For me, they're a little lacking. Don't get me wrong, I love how cute some of them are and I really like the fact they made something for everyone and every Sim. However... I was expecting a little more than a glorified death flower.
The only things I can do with my familiars on my Spellcaster is dismiss them or rename them, I can only have one at a time (which is ok, but imagine having a dragon, bunnerfly and leaf bat at the same time?!) and as far as I know, they only do 3 things total: Save your sim from death (this I haven't tested as I dismissed my familiar before my Sim died of magical overload), boost exp gain rate on your spellcaster (not 100% sure about this), and "talk" via notifications that you may or may not miss in the middle of the game.
I kinda wanted to be able to pet them and feed them (which I understand wouldn't work for all of them), have them do more than just be like the streaming drone following your Sim around. As a Sims 1 player who loved the dragons in that game, I was really excited when I learned dragons would be an option. I spent like 3 days in-game waiting for the dragon to come up, and while it's a perfect dragon for Sims 4's art style, it could've been so much more than it is.
However, this is just what I've experienced, and I'm curious what your opinions are on the subject, especially as I haven't found any threads about them!
Twists In Time And Space (Updated December 2nd 2018. New discord server!)
Bob Bobson (Updated August 12th 2019)
Comments
I do however... love, love that you can make your pet a familiar and summon them.. and dismiss them. That they get sparkles when you do. I'm not sure yet how effective they are.. I have gone to duel and my sims pet ran over to the duel area which made me feel better about it. I kept going though and eventually she was a bit farther away. I haven't seen how effective real pets are yet, but I intend to find out.. if I can stop getting cursed instead of dying.
Having that option has made me want to have pets more often, usually I only play them in my shorter term rotational houses.. I get a taste then move on.
I’ve been wishing for proper pet dragons for ages. So I got excited about the dragon familiars until I discovered that they don’t have needs or anything.
Aesthetically though, they are well done. And they are a nice feature to have even if they could have been better.
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
I kinda hoped that they would act as a shield all the time and make you be careful about dueling and interacting with other spellcasters so that there was a sense of danger with walking around in the magic realm which would also prevent you from leveling up too quickly.
Doesn't sound impossible to do with mods actually, if casting spells are the same as any action, maybe you could add so they cast spells on each other autonomously.
Just kidding, but seriously I really hope that it doesn’t exclude us from getting a proper pet dragon and phoenix in future packs, like, idk, in a back to the medieval EP?
Weeeeell you can if you set your cat or dog as your familiar. I like that there is that integration between packs.
I like that they have glowing eyes too.
How many familiars can we have summoned at once again?
My Mood:
1
I agree that it would be nice if they could be talked to as well, but I'm okay with them just being there occasionally commenting on the notification wall.
How come we can't do that? Is it the animations? Probably the animations. But come on.
they/he
simblr
It makes rubber ducky noises
Agreed. I thought they were going to be a little like the daemons from His Dark Materials in that they follow the sim around, but could be dismissed at will, and I assumed you could treat them as a sort of pet. I like them but I would like them even more if sims could interact with them.
i am so stoked you said this
Harry - owl
Ron - Leafbat
Hermione - cat
Dumbledore - phoenix
Snape - skull
Hagrid - dragon
Neville - glowfrog
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017