Product: The Sims 4Platform:PCWhich language are you playing the game in? EnglishHow often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)What is your current game version number? Latest version (in game, so not able to see)What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? EP: All except Island Living. GP: Star Wars, Magic, Jungle, Vampire, Dine, Outdoor, Dream Home Decorator, Strangerville SP: Knitting, Tiny, Laundry, Spooky Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Plant a tree, wait for it to show the evolve sign, and click it.What happens when the bug occurs? The Evolve button does not appear, like it does with other plants.What do you expect to see? To see the "evolve" option button.Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No My sim has a gardening skill level of 10. At first I thought it may be caused by the season, but my other plants that were out of season evolved. And my idea that the 'not-grown-yet' state could be an option, contradicted with the other ... dirtpiles (not-yet-grown-veggies) that I could evolve. Edit By Crinrict: Added Tag to Title

So, I may have stumbled on a solution for this. (Scroll down to 'POSSIBLE SOLUTION' if you don't care about the context and backstory.)I'm on Xbox Series X playing the base game via Game Pass with no expansions or packs (other than a couple of free cosmetic ones that installed automatically).Also, my sim is level 10 gardener.I suddenly had probably around a quarter of my plants (across multiple varieties) either stop growing, stop producing harvestables, revert to planted / ungrown state (pile of dirt), be unable to evolve (health bar shows it's ready, but 'Evolve' interaction missing), and/or be unable to do a lot of standard interactions on grown plants like take a cutting and others (the only options would be things like uproot, talk to plant, and maybe fertilize and one other - but even if I fertilize, it wouldn't have any effect). I'll refer to these plants as the broken ones.The unbroken ones are, obviously, the ones that are working correctly in all ways. lolOkay, so this sudden onset of broken plants coincided rather suspiciously with me moving things around on my lot. I used "move lot" to move everything (within the same lot, not moving to a new lot), and then made a bunch of manual tweaks to the placement of planter boxes / pots.Also note: I'm using planter boxes and planter pots, not bare ground, so I can't speak to how this all might behave or work for other situations.I seemed to be able to reliably identify broken plants by any of the following:Bring up the list of interactions. Broken ones had only a few, while unbroken ones had all of the interactions I'd expect (this was true for full-grown plants, but I think it's also true for earlier growth stages... not certain).Move an individual plant from the planter box to another spot (bare ground or same/different planter box). Broken ones would instantly change to a planted/ungrown state (pile of dirt). Unbroken ones would be fine and maintain growth stage / form. (Broken plants maintain stage/form when picked up and placed back where they came from. It has to be a different spot in the grid.)Rotate or move the planter box / planter pot. Broken plants would instantly change to a planted/unbroken state (pile of dirt). Unbroken ones would be fine and maintain growth stage / form.I used the above techniques to identify broken plants, and I started uprooting them and planting new ones (much to my dismay / frustration) when I stumbled on what might be a solution.I think I read somewhere (I've opened too many threads/links to remember where... hopefully it's not this thread cause then I'd feel dumb and I'm not gonna check as I type this up on mobile 😆) that one possible fix is to move the plants into your home inventory and then back into the grid. I don't think this worked for me, but I may have only tried that fix with a plant that couldn't be weeded... but I'm pretty sure I tried that fix with the evolve issue, too.POSSIBLE SOLUTIONBUT, while uprooting and re-planting the first few out of maybe a dozen broken plants, I went into build mode to mess with something and accidentally sold a planter that contained some broken plants. When I promptly hit 'Undo' to bring it back, the broken plants were fixed and back to normal, still with their health / proper growth stage.So this is what I did with the rest of the garden:Go into build mode.Select a planter box or pot, rotate it 90° in-place, and place it back down. This would cause broken plants to immediately revert to planted / ungrown state - piles of dirt.Rotate the planter box or pot back to its original orientation or just hit undo (I doubt this step is necessary, but I was doing it anyway).Select the planter box or pot and sell it ('Y' button on Xbox).Hit 'Undo' (LT on Xbox).The planter box/pot would reappear with all plants in an unbroken state, still with their quality and growth stage in-tact.This seems to have done the trick. All the previously broken plants had all their interactions back, they looked correct / had proper quality, could be evolved, and would gain health after being fertilized (haven't hit another harvest time yet to confirm that harvestables appear, but I'll be surprised if they don't).I did not test this method on individual plants, only planter boxes/pots, but that doesn't mean it won't work on bare ground with individual plants, though the process might look a little different (e.g. you probably have to move the plant, not rotate it, to test if it's broken).It's also possible that step 2 above isn't needed. I just did it to identify broken plants. If the plants in the box/pot weren't broken, I'd just move on to the next box/pot. The magic likely happens specifically due to steps 1, 4, and 5. BUT, I didn't test that.To give a concrete example, I had a broken apple tree that was showing as just a pile of dirt in the planter pot (it was previously fully grown). I followed the above steps, and as soon as I undid the sale of the planter pot, the tree was instantly there and fully grown and unbroken... no more pile of dirt.--I hope this works for some of you! I'll comment again if I learn more about the issue as I go. Please let me know if this works for your situation or if you identify new insights or better ways to fix the plants.-Mack

That's why I stated "And my idea that the 'not-grown-yet' state could be an option, contradicted with the other ... dirtpiles (not-yet-grown-veggies) that I could evolve.My spinach and other veggies evolved while they were still lumps of dirt....

Spinach, Basil, Grape, Dragon Fruit.AND i found another plat, able to evolve, my Bluebell. Check the photos.

Although I must say, THAT part actually felt like the bug. How can a plant evolve that hasn't even grown/sprouted yet. 😅

Could it, perhaps, be that I had some harvested units in my inventory, which were of "nice" quality already?And by planting, it sort of automatically starts at the 'normal' quality, but evolves almost right away, because it's harvested in a 'nice' quality?

[NEEDS SAVES] No evolve option (ready to evolve)

34 Replies

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JonaO703
Hero
4 years ago
@Liteblob Hello! I believe plants in the planted state, such as those in your images, can't be evolved. Plants must first sprout before you can evolve them. Hope this helps!
Edit: Here's an example of a mandrake sprout.
Liteblob
4 years ago
That's why I stated "And my idea that the 'not-grown-yet' state could be an option, contradicted with the other ... dirtpiles (not-yet-grown-veggies) that I could evolve.
My spinach and other veggies evolved while they were still lumps of dirt....
Liteblob
4 years ago
Although I must say, THAT part actually felt like the bug. How can a plant evolve that hasn't even grown/sprouted yet. 😅
JonaO703
Hero
4 years ago
@Liteblob Apologies. I missed the part about the just planted veggies evolving. Can you tell us which veggies did this? I just tried it on a bell pepper, potato, mushroom and spinach. None of them would evolve in the planted state.
Edit: I also tested this on tomato, garlic, green bean, black bean, carrot, taro root, onion and soy bean. I did not have the evolve option on any of those either.
Liteblob
4 years ago
Spinach, Basil, Grape, Dragon Fruit.
AND i found another plat, able to evolve, my Bluebell. Check the photos.
Liteblob
4 years ago
Could it, perhaps, be that I had some harvested units in my inventory, which were of "nice" quality already?
And by planting, it sort of automatically starts at the 'normal' quality, but evolves almost right away, because it's harvested in a 'nice' quality?
JonaO703
Hero
4 years ago
@Liteblob I can say for sure that if you harvest from an evolved plant, the harvest retains the quality. So if you plant a nice quality seed, it should start as a nice quality plant.
I did some more testing and found that I wasn't able to evolve any veggies in plant boxes. However, I did get the option when I moved them to the ground. I still was not able to evolve any trees including apple, plaintain, avocado, coconut and plasma fruit. I also was not able to evolve the bluebell for some reason so I tried some other flowers. I was not able to evolve daisy or rose either but I was able to evolve a begonia.
Even though I can't be sure, I don't think there's a bug here. It seems we have the ability to evolve some plants in a planted state but not others. I have no idea why though.
Liteblob
4 years ago
When you mentioned the difference between the ground vs the plant boxes, it might be an important detail that these particular plants AND trees are in the new ... 'gardening plots' that came with the new expansion Cottage Living.
JonaO703
Hero
4 years ago
@Liteblob You just might be onto something there. I don't have CoL so I can't test that part. :-/
crinrict
Hero+
4 years ago
@Liteblob There's an issue that plants revert to dirt piles when they shouldn't. That can lead to evolve on dirt piles.

Did yours ever revert ?

From the description it sounds like they are all newly planted but the dirt pile bug might play into this.