sure this is necessarily a bug, I think it might just be part of the new gardening design. Evolutions have slowed down, as it's now an end-game long-term goal. The Evolve commodity starts at around 50, and evolution is available at 100. Fertilize gives a solid amount of evolve commodity, depending on the quality of fertilizer but it's around 8. So you need to fertilize a plant about 7 times before it's ready to evolve. There are other factors that can affect the evolution rate as well, such as sheltering the plant. Sheltered plants have the benefit of being protected from the seasons but the evolution rate is much slower. Bluebells, for example, evolve 4x slower when sheltered than when not."
I will look into filing an issue regarding the Lessons not explaining all of this thoroughly enough. But if, after reading all of this, you believe that your game is still bugged and your plants just aren't evolving period, I would appreciate a save file to help us investigate."
Quote from SumGuruNick
"Splicing can produce a new harvestable, but there's supposed to be a lower chance that it does this. This is by design. For example, grafting a rose to a grape for bonsai buds will have the plant produce roses OR grapes OR bonsai buds, with the bonsai buds having the lowest chance. So if you're not seeing the new harvestable, I think it might just be a case of bad luck"
The seed packs in build/buy are supposed to provide "a chance" to get things like Orchids or Death Flowers. I have been experimenting with the bees. You can 'gather a swarm' and send them to get gifts. Sometimes they bring back rare seeds. Of course those with just the patch and not the Seasons EP do not have that option.
Yes, it's a lot more work than before, less money, more things to take into consideration when creating a garden - but isn't that what this game needs? Isn't that the complexity everyone misses in TS4?
Seasonal plants just make sense when seasons exist. Again, I will say, this is one of the little complex touches that make the game realistic. All I see is people complaining that 4 is too easy, things rarely make sense and generally there isn't much thought put into the features we're getting. Now that they actually re-worked a feature to function more realistically and give players some actual challenge, people are displeased...?
I didn't like the way gardening functioned before. It gave you way too much money and would make your sim rich so quickly I didn't even know what to do with all that money.
I'm tired of sloppy gameplay of TS4 and to me the gardening change is a move in the right direction. I understand it's a game, but games are about the challenge of achieving your goals. How is it fun to get your garden to be perfect in a few sim days?
I agree with you 100%.
I agree! Gardening felt over-powered to me before. However, I will say that it is a bit annoying when you can't complete the Gardening career task for the day, or it costs your Sim extra money to do so (for example, buying a seed packet is a requirement for the career, which my Sim only rolled after I'd bought loads of seed packets and planted a full garden to prepare her for her new career).
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My career gardener received a Cowplant berry as a promotion reward. I planted it in anticipation of needing it later to complete the final stage of the aspiration. The very next work day the work-at-home task was to feed a Cowplant. It was still a baby plant and not yet full grown! Tasked failed.
Of course once it did mature the task did not appear again.
Yes I agree with this. At first I thought the revamped gardening was too easy because my sims didn't have to water their plants as frequently... but as time goes on I see it's actually harder - because of plants becoming dormant, not as many harvestables, splicing is not guaranteed to get the third "new" plant - etc.
I like the challenge.
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Since the system is new, we can hope they'll be tweaking and perfecting it in future patches. I play with aging switched off and age my sims when I feel that they're "ready" so I have plenty of time to complete all the gardening related goals and job tasks but people who play with aging, especially the shorter lifespans should be able to enjoy gardening too.
One thing I'm thankful for is that we don't have to roam the world in search of some of the rarer plants anymore. Since the world isn't open and the plants in other towns only grow when your sim is present there it was a true nightmare! Now, that is NOT the challenge I want from the game
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That's why in the new system they also added glass roofs so your can make a green house, if you have plants indoors (like real life) in winter and when out of season they still grow as where it usually says what season they grow in it says 'Sheltered' .
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That's true , though I had a work-around for that: I let my Sim 'camp' for a couple of days in each neighbourhood (though I only did that in Newcrest and Magnolia Promenade, since I was playtesting the start of the Build Newcrest Challenge). I made a special room for it with a tent, the portable shower from Outdoor Retreat, the woohoo/toilet bush brom Get Together and some other camping accesories (like a cooler), and moved that one around the neighbourhoods. (It's on the gallery if you want to see it)
@Sassie These are my points of concern - that of how long it takes to evolve and of only having a very slim chance of ever getting a rare plant by grafting. Loving this workaround I too have several rooms on the gallery with bare essentials for survival. I need to remember to have my Sims pack a tent, cooler and shower so they can spend time in each area.
Gardening issues since Patch 1.44.22 (Gardening Overhaul)
I do like the ability to buy rare seeds - I could never find the cherry trees in previous games, and since my Sims only eat the superfood salad, I needed the cherries to get the pomegranate. I also appreciate that food made with 'normal' and 'nice' quality harvestables is no longer inedible, especially since it takes years (literally) to get plants to evolve.
every day at 5 am, the plants on the lot and in the neighborhood start producing their harvestables. by 5:20, they've produced whatever they're going to have for that day. and sometimes, the rare produce will show up in household inventory instead of on the plants (i had that happen with cowplant berries, someone else mentioned it with bird of paradise flowers)
i've made a list of the new apparent max number of harvestables each plant can have, it's posted in another thread about gardening (the one that also has what seasons every plant grows in). just know that some days, plants will produce one less than their max. and those days, all plants of that type produce less. like, plasma fruit spawns 3 fruit a day, then one day, it just produced 2. and the sim growing it lived in forgotten hollow and all four of the wild plasma fruit trees also only spawned 2 fruit that day. the next day, they all had 3 again
and all of this is apparently why they added the 'uncommon' and 'rare' seed packs. to have a chance at getting those plants that were once mostly best from splices
also, for orchid, you used to be awarded one for completing the space rock collection. if that's still the case, it's another way to get that flower