Fireflies

I can tell you a little secret. Once you get all 10 Alchemy Skills, you'll get an opportunity. With this opportunity it will ask your sim to bring in some different things, and one of those will be insects. Now if you go into map mode, you will see different markers of the type of insects that are in the world your sim is in. I use this opportunity to find those hard to find insects. Usually if your in Moonlight Falls those very rare insects will show up around the hospital, but it will be a rare event. This is one opportunity I make sure I take my time completing, because I do like finding all those special insects.

If you have the University EP installed, there is a skill that will allow your sim to clone quite a bit of things as well. I use that to clone the hard to find ones also, especially those needed for the different elixirs.

If you have, I think it's Master Controller (I forget which of the modules) you can force the game to give that opportunity to your sim again. I use it for forcing the game to give my sim the gardening challenge, so they can have the opportunity to be able to plant eggs, cheese, and those other things.

I know I can do that. I did it right after I read your first reply, to see what kinds of fireflies were out there, but I canceled it after that. At that time, there were only the same yellow and green ones she'd already found. There have been two more nights in her game since then, and I have used the collection helper to check on the insects while she's sleeping. So far, she now has collected a purple one, a roseus one, and a white one (albus). That makes 5 kinds so far. She really only still needs the blue one now, for the elixir. I might give her the opportunity some other night, if I don't find any blue ones in the next few of sim nights. But I'm playing this game with no cheating, except what is necessary to fix glitches, so I'm going to avoid giving her the opportunity unless it turns out to be the only way she can get that blue firefly.

By the way, thank you for your help.

I finally decided to give her the opportunity, just until she finds the blue firefly. She's found all of them now, except the blue one. The purple one was off wood street, at the edge of the mountains, about halfway between the arboretum and the Craftsman's Mansion house. So that's another place you can look if you ever need them again.

Thanks for the link to that page. There's a link on that page to a list of which items every spawner produces. It will come in handy for more than just this sim's game. For her, I'm going to keep checking until whatever spawner that's already in the town produces a blue firefly. She has plenty of other things to occupy her time until she finds one. Right now she is on potent invigorating elixirs, working day and night trying to finish making enough large inventions to meet the skill challenge. I'm more tired of the length of time that's taking right now, than I am of waiting for fireflies. While she's working through the night, I look for the fireflies, and interrupt her to send her after them if I find any she doesn't have. Hopefully, it won't be long now.

I like to search for fireflys in France. But I've also found lots in Lucky Palms too.

Unfortunately I don't often think about fireflies and therefore I've not searched in all worlds. It's definitely easier if they have a collection helper.

I was having issues with my game, with freezing. I had already moved my sim to a new copy of Moonlight Falls, and it started happening again, not long after I started this discussion, less than three sim weeks into the current saves. There was one thing that had changed with my game just before the problems started. I had downloaded and installed the items necessary for a homeworld university. So tonight I removed all of those items. Not only did the freezing stop, but so did another issue directly related to this discussion.

I had read a few days ago that after 11 PM, only fireflies would show up with the collection helper, as all the other insects would disappear. This was not happening. But after I removed all the homeworld university items, I saw the daytime insects suddenly disappear from my sim's yard at 11 PM, and I found in map view that they were now all gone from the rest of the world too. That definitely made it easier to find the fireflies!

I don't know how the NRaas Career mod or the University rabbithole rugs could be connected to any of this, but everything in my game was functioning normally before I installed them, and everything is back to normal functioning after removing them. I'm disappointed, because I really wanted to have a homeworld university.

@SimKeats Sims have to be witches to transmute things, right? My sim isn't a witch. She's just learning alchemy, along with all the other skills. At first I thought you were referring to the science experiments. My sim has changed insects to plasma bugs with radiation experiments. She's also changed herbs to bottled super herbs, a food item to an empanada, and normal seeds to forbidden fruit seeds. That's what came to mind at first, when I read your post. LOL!

@Karritz I didn't realize there were fireflies in France. I did send my sim to Bridgeport, mostly for the fish that aren't found anywhere else. But while she was there, I had her visit the butterfly emporium at night to catch fireflies. Unfortunately, the only ones that showed up were the same two kinds she had already caught lots of at home. I know I've had sims that lived there catch more kinds than that, but they lived there, so they were there more than the two nights my sim went.

I've often caught fireflies in France. But since I added this mod for epic spawners, last time I went to France I also go a Will o the Wisp.

http://modthesims.info/d/509778

http://s5.postimg.cc/dp913se4n/Will_OThe_Whisp001.jpg

And lots of fireflies
http://s5.postimg.cc/fobupz4av/Duncan043.jpg

He was analysing them so he could clone them when he went home. I only cloned a stag beetle so far - and also a Sim from France. Jolene was the Sim from France - he had to ask her to visit him in Sunlit Tides though as the DNA he got in France converted to his DNA on the way home.

http://s5.postimg.cc/brg5b0ps7/Duncan051.jpg

@LaBlue0314 Yes, my sim has mastered science, and the cloning she can do has been very handy. She's mastered inventing too, and the pink diamond for the simbot was very hard to come by as well, but not as hard as those fireflies. I was having her drill with the miner to find one, as that's the only way I'd ever found one in the past, but having no luck this time. Then she created a meteor shower with the group science project, and got her pink diamond that way. You can be sure she cloned it immediately. I'm saving samples of everything she may need again later, even the more common items, to save her having to go looking for them again.

It's been quite a while since she mastered alchemy, but I have never seen that opportunity yet. Hopefully, she will get it before too much longer. My plan for her is to master every skill, so she has a lot of different skills already, and gets opportunities related to many different skills. I turn down a lot of them, so as not to waste her time repeating things she's finished with.

When you say it will be a rare event, do you mean the rare insects showing up around the hospital? I could check out the area around there every night, just in case they show up.

OK, I was wrong. I decided to check with Master Controller to see what opportunities are available to my sim, and found she's already done that one. It was so long ago, I had forgotten about it. It's not repeatable, so she won't be offered it again. I guess I'll just have to keep checking with the collection helper every night while she's sleeping. If I find them, I can wake her up and send her after them. So far, most of the insects I find with it in the night are cockroaches and others that are available during the day, and the yellow and green fireflies. She has never found a regular moth, either.

I forgot to mention, for this opportunity to show up you must have in the town your sim lives in the rabbit holes that came with Supernatural. I know that if I have a sim who completes their alchemy skills and lives in a town that does have those location in their town the opportunity doesn't arises.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/sims/images/0/0c/Fae_Ray_Arboretum.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/185?cb=20120918083957&format=webp

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8168/7516755582_6840f2b1d6.jpg

Not the lager stuff, just the rabbit holes.