Not So Berry Sims 4 Base Game

[Marti Buday]

Sims4 Cowplants are in the base game so all Sims 4 players can find a Cowplant Berry and raise it into a Cowplant. There are numerous ways to obtain a Cowplant Berry both in the base game and through additional DLC packs.

The main way to get a Cowplant Berry involves grafting plants. Grafting a Dragonfruit plant with a Snapdragon plant will produce a Cowplant Berry. This sounds simple enough, except Dragonfruit cannot be found out in the world. At least not in the base game. You will need to graft that, too. The grafting combo for Dragonfruit is Strawberry+Snapdragon.

Of course, this is a pretty time-consuming method of obtaining a Cowplant Berry. If your Sim likes to fish, Cowplant Berries can also be caught while fishing in the Desert Bloom park in Oasis Springs at the tiny fishing hole located at the very back of the area, nestled between rocks. There are other fishing spots that yield Cowplant Berries, especially in DLC packs but this spot has a particularly high Cowplant Berry catch rate.

If Seasons is installed, Cowplant Berries and Dragonfruit also have a chance of appearing in Rare Seed Packets. Snapdragons and Strawberries can sometimes be found inside their respective Seasonal Seed Packets.

The best way to ensure that you will remember to feed your Sims 4 Cowplant on schedule is to place your Cowplant somewhere easily visible on your home lot. Somewhere you are focusing your attention most of the time and would be impossible to miss. The front yard, close to the front door is a good place for most people, especially if they have Sims who leave the lot daily for work.

You will know your Sims 4 Cowplant is hungry when you see it sticking out its tongue with a slice of cake on the end of it. When your Cowplant does this, you should drop everything you are doing and feed it immediately. Your Cowplant will only have its tongue out for a maximum of 24 hours before it dies and becomes a very sad-looking skeleton in your garden. Make sure you also pet it and play with it whenever you feed it just for good measure.

When kept well-fed, Sims 4 Cowplants are perfectly harmless. But a hungry Cowplant is a dangerous Cowplant. When a Cowplant becomes hungry, it will stick out its cake tongue. This cake tongue serves a very specific purpose; to lure Sims into trying to take the slice of cake. When a Sim does fall for the trap and go for the cake, the Cowplant will pull the Sim into its mouth and swallow them whole!

The first time this happens, it will regurgitate your Sim back up, sparing their life, but if this happens again while the Sim still has a negative moodlet from the Cowplant, it will eat them for good and your Sim will Die by Cowplant.

Gardening is a skill in The Sims 4. Gardening skill allows Sims to grow better plants (which sell for more and taste better in recipes), garden more efficiently, and get more out of gardening as an activity. Being Focused is the optimal emotion for building the Gardening skill. Reaching level 10 Gardening is the requirement for the Green Thumb Achievement.

Gardening is mainly built by tending various garden plants. Sims also read a gardening skill book to level the skill more quickly. After reaching level 2, sims can "Research Gardening" on any computer or Research Plant when interacting with a plant. At level 4, Sims can "Talk to Plants," which will build the gardening skill and satisfy social needs.

Starting with level 1 gardening, a Sim can plant flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables on their property, either outdoors on bare earth, or in flower pots. It appears that in Sims 4 there is no skill restriction on rare plants like it was in Sims 3, so you can plant uncommon and rare plants with a low-skilled sim. You can get your first plants for free by harvesting plants, growing wild on public lot. Then you can use them for planting. The easiest way to start a garden is to purchase seed packets at a computer or by clicking on a flower pot, or buying the harvestable from shops around the world. Once the Sim received the seed packet, opening it will give the sim one (the higher level packs) or multiple (the starter packs) items. This items are seeds, although they have same icon and model as grown fruit/flower/whatever.

Warning, you can eat or plant seeds, but you can't sell them from inventory. (Actually, you can plant those unwanted seeds and sell plants in building mode. This way you can return some of your simoleons you spent on seeds.) So be aware not to buy and open too many seed packs, since your inventory will be full of duplicate, tedious to get rid off seeds.

Once the seed or fruit is placed in a spot (on the ground) where it can be planted, the "Plant" interaction will appear when the Sim clicks on it. Be aware that actual location of the planted seed may shift a little to match the grid. If you place several seeds on the ground and ordered your sim to plant one, he will automatically continue planting all other seeds, laying on dirt.

After it is planted, the Sim can water it to keep it healthy until it grows. When a plant needs to be watered again, its base will appear dry and the foliage change hue (although visual difference is subtle). Every 12 Sim hours that it remains tended to, it will increase in health, until it is ready to increase in quality. Every 12 Sim hours that it remains untended (unwatered, covered in weeds, or surrounded by bugs), it will decrease in health until it dies. Its current health is represented by a progress bar separated in segments when highlighting the plant. If the colored part of the bar is closer to the previous segment it means the plant is in poor health, halfway is normal or just evolved and closer to the next segment means its close to evolving. Each segment of the bar represents one of the quality stages of a plant. All plants need to be tended to at least once on a daily basis, meaning that even if a plant is not tended to for 12 hours, fully tending it once will provide double the progress of what it lost. None of the plants found on Sixam in The Sims 4: Get to Work require watering.Weeds and bugs occur randomly and can occur every 24 hours, or not at all. Plants that require weeding will produce small white and yellow flowers around their base. Plants that require the Sim to spray for bugs will have a large number of bugs flying around the plant and will make an audible 'buzzing' sound. Despite the name, the Sixam Mosquito Trap will have no effect on how often plants have to be sprayed for bugs. Starting at level 7, Sims will have the ability to "Tend Garden" which will enable them to autonomously move between all plants within range, taking care of any tending that the plants need. "Tend Garden" does not autonomously fertilize or harvest plants.

Every so often, plants will produce harvestables. How often depends on the plant (see the table in section "Harvestables" below). When it comes time to harvest a plant, it will produce 10 harvestables (if you wait for it to fully grow). These harvestables can now be eaten, sold, used to plant new plants, or used in cooking or herbalism recipes. Plants can be harvested an unlimited number of times. Plant may continue to yield produce after the length of its cycle or may reset to planted stage and need time to regrow to mature stage to yield again. This reset seems to be hard to predict and may occur after the produce get ripe to harvest but before actual harvest thus losing it.

However in The Sims 4: Seasons, a gardening overhaul synchronize all plants on the current lot to produce harvestables every 5 AM. Confirmed for base game too.Attention, avoid saving/loading your game near 05:00 A.M., as it may result in zero ripe produce (your garden and wild plants as well). Probably saving at that moment interrupts process of adding harvest to plants, and after loading game logic check the time to be overdue and do not start the process over again.

When plants reach maximum health, they can be evolved by a Sim, who has at least a level 2 gardening skill. This will increase the quality of the plants harvestables and their value. Increasing quality also increases the quality of dishes, drinks, and herbal remedies made with them. Planting a higher quality harvestable will result in a plant starting at that quality. There are five levels of quality: Normal, Nice, Excellent, Magnificent and Perfect. Most plants will increase from 2x to 3.5x their value between normal and perfect.

From Level 3 Sims can fertilize plants, which helps them evolve more quickly. Fertilizing does not affect the quality of the plant or harvestables, or how quickly harvestables are produced, and does not make the plant more resilient to needing water, weeding, or being sprayed for bugs. Plants can be fertilized with any plant or fish. Plants are the most common choice as they are easy to obtain and inexpensive to use up. There are also unconfirmed reports that trash plants and mushrooms are more effective than other plants, as fertilizers. The in-game description of growfruit states that it is a "great" fertilizer. Given its name and that it was added as part of a gardening event, it is probably the most effective possible fertilizer. Fish are more effective than most plants, increasing in effectiveness depending on the rarity of the fish.There is other opinion, that quality of fertilizer depends only on its price. Best effect gives 50+ items. So rose with a value of 52 and dragonfruit with a value of 461 will provide the same fertilizing effect while excess value of dragonfruit is wasted (you should sell it instead).

After attaining level 5 in the gardening skill, Sims gain the ability to cut and graft plants. This allows them to make hybrid plants that grow multiple harvestables at once. To graft two plants together, the Sim simply needs to take a cutting from one plant and graft it onto another. The second plant will then need to regrow, but after reaching maturity will bear its original harvestable, as well as the harvestable of the plant that was grafted onto it. Certain grafting pairs will produce a third harvestable on the plant, unrelated to the original two. This is the only way to obtain several rare harvestables. After discovering one of these unique pairs, the recipe will be added to that Sim's notebook. Because there are two possible recipes to create bonsai buds, only the first one discovered will show up in the notebook. Grafted plants produce harvestables at the rate of the base plant, not the plant that came from a cutting. They will also start at the quality of the base plant and grow in the season of the base plant. Multiple plants can be grafted onto one base plant, but plants can only hold up to 10 harvestables, and grafted plants will split that randomly between all types. Mushrooms and the Sixam Mosquito Trap cannot be cut or grafted onto. Too many cuttings will kill a plant; depending on the plant, they can survive one to three cuttings.

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