Red Assassin, the bug that isn't in the game (and the bug that is).

The Red Assassin bug can take a few days to spawn, like Mummitomium. When the adventure is active it doesn't mean that there are any on the map at that time. I've spent a whole 3-day trip in Simhara waiting for the Mummitomium and never got one at times.

I've never had a problem collecting that bug, whether the adventure was active or not.

I can give you the 'lowdown' on this varmint. China is my fav vacation so I've run into this mission a few times.

When you receive the mission, go out to the map view of the village / area and you will be presented with a few icons on the map for the red assassin.

When you arrive at one of these locations, you won't see the bug immediately. You might see a black bug or nothing. Just hold that location and within 5 to 10 minutes of sim time you'll see one or more bright, more orange than red, dots on the ground.

Have your sim capture the red version. There is a chance your sim will fail at trapping the bug.

These little creatures are worth over 900 simoleans apiece. You might be tempted to drop the mission and just sell them instead.

Outside of the mission, I've never seen one, but then I don't run around looking either.

Hope this helps.

The Red Assassin Bug is there.
I've caught a few.

Your first paragraph cracked me up.

I was thinking that this was also bugged but reading the above perhaps I am wrong. When I get this quest I just dismiss it.

Thanks for the info Jagha! I kept getting frustrated because I had bugs tagged when I showed up it was those darn water beetles! I didn't even think they could be the same spawn point!

With all the WA bugs I just assumed it was another one like Mario.

What may help with more spawning is to use the buydebug on cheat in edit town to place a few more spawners in China.Just remember even newly placed spawners can take a few days to produce so sometimes a longer vacation stay is the answer.

Nah, I'm just completely chalking this up to a bug in the game itself. I've seen numerous forum posts around the internet with people unable to find bugs in this game, ehther they're red assassin or scarabs or cerambryx. And I can vouch amongst others that custom mods are NOT the sole proprietor of this glitch. I just hope it's recognized that even in the cases when bugs are invisible, it's still a frustrating problem.

That and the occurrences where Report In cannot be accomplished because the Sim necessary to Report In to either doesn't exist or has some kind of mystical protection from being seen on the map or interacted with.

As I recall they are considered an unusual find. Catching a few easier bugs, like ladybugs, increases your chances of catching them on the first try.
In my game they are widely scattered, but I can usually find one at that cool tiny lot way up above the Dragon Cave. There are a few more over between the Scholar's Garden and -hmm, not the Academy-the Retreat?

I never have a problem with any of these bugs. Although there are some places in China (like near the abandoned barn) where the beetle spawner seems to be too low in the ground, and the beetles never come up to the surface - you can see them when you're viewing the basement, but you can't catch them from there...

When I searched this forum with "Red assassin bug" I got 15 hits. Of course, some of them were this thread :-) .